Journals and peer review are unlikely to change for the better if the companies that operate scientific indexes and citation databases continue to stifle innovation. At eLife we believe that the content of a research article is more important than the name or impact factor of the journal in which it is published. Our approach to scientific publishing – which we adopted in 2023 – combines the immediacy and openness of preprints with the expert evaluation provided by peer review.| DORA
The innovative F1000Research open research publishing model was launched in 2012 and was born out of a desire to start again, thinking about the technology and tools at the time and redesigning how we share and critically review new discoveries and support others to then build on them. The biggest challenge is the way that we typically currently assess and incentivise researchers and the research processes that they use, which together in effect disincentivises the use of these new publishing...| DORA
Robert Harington talks to Melissa Junior, Executive Publisher at The American Society for Microbiology, in this series of perspectives from some of Publishing’s leaders across the non-profit and for-profit sectors of our industry.| The Scholarly Kitchen
Call for papers: Submissions for special issue “Work in Ecological Economics,” exploring how employment, time use, sustainability intersect.| The International Society for Ecological Economics
World Scientific Publishing is marketing my book. They have put out a flyer for several of their electronics books (https://www.worldscientific.com/pb-assets/wspc-site/catalogue-pdf/Electrical-Electronics-Engineering2024-25-1705395593457.pdf), and my book is the first one on the flyer! Of course, they don’t mention that the PDF for the book is also available on LeanPub for only $7.99 (https://leanpub.com/applied_analog_electronics), but I wouldn’t expect them […]| Gas station without pumps
“I know you cannot understand such matters, since you appear to have strong mother-related problems that most likely have denied you of a satisfactory sexual life”, _ Enrico Sciubba, Ed…| For Better Science
A new study on the connections between editors-in-chief in the social sciences reveals significant geographical and gender imbalances in editorial leadership. Male […]| Social Science Space
In a publish-or-perish system of scientific communication, large numbers of articles are written and submitted to journals. Editors face the...| researchpracticesandtools.blogspot.com
“Expressions of Concern may be used as an interim notice to flag a potential issue that may be ultimately resolved with another amendment outcome (e.g. retraction or correction) or they may r…| For Better Science
“Since Journal of Ethnopharmacology sees no reason to reject bear bile powder research like other scientific journals, that means you can expect to see anything there” – Parashore…| For Better Science
It's been an odd week for the academic publisher MDPI. On 16th December, Finland's Publication Forum (known as JUFO) announced that from January 2025 it was downgrading its classification of 271 open access journals to the lowest level, zero. | BishopBlog
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – After more than three decades, the editorship of the Philosophy of Music Education Review, the premier refereed| Indiana University Press
A pre-London-Book-Fair report assesses research writers' interest in using artificial intelligence responsibly and transparently.| Publishing Perspectives
Indiana University Press (IUP) is pleased to announce that Gigi Lamm will join the press as its new director of marketing and sales. In this role, Lamm| Indiana University Press
Drawing on discussions with academics who have oriented their work around public engagement and social impact, Daniel Pearson suggests these academics present an opportunity to rethink the existing structures of reward and recognition in higher education.| Social Science Space
During University Press Week, Oxford University Press announces a new award for early-career researchers in humanities and social sciences.| Publishing Perspectives
Earlier this year, I wrote about a draft academic paper that had attempted to condemn the new NICE guideline for ME/CFS. As regular readers might recall, the paper had claimed that NICE was guilty of “eight major errors” in its guideline reviewing processes. In my blog post I noted that […] The post The cries for help are getting louder. And that’s a good sign appeared first on The Science Bit.| The Science Bit
Let’s have another go, shall we? Last December we wrote about a paper published in Occupational Medicine, in which the following information was presented in a table: The study concerned a group of patients who were scrutinised at two time-points, firstly at “baseline”, and secondly at “follow-up”. That is basically […] The post Authors defend statistical errors, editor sees no evil appeared first on The Science Bit.| The Science Bit
I used to be concerned about bad science. These days, what gets me going is wrong science: blatant error somehow surviving peer-review and ending up published as if it were fact. It seems that is where we have got to with modern academic publishing. Standards have slipped so badly, even […] The post Will innumeracy cause this study to be retracted? Don’t count on it… appeared first on The Science Bit.| The Science Bit
Since 2012, thousands of academics have been boycotting the academic publisher Elsevier, whom they blame for overpricing its journals, and more generally for resisting open access to the scientific literature. Of course, most major academic publishers are guilty of the same, but Elsevier stands out as the worst offender. For instance, Elsevier was the last major publisher to join the Initiative for Open citations, years after all the others. Elsevier did not join the Initiative for open abstr...| Research Practices and Tools
When it comes to good practices, research institutions are often good at declarations of principles, and not so good at implementation. For example, it is easy to declare that research assessment should be qualitative and not rely too much on bibliometrics, but harder to do it in practice.| Research Practices and Tools
“Science family of journals announces change to open-access policy”: the title of this Nature news article may sound boring, but the news are not:| Research Practices and Tools
The European Research Council (ERC) just announced that they would withdraw their support for Coalition S, the consortium of research funders behind Plan S. Plan S is the valiant but not universally welcome attempt to impose strong open access requirements to research articles, without paying more money to publishers.| Research Practices and Tools
The principles behind plan S have already sparked lots of debate, including an open letter denouncing the plan, based on objections that I found not very convincing. Now that the plan’s promoters have published their draft implementation guidance (and are inviting comments on it), the discussion can become more specific. Given the boldness of the principles, their implementation cannot be painless, and is bound to raise criticisms if not resistance. It is therefore both crucial and difficul...| Research Practices and Tools
After a coalition of European science funding agencies announced their Plan S initiative for open access, a number of researchers wrote an open letter criticizing the move, under the title “Reaction of Researchers to Plan S: Too Far, Too Risky”. To summarize, they fear that Plan S would increase costs, lower quality, and restrict academic freedom. In order to evaluate how seriously these fears should be taken, let me start with a 5-point analysis of the issues, before discussing the open ...| Research Practices and Tools
After long and tortuous negotiations, the French consortium Couperin has claimed victory in its recent agreement with Springer, after having secured price decreases. This claim seems reasonable, as prices of big deals with publishers tend to increase steadily. Of course, critics can still point out that Springer remains very expensive compared to smaller, more efficient publishers. But at least Springer seems amenable to some compromises in negotiations. And one should not forget that the gre...| Research Practices and Tools
Update Nov 2022: This blog has now been superseded by new data up to 2021 which are available here In this blog I report on growth in MDPI journals from 2015-2020. It updates two previous blogs on …| Dan Brockington
