Guest Post — Self-Citation Is How Fields Grow
Today’s post provides a brief analysis of self-referencing and scholarly impact through the lens of stigmergy theory
Guest Post — The Third Time is NOT the Charm: Who Will Own How AI Participates in Scholarship?
Today’s guest post warns the community that, in the AI era, we cannot keep building the pieces that lay the foundation and letting someone else own what gets built on top of it.
Guest Post — Beyond the Prestige: Why Scientific Impact is More Than a Numbers Game
Today’s guest post introduces the YCR-index as an alternative to measuring value with raw citation counts.
Making AI Use of Scholarly Content Traceable, Measurable, and Trustworthy: A Meeting Report from Cambridge Scholarly AI Workshop
A Cambridge workshop proposes new standard work to support provenance, attribution and metrics in scholarly communications AI tools.
Attribution, Provenance, Reference, Citation, and AI for Research Applications – Understanding the Differences
Building robust citation and attribution into generative AI systems are foundational to usage, credit and trust. We need to expect more from AI.
What AI Asks of Open Access
As AI systems increasingly reason from the scientific literature, the integrity signals that make research trustworthy — open data, structured metadata, robust retraction processes — matter more than ever. PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt on why open access publishers have a different set of obligations in an AI world.
Guest Post — The Open Access – AI Conundrum: Does Free to Read Mean Free to Train?
It is time for OA proponents to engage in public debate with academic associations, universities and national funding agencies, because the widespread use of academic content in AI models poses significant risks for the research ecosystem.
bioRxiv and Citations: Just Another Piece of Flawed Bibliometric Research?
Even a flawed paper can offer lessons on how (not) to report, and what (not) to claim.
Guest Post — The Case For Not Citing Chatbots As Information Sources (Part II)
Citing chatbots as information sources offer little in terms of promoting smart use of generative AI and could also be damaging.
Guest Post — Chatbots: To Cite Or Not To Cite? (Part I)
If you use a chatbot in writing a text, and are discouraged from listing it as a coauthor, should you attribute the relevant passages to the tool via citation instead? Is it appropriate to cite chatbots as information sources?
Citation Contamination: References to Predatory Journals in the Legitimate Scientific Literature
How many articles from predatory journals are being cited in the legitimate (especially medical) literature? Some disturbing findings.
Revisiting: Splitting the Difference — Does an Editorial Mutiny at a Journal Do Much Long-term Damage?
The recent editorial board defection from an Elsevier journal brings up issues raised in Todd Carpenter’s 2013 post on editorial boycotts and declarations of independence. They generate a lot of heat, but what do the data say about the actual success of the new journals compared to the journals that were overthrown.
If We don’t Know What Citations Mean, What Does it Mean when We Count Them?
There is no shortage of critique of citation metrics and other efforts to quantify the “impact” of scholarship. Will a report calling for “responsible metrics” help researchers, administrators and funders finally wean themselves?
When Do Citations Reflect "Impact?"
Citation practices vary between and within STM and HSS; they also vary by discipline and within disciplines. Though citation metrics presume evidence of “impact,” in fact a citation may represent a range of intentions. Given the emphasis on citation indices, isn’t it important to query what scholars are actually doing when they cite another scholar’s work?
Why are Authors Citing Older Papers?
Scholars are citing an increasingly aging collection of scholarship. Does this reflect the growing ease with accessing the literature, or a structural shift in the way science is funded–and the way scientists are rewarded?