Elsevier’s new CiteScore service is a carefully thought-out element in the company’s competitive strategy, but it reinforces the widespread error that bibliometrics can be use as proxies for the quality of a publication.
How valuable is the brand? It depends on the ecosystem or publishing epoch. Brands were the hallmark of the print era, but with the advent of new publishing paradigms, brands now compete with other useful means to identify materials.
Gold open access publishing has proved to be successful, but it has certain limitations. This essay probes what those limitations are, but it argues that OA’s limitations do not outweigh its strengths. Gold OA most usefully coexists with traditional publishing models.
A long-term observation among physicians and their relationship with the scientific literature leads to thoughts about the risks we run with our increasing focus on authors and funders — the producers, not the consumers.
Do higher impact journals do a better job with their statistics? A study with a sexy title proves to be poorly designed and poorly reported.
Now that the vaccine-autism link has been shown to be based on a fraud, will ego continue to trump humility in the face of evidence?
Do medical editors have different quality standards based on the author’s geographic location?