Editors keep allowing nonsense and gibberish to be published in their journals and conference proceedings. How many exposés and sting operations will it take before scholarly publishing begins effectively to police itself?
Businesses are using more data than ever to inform decision making. While the truly large Big Data may be limited to the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, publishers are nonetheless managing more data than ever before. While the technical challenges may be less daunting with smaller data sets, there remain challenges in interpreting data and in using it to make informed decisions. Perhaps the most daunting challenge is in understanding the limitations of the dataset: What is being measured and, just as importantly, what is not being measured? What inferences and conclusions can be drawn and what is mere conjecture? Where are the bricks and mortar solid and where does the foundation give way beneath our feet?
Despite the feeling that the factory has turned out just another from the same template, Gladwell’s new book turns out to be refreshing, surprising, and thought-provoking.
Alan Alda spoke at the AAAS meeting in Chicago on the theme of communicating science to the public. We often view the communication of science, be it in one’s own scholarly journals or in mass media, as somehow distinct and meaningfully different from other communication styles. However, Alda made the point repeatedly during his presentation that this should not be the case. One can accurately convey science with stories and an engaging style that not only brings the reader along in the discovery process, but also preserves the truth and validity of the underlying discovery. Alda made the point that “Communication is not something you add on to science, it is of the essence of science.” Publishers can help to improve how science is communicated; indeed it is at the core of what publishers bring to the process of distributing science.
While we usually think of innovators as visionaries with big ideas that challenge the very assumptions of the way we conduct our lives, many innovations seem to happen almost by accident. The challenge is how to make these accidents occur more often and to benefit from them.
A video translates the odd behaviors of the conference call into real life.
Much of the public debate about open access is polarized, but a recent study of scientific communications shows that extremism breeds more extremism. Isn’t it time we started to look at more effective ways to communicate – to listen, learn to understand each others’ views, and find ways of collaborating and cooperating, rather than competing?
A contemplation of constraints — how some have vanished, how others are needed, how new ones are emerging, and the benefits constraints deliver.
Social media presents a new set of marketing opportunities for publishers, the most important of which is a new paradigm for thinking about the world of digital media, which now is the world of the social stream instead of the world of cyberspace.
Ann Okerson is the National Contact Person for SCOAP3, a partnership aimed at converting high energy physics journals to an open access model.
A particularly pervasive type of error in the ROARMAP registry seems designed to give the impression that many institutional OA policies are more mandatory than they really are. What purpose does this serve?
When does it make sense to call an Open Access policy a “mandate” — and when does it constitute unhelpful exaggeration?
With the ease of posting and searching online for final published PDFs of journal articles and ebooks, publishers have turned to digital solutions for finding unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials. Recently, some authors have taken exception to these policies leaving publishers to defend these practices and explain author rights when it comes to sharing accepted manuscripts.
Legal issues are an inevitable part of publishing cutting-edge information in a world as political as academic research. However, the role of publishers in these matters, and their important contributions, are often concealed within necessary discretion.
When novel, newsworthy results are discovered to be wrong, is that still news?