I am the Associate Publisher and Journals Director for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), publisher of 36 technical journals. Prior to that, I was the Production Director at ASCE overseeing all production aspects of journals, a monthly member magazine, and book products. I was Managing Editor of Cancer and Cancer Cytopathology at the American Cancer Society and was Production Manager for Journals at ASCE. I am the Past-president of the Council of Science Editors. My views on The Scholarly Kitchen are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
A new kind of predator is taking advantage of unsuspecting authors. In this post, Angela Cochran discusses the forged acceptance letters received and what publishers can do to help authors avoid this costly and embarrassing pitfall.
New changes at COPE seem to move the organization further away from standards and closer to suggested behavior. At the same time, a new policy on member expulsions was announced. Is it clear exactly what members are agreeing to?
Hoping to woo authors away from commercial publishers, a group of biomedical science societies have launched a new alliance to promote the value of publishing in society journals.
Citations and the metrics around their use are an important part of evaluation and promotion of science and scientists and yet, little attention is paid to them in the peer review process. In this post, Angela Cochran makes a call to critically review reference lists and develop standards around what should and should not be included.
Managing volunteers in a critical and yet overlooked part of running a successful journal or program. Angela Cochran explores tips for getting the most out of volunteers and where we can find training to learn these skills.
There is little doubt that piracy of subscription or member-only access content is damaging to publishers and societies. Does the same hold true for open access journals? Angela Cochran explores some of the dangers piracy poses to open access content.
No matter what we call it, commenting on scholarly publications has a spotty record of success. Despite the mediocre results, journals, databases, and third party sites keep trying to get authors and readers to engage in this way. This post explores different models and the challenges online commenting faces.
In the quest to measure everything, authors are now presented with all kinds of metrics. This post reviews common sources for citation, attention, and usage metrics. Not all the tools are up for the job leaving authors wondering how to quantify the impact of their work.
In the wake of public questions about trust in science, Angela Cochran had a conversation with Dr. Jamie L. Vernon about the challenges of communicating science to the public and how the SciComm community could do better.
Fake News is making headlines as questions about how dubious stories may have influenced the US election. This post explores the damage done to reputable news organizations and what scholarly publishers could learn from the whole thing.