Phil Davis is a publishing consultant specializing in the statistical analysis of citation, readership, publication and survey data. He has a Ph.D. in science communication from Cornell University (2010), extensive experience as a science librarian (1995-2006) and was trained as a life scientist. https://phil-davis.org/
Like other greying professions, demographic data for ARL libraries warn us of a breaking wave of retirements, but may paint an unrealistic picture of what the beach will look like after the surf has settled.
Journal editors are more likely to reject papers when they experience trouble recruiting reviewers, reports a new study.
While few will disagree with their motives, the authors provide no roadmap for scientific societies. It may be time to learn from the successes of commercial rivals.
After several pivots and failures, it may be time to finally say goodbye to portable peer review.
Designed to identify individuals who might be gaming their h-index score, the s-index may do more harm than good.
As an alternative to the Journal Impact Factor, editors propose an index that measures highly cited papers.
Open online review has the potential to attract many more eyes to a new piece of research than conventional peer review. In reality, it may do far worse in attracting the eyes you want.
Journal suppression is an effective tool for reducing high rates of self-citation, even years after a title is reintroduced.
Now we know how suppression decisions are made, should metrics companies suppress titles at all or simply make the underlying data more transparent?
Is citation manipulation a moral problem or an accounting problem?