Validating Author Services Providers: Q&A with Donald Samulack
A proposed coalition aims to help authors identify reputable service providers. In this Q&A with Donald Samulack, the justification and way forward for such an effort is discussed.
Deceptive Publishing: Why We Need a Blacklist, and Some Suggestions on How to Do It Right
Predatory publishing is a big and complex problem; so is calling out and shaming deceptive publishers by means of blacklisting. Is that something we should even do, and can it be done fairly, constructively, and helpfully? Yes, and here are some suggestions how.
You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
A look at common terms that are improperly used to describe science.
Revisiting: Is Access to the Research Paper the Same Thing as Access to the Research "Results"?
Is access to the research paper really the same thing as access to the research results themselves? Are funding agencies creating a false equivalency by confusing the two? And does this confusion favor researchers in some fields over others? Revisiting a 2013 post to re-examine these questions.
Network-based Citation Metrics: Eigenfactor vs. SJR
Can network-based metrics allow us to separate true scientific influence from mere popularity?
Thinking about Internet Scale
The Internet operates on a scale unlike anything we have seen before. How must publishing adapt to this scale? This requires more than thinking of the Internet as another format. The scale of the Internet requires us to invite machines into our research and publishing activity.
Advocacy, Analysis, and the Vital Importance of Discriminating Between Them
As the scholarly communication world becomes more complex and the issues we deal with become more politically and emotionally fraught, it becomes increasingly essential that we be able to tell the difference between anlaysis and advocacy. What markers can we look for to help us discriminate between them?
Data Curation–The New Killer App
Establishing new citation benchmarks and an international board of academics, Elsevier is poised to take on Thomson Reuters for dominance in the citation metrics market.
Academia Versus Academia.edu: Should Tech Business Needs Trump Scholarly Culture?
Should the fast and loose rules of startup company business models and the spin-oriented language of advertising be given free rein in the scholarly community?
Should We Retire the Term "Predatory Publishing"?
Those who argue that “predatory” behavior is not only a problem among author-pays OA publishers have a good point. But this raises another question: is the term “predatory” itself really useful in the context of scholarly communication?
The ROARMAP Open Access Registry: New and Greatly Improved
ROARMAP, a deeply flawed and often misleading international registry of open access “mandates,” has now been completely revamped–and the result is a much more informative and reliable resource.
Ask The Chefs: How Can We Improve the Article Review and Submission Process?
What’s wrong with peer review and article submission processes? What can publishers, authors, and reviewers do to improve the status quo?
Guest Post: Karin Wulf on Open Access and Historical Scholarship
As we consider the future of scholarly publishing generally and of open access in particular, we need to keep in mind the deep differences between the humanities and the applied sciences when it comes to both the production and the consumption of scholarship–and the implications of those differences for new dissemination models.
Knockoffs Erode Trust in Metrics Market
If the Internet created a burgeoning market of cheap academic journal knockoffs, should we be surprised to witness new knockoff ratings companies?
Guest Post: Bryn Geffert On Securing Rights
Guest Chef Bryn Geffert (Librarian of the College at Amherst College) tries to envision a world in which publishers can spend less time and money wrestling with copyright issues and scholars can more effectively share their work.