Revisiting: Governance and the Not-for-profit Publisher
How can not-for-profit organizations outcompete their commercial rivals? Revisiting Joe Esposito’s 2011 post that lays out a blueprint for success.
Guest Post – An Early Look at the Impact of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Journals Warning List
At the end of 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued their first “Early Warning List of International Journals”. Christos Petrou takes a look at the early impacts this list has had on the journals and publishers named.
Imposters and Impersonators in Preprints: How do we trust authors in Open Science?
Preprints play a crucial role in open science but offer an opportunity to be gamed. Fictitious authorship in preprints show that open science needs checks and we need to collaborate to govern Open Science.
Guest Post — Putting Publications into Context with the DocMaps Framework for Editorial Metadata
The DocMaps Project offers a machine-readable, interoperable and extensible framework for capturing valuable context about the processes used to create research products such as journal articles.
Guest Post — Unethical Practices in Research and Publishing: Evidence from Russia
Anna Abalkina discusses evidence of widespread academic misconduct in Russia.
Watch Out for the Silent Librarian: An Interview with Crane Hassold
Silent Librarian is an international phishing organization that “angles” for university network credentials on behalf of the Iranian government. Crane Hassold gives us the lowdown on this dangerous scam.
Truth and Lies
How to address lies in the political life of a democracy? Education, information literacy, gatekeeping, and dialogue are not enough. Lisa Hinchliffe and Roger Schonfeld examine the issue.
Journalism, Preprint Servers, and the Truth: Allocating Accountability
Journalists are increasingly flagging unsupported claims and blatant falsehoods–it’s time for preprint platforms to do the same.
What a Mangled Press Conference on COVID Can Tell Us About the Need for Good Data Storytelling
Last week the UK government COVID held a press briefing in an attempt to get the country behind new travel and social restrictions. What lessons can we learn from this bad example of how not to present evidence to support our positions?
There is No Truth, There is Only Workflow
The crisis of information integrity is real. Integrity of workflow — analyses of process, investment in process, transparency of process — is the intervention
Are Publishers Learning from Their Mistakes?
Publishers have retracted more than 20 COVID-related papers. Are they learning from their mistakes and fixing process failures?
Guest Post — Risks from Self-Referential Peer Review: An Interview with Jeffrey Unerman
Peer Review Week 2020 continues with a guest post by Bahar Mehmani of Elsevier, who interviewed Professor Jeffrey Unerman about his work on the risks of self-referential peer review.
Trust as an Ethic and a Practice in Peer Review
Chefs Alice Meadows, Jasmine Wallace, and Karin Wulf tackle Peer Review Week 2020’s theme of Trust in Peer Review with this post on trust as both an ethic and a practice
IOP Moves to Universal Double-blind Peer Review: An Interview with Kim Eggleton
Rick Anderson interviews Kim Eggleton of IOP about the publisher’s recently announced move to 100% double-blind peer review.
Guest Post — What are Academic Book Publishers for? Part 2
What have academic book publishers been for? And what might they be for, in the future? Part 2