Politics and Open Access
Robert Harington explores rumors circulating in recent weeks of an impending US Executive Order focusing on public access to federally funded research and open data.
Guest Post — How Will the Needs of Emerging Professionals/Academics Change Scholarly Communications in the Future?
SSP and the Charleston Library Conference have partnered to offer a scholarship program to attend each organization’s annual meetings. Here, the winning essay from Lynnee Argabright offers thoughts on how the needs of emerging professionals/academics change scholarly communications in the future.
What Do Researchers Want from Publishers? An Interview with Dr Milka Kostic
Former scientist, turned publisher, turned research program director, Milka Kostic is uniquely placed to look at publishing from a researcher and a publisher perspective. In this interview with Alice Meadows, she shares her thoughts on both.
Citation Contamination: References to Predatory Journals in the Legitimate Scientific Literature
How many articles from predatory journals are being cited in the legitimate (especially medical) literature? Some disturbing findings.
Guest Post — The Future of Open Access Business Models: APCs Are Not the Only Way
Highwire’s Byron Russell reports on this year’s OASPA Conference, and future paths to sustainable open access business models.
Whither (or Whether) the Monograph? Karin Wulf and Rick Anderson Discuss Some Recent Research
Karin Wulf and Rick Anderson discuss some implications of a recent research report on the future of the scholarly monograph.
Roadblocks to Better Open Access Models
The conversation around open access has shifted from “should we?” to “how are we going to?” The failings of the author-pays model are becoming increasingly evident. Finding better models is proving to be both urgently necessary and extremely difficult.
Why Scholarly Societies Are Vitally Important to the Academic Ecosystem
Robert Harington suggests that despite the critical role of scholarly societies in publishing and academia, the sad reality is it is the big corporate publishers who win.
Repairing an Institutional Reputation Tarnished by Fraudulent Publishing
Given the reality of fraudulent publishers and their deceptive practices, will institutions consider more strongly guiding author choice of publishing venue in order to protect institutional reputation?
So What’s the DEAL?: An Interview with Springer Nature’s Dagmar Laging
An interview with Springer Nature’s Dagmar Laging about the emerging transformative open access agreement with Germany’s Projekt DEAL.
Fighting Citation Pollution — The Challenge of Detecting Fraudulent Journals in Works Cited
Scholarly publishing needs a scalable, easily adopted, and industry-wide approach to the problem of author manuscripts including citations to articles in fraudulent journals.
How to Be A Good Peer Reviewer
A major factor in determining quality in the peer review process are the reviewers. Without peers providing high-quality reviews, the value-add of the peer review process declines. We started this conversation about what makes a quality peer review within our larger community via Twitter , and came up with a few qualities of good peer reviewers.
Where is the Publication Puck Going? Making Research Available “Upstream” of Publication
Could scholarly publishers’ skills and capacity be re-positioned to serve researchers at earlier stages in the research process, “upstream” of publication? Charlie Rapple shares findings from a survey of the communications needs of almost 10,000 researchers.
Guest Post — A Case for Universal and Simplified Journal Systems
If publishers truly are service providers, then better care should be taken in setting up journal submission guidelines and formats. This guest post by Mriganka Awati shares author feedback on the frustrations with the current submission processes and offers solutions for consideration.
The Value of Redundancy in Research, or, In Research, Redundancy Has Value
The systems of research and scholarly communication contain a lot of redundancy. This is a good thing.