Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2014 Part 2
The beginning of the holiday season means it’s time for our annual list of our favorite books read during the year. Today brings Part 2 of the list.
Welcoming a New Chef into the Kitchen: Phill Jones
Digital Science’s Phill Jones officially joins the Scholarly Kitchen as a regular blogger.
Buried in the Matryoshka — Unpacking the "Value Add" of Peer Review
Publishers often slap labels on activities that are complex, expensive, and high-value. Worse, we often accept people calling these activities “value-add” when they are core functions of how scientific information shared.
Open Access: Meaning(s) and Goal(s)
Are we all talking about the same thing when we say “open access” — and do we all mean the same thing when we talk about an “open access future”? Short answers: “yes (kind of)” and “no way.”
Nevermind the Data, Where are the Protocols?
Journals and funding agencies are focusing on data availability as a route to better experimental reproducibility. But the data is only part of the equation. A new set of NIH guidelines is a great start toward making methodologies better documented and more available.
Slow and Steady — Taking the Time to Think in the Age of Rapid Publishing Cycles
Simple things are often more complex than we initially think, and the push for faster publication may be an expensive and risky trend to follow too much further.
Strategy 1, 3, 5, and 10
Organizations need to encompass multiple perspectives on where a business is headed. It’s usually the case that the staff is not in agreement on that direction, but that could be a very good thing.
Guest Post: Phill Jones on Learning from the Next Generation of Researchers, A Report on the Early Career Researcher Panel at the STM Frankfurt Conference
Guest Chef Phill Jones returns to discuss the lessons learned at the Frankfurt STM panel meant to introduce publishers to the realities of the lives of postdocs.
Feeding the Goose: Thoughts on Fair Use and the GSU Decision
With the appellate court’s rejection of the district court’s decision in the Georgia State University fair-use case, we have yet another twist in this six-year-long saga of copyright litigation. It’s clearly a setback for GSU–but what about for fair use?
Old and Stale? — Aging Researchers, Funding Trends, and the Doughnut Effect
Proposals to get more money to younger researchers shine a light on the aging cadre of academic researchers and the lack of succession we risk with current practices.
UPDATED — 82 Things Publishers Do (2014 Edition)
The annual update to the list adds some important items overlooked on prior versions, including design, enforcement of editorial policies, and Board interactions.
Virtual Reality Research — Some Early Problems with Data Reanalysis and Risks of Open Data
The idea of “reanalysis” needs to be rethought, if recent examples are any indication of what this trend could do to science.
Stick To Your Ribs: What Does A Scientist Want?
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on the real world concerns of the research community. Although many people claim to know what scientists want, the author’s own ongoing survey has come up with results that are at odds with most conventional wisdom. This post summarizes those findings and identifies a near-universal view held by many scientists.
When a Journal Sinks, Should the Editors Go Down with the Ship?
This year, Thomson Reuters suspended six business journals for engaging in a citation cartel. Should the authors be held responsible for the malfeasance of their editors? We propose a new solution to punishing the community for the poor decisions of the few.
Book Review: "What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by Randall Munroe
A new book by the creator of xkcd takes crazy questions about science and tackles them with verve, humor, great illustrations, and great examples of how to break down even the strangest problems.