All the News That Fits — What’s Really Driving Altmetric’s Top 100 Articles List?
The Altmetric “flower” is an icon, and the annual Top 100 list a much-anticipated event. But is the flower really a stalk?
Enriching Book Metadata is Marketing in the Digital Age
A study of how enriching keyword metadata improved sales of 4 publishers points to changes in how we should view marketing of books online.
Metrics: Human-Made, but Humane?
With a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, HumetricsHSS is a kind of meta-workshop in “rethinking humane indicators of excellence in the humanities and social sciences.”
Book Review — “World Without Mind,” by Franklin Foer
Franklin Foer’s new book is a bracing account of the current information economy, the monopolies and motivations at its heart, and the weakening of democratized knowledge.
Guest Post — Does ResearchGate Emerge Unscathed, or Even Strengthened?
Librarian Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe offers thoughts on where the ongoing clash between scholarly publishers and ResearchGate may end up.
Who Owns Digital Science?
In the shift beyond content licensing and towards supporting researcher workflow, Elsevier has few competitors. A key question is whether Digital Science and SpringerNature should be understood strategically as one company, or two. Who owns Digital Science?
Retirement Wave To Hit Academic Librarianship
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.
Transforming Research, in the Face of Uncertainty, Scarcity, and Bias
Last week’s Transforming Research conference in Baltimore, MD, gathered a range of speakers across the academic and professional spectrum. Charlie Rapple highlights some of the new research that was shared, and draws out some of the prevalent themes.
The Facebooking of Scholarly Research
The search tools and social networks we increasingly rely on are all dependent on advertising-based business models. What does this mean for scholarly communication?
Turning a Critical Eye on Reference Lists
Citations and the metrics around their use are an important part of evaluation and promotion of science and scientists and yet, little attention is paid to them in the peer review process. In this post, Angela Cochran makes a call to critically review reference lists and develop standards around what should and should not be included.
Guest Post — When Metrics and Politics Collide: Reflections on Peer Review, the JIF and Our Current Political Moment
Sara Rouhi from Altmetric reflects on the biases of the “research industrial complex”.
Do We Need A Self-Citation Index?
Designed to identify individuals who might be gaming their h-index score, the s-index may do more harm than good.
Less Than Meets the Eye: Print Book Use Is Falling Faster in Research Libraries
Use of printed books in large North American research libraries is falling even faster than we think.
The One-Percent Club For Top-Cited Papers
As an alternative to the Journal Impact Factor, editors propose an index that measures highly cited papers.
Ask The Chefs: If You Were A VC Investing In Scholarly Communications, Where Would You Be Placing Your Bets?
How do you know which technologies, tools, or best practices to incorporate into your organization? What if you had money to invest? Where would you place your bets? This month, we asked the Chefs that question. Come see what they said.