Guest Post: Kent Anderson UPDATED — 96 Things Publishers Do (2016 Edition)
Kent Anderson returns to update his essential list of just what it is that publishers do.
Revisiting: The Problem(s) With Credit for Peer Review
Do we need more metrics, or can some questions be answered more easily?
The Open Syllabus Project, Altmetrics, and a New Dataset
The Open Syllabus Project has created a database of over 1 million college syllabuses and extracted the names of the materials used in these courses. These materials are analyzed quantitatively and ranked. The creators of the service propose a new metric for the evaluation of academic publications.
The Network Model of Publishing
One of the unanticipated consequences of the introduction of digital media to scholarly publishing is that publishing properties increasingly are organized into networks, with one property pointing to another for the benefit of all. This essay describes the network publishing model and comments on some of a network’s characteristics and economic opportunities.
PNAS: Tighter Editorial Policy Improves NAS Papers
After years of tightening its submissions policy, papers contributed by NAS members start resembling direct submissions.
Incremental Improvements Start With A/B Testing
Why do publishers and platform providers spend so little time seeking incremental improvements?
Improving Privacy by Rethinking Architecture
Today, we grapple with privacy issues as consumers, as citizens, and as voters. As an industry, we should be thinking about how to draw not only on policy but also on technical architecture to balance privacy and innovation. When the stars align, an entirely different architecture for the control of user data is possible. What would such a shift mean for scholarly publishing and academic libraries?
Mr. Market is a Brilliant Editor
Of the many ways to measure the quality of a publication, one that is often overlooked are the workings of the marketplace itself. Purchases for published material is made in large part on the basis of the quality of that material, making the marketplace something of an editor of genius. This mechanism incorporates all other metrics, from impact factor to altmetrics. Unfortunately, the marketplace is not free to exercise its judgment when many participants seek dominant and even monopolistic control.
PubMed Central Boosts Citations, Study Claims
Researchers claim that PMC boosts citations by 26%. A closer look at the paper reveals serious data and analysis problems. Can we collectively design a better study?
People Make the Difference: Steering a Start-up to Success
A panel at the Charleston conference featured three CEOs of start-ups, who shared their experiences in creating and running a completely new organization. All of these companies are computationally sophisticated, so advanced technologically that it is hard to image established companies taking on their challenges. Another common theme is the importance of hiring and retaining the very best people, a matter in which start-up CEOs tend to be obsessive.
Celebrating Five Years of Altmetrics
Charlie Rapple reports on the 2:AM conference, which celebrated five years of altmetrics and considered what we should aspire to achieve in the next five years
Seeing the Forest (Plot) for the Trees
Clean, data rich, and intuitive, forest plots can be used to visualize publication metrics.
Do Academy Members Publish Better Papers?
When journals provide academy members a VIP submission track, do their papers perform any better?
Guest Post: HighWire’s John Sack on Online Indexing of Scholarly Publications: Part 2, What Happens When Finding Everything is So Easy?
HighWire’s John Sack looks at the changes that search engine indexing has driven for discovery of research publications. Part 2 of a two part series covering Anurag Acharya’s recent ALPSP keynote address.
Viva VIVO! Thinking More Broadly About the Scholarly Communications Infrastructure
Inspired by this year’s VIVO conference, this post looks at why we need a better understanding of how the scholarly research infrastructure works today in order to keep improving it for the future.