Ask The Chefs: Are Publishers Customer Focused?
This month the Scholarly Kitchen Chefs consider how publishers identify and serve their customers? Are they doing it well? What do YOU think?
Meet the New Economy of Letters, Same As the Old Economy of Letters
Last fall in the New Yorker, Jill Lapore bemoaned the current relationship between intellectuals and the general public, which she feels is “more vexed than ever” — in part because of a system that rewards academics for outrageousness and for lousy writing. Does she have a point?
Exhibition Prohibition — Why Shouldn’t Publishers Celebrate an Improved Impact Factor?
A trend toward shaming journals that promote their impact factors needs to be rolled back. Impact factors are journal metrics. It’s the other uses that need to be curtailed.
Well, Blow Me Down — A Tale of Spinach, Citations, Nutrition, Epistemology, and Cognitive Ease
More and more studies are emerging showing how misdirecting and expanding citations can lead to long-term misconceptions and mistaken belief systems in the sciences.
Ask The Chefs: "What is ‘International’ in Publishing Strategy Today?"
The chefs are asked about international publishing strategy and so are you. Tell us how you’d answer today’s question!
Going to the Beach with a Public Intellectual
This year’s beach reading will be spent with books by public intellectuals. Unfortunately, writing for the general public is not valued within the academy, to the detriment of public education.
The Mystery of a “Partial” Impact Factor
The lack of an Impact Factor is one reason that new journals have difficulty attracting submissions. Some journals, such as eLife and Cell Reports, qualify for an Impact Factor based on partial data. This post explores how that happens.
An Interview with Amy Brand on a Proposed New Contributor Taxonomy Initiative
We’ve got DOIs (digital object identifiers) to help identify research articles, images, and other digital objects, and ORCIDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs) to help disambiguate the authors of those objects. Now there’s a new initiative to create a contributor taxonomy that identifies who’s done what in the creation of published research – find out more in our interview with Amy Brand, one of the brains behind the concept.
Interview with Thomson Reuters: InCites Platform Offers New Analytics and Transparency
Thomson Reuters launched a new platform called InCites last week. The platform combines Journal Citation Reports with the Essential Science Indicators. In this Q&A, Patricia Brennan from Thomson Reuters describes the new platform and new additions that answer concerns from critics.
Is Open Access a Cause or an Effect?
Why can’t researchers agree on whether Open Access is the cause of more citations or merely associated with better performing papers? The answer is in the methods.
Stick To Your Ribs: The Impact Factor’s Greatest Hits (and Misses)
Yesterday saw the release of the 2013 Impact Factors for scholarly journals. We present a look back at some favorite posts examining the Impact Factor.
Libraries Receive Shrinking Share of University Expenditures
Over the past three decades, the research library has been receiving a smaller proportion of the university budget. Does this trend reflect the failure of library administrators and the declining relevance of libraries? Or does it tell the story of self-control and growing efficiency against a backdrop of spiraling higher education costs?
The 1% of Scientific Outputs — A Story of Strawmen, Sensationalism, and Scopus
A paper claiming to have identified “the 1%” in productive published researchers may suffer from problems with disambiguation, timing, and scope.
NISO Vets Research on Altmetrics
NISO has released the results of their year long study of Altmetrics in draft form for comment.
How Important Are Library Sales to the University Press? One Case Study
A study of sales data for 2012 imprints from the University of Chicago Press offers tantalizing hints about the importance (or lack thereof) of library sales to university presses — particularly with regard to scholarly monographs.