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.
World production of scientific literature continues to grow at nearly 3% per year. China, Brazil, and India account for a much larger share of the world’s output, while the United States and Japan’s share continues to decline. Interactive world maps show the growth of article production, and focus on the countries that continue to dominate the top literature.
Guest Chef Elisabeth Jones offers a critical analysis of a widely-distributed statistical chart that seems to show a doubling in the unit cost of monographs since 1985.
This month the Scholarly Kitchen Chefs consider how publishers identify and serve their customers? Are they doing it well? What do YOU think?
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?
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.
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.
The chefs are asked about international publishing strategy and so are you. Tell us how you’d answer today’s question!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?