PLoS Releases Article-level Metrics
Moving beyond citations, publisher paints broader picture of quality with palette of performance indicators.
Peer Review Survey 2009
Providing incentives to reviewers may be key to improving the peer review process.
Learning from Books — Lessons for STM Publishers
Mass-market book publishing is being disrupted more quickly than anyone expected. What lessons can we learn?
Wikipedia’s Plateau: A Sign of Elitism, Maturity, or Both?
The plateau of entries in Wikipedia has people scratching their heads. Are the editors becoming elitists? Is quality beating quantity? Or is it a little of both?
Google Knol — Vanity Publishing Fails Again
Google Knol is fading fast. Why didn’t it work? And when will it be put out of its misery? Meanwhile, Google opens the doors on a faster, more accurate version of its search engine.
Ghostwriters & Ghostresearchers: Supernatural Forces in Scholarship
Ghostwriters and unnamed contract researchers might scare up controversy, and frighten away the truth. And they’re only part of the problem.
Diversion, Invention, and Socialized Medicine
A study of social citation reveals diversion, invention, and distortion, and provides a cautionary tale about how socialization of knowledge in medicine can have downsides.
Journalism and Driving — Technology Enables Amateurs
Amateurs with similar machines as professionals have emerged before. Instead of travel, this time, it’s information.
A Gate-keeping Failure at Morgan Stanley
When a teenager is allowed to publish a report under the name of Morgan Stanley, the results show that an important gate-keeping function failed.
Paying for Peer-Review — or, What We’ve Learned from Financial Watchdogs
A common systemic problem links oversight of financial risks and author-pays peer-review. Both are potentially calamitous.
Chaos Still Publishing Former Editor’s Work
The journal that sparked a peer-review controversy has resumed publishing its ousted editor’s work.
The Tip of an Iceberg?
The Bentham experiment suggests that a poorly managed payment system may be the root of a larger problem emerging in academic publishing.
Chaos Journal Preparing to Close Shop?
No new editor, a submission stop, and an announcement to authors to select another journal. As if this weren’t enough, the backlog of unpublished manuscripts is being cleared at an unprecedented rate.
A World of Digital Docents
Untangling the functions of curators and docents raises an interesting set of questions for STM publishers — about ownership, value, and the future.
Chaos Plays Catch-up
An embattled math journal resumes publishing without its editor. Is this journal preparing to close shop?