Surprise, Surprise — The Web Turns Out to Be Too Persistent
The recent “right to be forgotten” case raises a corollary issue for scholarly publishers — are you managing your archives so that users have been given the “right to ignore”?
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?
The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore
An alien landing in the scholarly and scientific publishing world today, reading all the opinions about how to make things more efficient and effective, might be forgiven for thinking there are only authors, readers, librarians, and reviewers. After all, those […]
Interview with Laurel Haak of ORCID: Supporting the Efforts with Membership and Integration
As ORCID comes close to reaching it’s goals for registrations, the organization is not yet financially stable. Laurel Haak, executive director of ORCID, answers questions about where they are at and what is coming for users and members.
Cascades and Volcanoes — Are the Problems of Science in Public Discourse Getting Worse?
Hysteria over a supervolcano leads to speculation about the eruptions of misinformation all around us. And, why exactly are we seeing so many recycled news stories in social media these days?
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.
When Crises Collide: The Tension Between Null Results and Reproducibility
Reproducibility of research results, and the lack of availability of negative results have both been deemed “crises” for the research community. But proposed solutions for each seem at odds with one another.
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.
Have You Looked At This? Vox.com
An overview of Vox, a news site designed around current technology and information trends offers a fresh set of design choices worth considering.
Instruction Junction — The Ballooning Lists of Editorial Policies, and the Burdens They Create
Long “Instructions to Authors” filled with ancillary policies and undifferentiated requirements don’t help authors, staff, or editors. As the graveyard for unmade decisions, they’ve only gotten longer and more opaque. Maybe it’s time to clean yours up!
Interview with Gordon Nelson — Public Access Policies, Open Access, and the Viability of Scientific Societies
An interview with the President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, on the unintended and potentially damaging consequences of public and open access mandates and embargoes.
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.
How Much Does It Cost eLife to Publish an Article?
Adding to the discussion of APCs, eLife’s financials suggest that being competitive with some major journals means the journal is expensive to run.
In Science, Should the Majority Rule?
HBO’s John Oliver offers a numerically representative debate about climate change. While he accurately skewers how the media presents science, this “majority rules” approach may not be the best way to judge what’s right or wrong.