Claims of speed can be used to carve out a competitive edge, especially for journals serving authors. PLoS ONE entered the market claiming fast publication times, but data show that PLoS ONE is slowing down, with times more than doubling over the past few years. Is PLoS ONE losing its speed advantage?
Does the release of a journal ranking metric signal a change in vision for post-publication peer review?
If the Journal Usage Factor were run like an election, it would be a system where each party runs its own polls, hoards its own votes, provides no paper trail, and has the power to ignore any appeal.
The last few weeks of lively debate about OA in the Scholarly Kitchen have been informative, but have also involved a variety of mixed messages from all sides. There are assumptions being made that aren’t necessarily true, and arguments joined together that may in reality be at cross purposes.
Information tailored to the user requires identity services that are useful and trusted. Will Google+ create a new baseline standard? Whither ORCID? Why can one succeed while one might be doomed? And what might the world look like for scientists when these opportunities are captured?
How well do citations predict Nobels? With an ever-expanding roster of eligible candidates, the going is getting tougher.
Another open access plug piece, this time in the Gray Lady herself, but fed from London (yet again). Is there something more to all this?
Taxpayer access to US federally funded research results need not involve publishers giving away their product. An alternative mechanism is available, one that is already partially implemented. It is called the research report. Demands for free access to taxpayer funded […]
When publishers don’t employ foresight, they find themselves with challenges to their businesses, often from unexpected directions. Innovation is an imperative.
A critic of publishers and eminent economist is caught in a swirl of allegations about self-plagiarism.
The plagiarism-detection products in use in academia and scholarly publishing are also available for students and authors, who can pre-screen their papers to lower their chances of detection. In the middle, iParadigms takes money from both sides. Is this proper?
Rhetoric can’t hide financial realities. Is trading research for access a good use of funds?
Not all conflicts are monetary. Sometimes, the pressure to do something good can lead to biased behavior.
A retraction study hits some familiar conceptual problems, and a proposed retraction index runs into a deeper issue.
A recent analysis suggests some worrisome trends for librarianship.