Hit the Road — How a Forgettable Paper and a Misguided Publisher Created an Unnecessary Controversy
The censorship scandal at Taylor & Francis has wrapped up, and the lessons are as obvious as you think.
Author vs. Author: The Authors Guild and the Authors Alliance Set to Duke It Out?
The emergence of the Authors Alliance is causing consternation among some members of the traditional publishing community, most notably the Authors Guild, which has already issued a sharply-worded critique. But what is the Alliance actually going to do? They’re not really saying.
Open Access: Fundamentals to Fundamentalists
There is a certain fundamentalism that pervades discussions around open access policies and business models. On the one hand there are the advocates, and through the laws of conservation of energy, the equal and opposite reaction of anti-open access advocacy. There seems little room for rational debate about open access in the midst of such an antagonistic atmosphere.This post asks us to spend our time thinking through a range of open access models, experimenting and refining, rather than forcing ourselves down the road of policy mandates that potentially discourage innovation.
Identity Theft of the Scholarly Kind
Building a reputation can take decades for a society, publisher or journal. Unfortunately, the influential “seals of approval” in the industry are easy to spoof leaving some authors confused and deceived.
Keeping It Real — Ethics and Privacy as the Frontiers "Recursive Fury" Case Continues to Churn
Frontiers issues another statement about why the “Recursive Fury” paper was retracted, raising once again questions about why it was retracted, but shifting the focus more and more to how it was retracted.
Left Behind—Will Proposed Rules in Scholarly Publishing Leave Behind a Population of Researchers?
Lost in the discussions of what open access, open data and public access should look like are the concerns of researchers who are not yet on board with what is being proposed.
The Next Big Things?
Privacy, trust and managing the cultural record bubble to the surface of growing concerns.
Stick to Your Ribs: The Problems With Calling Comments "Post-Publication Peer-Review"
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2012 post about how comments and letters probably shouldn’t be branded as “post-publication peer review”.
Publish or Perish: Is Publishing the Career it Once Was?
A sense of gloom hangs over academic publishing these days. As library budgets are cut, and the fear of OA mandates cutting profit margins clouds publishers’ sense of their place in the world, what is it like to be a publishing professional in this era of climate change?
What Does "Unsustainable" Mean?
We breeze by the statement that “scholarly publishing economics are unsustainable,” without contemplating what it actually means, how deep it goes, and why it has been allowed to get this way.
PLOS' Bold Data Policy
PLOS has set a new policy, requiring authors to make all data behind their published results publicly available. This has been met with a great deal of controversy from the research community. Thoughts on why this policy and why now…
The Legal Hot Zone — The Hidden Role of Publishers in Academic and Scientific Legal Disputes
Legal issues are an inevitable part of publishing cutting-edge information in a world as political as academic research. However, the role of publishers in these matters, and their important contributions, are often concealed within necessary discretion.
Can Mega-journals Maintain Boundaries When They and Their Customers Align on "Publish or Perish"?
The “publish or perish” culture has created a major mega-journal. But are its boundaries and standards built properly to avoid becoming an enabler of that culture?
New US Public Access Legislation Included in Government Funding Bill
The US government’s new appropriations bill contains a public access mandate for research articles funded by some agencies.
History as Caution — When Paid Scientific Articles Were Legally Considered "Advertisements"
A strange trip down memory lane, when scientific articles funded by page charges were considered advertisements. Are we entering another era of “articles as advertising,” only this time without any limitations?