The eLife Story Continues — Evasions Seem the Best We Can Expect
The continued silence from major funders involved in the eLife-PubMed Central scandal is creating a noise all its own.
Extension and Conflation — How the NLM’s Confusing Brands Have Us All Mixed Up
The National Library of Medicine has a couple of powerful brands, but they’ve become conflated and compromised by poor brand management. Ultimately, their brand value is derived from the value of the MEDLINE brand, which may now be spread too thin.
Don't Shoot the Messenger — Keeping Our Eye on the Real Meaning of the eLife-PubMed Central Scandal
Attacks — both overt and covert — from OA advocates and NIH/NLM phantoms come in the wake of the posts revealing how eLife and PubMed Central coordinated activities and kept secrets.
Pulling the Wool Over Their Eyes — The PubMed National Advisory Committee and Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest at PubMed Central have been mismanaged, and seem to have led to loading the National Advisory Committee with Wellcome representatives, among other things.
Why Were PubMed Central and eLife Discussing PeerJ?
When PubMed Central expedited eLife, PeerJ wondered why. Emails within PMC suggest they were tempted to help PeerJ in the same way. They even talked with eLife about how to handle things.
Something's Rotten in Bethesda, Indeed — How PubMed Central Came to Help Launch and Initially Publish eLife
Circumstantial evidence has become direct evidence — that eLife requested publication in PMC; that PMC collaborated with eLife; that PMC sought to conceal its preferential treatment; and that systems and processes at the NLM regarding PMC inclusion are unclear and open to abuse and misuse.
PubMed and F1000 Research — Unclear Standards Applied Unevenly
F1000 Research has confusing review and publication practices, and doesn’t call itself a journal, yet is now going to be indexed by PubMed — further eroding the PubMed brand.
New Players, New Priorities — Part 3: It's Never About the Money; It's Always About the Money
Funders and governments are exerting their influence in scientific publishing through monetary and financial threats, and are willing to slow science in order to accomplish OA goals.
The Hall of Mirrors — Trying to Explain Why Users Value Free Content Differently
Why would free content be differentially accessed across versions of it, and across publications? A dive into PLoS data leads to a potentially reassuring answer.
How Valuable Is PubMed Central's Early Publication of eLife Content?
What is the likely value of what PubMed Central is providing to eLife by publishing them free online, providing PubMed indexing without delay, and getting them into the market six months early?
More eLife Articles on PubMed Central — The Government Subsidy Continues
More articles are published by PubMed Central at the behest of eLife. It seems taxpayer-funded publishing is just fine for this new group.
PubMed Central or OA Central — More Strange Behaviors at PMC and NLM Paint a Portrait of Biases and Poor Process
More information emerges about PubMed Central, its processes, its relationship with eLife, and its role as a technology provider. Overall, it looks like certain OA friends get special treatment, and the processes you think occur are often short-circuited and may not even be tracked.
Something’s Rotten in Bethesda — The Troubling Tale of PubMed Central, PubMed, and eLife
Last week, PubMed Central became the primary and sole publisher of eLife content, putting its competition with publishers, its manipulation of PubMed indexing criteria, its competition with publishing technology companies, and its clear OA bias into stark relief.
Does Open Access Tackle, Perpetuate, or Exacerbate the Matthew Effect?
While some hope that OA will create a more accessible literature, new data about NSF funding and some logical extrapolations suggest it may actually exacerbate the Matthew Effect, choking off opportunities to publish for those without the funding necessary.
Mountains Out of Molehills, and the Search for a Retraction Index
A retraction study hits some familiar conceptual problems, and a proposed retraction index runs into a deeper issue.