A New Twist on a Publishing Scam: Ghost-authoring Book Reviews for Fun and Profit
In a new twist on academic fraud, a company now offers to pay you to write and publish book reviews that will be credited to someone else.
Guest Post: A Decade of Open Data in Research — Real Change or Slow Moving Compliance?
Mark Hahnel looks at the progress that’s been made toward open research data — what’s been achieved, what still needs work, and what happens next?
Retroactively Open: Elsevier Backflips for NERL Agreement
In a novel license agreement, Elsevier agrees to open backfile content from a consortium of elite private institutions. Will other libraries and publishers follow this model?
Revisiting: A Parable of Innovation in Publishing — A Mostly True Story
Joe Esposito looks back at a 2011 post offering a parable of the role in innovation in publishing and makes the case that we should not criticize companies that try and fail to do new things.
Revisiting: Why Aren’t There More Women at the Top in Scholarly Publishing?
Alice Meadows revisits a post from 2013 that looked at how the scholarly publishing field fares in terms of the number of women in leadership roles. Nine years later, has anything changed?
Accelerating Open Research: A Multi-stakeholder Discussion
Robert Harington reports on the recent SSP Publisher-Funder Task Force closed forum of funders, publishers, librarians and academics, who met to discuss how collaboration among stakeholder groups may accelerate a transition to open research.
Decoupling from Russia
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a sudden and serious decoupling of the West from Russia. Today, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Roger Schonfeld discuss implications for research collaboration, scientific exchange, and scholarly communication.
Guest Post — Offensive or Inclusive Language in Scientific Communication?
Richard de Grijs comes to grips with his field’s use of potentially offensive language.
Revisiting — Additive, Substitutive, Subtractive: Strategic Scenarios for Publishers in an OA World
Revisiting a 2008 post noting that while it is often argued that open access will reduce the overall cost of scholarly communications, this article proposed that OA will be additive to the size of the current market.
The State of the Version of Record
The “version of record” is an organizing concept in scholarly publishing. It is by referent to that version that others are understood and it is the object of financial models, policies, and recognition and reward systems.
How Do We Make Research Assessment More Responsible? – A Multi-stakeholder Discussion
A report on the SSP Publisher-Funder Task Force’s meeting of senior researchers, university administrators, funders, publishers, and representatives from other organizations on the topic of Responsible Research Assessment for the 21st Century.
Connecting Sustainable Development, Publishing Ethics, and the North-South Divide
Haseeb Irfanullah explores the Global North-South divide in scholarly publishing ethics in the context of sustainable development.
Iterative Development, User-centered Design, and the Fear of Getting it Wrong in Publishing
User-centered design provides a model for improving services, but is the history of print holding publishers back?
Revisiting: The Multifarious Book
Revisiting a 2017 post: The book is asked to perform many tasks, some of which are not necessarily the best use of the book format, whether in print or electronically. The long-form text, which may be print or digital, is a different matter, and is likely to remain with us and be called “a book” for some time to come.
Opening The Book: SSP Charleston Pre-Conference Video Now Available
The SSP’s Charleston Pre-Conference Session looked at key issues and challenges in OA monograph publishing as well as how best to evaluate new OA book models and their potential ROI.