New Chinese Policy Could Reshape Global STM Publishing
A new set of policies mark an effort to largely reform the research and higher education evaluation systems in China. The potential impact on the STM publishing sector is examined.
Guest Post — An Open Agenda: European Funder Approaches to Open Science
Rob Johnson of Research Consulting and Vanessa Proudman of SPARC Europe look at a recent survey of of European funders to explore what’s being done to drive change in scholarly communication, and argue that funders’ open policies could be backed up more by funders’ own practices.
Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?
One way or another, the #scholcomm community is going to choose either a diversity of publishing models or a monoculture, because it can’t have both. How will this choice be made, and by whom?
“Recenter Library Systems on the User”: An Interview with OhioLINK’s Gwen Evans
The major US library consortium OhioLINK has created a vision for the systems that libraries use for acquiring content from publishers, managing collections, and enabling discovery. An interview about this vision with executive director Gwen Evans,
Reforming Research Assessment: A Tough Nut to Crack
Alison Mudditt looks at the recently released TOP Factor from the Center for Open Science, and the bigger picture of shifting the nature of research assessment.
Inspiring the Next Generation of Women in Science
Siân Harris hears from female early-career researchers in Asia and Africa about their passion for research, the challenges they face, and the advice they would give to women and girls interested in pursuing research areas.
If My AI Wrote this Post, Could I Own the Copyright?
Todd Carpenter reports on a forum hosted by WIPO and the Copyright Office that focused on whether copyright can apply to the works created by artificial intelligence systems.
ACM’s New Open Access Agreements: A Q&A with Scott Delman
A conversation with Scott Delman of ACM about the publisher’s recently-announced deal with four major US research universities.
Scholarly Societies: The Importance of Community
In this article Robert Harington describes how scholarly societies are an indelible part of the research and support system for academics across many disciplines. Robert suggests rather than requiring societies to seek alternative revenue streams beyond publishing, why not turn that argument on its head and more fully support society and academic community life?
Global Science, China’s Rise, and European Anxiety
While some talk about global science, China’s skyrocketing investment in its scientific sector is causing real anxiety for Europe.
The Data Science Revolution: An Interview with Xiao-Li Meng
An interview with Xiao-Li Meng, Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, about the increasingly central role data science is playing in research and teaching, – and how journals, publishers, societies, and librarians fit in this emerging ecosystem.
Revisiting The Great Acceleration: A Technology Perspective
A reflection on the increasing rate of change in the technology space, enabled by the commoditization of compute capability and what the implications are for the world of scholarly publishing
Guest Post: Interesting Versus True? Measuring Transparency and Reproducibility of Biomedical Articles
Today’s guest post, by Anita Bandrowski and Martijn Roelandse, highlights some of the challenges – and opportunities – of evaluating the quality of research rather than its impact.
Politics and Open Access
Robert Harington explores rumors circulating in recent weeks of an impending US Executive Order focusing on public access to federally funded research and open data.
A Rare Shared Cultural Experience and the Value of Inconvenience
When was the last time everyone you knew experienced the same piece of culture at the same time? Is the age of shared cultural experiences over?