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N – DOI as URL7 November 2011CrossRef has announced a new format for the display of digital object indentifiers (DOIs). All organisations are now encouraged to use the URL format http://dx.doi.org/doi wherever a DOI appears. This makes DOIs more user-friendly, more appropriate for mobile devices and more easily machine-readable. To address concerns that the URL string is longer than the previous […]
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N – Edited news is good news7 November 2011Another boost for editors: readers prefer news articles that have been profesionally edited. The research, sponsored by the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), also found that readers were more concerned about professionalism and grammar than style or structure. Fred Vultee of Wayne State University, USA, presented the findings at the ACES annual conference and indicated […]
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N – From MathML to MathJax7 November 2011Presenting mathematical formulae correctly has always been tricky for publishers, whatever the medium. It’s especially difficult when you are delivering a range of mathematical content via multiple online platforms. An article in the October/November issue of Research Information reports on the development and progress of MathJax, a universal standard for online display of mathematical formulae. […]
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N – ALPSP awards7 November 2011The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)’s Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing has gone this year to Cliff Morgan of John Wiley & Sons, in recognition his long-standing contributions to digital preservation, article metrics, article versioning, and many other projects. The best new journal award went to Chemical Science, published by RSC […]
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N – Interoperability options7 November 2011The number of open access institutional repositories has been rising steadily, but the real value lies in the potential to create a linked network of these repositories. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories is addressing the inevitable technical and organisational challenges that may prevent interoperability, defined as “the ability for systems to communicate with each […]
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N – Data centres as curators7 November 2011There is much debate about mandatory versus optional policies for self-archiving or repository deposition. A new report from Research Information Network and JISC takes a step back and looks at the usage and impact of data centres in the UK. Data centres supply research data to the academic community, and may also collect, store and/or […]
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N. Philosophical Transactions now online29 October 2011During the International Open Access Week (October 24-28) the Royal Society announced that its world-famous historical journal archive – which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal – has been made permanently free to access online Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 […]
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B – Ethical guidelines by professional societies10 October 2011Zigmond MJ. Making ethical guidelines matter. American Scientist 2011;99(4):296(doi: 10.1511/2011.91.296) Today more than 50 scientific societies have written guidelines on research ethics for their members. These societies are uniquely positioned to understand and develop effective codes of conduct for the specific segment of science that they represent. Research institutions can set standards only for the […]
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B – Do authors deliberately commit research fraud?10 October 2011Steen RG. Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud? Journal of Medical Ethics 2011;37:113-117(doi: 10.1136/jme.2010.038125) A study was undertaken to test the “deliberate fraud” hypothesis that some authors deliberately commit research fraud. It is based on the presumption that authors producing fraudulent papers specifically target journals with a high impact factor, […]
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B – Conflicts of interest for medical publishers and editors10 October 2011Desai SS, Shortell CK. Conflicts of interest for medical publishers and editors: protecting the integrity of scientific scholarship. Journal of Vascular Surgery 2011;54(3):59S-63S(doi: 10.1016/j.jvs.2011.05.111) This article discusses the potential conflicts of interest between editors, contributing authors, the publisher, and advertisers in the medical publication process. Editors and publishers must be as responsible as authors to […]
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B – Reading scientific articles6 October 2011Lang TA. The illusion of certainty and the certainty of illusion: a caution when reading scientific articles. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2011;2(2):118-123 The article provides an example of the analyses needed to understand a single sentence in a scientific journal. In so doing, it raises several interesting issues of meaning, measurement, statistical […]
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B – Signs, symptoms and causes of plagiarism6 October 2011Shashok K. Authors, editors, and the signs, symptoms and causes of plagiarism. Saudi Journal of Anaesthesia 2011;5(3):303-307(doi: 10.4103/1658-354X.84107) This article discusses how plagiarism is defined and suggests some possible causes for its increase in scientific literature. Nowadays there is some awareness that re-use of words in research articles by no English-mother tongue authors should be […]
