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B – Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship8 October 2008Evans J A. Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship. Science 2008;321(5887):395-399DOI: 10.1126/science.1150473 Electronically available journals may portend an ironic change for science. As more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tend to be more recent, fewer journals and articles are cited, and more of the citations were to fewer journals and […]
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B – Applying the author affiliation index to library and information science journals8 October 2008Cronin B, Meho Lokman I. Applying the author affiliation index to library and information science journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 2008;59(11):1861-1865Doi: 10.1002/asi.20895 The authors use a novel method – the Author Affiliation Index (AAI) – to determine whether faculty at the top-10 North American library and information science (LIS) […]
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B – Conference proceedings as a source of scientific information8 October 2008Lisée C, Larivière V, Archambault É. Conference proceedings as a source of scientific information: A bibliometric analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2008;59(11):1776-1784Doi: 10.1002/asi.20888 This article examines the scientific impact and aging of conference proceedings compared to those of scientific literature in general. Results show that the relative importance of […]
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B – What Does it Take for a Canadian Political Scientist to be Cited?8 October 2008Montpetit É, Blais A, Foucault M. What Does it Take for a Canadian Political Scientist to be Cited? Social Science Quarterly 2008;89(3):802 – 816Doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2008.00561.x The article examines the factors that influence the frequency whereby scholarly articles published by Canadian political scientists are cited. 1,860 journal articles published between 1985 and 2005 by 758 Canadian […]
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B – Cyberabstracts8 October 2008Pinto M. Cyberabstracts: a portal on the subject of abstracting designed to improve information literacy skills. Journal of Information Science, 2008;34(5):667-679DOI: 10.1177/0165551507086262 An academic portal specifically centred on abstracts and abstracting resources is proposed with the aim of mproving the information literacy skills of librarianship and information science students. The research to design it mainly […]
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B – Amusing titles in scientific journals and article citation8 October 2008Sagi I. Amusing titles in scientific journals and article citation. Journal of Information Science, 2008;34(5):680-687DOI: 10.1177/0165551507086261 The present study examines whether the use of humor in scientific article titles is associated with the number of citations an article receives. The association between the levels of amusement and pleasantness and the article’s monthly citation average has […]
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N – Where are the negative results?6 October 2008“In their own way, academic journals are exactly as selective as the tabloid health pages,” claims the doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre in the Guardian newspaper on 20 September (http://tinyurl.com/4lyrq2). He writes that only 5.9% of industry sponsored trials on cancer treatment get published and that 75% had positive results. Doctors and academics need all […]
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B – Don’t release other people’s data without their consent3 October 2008Frank DN. Don’t release other people’s data without their consent. Nature2008:455:589. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/full/455589a.html Letter commenting on Nature’s report that data photographed during aconference publication were later published without the presenter’sconsent. The issue is whether the data are released in a fair andrepresentative manner. Biology operates under the implicit, ofd oftenexplicit, ethic that data presented at meetings […]
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B – Science journals have been slow to make themselves audible3 October 2008Achten WMJ. Science journals have been slow to make themselves audible.Nature 2008;455:590. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/full/455590a.html Podcasting holds huge potential for visually impaired people and others;listening to scientific articles read aloud could increase readers’concentration and absorption of information. Several newspapers andmagazines are offered in podcast form, but the scientific press is laggingbehind. Thanks to Margaret Cooter
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B – Better reporting of randomized trials1 October 2008Sally Hopewell, Anne Eisinga, Mike Clarke, Better reporting of randomized trials in biomedical journal and conference abstracts, Journal of Information Science, XX (X) 2007, pp. 1-12 Well reported research published in conference and journal abstracts is important considering that individuals often base their initial assessment of a study on the information reported in abstracts. This […]
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N – Law demands patients’ consent30 September 2008Biomedical journals must always have explicit consent to publish medical information about an identifiable living patient, insists UK data protection legislation, Jane Smith explained in the BMJ (2008;337:a1572). Doctors should ask for consent before they lose touch with patients; alternatively complete anonymisation might be a solution to not having consent. The BMJ used to waive […]
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N – “Going forward” is step backward25 September 2008Office jargon “cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language,” says Lucy Kellaway, complaining on the BBC’s website, and usage trickles down into common parlance. “Like ‘like,’ ‘going forward’ is as contagious as smallpox. It started with business people, and now has not only infected farmers, it has reached epidemic proportions with footballers.” […]
