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B – Ending honorary authorship5 September 2012Greenland P, Fontanarosa PB. Ending honorary authorship. Science 2012;337:1019(doi: 10.1126/science.1224988) Academic institutions, funders, and publishers are exploring new ways to clarify authorship attribution, and many journals have updated their policies on authorship and now require disclosure of specific contributions to discourage honorary authorship. Research institutions should also develop and promulgate clear statements in their research […]
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B – Science writers should not fear jargon3 September 2012Quirk T. Writers should not fear jargon. Nature 2012;487:407 Specialized terms capture the complexity and specificity of scientific concepts. The truth tends to be complicated, and jargon offers its most obvious peek: compression. Researchers use complex language for a specific purpose, and science writers should be clear about what those reasons are. The author, a science […]
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B – Quality of peer review in biomedical journals3 September 2012Gasparyan AY, Kitas GD. Best peer reviewers and the quality of peer review in biomedical journals. Croatian Medical Journal 2012;53(4):386-389(doi: 10.3325/cmj.2012.53.386) Evidence supporting peer review as a guarantor of the quality of biomedical publications is currently lacking. Its outcomes are largely dependent on the credentials of the reviewers. Some experts are in favor of formal […]
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B – New COPE guidelines3 September 2012Wager E, Kleinert S. Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases: guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Acta Informatica Medica 2012;20(3):136-140(doi: 10.5455/aim.2012.20.136-140) It is important for institutions and journals to communicate and collaborate effectively on all aspects of research and publication integrity. Recognising the important role that institutions have in […]
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N – Towards open content mining24 August 2012The use of technology to extract data and meaning by ‘mining’ journal content opens up new areas of research and new ways of answering research questions. Researchers in this emerging field have pushed for more co-operation from publishers, especially those researchers whose institutions already subscribe to journals but who aren’t able to ‘mine’ those journals’ […]
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N – How to insult a scientist24 August 2012“Mostly publishes in specialist journals” (i.e. his papers are not good enough for a top journal) and “papers are mostly descriptive” (i.e. her work is boring) are just two of the phrases scientists use to insult their peers, as collected by stem cell scientist Paul Knoepfler on his blog. Other insults include “mostly middle author […]
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N – Looking into the future24 August 2012An impressive gathering of academics, editors and technologists gathered at Stanford University (California, USA) in March for a colloquium titled Rethinking the future of science communication. The participants considered the role of a journal article as “just one node in the chain” of communication and for disparate groups to engage in the “ecosystem of objects” […]
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N – PEERing into access24 August 2012PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), an EU-funded project to explore the impact of large-scale ‘green’ open access (deposition of peer-reviewed manuscripts in repositories) on “reader access, author visibility and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research”, came to a close in May 2012, with an end-of-project conference. […]
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N – Indicators for OA journals24 August 2012One of the criticisms levelled at the Finch report was that it supported the gold model of open access (OA) without also acknowledging concerns about the quality of some open-access journals. To address this concern, researchers in the Netherlands are developing quality indicators for OA journals. The indicators, looking at the quality of the editorial […]
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N – Reasons not to be a peer reviewer24 August 2012Despite its failings, peer review remains a fundamental component of science editing and publishing. A recent article in Clinical Chemistry article looked at ways of recruiting and keeping peer reviewers. The journal’s deputy editor, Thomas Annesley, explores the seven most common reasons (excuses) given by potential peer reviewers when declining an invitation. These range from […]
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N – Choosing a journal24 August 2012Writing a research paper is one thing; getting it published and read is another matter. Choosing a suitable journal has always been a challenge for researchers, but with the increasing number of journals and alternate publishing avenues available, that choice may be harder than ever. Journal editors can and do give guidance, but it can […]
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N – FundRef24 August 2012FundRef is a new project that builds on a collaboration between publishers and funding agencies. The project, supported by CrossRef, aims to standardise how funding sources are reported in research articles. Funding statements in journal articles vary widely and make it difficult for funders to track the output of their funding streams. The project will […]
