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N -Open citations24 August 2012The publishers of the two biggest science journals, Nature and Science, have announced that they will make available the reference lists of those journals’ articles for use in an Open Citations project developed by JISC, the organisation that promotes digital technologies in British academic institutions. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) had already launched its own linked […]
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N – Welcome to PeerJ24 August 2012PeerJ (peerj.com) is a new publishing venture set up by Peter Binfield, previously of PLoS ONE, and Jason Hoyt, ex-Mendeley. PeerJ is a new open-access journal and pre-print service, initially limited to biomedical science, and opens for submissions in summer 2012. Like PLoS ONE, and the many other broad-based ‘mega-journals’, PeerJ will assess submissions for […]
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N – Journal naming standards24 August 2012What happens when a journal changes its name? The US National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published draft recommendations for the presentation and identification of e-journals. When a journal changes name, publishers are likely to list older articles on the newly branded journal website, with potential confusion for users and problems for librarians (the ISSN […]
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N – The Finch Report24 August 2012The Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Dame Janet Finch (co-Chair of the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology, published its findings in June. The group’s remit was to investigate how UK-funded research findings could be made more accessible. Its report recommended better, faster communication of research results through […]
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B – Pricing principles by open access publishers17 July 2012Björk B. Solomon D. Pricing principles used by scholarly open access publishers. Learned Publishing 2012;25(2):132-137(doi: 10.1087/20120207)The article processing charge (APC) is currently the primary method of funding professionally open access (OA) peer reviewed journals. In the article the pricing principles of 77 OA publishers publishing over 1,000 journals using APCs were studied and classified. The […]
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B – Medical publishing and drug industry17 July 2012Sismondo S. Medical publishing and the drug industry: is medical science for sale? Learned Publishing 2012;25(1):7-15(doi: 10.1087/20120102) Drug company articles placed in medical journals are often written under the names of independent medical researchers in order to gain their largest scientific impact and market value. Pharmaceutical company statisticians, reviewers, and key company scientists are only […]
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B – Outsourcing of editorial processing17 July 2012Sellwood S. Editorial processing: to outsource or not? Learned Publishing 2012;25(3):225-230(doi: 10.1087/20120310) This article examines the reasons why outsourcing the editorial assistant function might be of benefit to a journal, either on a temporary or permanent solution. It also examines the practical considerations of entering into such an arrangement – what should be looked for […]
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B – Publication guidelines10 July 2012Larson EL, Cortazal M. Publication guidelines need widespread adoption. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 2012;65(3):239-246 This study aims at describing the development and adoption of general publication guidelines for various study designs, at providing example of guidelines adapted for specific topics, and at recommending next steps. These ones include: increasing use of available guidelines and their […]
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B – Citation biases10 July 2012Radicchi F, Castellano C. Testing the fairness of citation indicators for comparison across scientific domains: the case of fractional citation counts. Journal of Informetrics 2012;6(1):121-130(doi: 10.1016/j.joi.2011.09.002) The use of raw citation counts is generally misleading, especially when applied to cross-disciplinary comparisons, since the average number of citations is strongly dependent on the scientific discipline of […]
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B – Open access debate10 July 2012Lucibella M. Bill to kill open access sparks debate. APS News 2012;21(3):1-6 The article reports on whether scientific articles funded by US Federal agencies should be publicly available on the web. It presents publishers’ stance about this issue and discusses how journal costs could be met. It ends by describing the England-based “Faculty of 1000”, […]
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B – Multiple authorship10 July 2012Wyatt PJ. Commentary: too many authors, too few creators. Physics Today April 2012:9 The author discusses interesting issues regarding multiple authorship of articles written by authors in, or associated with, academia, government laboratories and industry in the USA. Over the years the number of authors associated with each published article has greatly increased; single-author papers […]
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B – Scientific fraud in China10 July 2012Hao X. Fraud takes the shine off rising star. Physics World September 2011:12-13 Reent cases of scientific plagiarism and fraud in China have cast a shadow over the rise of science in China, and have raised questions about why the country has not done more to tackle misconduct. Many Chinese scientists state that the root […]
