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B – Modelling and representing the scholarly article13 February 2012Pettifer S, McDermott P, Marsh J. et al. Ceci n’est pas un hamburger: modelling and representing the scholarly article. Learned Publishing 2011;24(3):207-220(doi: 10.1087/20110309) In spite of its apparent limitations, the PDF remains the favourite vehicle for distributing scholarly work, representing more than 80% of all downloaded content. The article introduces the Utopia Documents, a new […]
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B – The Creative Commons licence9 February 2012Morgan C. Understanding the Creative Commons licence. Learned Publishing 2011;24(1):51-53(doi: 10.1087/20110108) This article explores some of the issues related to the use of the Creative Commons (CC) licences. Six types of CC licences are described, from the least to the most restrictive. Each publisher needs to make his own decision about whether to use them […]
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B – Science as a public enterprise8 February 2012Boulton G, Rawlins M, Vallance P et al. Science as a public enterprise: the case for open data. The Lancet 2011;337(9778):1663-1635(doi: 10.1016/S0140-6376(11)60647-8) Despite the spectacular advances of science, nowadays there is criticism about the accessibility of data on which scientists base their conclusions and on which policy or regulatory decisions are made. The UK’s Royal […]
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B – Coercive citation in academic publishing7 February 2012Wilhite AW, Fong EA. Coercive citation in academic publishing. Science 2012;335(6068):542-543(doi: 10.1126/science.1212540) One side effect of impact factors is the incentive they create for many journal editors to coerce authors to add citations to their journal. To explore the extent and nature of such coercive self-citation, the authors analyzed responses from a survey and journal-based […]
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B – Article evaluation: the five stars1 February 2012Shotton D. The Five Stars of Online Journal Articles – a framework for article evaluation. D-Lib Magazine Epub January/February 2012;18(1/2)(doi: 10.1045/january2012-shotton) The author proposes five factors – peer review, open access, enriched content, available datasets and machine-readable metadata – and a five-point scale for each of them, by which an online journal article can be […]
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B – Retraction index31 January 2012Fang FC, Casadevall A, Morrison RP. Retracted science and the retraction index. Infection and Immunity 2011;79(10):3855-3859(doi: 10.1128/IAI.05661-11) To determine whether journals differ in frequency of retracted articles and whether there is a relationship between retraction frequency and journal impact factor, the authors carried out a PubMed search among 17 journals. Using a novel measure, the […]
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B – Influence of titles on citations31 January 2012Jamali H, Nikzad M. Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations. Scientometrics 2011;88(2):653-661(doi: 10.1007/s11192-011-0412-z) The authors wondered if the type of article title affect the number of citations and downloads an article receives. They found that articles with a question mark in their title tend to be downloaded more […]
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B – Evaluating research: from informed peer-review to bibliometrics31 January 2012Abramo G, D’Angelo CA. Evaluating research: from informed peer-review to bibliometrics. Scientometrics 2011;87(3):499-514(doi: 10.1007/s11192-011-0352-7) This article contrasts the peer-review and bibliometrics approaches in the conduct of national research assessment exercises. The comparison is conducted in terms of the essential parameters of any measurement system: accuracy, robustness, validity, functionality, time and costs. Empirical evidence shows that […]
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B – New ways of making academic articles easier to read31 January 2012Hartley J. New ways of making academic articles easier to read. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology 2011;12(1):141-158 This article focuses on more recent techniques in writing academic journal articles that might help authors when writing and revising text, and readers appreciate what they are saying. In particular, new approaches to the presentation of […]
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N – New journal from FEBS13 January 2012Another News Notes, another new open biology journal. The Federation of Biochemical Societies (FEBS) has launched a new ‘open-access’ journal called FEBS Open Bio. The journal, published by Elsevier, is open for new submissions and also for direct transfer of articles rejected by other FEBS publications (FEBS Letters, FEBS Journal and Molecular Oncology). All articles will […]
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N – Free access to UK research?13 January 2012The UK Government has published a report that calls for all publicly funded research to be made freely available. The report says: “Government will work with partners, including the publishing industry, to achieve free access to publicly-funded research as soon as possible and will set an example itself,” Research councils will be required to ensure […]
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B – The ethics of scholarly peer review4 January 2012Souder L. The ethics of scholarly peer review: a review of the literature. Learned Publishing 2011;24(1):55-72(doi: 10.1087/20110109) This review attempts to track the various ethical issues that arise among key participants in peer review systems: authors, editors, referees, and readers. These issues include: bias, courtesy, conflict of interest, redundant publication, honesty, transparency, and training. The […]
