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Vienna Principles: a vision for scholarly communication

Vienna Principles: a vision for scholarly communication

A set of twelve principles that represent the cornerstones of the future scholarly communication system. They are designed to provide a coherent frame of reference for the debate on how to improve the current system. With this document, we are hoping to inspire a widespread discussion towards a shared vision for scholarly communication in the 21st century.

Opening the Black Box of Scholarly Communication Funding

Opening the Black Box of Scholarly Communication Funding

Obtaining a more joined up picture of financial flows is vital as a means for researchers, ­institutions and others to understand and shape changes to the ­sociotechnical systems that underpin scholarly communication.

Europe's Most Innovative Universities

Europe's Most Innovative Universities

At first glance, the most innovative universities in Europe don't appear to have much in common. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular, others are state-run and some are private. One is 920 years old. Another has been an independent institution for less than a decade. They’re scattered across the continent, some in large cities, others in rural areas.

Measuring gender when you don’t have a gender measure: constructing a gender index using survey data

Measuring gender when you don’t have a gender measure: constructing a gender index using survey data

This study outlines the development of a gender index, focused on gender roles and institutionalised gender, using secondary survey data from the Canadian Labour Force survey. Using this index we then examined the distribution of gender index scores among men and women, and changes in gender roles among male and female labour force participants between 1997 and 2014.

Patent Law's Reproducibility Paradox

Patent Law's Reproducibility Paradox

Many recent clinical and preclinical studies appear to be irreproducible; their results cannot be verified by outside researchers. This is problematic for not only scientific reasons but legal ones: patents grounded in irreproducible research appear to fail their constitutional bargain of property rights in exchange for working disclosures of inventions.

Contributorship and division of labor in knowledge production

Contributorship and division of labor in knowledge production

Examining the forms that division of labor takes across disciplines, the relationships between various types of contributions, as well as the relationships between the contribution types and various indicators of authors’ seniority.

Genuine research keeps students in science

Genuine research keeps students in science

A new study of a novel undergraduate program at the University of Texas (UT), Austin, has found that giving college freshmen the opportunity to do research as part of their coursework significantly increases their chances of completing college and graduating with a science degree.

University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence

University Research and the Fetishisation of Excellence

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organisations, from art history to zoology. But what does “excellence” mean? Does it in fact mean anything at all? And is the pervasive narrative of excellence and competition a good thing?

A new complementary index for analyzing research performance

A new complementary index for analyzing research performance

A researcher collaborating with many groups will normally have more papers (and thus higher citations and h-index) than a researcher spending all his/her time working alone or in a small group. While analyzing an author’s research merit, it is therefore not enough to consider only the collective impact of the published papers, it is also necessary to quantify his/her share in the impact. For this quantification, here I propose the I-index which is defined as an author’s percentage share in the total citations that his/her papers have attracted.

What does research reproducibility mean?

What does research reproducibility mean?

The language and conceptual framework of “research reproducibility” are nonstandard and unsettled across the sciences. In this Perspective, we review an array of explicit and implicit definitions of reproducibility and related terminology, and discuss how to avoid potential misunderstandings when these terms are used as a surrogate for “truth.”

The Natural Selection of Bad Science

The Natural Selection of Bad Science

The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favor them, leading to the natural selection of bad science. This dynamic requires no conscious strategizing - no deliberate cheating nor loafing - by scientists, only that publication is a principle factor for career advancement.

The ecstasy and the agony of the altmetric score

The ecstasy and the agony of the altmetric score

Altmetrics have gained momentum and are meant to overcome the shortcomings of citation-based metrics. In this regard some light is shed on the dangers associated with the new “all-in-one” indicator altmetric score.

Organised crime against the academic peer review system

Organised crime against the academic peer review system

Editorials are generally about what we did right in our journal and we do not often publish about our failures. Yet, in this Editorial we feel we have to convey the full story of how we went entirely off track with the publication of a paper.

Quality Assessment of Studies Published in Open Access

Quality Assessment of Studies Published in Open Access

A comparison of the methodological quality and the quality of reporting of primary epidemiological studies and systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in OA and non-OA journals.

Stability and Longevity in the Publication Careers

Stability and Longevity in the Publication Careers

Since the 1950s, the number of doctorate recipients has risen dramatically in the United States. In this paper, we investigate whether the longevity of doctorate recipients’ publication careers has changed.