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The availability of research data declines rapidly with article age

The availability of research data declines rapidly with article age

Broken e-mails and obsolete storage devices were the main obstacles to data sharing. Policies mandating data archiving at publication are clearly needed.

Collective allocation of science funding: from funding agencies to scientific agency

Collective allocation of science funding: from funding agencies to scientific agency

The NSF and the NIH award tens of billions of dollars in annual science funding. How can this money be distributed as efficiently as possible to best promote scientific innovation and productivity?

Tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact

Tracking the dynamics of individual scientific impact

Typically papers appearing in journals with large values of the IF receive a high weight in such evaluations. However, at the end of the day one is interested in assessing the impact of individuals, rather than papers. Here we introduce Author Impact Factor (AIF), which is the extension of the IF to authors.

Global R&D funding 2014 forecast

Global R&D funding 2014 forecast

Battelle and R&D Magazine jointly released the 2014 Global R&D Funding Forecast indicating that the combination of private and public global R&D spending was flat for 2013.

Manipulating Google Scholar metrics: simple, easy and tempting

Manipulating Google Scholar metrics: simple, easy and tempting

Paper showing how to manipulate the Google Citations profiles of a research group through the creation of false documents that cite their documents, and consequently, the journals in which they have published modifying their H index.

Global gender disparities in science

Global gender disparities in science

Cassidy R. Sugimoto and colleagues present a bibliometric analysis confirming that gender imbalances persist in research output worldwide.

Journals, repositories, peer review, non-peer review, and the future of scholarly communication

Journals, repositories, peer review, non-peer review, and the future of scholarly communication

Essay on the problems relating to reliance on subject-specific journals and peer review.

Impact beyond the impact factor

Impact beyond the impact factor

The journal impact factor is an annually calculated number for each scientific journal, based on the average number of times its articles published in the two preceding years have been cited.

A semi-automated peer-review system

A semi-automated peer-review system

Abstract: A semi-supervised model of peer review is introduced that is intended to overcome the bias and incompleteness of traditional peer review. Traditional approaches are reliant on human biases, while consensus decision-making is constrained by sparse information. Here, the architecture for one potential improvement (a semi-supervised, human-assisted classifier) to the traditional approach will be introduced and evaluated.

The missing piece to changing the university culture

The missing piece to changing the university culture

A new type of initiative is empowering graduate students and postdocs to reshape their academic training, providing another avenue to express their passion for research.

Research blogs and the discussion of scholarly information

Research blogs and the discussion of scholarly information

The research blog has become a popular mechanism for the quick discussion of scholarly information. However, the characteristics of this form of scientific discourse are not well understood, for example in terms of the spread of blogger levels of education, gender and institutional affiliations.

A comparison of the quality of reviewer in journals operating on open or closed peer review models

A comparison of the quality of reviewer in journals operating on open or closed peer review models

Report quality is significantly higher on the open peer review model for questions relating to comments on the methods and study design, supplying evidence to substantiate comments and constructiveness.

What can article-level metrics do for you?

What can article-level metrics do for you?

In this essay, we describe why article-level metrics are an important extension of traditional citation-based journal metrics and provide a number of example from Article-level metrics data collected for PLOS Biology.

Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact

Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact

How big a role do unconventional combinations of existing knowledge play in the impact of a scientific paper? A new study shows that the highest-impact papers were not the ones that had the greatest novelty, but had a combination of novelty and otherwise conventional combinations of prior work.

The maze of impact metrics

The maze of impact metrics

So much science, so little time. Amid an ever-increasing mountain of research articles, data sets and other output, hard-pressed research funders and employers need shortcuts to identify and reward the work that matters.

Research evaluation: Impact

Research evaluation: Impact

Every organization that funds research wants to support science that makes a difference. But there is no simple formula for identifying truly important research. And the job is becoming more difficult.