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No Amount of Open Access Will Fix the Broken Job Market

No Amount of Open Access Will Fix the Broken Job Market

Open access has always been promoted for its reputational benefits. The OA citation advantage is one way in which advocates try to convince researchers of the benefits of publicly sharing their work. But researchers are also motivated by the need to publish in prestigious and ‘high-impact’ venues, which often precludes the possibility of open access forms of publication.

GRE Fails to Identify Successful Ph.D. Students

GRE Fails to Identify Successful Ph.D. Students

A team of researchers led by RIT Professor Casey Miller discovered that traditional admissions metrics for physics Ph.D. programs such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) do not predict completion and hurt the growth of diversity in physics.

Platform Capitalism and the Governance of Knowledge Infrastructure

Platform Capitalism and the Governance of Knowledge Infrastructure

The dominant academic publishers are busy positioning themselves to monetize not only on content, but increasingly on data analytics and predictive products on research assessment and funding trends. Their growing investment and control over the entire knowledge production workflow, from article submissions, to metrics to reputation management and global rankings means that researchers and their institutions are increasingly locked into the publishers' "value chain".

Report Gauges Potential Risks to Scholars and Universities if Publishers Capture Research and Student Data

Report Gauges Potential Risks to Scholars and Universities if Publishers Capture Research and Student Data

Analysis commissioned by advocacy group documents how major companies' business strategies could help them lock up research and learning data that colleges and scholars need.

Junior researchers often ghostwrite peer reviews

Junior researchers often ghostwrite peer reviews

A new survey reveals the alarming extent of a practice that is universally considered unethical.

"A New Form of Plagiarism:" When Researchers Fake Co-Authors' Names

"A New Form of Plagiarism:" When Researchers Fake Co-Authors' Names

There’s a new publishing trend in town, says Mario Biagioli: Faking co-authors’ names. Biagioli, distinguished professor of law and science and technology studies and director of the Center for Innovation Studies at the University of California, Davis, writes that it’s “the emergence of a new form of plagiarism that reflects the new metrics-based economy of scholarly publishing.” We asked him a few questions about what he’s found, and why authors might do this.

Towards Persistent Identification of Conferences

Towards Persistent Identification of Conferences

Conference talks are a key element in scholarly communication. It is the primary mechanism for sharing research results and getting feedback. However, conferences in most disciplines never reached the same level of maturity as traditional journal publications in terms of quality management, which led to challenges like fraudulent conferences. There is need for a better control mechanism that can deliver credible information about conferences. 

Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility

Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility

Threats to reproducibility, recognized but unaddressed for decades, might finally be brought under control. The four horsemen of the reproducibility apocalypse being: publication bias, low statistical power, P-value hacking and HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known).

Open Access Publishing: New Evidence on Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors

Open Access Publishing: New Evidence on Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors

On Friday, Ithaka S+R released the latest cycle of our long-standing US Faculty Survey which has tracked the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of higher education faculty members on a triennial basis since 2000.  Here, some of the key findings around open access are higlighted. Especially among early career researchers, real-world incentives remain misaligned — and indeed appear to be moving further out of alignment — with the drive towards open access.

Networking for Introverted Scientists

Networking for Introverted Scientists

Networking is a crucial skill for all scientists. Ruth Gotian offers tips for those who struggle to make it work.

Open Access: 'no Evidence' That Zero Embargo Periods Harm Publishers

Open Access: 'no Evidence' That Zero Embargo Periods Harm Publishers

Debate around embargo periods heightens as Plan S deadline draws near. "Embargoes are just there to serve the interests of the publishers” says Robert-Jan Smits, the former lead architect of Plan S who is now president of Eindhoven University of Technology.  

Read-and-publish? Publish-and-read? A Primer on Transformative Agreements

Read-and-publish? Publish-and-read? A Primer on Transformative Agreements

Is it every day or just every week that we see an announcement of a new “transformative agreement” between a publisher and a library or library consortium? Or, if not a press release announcing such an agreement, a statement that such is the goal of a newly opened — or perhaps faltering — set of negotiations? What makes an agreement transformative anyway?

Interview - Brian Nosek on Open Science

Interview - Brian Nosek on Open Science

Jonathan and Chris interview Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology and the co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science. They discuss problems and solutions in modern scientific research, such as committing scientists.

The "impact" of the Journal Impact Factor in the Review, Tenure, and Promotion Process

The "impact" of the Journal Impact Factor in the Review, Tenure, and Promotion Process

The authors of the preprint "Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations" discuss their investigation and their findings on how the flawed metric is currently used in tenure and promotion decisions in universities across North America.

Indian Scientists Launch Preprint Repository to Boost Research Quality

Indian Scientists Launch Preprint Repository to Boost Research Quality

IndiaRxiv is the latest of several preprint servers set up to host research from a particular region.

Big Qual - Why We Should Be Thinking Big About Qualitative Data for Research, Teaching and Policy

Big Qual - Why We Should Be Thinking Big About Qualitative Data for Research, Teaching and Policy

When social scientists think about big data, they often think in terms of quantitative number crunching. However, the growing availability of ‘big’ qualitative datasets presents new opportunities for qualitative research.