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How Journals and Publishers Can Help to Reform Research Assessment

How Journals and Publishers Can Help to Reform Research Assessment

It is well established that administrators and decision-makers use journal prestige and impact factors as a shortcut to assess research. But it is not enough to recognize the problem. Identifying specific approaches that publishers can take to address these concerns really is key.

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.

Plagiarizing Names?

Plagiarizing Names?

A new trend in scientific misconduct involves listing fake coauthors on one’s publication. I trace some of the incentives behind faking coauthors, using them to highlight important changes in global science publishing like the increasingly important source of credibility provided by institutional affiliations, which may begin to function like ‘brands’.

Figure Errors, Sloppy Science, and Fraud: Keeping Eyes on Your Data

Figure Errors, Sloppy Science, and Fraud: Keeping Eyes on Your Data

Recent reports suggest that there has been an increase in the number of retractions and corrections of published articles due to post-publication detection of problematic data. Moreover, fraudulent data and sloppy science have long-term effects on the scientific literature and subsequent projects based on false and unreproducible claims. The JCI introduced several data screening checks for manuscripts prior to acceptance in an attempt to reduce the number of post-publication corrections and retractions, with the ultimate goal of increasing confidence in the published papers.

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.

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?

About University Journals

About University Journals

Fourteen universities from five European countries started a collaboration to set up University Journals as an alternative to the current journal system that requires authors to transfer their copyright or charges article processing charges.

So What About Editor Compensation?

So What About Editor Compensation?

As open access Plan S draws closer editors start to re-evaluate the business case of academic publishing, and their role in it. A major investigation reveals that editors at academic journals can make up to five figure salaries.

How Can Publishers and Librarians Work Together to Increase Engagement to Digital Collections?

How Can Publishers and Librarians Work Together to Increase Engagement to Digital Collections?

UKSG Breakout session: Increasing Engagement with Digital Collections.

Kudos and DataCite Partnership Substantially Advances Communications, Tracking and Impact Potential for Research Projects and Programs

Kudos and DataCite Partnership Substantially Advances Communications, Tracking and Impact Potential for Research Projects and Programs

Kudos, the award-winning service for accelerating research impact through strategic communications management, has today announced a partnership with DataCite.

ELife Announces First Release of Open-source Submission and Peer-review Platform: Libero Reviewer

ELife Announces First Release of Open-source Submission and Peer-review Platform: Libero Reviewer

New software enables the rapid submission of manuscripts for initial assessment.

Ten Myths Around Open Scholarly Publishing

Ten Myths Around Open Scholarly Publishing

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emergence of 'Open Science' or 'Open Research' has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly-debated topics. Yet, evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication.

How Publishers Keep Fooling Academics

How Publishers Keep Fooling Academics

Time and time again, academic publishers have managed to create the impression that publishing incurs a lot of costs which justify the outrageous prices they charge, even though it is well established that the cost of making an article public with all the bells and whistles that come with an academic article is between US$/€200-500.