What Does Openness Mean to You?
Abigail Cabunoc Mayes from Mozilla Open Leaders offers some answers.
In Academia, Hard Work is Expected-but Taking a Break is Effort Well Spent, Too
Work-life balance is not a detriment to excellent research, or an optional bonus, but an integral part of it.
Peer Review or Lottery? A Critical Analysis of Two Different Forms of Decision-Making Mechanisms for Allocation of Research Grants
Peer Review or Lottery? A Critical Analysis of Two Different Forms of Decision-Making Mechanisms for Allocation of Research Grants
By forming a pool of funding applicants who have minimal qualification levels and then selecting randomly within that pool, funding agencies could avoid biases, disagreement and other limitations of peer review.
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.
Use of the Journal Impact Factor in Academic Review, Promotion, and Tenure Evaluations
Use of the Journal Impact Factor in Academic Review, Promotion, and Tenure Evaluations
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) was originally designed to aid libraries in deciding which journals to index and purchase for their collections. Over the past few decades, however, it has become a relied upon metric used to evaluate research articles based on journal rank. Surveyed faculty often report feeling pressure to publish in journals with high JIFs and mention reliance on the JIF as one problem with current academic evaluation systems.
Is It Publish or Perish for PhD Students?
Nature Human Behaviour and the Behavioural and Social Sciences Community invite researchers across all career stages and disciplines to share their thoughts on publishing while training for a PhD. A broad selection of submissions will be published as World Views in Nature Human Behaviour or will be posted on the Behavioural and Social Sciences community page. Send us a short presubmission enquiry now!
Few Open Access Journals Are Compliant with Plan S
Much of the debate on Plan S seems to concentrate on how to make toll-access journals open access, taking for granted that existing open access journals are Plan S-compliant. This question was examined using Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) metadata. The conclusion was that a large majority of open access journals are not Plan S-compliant, and that it is small publishers in the SSH that will face the largest challenge with becoming compliant.
That Image of a Black Hole You Saw Everywhere Today? Thank This Grad Student for Making It Possible
That Image of a Black Hole You Saw Everywhere Today? Thank This Grad Student for Making It Possible
The effort wouldn't have succeeded without Katie Bouman, who developed a crucial algorithm and helped devise imaging methods.
Black Hole Picture Captured for First Time in Space Breakthrough
Network of eight radio telescopes around the world records revolutionary image.
Exposing DOI Metadata Provenance
DOI metadata provenance is describing the history of a particular DOI metadata record, i.e. what changes were made when and by whom. This information is now stored and provided via an API for all DOI registrations since March 10, 2019.
World Impact Rankings
The Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings assess universities against the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Calibrated indicators are used to provide comprehensive and balanced comparisons across three broad areas: research, outreach, and stewardship. This first edition includes more than 450 universities from 76 countries.
Impact Factors Are Still Widely Used in Academic Evaluations
Survey finds that 40% of research-intensive universities mention the controversial metric in review documents - despite efforts to dampen its influence.
Concerns of Young Protesters Are Justified
The world's youth have begun to persistently demonstrate for the protection of the climate and other foundations of human well-being. As scientists and scholars who have recently initiated similar letters of support in our countries, we call for our colleagues across all disciplines and from the entire world to support these young climate protesters. Their concerns are justified and supported by the best available science.
How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project
The project included more than 200 researchers around the world, about 40 of them women, including Dr. Bouman.
Meet the Scientist Painter Who Turns Deadly Viruses into Beautiful Works of Art
Meet the Scientist Painter Who Turns Deadly Viruses into Beautiful Works of Art
David Goodsell's scientifically precise watercolor paintings of the cells and microbes he studies grace journal covers and impress colleagues.
Libero Reviewer: The Making of a User-friendly Submission and Peer-review Platform
Libero Reviewer: The Making of a User-friendly Submission and Peer-review Platform
A review of the challenges and lessons learned in managing the development of Libero Reviewer.
Thousands of Scientists Back "young Protesters" Demanding Climate Change Action
The Scary Shortage of Infectious-Disease Doctors
Superbugs are spreading. We need doctors trained to treat them.
The "invisible Hand" of Peer Review: The Implications of Author-referee Networks on Peer Review in a Scholarly Journal
The "invisible Hand" of Peer Review: The Implications of Author-referee Networks on Peer Review in a Scholarly Journal
Peer review is not only a quality screening mechanism for scholarly journals. It also connects authors and referees either directly or indirectly. Thi…
The F3-index. Valuing Reviewers for Scholarly Journals
This paper presents an index that measures reviewer contribution to editorial processes of scholarly journals. Following a metaphor of ranking algorit…
The Peer Review Game: an Agent-based Model of Scientists Facing Resource Constraints and Institutional Pressures
The Peer Review Game: an Agent-based Model of Scientists Facing Resource Constraints and Institutional Pressures
This paper looks at peer review as a cooperation dilemma through a game-theory framework. We built an agent-based model to estimate how much the quality of peer review is influenced by different resource allocation strategies followed by scientists dealing with multiple tasks, i.e., publishing and reviewing.
Assessing Peer Review by Gauging the Fate of Rejected Manuscripts: the Case of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Assessing Peer Review by Gauging the Fate of Rejected Manuscripts: the Case of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
This paper investigates the fate of manuscripts that were rejected from JASSS- The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal of social simulation. We tracked 456 manuscripts that were rejected from 1997 to 2011 and traced their subsequent publication as journal articles, conference papers or working papers.
Opening the Black-Box of Peer Review
This paper investigates the impact of referee behaviour on the quality and efficiency of peer review. We focused on the importance of reciprocity motives in ensuring cooperation between all involved parties. We modelled peer review as a process based on knowledge asymmetries and subject to evaluation bias. We built various simulation scenarios in which we tested different interaction conditions and author and referee behaviour. We found that reciprocity cannot always have per se a positive effect on the quality of peer review, as it may tend to increase evaluation bias. It can have a positive effect only when reciprocity motives are inspired by disinterested standards of fairness.
Does Incentive Provision Increase the Quality of Peer Review? An Experimental Study
Does Incentive Provision Increase the Quality of Peer Review? An Experimental Study
Although peer review is crucial for innovation and experimental discoveries in science, it is poorly understood in scientific terms. Discovering its true dynamics and exploring adjustments which improve the commitment of everyone involved could benefit scientific development for all disciplines and consequently increase innovation in the economy and the society.
Saint Matthew Strikes Again: An Agent-based Model of Peer Review and the Scientific Community Structure
Saint Matthew Strikes Again: An Agent-based Model of Peer Review and the Scientific Community Structure
This paper investigates the impact of referee reliability on the quality and efficiency of peer review. We modeled peer review as a process based on knowledge asymmetries and subject to evaluation bias.
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.