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Common Struggles: Policy-based Vs. Scholar-led Approaches to Open Access in the Humanities

Common Struggles: Policy-based Vs. Scholar-led Approaches to Open Access in the Humanities

The thesis argues that the UK governmental policy framework promotes a form of OA that intends to minimise disruption to the publishing industry. The scholar-led ecosystem of presses, in contrast, reflects a diversity of values and struggles that represent a counter-hegemonic alternative to the dominant cultures of OA and publishing more generally.

Nominations Now Open for ORCID Board Elections 2020

Nominations Now Open for ORCID Board Elections 2020

The ORCID Nominations Committee is now welcoming nominations for Board members to serve from 2020 - 2022. Learn how, when and why to get involved.

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.

Making Science Open with the New Europe PMC Plus

Making Science Open with the New Europe PMC Plus

We are delighted to announce the launch of the new Europe PMC Plus - the manuscript submission system for authors supported by Europe PMC funders.

An Open Toolkit for Tracking Open Science Partnership Implementation and Impact

An Open Toolkit for Tracking Open Science Partnership Implementation and Impact

An open toolkit to guide and facilitate data collection about Open Science (OS) and non-OS collaborations with the aim of measuring the implementation and impact of OS partnership across these organizations.

Researchers Meet Innovators

Researchers Meet Innovators

In this 2-day meeting participants will learn how to contribute to innovation covering a large variety of roles in the value chain.

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.

Ten Ways Times Higher Education Can Change the Story

Ten Ways Times Higher Education Can Change the Story

By Rob Cuthbert Tips from an editor on how Times Higher Education can shift the negative perceptions of people in higher education to reassert its value to the sector. Times Higher Educat…

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 Journal Impact Factor has been widely critiqued as a measure of individual academic performance. However, it is unclear whether these criticisms and high profile declarations, such as DORA, have led to significant cultural change.

New Preprint: Scholar-Led Publishing and the Pre-History of the Open Access Movement

New Preprint: Scholar-Led Publishing and the Pre-History of the Open Access Movement

There is an often-neglected pre-history of open access that can be found in the early DIY publishers of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, including involvement of the humanities and social sciences. Policymakers are advised to keep in mind this separate lineage in the history of open access as the movement goes mainstream.

New Data Re-Use Prizes Help Unlock the Value of Research

New Data Re-Use Prizes Help Unlock the Value of Research

The winners of the Wellcome Data Re-use Prizes have generated new insights in antimicrobial resistance and malaria research.

Swiss Consortium Pledges 216,000 Eur to DOAJ and SHERPA/RoMEO

Swiss Consortium Pledges 216,000 Eur to DOAJ and SHERPA/RoMEO

The Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries, comprising sixteen libraries and the Swiss National Science Foundation, is the third national consortium to commit to the SCOSS initiative.

Is Blinded Review Enough? How Gendered Outcomes Arise Even Under Anonymous Evaluation

Is Blinded Review Enough? How Gendered Outcomes Arise Even Under Anonymous Evaluation

Blinded review is an increasingly popular approach to reducing bias and increasing diversity in the selection of people and projects. We explore the impact of blinded review on gender inclusion in research grant proposals submitted to the Gates Foundation from 2008-2017. Despite blinded review, female applicants receive significantly lower scores.

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. 

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassadors

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassadors

The AAAS IF/THEN Ambassadors program furthers women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers.

Rare Case of Gender Parity in Academia

Rare Case of Gender Parity in Academia

The results of this study strongly suggest that when male and female authors publish articles that are comparably positioned to receive citations, their publications do in fact accrue citations at the same rate. This raises the question: Why would gender matter “everywhere but here”? 

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.

OAI11 - CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (19-21 June 2019)

OAI11 - CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (19-21 June 2019)

The CERN-UNIGE Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication will be held at University of Geneva in June 19th-21st 2019. The main theme of this edition is: Open Science - its impact and potential as a driver for radical change.

How many reviewers are required to obtain reliable evaluations of NIH R01 grant proposals?

How many reviewers are required to obtain reliable evaluations of NIH R01 grant proposals?

The National Institutes of Health uses small groups of scientists to judge the quality of the grant proposals that they receive, and these quality judgments form the basis of its funding decisions.  In order for this system to fund the best science, the subject experts must, at a minimum, agree as to what counts as a “quality”proposal.  We investigated the degree of agreement by leveraging data from a recent experiment with 412 scientists.

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.

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.

Opening the Black-Box of Peer Review

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.

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.

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.

Thousands of Scientists Back "young Protesters" Demanding Climate Change Action

Thousands of Scientists Back "young Protesters" Demanding Climate Change Action

"Without bold and focused action, their future is in critical danger. There is no time to wait until they are in power," scientists say.