ScienceGeist

Scientific publishers as we know them today remain a threatened species. They will have to do more to prove their added value to science and society. Unless they do so, they may not deserve to survive.

Every research paper tells a story, but the pressure to provide 'clean' narratives is harmful for the scientific endeavour.

We're updating our list of free and low-cost article access programs, including patient/caregiver access. 

Papers are getting more rigorous, but progress is slower than some researchers would like.

Up to £200,000 per society available for flagging important biomedical research outputs.

In a recent letter to the White House, a group of corporate publishers and scholarly organizations implore the president to leave intact…

The open-access era seems to be arriving for academic research, but it looks as if big publishers will still profit.

Warnings that Sci-Hub poses a cybersecurity threat to universities have intensified. But few institutions appear to be acting on them.

This essay argues that giving authors a choice between submission fees and APCs has numerous benefits.

The structural transition wrought by the internet continues to transform the journal-centric model of scholarly publishing into a researcher-centric model of scholarly communication. Success requires engagement with researcher identity, which is a struggle even for most of the largest publishing.

Let 2020 be the year in which we value those who ensure that science is self-correcting.

Letters blast rumored shift to immediate open access for taxpayer-funded studies

Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing that can protect scholarship. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach.

Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favour them, leading to the natural selection of bad science.

A study of protein databases shows that discoverers who are second to publish still end up getting a substantial portion of the recognition.

Researchers from 180 UK universities can now benefit from a national open access deal agreed between Jisc Collections and Frontiers, the second largest fully open access publisher in the UK.

Publishers rarely make publication fee spending for hybrid journals transparent. Elsevier is a remarkable exception, as the publisher provides open and machine-readable data relative to its central invoicing with funding bodies and fee waivers at the article level.

The publisher is committed to financial sustainability. How it achieves it is an open question.

Managing a New University Press (NUP) is often a one-person operation and, with limits on time and resources, efficiency and effectiveness are key to having a successful production process and providing a high level of author, editor and reader services. This article looks at the challenges faced by open access (OA) university presses throughout the publishing journey and considers ways in which these challenges can be addressed. In particular, the article focuses on six key stages throughout the lifecycle of an open access publication: commissioning; review; production; discoverability; marketing; analytics. Approached from the point of view of the University of Huddersfield Press, this article also draws on discussions and experiences of other NUPs from community-led forums and events. By highlighting the issues faced, and the potential solutions to them, this research recognises the need for a tailored and formalised production workflow within NUPs and also provides guidance how to begin implementing possible solutions.

The practice was probably used to improve the children's chances of securing a university place.

Study finds that the number of publications in open access journals rises every year, while the number of publications in questionable journals decreases from 2012 onwards. Both early career and more senior researchers publish in questionable journals.

In exchange for full open access Elsevier requests full cooperation in a number of (meta)data projects. Initial responses to the proposed deal show a fear of 'vendor lock-in'.

In order to align incentives with good science, we need to move to a system in which work that is well thought-out, well carried-out, and well communicated – regardless of the ‘story’ it tells – is given the highest reward. Changing what is rewarded will change what is done.

Unpaywall Journals needed data on whether a given journal is associated with an academic society, to help inform librarians in their subscription decisions. Alas there was no open source of this information. There is now! 

Sudip Parikh will become the new CEO of AAAS (which publishes Science) as the 171-year-old association pursues its mission to advance science and serve society.

Former scientist, turned publisher, turned research program director, Milka Kostic is uniquely placed to look at publishing from a researcher and a publisher perspective. In this interview, she shares her thoughts on both.

EMBO and EMBO Press are making their journals' finances public to provide transparency and clarity about what it costs to publish articles in high quality, selective journals.

Based on the data collected for the 2019 Big Deals Survey Report, this publication aims to deliver additional transparency of the dynamics of the scholarly publishing market by providing insights and indicators on the costs, publication volumes and timelines of Big Deal contracts.

Recent allegations of copyright violations against a professor who shared his own work on his website spark debate about ownership and whether peer reviewers should be paid.