ScienceGeist

Scholarly publishers are working together to maximize the efficiency of peer review, ensuring that key work related to COVID-19 is reviewed and published as quickly and openly as possible. The group of publishers and scholarly communications organizations - initially comprising eLife, Hindawi, PeerJ, PLOS, Royal Society, F1000 Research, FAIRsharing, Outbreak Science, and PREreview - is... Read full article >

Editors of academic journals have started noticing a trend: Women - who inevitably shoulder a greater share of family responsibilities - seem to be submitting fewer papers, while men are submitting up to 50 percent more than they usually would.

Early journal submission data suggest COVID-19 is tanking women's research productivity.

For Elizabeth Gadd, the Covid-19 pandemic makes it clear that long standing issues with academic publications need to be addressed quickly and definitively.

What does it mean for science - and public health - that scientific journals are now publishing research at warp speed?

Preprint servers and peer-reviewed journals are seeing surging audiences, with many new readers not well versed in the limitations of the latest research findings.

While some libraries seek transformative agreements, others are unbundling the Big Deal: a look at licensing models and revenue pressures for publishers.

Revised ‘Transformative Journal’ criteria from cOAlition S are “challenging” but Springer Nature commits to transition majority of journals, including Nature. Approach means Plan S-funded authors will be able to continue to submit research to these journals.

With help from Fox News and Elon Musk, a misleading French study prompted a wave of misinformation that made its way to the president

A systematic focus on governance – instead of, or at least alongside, open access – is vital for the future of publishing. Even if the for-profit publishing model is not going to be ‘killed’ any time soon, governance may still allow us to assert some control over it. Coupled with the publishing futures already being created and nurtured by library publishers, university presses and scholar-led collectives, we may be able to imagine a world that isn’t trapped in the logic of COVID-19.

A growing suite of tools allows teams of researchers to work collectively to edit scientific documents.

eLife is making changes to its policies on peer review in response to the impact of COVID-19 on the scientific community.

Bioscience publishing, from preprint servers to established medical journals, is finding new and faster ways to publish Covid-19 research results.

As the Board of Reviewing Editors reaches 500, we reflect on recent recruitment efforts.

But can they overcome free riders and concerns about higher prices?

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak exposes an inconvenient truth about science: the current scholarly communication system does not serve the needs of science and society.

A researcher from the Wuhan University of China offers a view of how Chinese researchers are reacting and are likely to alter their behavior in response to new policies governing research evaluation.

New policy tackles perverse incentives that drive 'publish or perish' culture and might be encouraging questionable research practices.

Self-governance of science was supposed to mean freedom of inquiry, but it also ended up serving the business model of scientific publishers while undermining the goals of science policy.

A study suggests that the productivity and impact of gender differences are explained by different publishing career lengths and dropout rates. This inequality in academic publishing has important consequences for institutions and policy makers.

Opinion piece argues that Plan S deals have streamlined open access provision in the global North while exacerbating existing inequalities in scholarly publishing, by establishing and entrenching a two-tier system of scholarly publishing based on access to funds. 

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the University of California (UC) announced a two-year agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish in the nonprofit open access publisher’s suite of journals.

Reversing the relationship between authors and publishers would ease perverse incentives that impede progress, say Hilal Lashuel and Benjamin Stecher

Standard reports paint a much rosier picture of the research landscape than may be warranted. In this analysis, the first hypothesis of standard articles reported was supported by the data 96% of the time, while that rate was only 44% in registered reports.

Former editors-in-chief at European Law Journal say the departure of editorial boards raises issue about 'who owns' scholarly journals.

Do you know what is meant by the term 'transformative agreement' or how 'Read and Publish' deals are structured? Today we explain the concepts behind these increasingly important approaches.

Curtin University researchers will help create a new international data trust to improve the measurement and analysis of open-access (OA) books.

A new study found that Registered Reports are only about 50% as likely as standard, non-RR research to confirm their hypothesis.

Nature asked readers what it should focus on in the next decade. Here is what the respondents said.

Altmetrics have become an increasingly ubiquitous part of scholarly communication, although the value they indicate is contested. A recent study examined the relationship of peer review, altmetrics, and bibliometric analyses with societal and academic impact. Drawing on evidence from REF2014 submissions, it argues altmetrics may provide evidence for wider non-academic debates, but correlate poorly with peer review assessments of societal impact.