Author: Ernesto Spinak

Colaborador do SciELO, engenheiro de Sistemas e licenciado en Biblioteconomia, com diploma de Estudos Avançados pela Universitat Oberta de Catalunya e Mestre em “Sociedad de la Información" pela Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona – Espanha. Atualmente tem uma empresa de consultoria que atende a 14 instituições do governo e universidades do Uruguai com projetos de informação.

Odontoestomatología – first Uruguayan journal entirely in English in SciELO

On December 4th, the Facultad de Odontología, Universidad de la República del Uruguay marked a milestone in scientific publication in the country. After eight years of scheduled tasks the journal Odontoestomatología, indexed in SciELO, is the first journal in the country available online, in open access entirely in English. Read More →

Principles for the citation of scientific data

The Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles was recently approved by the international group FORCE11. It marks a milestone in the advancement of scholarly communication in the online world. This Declaration is being signed and endorsed by the world’s leading publishing groups and universities, and will in the future be incorporated into SciELO’s procedures as part of its ongoing improvements in management overall. Read More →

How do I get read and cited if I do not publish in elite-journals?

The citation impact of our articles largely depends largely on the promotion work we do of what we publish. Citations do not arise mechanically from the Impact Factor of the journal, but from our personal marketing. Read More →

International Open Data Week – what’s new?

At the World Open Data Week, the ETSINF of Valencia promoted the “1st International Workshop on Open Research Data”, where interesting lectures were presented which covered the implementation of policies that are being established within the European Community, as well as legal and ethical considerations regarding open data, the visualization technologies, the challenge of the new specialty “data curator” and the new services created by companies specialized in the preservation of open data. Read More →

Exchange of research data remains low and increases slowly

The exchange of academic research data allows other scientists to replicate the experiments and move solidly in the construction of science. Although the major funding agencies in the world established in its policies the open availability of data, only a third of medical research, and much less in other areas comply with these provisions. There are several reasons that slow this progress, ranging from copyright and commercial interests to national security. Read More →

Latin-American repositories have little visibility in Google Scholar

A recent study concerning the visibility of Latin American scholarly output in open access repositories reveals their poor indexing in Google and Google Scholar. The technical reasons for these problems, which affect the visibility of Latin-American research which, for the most part, is not indexed in either in WoS or Scopus, are explained in this post. Read More →

Editorial ethics – good and bad scientific practices

III BRISPE: Brazilian Meeting on Research Integrity, Science and Publication Ethics, sponsored by FAPESP, was the third event held in Brazil with the objective to promote institutional policies and practices of ethical research integrity and responsible conduct. With the presence of several prestigious guests from developed countries, the education strategies to new scientists were analyzed as well as how to reduce bad practices such falsification of data, plagiarism, conflict of interests, manipulation of results, etc. Read More →

Ethical publishing – should plagiarized pieces be retracted ? – well, perhaps not all

An article that contains sections of texts copied from other sources (plagiarism) does not necessarily make its research bad or invalid. Even though this is a warning of unethical behavior, this does not always merit the rejection or retraction of the article concerned. This is the opinion published recently in an article in Nature. Read More →

What can alternative metrics – or altmetrics – offer us?

The results and comments in four articles dedicated to altmetrics and published in an issue of EPI are analyzed. They show future possibilities and the real difficulties in the development of a new technique for the measurement of the impact of research based on social networks on the web. Read More →

Author credits …. Credited for what?

When the publication of a scientific article has been the joint responsibility of dozens of people, the following questions can arise: Who is the author? How is credit apportioned? and Does everyone have the same level of responsibility? A recent editorial in Nature puts forward a taxonomy which can be used to categorize the different roles which come together to make up the concept of authorship. It is interesting to make a comparison with how the film industry addresses this issue when apportioning credits in the awarding of Oscars. Read More →

What are the Public Library of Science Collections ? – Part II

This post is the second part of the description of the contents of the PLOS Collections. Of the seven collections that makeup PLOS Collections, the Text Mining and Altmetrics collections have been selected for a brief analysis of their contents and their importance to scientometrics and information science, and of the growth of these disciplines that are bolstered by free access to full text. Read More →

What are the Public Library of Science Collections ? – Part I

The PLOS Collections contain selected documents published in open access in seven subject disciplines. The contents and importance of these collections to the past, present and future of open access is briefly presented, as well as the growth of the disciplines of Text Mining and Altmetrics, stimulated by the open access to full text. Read More →

What is the decline of the elite journals?

According to a study by Vincent Larivière of the Université de Montréal, there was an exponential increase in the number of articles published in the elite journals. However, it is now required twice the number of citations than in previous decades for an article to be in the top 5% with higher impact, and that these articles are distributed amongst a wider base of titles because authors have more independence in choosing where they publish. Read More →

Ethical Publishing – the time line of a case of plagiarism

The most advanced research, which is published in elite journals such as Nature, is not beyond plagiarism or serious misconduct. In a recent case in stem cell research at Weseda University in Japan, the university ordered a review of the 280 theses produced at the RIKEN Institute since its founding in 2007. Read More →

Scientometrics of peer-reviewers – will they be finally recognized?

ORCID and CASRAI have initiated a project to establish a set of standard procedures to recognize the work of peer-reviewers. In this way the important work of peer-review, almost always anonymous, will be counted in the acknowledgments and be incorporated into scientometric indicators and altmetrics. But this will depend upon a sufficient level of adoption and acceptance of the procedures. Read More →