The financial and ethical implications that emerge from open access publishing through article processing fees in India are analyzed in a study that proposes the creation of a national open access journal platform such as SciELO in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and facilitate the sharing of metadata among repositories. … Read More →
Study shows that articles published in English attract more citations
Among the many factors that influence citation practice in scholarly communication, the language of publication plays a key role. A study by Argentine researchers showed that English articles receive more citations than those published in other languages. Despite being perceived by many as of lower quality and relevance, articles in Spanish from two Latin American journals were blind evaluated and were not, in fact, underqualified. … Read More →
Is it possible to normalize citation metrics?
Bibliometric indicators represent much more than an indication of the visibility, relevance and impact of an article. A researcher’s entire career profile can be summarized in one or more numerical productivity and impact indicators of his research. However, citation metrics vary considerably according to the area of knowledge, the publication age, the type of document and the coverage of the database where citations were accrued. Is it possible to normalize them? Here we discuss the challenges of this practice. … Read More →
Theses and dissertations: pros and cons of the traditional and alternative formats
In order to expedite the writing and assessment of theses, institutions and graduate programs in several countries, including Brazil, are choosing to allow candidates who have published papers on their masters or doctorate research topics to replace the thesis chapters by these articles, headed by an introduction, conclusion and review of scientific literature. Is this format ideal and applicable to all? … Read More →
How do researchers and journalists in Brazil relate to each other?
Scientists admit that dealing with complex issues related to their research with journalists is not an easy task. However, long they realized that communicate their results in scientific journals is not enough. To obtain research grants, attract collaboration opportunities and for career advancement, it is necessary – and advisable – to communicate with the public through journalists. Read about the details of this relationship and what can be done to improve it. … Read More →
Instructions to authors of Health Science journals: what do they communicate?
Instructions to authors (IA) allegedly contain all necessary and sufficient information to guide authors on the correct submission of a manuscript to a journal. Actually, however, a huge diversity of contents not always fulfills that purpose. In this post, we analyze the instructions to authors of SciELO Brazil Health Science journals, as well as literature on the subject. … Read More →
How Open Access can boost researchers’ careers
Full adoption of open access has not been achieved mainly because researchers are not yet totally convinced that this type of publication will do for their careers the same as the subscription journals. A detailed review article published in eLife shows that open research brings many benefits to researchers and it is associated with increased citations, media attention, potential collaboration and funding and jobs opportunities. … Read More →
Open Access reviewed: stricter criteria preserve credibility
The most comprehensive index of open access journals, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), reviewed its inclusion criteria, in view of allegations of the presence of predatory journals. This restructuring will lead to more than 3,000 journals to be removed from the database. DOAJ, besides advocating Open Access, established, in collaboration with COPE, OASPA and WAME, a code of principles and good practices in scientific publishing. … Read More →
The search for scientific literature: how readers discover content
What are the sources most used by researchers and other professionals to search and access scholarly literature? A detailed study conducted by experts in publication and management of scientific journals, published in March 2016, aimed to answer this question. Through a survey with over 40,000 readers worldwide, the authors built a broad overview of users’ reading habits, comparing those with results from the last ten years. … Read More →
From the NY Times: Biologists went rogue and publish directly on the Internet
The ASAP Bio conference held in February at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, US, brought together biomedicine researchers to discuss new ways to communicate research results using preprints and post-publication peer review. Renowned scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners started to deposit their articles in open access preprint repositories before proceeding with the formal publication in journals. The topic received last week the attention of the New York Times. … Read More →
Reproducibility in research results: the challenges of attributing reliability
Recently projects have been developed with the aim to reproduce published research results in psychology, biology and economics to verify their reliability. The results indicate different degrees of reproducibility in each area, however, they served to alert the scientific community about how fragile results considered irrefutable can be and reflect on the role of science in self-correcting. … Read More →
May excessive transparency damage Science?
The scholarly community promoted and encouraged research transparency to curb the lack of reproducibility and scientific misconduct. However, this openness also opens room for attacks and harassment of researchers, often motivated by simple discrepancy between the results and even threats of physical and psychological violence. Learn how to recognize and protect yourself from attacks of this nature. … Read More →
Results of the workshop AlterOA: recommendations for the future of open access
The future of open access, as the preferred alternative for publication of research results, was widely discussed at the Workshop on Alternative Open Access Publishing Models, held in October 2015 in Belgium. Learn about the participants’ innovative ideas and the recommendations of the European Commission to strengthen and facilitate this business model. The workshop report considers SciELO the most established among the models analyzed. … Read More →
Open access as a sustainable alternative to scholarly communication
The abusive price of scientific journals subscriptions, that triggered the open access movement in the 2000s, remains until today. The enormous financial pressure on academic libraries, research institutions and governments find alternative in open access business models. Innovative alternatives on open access publishing systems were created in several countries and a workshop organized by the European Commission brought together experts to discuss them. Get to know some alternatives. … Read More →
European Commission debates alternative approaches to open access
The Workshop on Alternative Open Access Publishing Models organized by the European Commission in October 2015 convened experts to discuss the future of open access as preferable publication model of research results, especially those financed by public funds. The meeting’s approach prioritized issues beyond the mere access to publications and resulted in fairer and more transparent alternative models aimed at increasing the dissemination and use of research by academia and other sectors of society. … Read More →
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