Europe brings together many countries leaders in scientific and technological research and has encouraged cooperation programs between institutions, countries and regions to foster competitiveness, impact and relevance in research. A comprehensive study based on bibliometric indices analyzes the scientific output of the region and appraises its contribution to the realization of the European Research Area. … Read More →
Science (which needs communication) first, careers (which need selectivity) later
Science communication and career advancement via journal publications are too closely intertwined, to the detriment of science. The selectivity of journals slows, hampers, and distorts the communication process. Therefore, the processes of scientific communication and assessment for career advancement should be separated. As a welcome side effect, publishing, particularly publishing with open access, could be very much cheaper than it is currently (and the money saved used for research). … Read More →
Launch of Research Integrity & Peer Review journal
The reliability of the research record should be of concern to everybody, yet it has attracted remarkably little study. A new journal of Research Integrity & Peer Review was recently launched at the World Conference on Research Integrity in Rio de Janeiro. The editors hope the new journal will not only provide a much-needed forum for research on these topics but may also stimulate additional research. … Read More →
Sustainability Science in the global landscape
Before the challenge of the Sustainable Development Goals established by the UN for 2030, scientific research has a key role to support decisions and public policies to reach them. A study by Elsevier and SciDev.Net about sustainability science addresses three main aspects, production, impact, and collaboration in research in this area and its interdisciplinarity. … Read More →
The publishing proposal of the Open Library of Humanities [Originally published in The Impact Factor Blog]
The Open Library of Humanities (openlibhums.org) is no longer a project. On September 28th, 2015 the mega-journal for humanities and the social sciences came into existence, and at the same time a new funding model. … Read More →
Project Making Data Count encourages sharing of research data
Sharing of research data (open data) is increasing in all areas related to scientific research, and it involves authors, journals, publishers, funding agencies, the productive sector and society. In order to encourage authors to provide and reuse datasets, it is paramount to find ways to measure their impact. The initiative ‘Making Data Count’ is efficiently doing this, find out how. … Read More →
The BMJ requires data sharing to publish clinical trials
Increased publication of clinical trial outcomes has been promoted by regional and global initiatives in order to increase transparency, reproducibility and reliability of the assays. The BMJ follows this movement, becoming the first journal to require availability of individual patient data, anonymously and upon request, as a prerequisite for publication. … Read More →
The favourable perception of open access increases among researchers
A research conducted by the Nature Publishing Group indicates that the perception of open access (OA) publishing is rapidly changing among researchers. In 2014, 40% of authors who have not published in OA journals declared themselves concerned about the quality of publications, a percentage which fell to 27% in 2015. The NPG supports OA publications and recognizes its importance, publishing 56% of the articles in this format. … Read More →
What is holding back the transition to open access if it does not cost more?
Transition to Article Processing Charge supported open access from a closed access subscription system is far from straightforward, even if the cost of such an open access system is the same, or even less. There are glimmers of hope, though, in an approach that may help to overcome the hurdles, by taking a large-scale, even nationwide, approach as opposed to the usual one where each individual institution has to weigh up the costs and benefits. … Read More →
SciELO’s Contribution to the Globalization of Science [Originally published in Digital Science’s “Perspectives” blog]
SciELO was created in Brazil about two decades ago when international indexes limited their coverage to the so called main stream journals ignoring an universe of journals edited by regional publishers mainly from developing and non-English speaking countries. Aiming to increase the quality and visibility of world-class research communicated by these nationally edited peer reviewed journals, SciELO quickly emerged as an indexing and publishing model adopted by a network of 15 countries that covers over one thousand journals, more than 500 thousand articles that serve a daily average of more than 1 million downloads. SciELO contributes to the globalization of science and to the cultural enrichment of the international flow of scientific information. This post by the directors of SciELO was originally published on Digital Science’s blog, “Perspectives”. … Read More →
Open Access in Latin America: a paragon for the rest of the world [Originally published in the SPARC blog]
Manifesto signed by scholars and representatives of pro-open access associations, published on the website of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition – SPARC, repudiates the ideas advocated by Jeffrey Beall disqualifying SciELO (and Redalyc) in favor of control over journals by large commercial publishers. The manifesto states that open access is exemplary in Latin America. … Read More →
Unpublished results from clinical trials distort medical research
The ClinicalTrials.gov initiative was created with the purpose to establish a platform for recording information on clinical trials conducted by public organizations (research institutes and government agencies) and private (pharmaceutical companies). A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, however, shows a worrying scenario. Despite the requirement to register clinical trials in a publicly accessible base, a small fraction of them are published in scientific journals, compromising the transparency and applicability of the discoveries. … Read More →
Jeffrey Beall and Blacklists
Jeffrey Bell, the author of the list of predatory publishers and journals widely expresses his unfavorable opinion about the open access movement in general and the academic publishing in developing countries. His latest attack was directed to SciELO, that he called on his blog “A publication favela”, in another sad attempt to discredit both open access and scholarly publication in the developing world. His opinions are personal, unfounded and biased, and do not deserve any credit. … Read More →
Motion to repudiate Mr. Jeffrey Beall’s classist attack on SciELO
By the Brazilian Forum of Public Health Journals Editors and the Associação Brasileira de Saúde Coletiva (Abrasco, Brazilian Public Health Association) … Read More →
The fenced-off ‘nice’ publication neighbourhoods of Jeffrey Beall
Jeffrey Beall, librarian at the University of Colorado, describes SciELO as a ‘publication favela’ and commercial publishers as ‘nice neighbourhoods for scholarly publications’. The only way for us to understand that is if we consider his anti-open access, anti-subsidy, and anti-non-western attitudes, which are so clearly visible in his writings. It is a pity a university librarian of an otherwise reputable university thinks like this. He is wrong, and that has to be exposed. … Read More →
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