SciELO has been a shining example of how a publicly supported infrastructure could bolster scholarship and knowledge as public goods. However, its increasingly focus on “professionalization” and “internationalization” may serve to reduce the intellectual and linguistic heterogeneity of the region, while subjecting the evaluation of quality to “standards” largely set by multinational corporations that are far more interested in profit extraction than in local development. … Read More →
All journals should have a policy defining authorship – here’s what to include [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in January/2018]
Scientific research papers with large numbers of authors have become more commonplace, increasing the likelihood of authorship disputes. Danielle Padula, Theresa Somerville and Ben Mudrak emphasise the importance of journals clearly defining and communicating authorship criteria to researchers. As well as having a policy for inclusion, journals should also indicate unethical authorship practices, clarify the order of authors at an early stage, consider recognising “contributorship”, and refer any disputes that do arise to the authors’ institutions. … Read More →
The basics of sponsorship at Crossref
There are many journals that want to register content and benefit from the services provided by Crossref, but may not be able to do so alone. These organizations use sponsors. Sponsors are organizations who publish on behalf of groups of smaller organizations. Nearly 650 of the 800 Brazil members of Crossref are represented by such a sponsor. … Read More →
What do Spanish researchers think about Open Peer Review?
In February 2018, the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas launched a survey to know the habits, preferences and opinions of its researchers when performing an evaluation and being subjected to open peer review, with the aim of contributing to the international debate on science assessment and possible ways of improvement. Fifty-four percent of respondents are satisfied with the dominant peer review system and fifty percent agree to open the reviewers’ identity as it helps reduce conflicts of interest. … Read More →
Output and impact of Brazilian research: confronting international and national contexts
Brazilian scientific research, seen through its articles and their impact reveals a scenario that 30 years ago could not have been described. SciELO concretizes what Garfield envisioned for Latin America in the 1990s, allowing to delineate the citation flow, as in many countries, as yet unseen, and allowing to question the pertinence of Gibbs’s expression: “lost science in the third world”. … Read More →
The basics of content types: Preprints, Crossmark, translations, and more
What’s the difference between preprints and ahead of print? When should you use each; and, what are the DOI requirements? This article answers those questions and provides a basic overview of how to connect the metadata records of related content types, like translations. … Read More →
Do the article and scientific journals have a future?
How to think the future of scholarly communication, aiming at its broadest circulation, use, citation, and impact? It is proposed to preferentially focus on meeting the needs of the “Great Dialogue” in knowledge production and less on the financing and survival strategies of canonical forms of scholarly communication before the disruptive effects of open access. … Read More →
Towards universal open access? Why we need bibliodiversity rather than a “silver bullet”
The current debate on open access is often based on undue generalizations advocating for “silver bullet” models to flip the scholarly communication system globally. This approach is flawed because it doesn’t take into account the diversity of communication practices across the different disciplines and countries. … Read More →
Book Review: Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age by Matthew J. Salganik [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in July/2018]
In Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, Matthew J. Salganik explores the process of undertaking social research in the digital era, examining a wide range of concepts while also offering teaching activities and materials. In bringing together the expertise of social and data scientists to the benefit of both, this is a comprehensive overview of new approaches to social research in our time, recommends Marziyeh Ebrahimi. … Read More →
Books’ relevance in scholarly communication – The case of SciELO Books
Manuscripts were the first repositories of scholarly communication. Over the centuries and new technologies, science has been communicated by books, by personal correspondence between researchers, journals and paper books, until we came to electronic technologies and the Internet. Throughout the 20th century, journals became predominant as a means of communicating research results, with rapid adaptation to the features offered by technological changes. At the SciELO Network Meeting of the SciELO 20 Years Week, a working group will analyze and discuss the relevance of books in scholarly communication, focusing on the progress of academic publishers and, more specifically, the SciELO Books Program. … Read More →
The critical role of the DOI
Find out why URL links to research articles are fragile, and how DOIs are essential in building stable, persistent links between research objects. This is achieved through the metadata that members deposit with Crossref, as part of their obligations. Learn how we can all contribute to creating a global, robust research record. … Read More →
Journals’ presence and impact on the social web: Towards the social media impact factor
The routine practice of evaluating the journal Impact Factor to determine where to submit a manuscript has been reconsidered to the detriment of the social impact of the journal in the relationship that the journal establishes with the scientific community and the public. Social media metrics act in this direction by measuring the journal social media impact factor which may assist in managing the journals’ web presence in the profiles kept on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. … Read More →
Scientific-public interface in times of correction of scientific literature: Contemporary ethical issues
The process of correcting scientific literature becomes increasingly accelerated and reflects, among several factors, a greater scrutiny by scientific publishers. Unlike what happened about two decades ago, when retracting an article was rare, today it has been integrated into the editorial culture. In this context, the way in which this correction process is articulated with the news flow about science deserves attention. In the science-public interface, retractions broaden the spaces to strengthen public understanding about science and its mechanisms of self-regulation. How to extend this space is one of the ethical discussions of our time. … Read More →
What does a new approach mean (for journals, research councils)?
Preprints are a development underway in science communication and publishing. For journals, this has consequences. They may adopt a passive role, an opposing stance, or an encouraging, stimulating role, and see it as an opportunity, placing their journal in the midst of the preprint development. These are issues to be discussed in detail at the SciELO 20 Years Conference in September 2018. … Read More →
Why Crossref exists and persists
In today’s world, an author’s work needs a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for it to become discoverable, citable, and linkable. This unique alphanumeric string identifies the content of a research work, and remains associated with it irrespective of changes to its web location. Discover the origins of the DOI, how Crossref was founded, and why they continue to exist and persist. … Read More →
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