Is there any positive relationship between open access and the amount of citations? Last year Academia.edu announced in its website that citations to papers in its repository could raise in percentages much higher than other repositories. Is it truth or exaggeration? … 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 →
Openness and quality of a published article
Openness is a scientifically and societally relevant part of a published article’s quality. It is time that openness is recognized as a most important element of the quality of a research publication and that those who judge researchers on their publications (e.g. tenure and promotion committees) take that into account. For the benefit of science and the benefit of society as a whole. … Read More →
Annotating the scholarly literature online
The Internet irreversibly changed the scholarly literature, the way it is published, assessed, disseminated, read, shared and cited. The peer review process has been evolving as a result of innovations facilitated by the Web. Among them, the post-publication review and open comments on online texts constitute a strong trend. Hypothes.is is an open source initiative that allows sharing openly – or privately – comments from researchers on scientific publications, contributing to their improvement. … Read More →
How to assess research proposals?
The peer review of research proposals (grants) aims to judge the merit of projects and researchers and enable the best to be contemplated. The director of an institution in the United Kingdom shared on Twitter his struggle in evaluating the numerous proposals received and started a discussion forum from which ideas and suggestions emerged. … Read More →
Open Access in Latin America free of predatory journals
Low quality non peer reviewed open access journals called ‘predatory’ compromise the credibility of open access publishing and cause damage to this business model’s reputation. A detailed study analyzes these journals and their publishers, including geographic location and authors’ profile. … Read More →
Bibliometric indicators of the European scientific production
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 →
Taking open access one step further: The role of SciELO in the global publication landscape [originally published in Editage Insights]
In this conversation, Abel Packer traces SciELO Program’s growth and talks about the gap in publication standards and processes between developed and developing countries. He also emphasizes the importance of establishing sustainable open access publication models. [Available only in English] … Read More →
The “Salvador Declaration on Open Access: the developing world perspective” completes 10 years
Open Access promotes equity. For the developing world Open Access will increase scientists and academics capacity to both access and contribute to world science. After 10 year the Salvador Declaration promoted by SciELO remains actual. … 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 →
France prepares bill to regulate open access
France is preparing a bill to regulate open access to scientific research results financed with public funds. The text of the law, however, does not agree with what the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) believes it benefits the scientific community, the French and the world society. The project is available for public consultation and any Internet user can suggest changes that will impact on the way research is conveyed digitally. Your feedback is very important, vote you too. … 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 →
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