In scholarly communication, contrary to politics and literature, it is considered unethical to write anonymously (as a ghostwriter) and to put the name of another person to what has been written. This can have legal consequences. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to use ghostwriters to publish articles that promote their products, often without them having been properly tested in independent clinical trials. Nevertheless, these articles are often published in journals that have international impact. … Read More →
Preservation: the construction of our digital continuity
The amount and variety of digital information continues to grow, and this includes academic journals, government records, information for education, and all that is produced and published on the Internet which needs to be preserved. The need for long-term preservation is not an issue of technology, but rather an enormous unplanned challenge for institutions which requires professional skills not commonly found in the professional labor market. This challenge is one of the most pronounced issues in developing countries which are devoting large sums of money to deal with it. … Read More →
“Small Journals”, indexes and ecancer: an opportunity for Latin America
Most biomedical journals from developing countries have a special characteristic, which consists in the fact that they can be grouped under the heading “Small Journals”. Some of these publications have significant historic value since they have been in circulation for more than fifty years, while others have been published more or less on a regular basis for over a century. The Open Access international journal “ecancer” is beginning to enrich this context, and is contributing to the regional and international dissemination of knowledge produced in the field of oncology in Latin America.” … Read More →
PubMed Commons: NLM launches pilot version of open comments on articles
The United States National Library of Medicine announced the implementation of the PubMed Commons, an innovative system that enables researchers to comment on published scientific papers, promoting a forum of discussion among peers. For the pilot phase, NIH and Wellcome Trust scientists were selected to test the initiative, along with invited colleagues. This system meets the worldwide trend to promote the open discussion of research results. … Read More →
The way ahead for innovating and renewing the management of the SciELO journals
The SciELO Program team is pleased to wish all the readers of the SciELO in Perspective blog Seasons Greetings, and hopes that 2014 will be full of success for you all. The celebration of 15 years of the on-going operation of SciELO in 2013 was enriched by the wide-ranging and in – depth analysis and discussion concerning SciELO’s successes and the advances made, the lessons learned, and the problems which still persist as well as the challenges and future perspectives. … Read More →
To blog or not to blog – what academics are doing
When we speak of scientific blogs, we think of them as a means by which importance is given to the dissemination of scientific activities to the public in general. But apparently this ideal of transferring scientific knowledge to the citizens via blogs is not occurring. Instead, the blogs are becoming internal discussion forums amongst colleagues interested in their own professional careers, in other words, blogs by scientists for scientists. … Read More →
Interview with Atila Iamarino
Social networks are gaining increasing importance in scientific communication. One of the classical tools of social media is scientific blogs. Relevant questions about the use of blogs in scientific communication are disclosed and discussed in this interview with Atila Iamarino, published in both audio and text. … Read More →
Open-Data: liquid information, democracy, innovation… the times they are a-changin’
Open data are changing teaching, research and decision making. The Open Government registry registers more than 385 catalogs in 40 countries which offer more than one million open data-sets. Open data joins Open Access, Open Source and Creative Commons in a process of global change. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that the availability of Open data could increase trillions of dollars in economic value annually. … Read More →
Ethical editing practices and the problem of self-plagiarism
If an author copies a passage from another author without indicating it, it is considered plagiarism, but … what happens if he takes passages from his own previously published works without indicating it? Self-plagiarism is not an offense against intellectual property but it is, however, a significant ethical lapse in scholarly communication. Is it Ok to reuse one’s own material? To what degree can a work incorporate parts of previous works? … Read More →
The SciELO 15 Years Conference on Twitter
The SciELO 15 Years Conference was a huge success, and its impact was felt far and wide thanks to its dissemination by social media – effective ways of broadcasting information and which are already important for the dissemination of scientific activity. They are also becoming useful tools for the evaluation of the influence and impact of research as measured by the new altmetrics. See the extent of the reach of the conference in Twitter! … Read More →
Interview with William Gunn
Mendeley, the service for managing and sharing scholarly articles, is an innovative tool that makes up the new modus operandi of scholarly communication based on networks of researchers. Mendeley was acquired by the commercial publisher Elsevier which guarantees, however, to keep it free to use. … Read More →
The SciELO 15 Years Conference is a milestone in SciELO’s History
The results of the SciELO 15 Years Conference were very positive and represent a milestone in the history of the SciELO Program. On the one hand, the conference widely reaffirmed SciELO’s importance and, on the other hand, it brought out new challenges and possibilities for its future development. … Read More →
Controversial Article in The Journal “Science” exposes the weaknesses of Peer-Review in a set of Open Access Journals
Just before celebrating the Open Access Week worldwide, a controversial article published on Science exposed the recurrent question of the weaknesses of the peer review process in scientific communication. The paper focus on the selection of journals which collect article processing fees and describes how 304 versions of a fictitious article containing serious and obvious flaws were accepted in 157 open access journals, many already considered predatory. This post describes the experiment and gathers comments from international blogs. … Read More →
Impact – Nature’s Viewpoint: comments on special issue 502 (7471) 17th October, 2013
The journal Impact Factor as measured by citations is a relevant yet insufficient measure in the evaluation of projects by national research funding agencies. Without denying this objective measure and the importance it has, a consensus is emerging that the social and economic impact of research funded by these agencies must also be evaluated. … Read More →
Interview with Cameron Neylon
The Open Access advocate, Cameron Neylon, speaks about the role of PLoS journals on the dissemination of best quality articles, through a business model that transfers from readers to authors the responsibility for the payment of editorial costs. … Read More →
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