There is a disconnect between the collective nature of science, and the way the publishing and scholarly credit and reward systems focus very strongly on individual achievements. This results in problems that affect not only science, but society’s trust in science, and thus society as a whole. … Read More →
Science is largely a collective enterprise. That collectivity needs to be recognized more explicitly
Texture – an open science manuscript editor [Originally published in eLife in July/2017]
The Substance project released in 24 July 2017 the Alpha3 version of the Texture editor, which reads and produces XML files according the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) used by SciELO to structure scientific texts. It is a major step towards a complete solution for editing JATS articles and its application in publishing workflows. … Read More →
Editorial ethics – other types of plagiarism… and counting
Plagiarism and fraud multiply in a variety of ways. Recently two less frequent types have come up – accidental plagiarism and referee plagiarism. In any case, plagiarism is an ethical breach that erodes public confidence and we must prevent it. … Read More →
The editors’ role on peer review: how to identify bad referees
A theoretical peer-review model assesses the effects of referees’ unethical conduct on approving and rejecting articles and how journal editors can mitigate this behavior. What is at stake is the reliability, transparency and efficiency of pre-publication peer review. … Read More →
The myopia of bibliometric indicators
The use of bibliometric indicators in science evaluation is a ubiquitous practice, despite the fact that there is no unequivocal relationship between citations and scientific quality, impact or merit. A recent study showed that the indiscriminate use of these indicators may hinder the publication of innovative research results, delaying the development of science. … Read More →
How to find articles in open access – tips from my favorite nerd
Scholarly communication available online, whether in journals or repositories, adds up to millions, and this figure grows every year. What browser efficient tools are available to researchers, librarians, students, and the like to find the open-access versions of the articles that interest them? … Read More →
Grant applications submitted to the NIH can cite preprints
The use of preprints as a means of accelerating research communication has become a frequent practice in many areas of knowledge also as a way to improve peer review. The U.S. National Institutes of Health, a renowned research and development agency, recently announced that grant applications and reports are entitled to cite preprints, “to speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor of their work”. … Read More →
Gender disparities in science persist despite significant advances
The participation of women as authors in academic publications has been increasing significantly worldwide and in all areas of knowledge, reaching 49% in Brazil and Portugal, followed by Australia (44%) and the European Union (41%). Gender equity in science, however, still has a long way to go, especially in the editing and peer review functions. A study of more than 41,000 articles published between 2007 and 2015 shows that male editors – who are majority – preferentially select same gender referees. … Read More →
Plain-language summaries of research: Something for everyone [Originally published in eLife]
More than 50 journals and scientific organizations produce a wide variety of plain-language summaries that are available for research in many different areas of science and medicine. Plain-language summaries can help biomedical science journals to reach patients and others who may benefit from the research. This diversity means that there will always be something available to all those interested in science, regardless of their scientific background. … Read More →
Are we in the GSM Radar?
Google Scholar Metrics (GSM) offers alternative metrics to the JCR Impact Factor and the SJR, namely the h-5 index. To enter this world ranking that covers more than 40,000 journals it is only necessary to publish an average of 20 articles per year and be cited. However, there are hundreds of journals (our journals) that are not being indexed in GSM. They’re off Radar. … Read More →
I wrote this… I did not write this… now I write something else…
The emerging system of online scholarly communication incorporates a technological and ideologically approach different from the traditional one, where the articles initially appear as preprints versions and are modified until reaching the final version. In case of errors, these same technologies provide efficient opportunities to make partial or total corrections and even retractions, associating to the path of a document the history of its versions. It is time, therefore, to establish methodologies that allow to obtain the maximum of more updated information to support the scientific undertakings. … Read More →
Internationalization as an indicator of journal performance in Brazil: the case of Psychology
The path to strengthening scientific publications almost always goes through internationalization. Publishing in English, however, is not enough to reach a truly global audience and indices comparable to the most prestigious journals. A study on the degree of internationalization of Brazilian psychology journals shows how to walk this path. … Read More →
In memoriam: Eugene Garfield – 1925-2017
The father of Scientometrics died at 91 years old on February 27, 2017 leaving a production of more than 1.000 papers and communications over 60 years of research. … Read More →
SciELO Preprints on the way
The main objective of SciELO Preprints is to speeding up the availability of research results and will contribute to an organized flow of potentially acceptable preprints by SciELO journals, in line with the advances and growing importance of preprints publication internationally. The cooperative construction of the SciELO Preprints modus operandi will encompass the promotion and debate of the preprints concept, the definition of governance and operations structures and the operational implementation. It is expected to be fully operational by mid-2018. … Read More →
Preprints – the way forward for rapid and open knowledge sharing
Preprints – versions of academic articles that have not yet been formally peer-reviewed before publication – are gaining acceptance in the academic world. They deliver open access as well as speedy publication, and their decades old success in physics has spurred on their spread in other disciplines. The development of preprints is accelerating; important funding agencies are in support of them, and also SciELO is planning to set up a preprint server for authors in Latin America and the Global South generally. … Read More →
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