1. Evidence-informed policymaking: does knowledge brokering work?
There is an accepted need to bridge the gap between academic research and public policy. Knowledge brokers, individuals or organisations sympathetic to both research and policymaking cultures and able to mediate between the two, represent one way of doing so. In her post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, Sarah Quarmby takes a look inside a knowledge broker organisation, the Wales Centre for Public Policy, to see how its day-to-day workings tally with the body of knowledge about evidence use in policymaking.
The blog post says (quote): Nathan Caplan's "Two-Communities" theory is still a useful tool for thinking about how to bridge the gap between academic research and policymaking. He suggests that the research and policymaking worlds operate according to such different value systems and timescales it is as though they were speaking different languages. Policymakers face political pressures and public scrutiny, and are looking for timely, practical input into policy matters, whereas academics are more interested in longer-term, theory-driven research and are under pressure to publish in academic journals. Caplan pointed to the need for intermediaries who are sympathetic towards both cultures and can mediate to best effect.......(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Guest Post: Is the Research Article Immune to Innovation?
Despite the enormous changes that digital communication has brought to our lives, the form of the research article remains much the same as it was centuries ago. Sarah Andrus, in her guest post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, looks at why it has not changed and where it is likely to go in the future.
The blog post says (quote): The formal structure of the research article has resisted any fundamental change for centuries, despite a number of ambitious attempts to boost adoption of technologies that take real advantage of the dynamic capabilities of the post-digital era. It's hard to disagree with some of the futurists' arguments here: With all the incredible tools available to recreate the modern article as an interactive, living entity, why is the PDF - a digital facsimile of print - still the dominant format? Why is it necessary for researchers to spend so much time reading and writing lengthy, austere papers when a far more streamlined, visual approach could relay all of the relevant background and findings in a much more impactful way? What might be possible if it were much easier to publish and discover negative results, data sets, code, and other research outputs that have no inherent need to be tied to a formal article?.......(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Data sitting on the shelf? Publish it as Micro Report
Do you have any data that is interesting or striking but has not been published? Many scientists do, and at a surprising volume. They spend their time, labour and money on yielding them but, for various reasons, they remain unpublished. As a Micro Report, Molecular Brain now provides a way to publish this data in its simplest form, notes Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, in his post in the BioMed Central Blog.
The blog post says (quote): But, what if we can publish such a small piece of data, as it is, without writing a lengthy introduction and discussion? A paper consisting of just one figure and the minimum information that is needed to replicate the study. The new article type, Micro Reports, in Molecular Brain is the one that enables such quick and easy publication, at a lower cost to that of research articles (£825/$1290/€1050).......(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. What happened when Elsevier tried open peer review? And which field says "no, thanks?"
Is open peer review the future? The EMBO Journal has offered it since 2009. eLife offers it. They are not alone, although they are still in the minority. Elsevier has tried a pilot of it, too, so they thought it would be worth finding out what happened. Alison McCook, in her post in the Retraction Watch Blog, discusses with Bahar Mehmani, Elsevier's lead for reviewer experience, about the project, and lessons learned.
The blog post says (quote): The journal's community and editors wanted to have peer review reports published alongside articles. They started by publishing peer review articles as PDF files in the supplementary documents of the article. However, surveying reviewers and authors as well as looking into collected data showed that peer review reports are not easily found and read. And the community wanted them to have more visibility. To respond to this need they prepared a workflow enabling the journal to typeset and publish peer review reports with separate DOIs interlinked to the article page. Despite the manual work involved – and to learn from this practice – they reached out to a small sample of journals asking if they were interested in joining..........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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