1.Workflow Lock-in: A Taxonomy
Research workflow providers can be expected to lock in researchers and universities to their products through a variety of tactics. In his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, Roger C. Schonfeld provides an overview of what is meant by lock-in and a taxonomy of approaches that may be pursued.
The blog post says (quote): Holtzbrinck's Digital Science has developed an impressive portfolio of tools that support researcher workflow, as well as university research management. So has Elsevier. Clarivate is building an interesting portfolio as well. Much remains unsettled. But there are substantial opportunities for these providers to integrate individual products and services and thereby over time lock individual researchers, and their universities, into these tools. Both Digital Science and Elsevier have denied that their strategies will result in an end-to-end lock-in for researchers across every part of their research lifecycle, but there are other forms of lock-in as well that we should expect to see develop over time……….(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2.Novelty in science - real necessity or distracting obsession?
Scientists are rewarded with funding and publications when they come up with innovative findings. But in the midst of a 'reproducibility crisis,' being new is not the only thing to value about research, notes Jalees Rehman, in his post in The Conversation Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Scientific papers now inflate their claims in order to emphasise their novelty and the relevance of biomedical research for clinical applications. By exchanging depth of research for breadth of claims, researchers may be at risk of compromising the robustness of the work. By claiming excessive novelty and impact, researchers may undermine its actual significance because they may fail to provide solid evidence for each claim. Prestigious journals often now demand complete scientific stories, from basic molecular mechanisms to proving their relevance in various animal models. Unexplained results or unanswered questions are seen as weaknesses. Instead of publishing one exciting novel finding that is robust, and which could spawn a new direction of research conducted by other groups, researchers now spend years gathering a whole string of findings with broad claims about novelty and impact……….(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3.Reward research that changes society
Tracking societal impacts encourages academics to pursue them. Journals that target societal issues typically grapple with an unusual issue for academic publishers: how to assess the significance of research that claims potential utility outside academia, discusses a post in the Nature Blog.
The blog post says (quote): In Nature journals, the ultimate responsibility of selecting which papers to publish lies with the editors - not with referees, not with external editorial boards. Is the decision-making therefore subjective? No more so than decisions in fundamental science can be, where the significance is not immediately obvious. The quality of advice is what counts, alongside the breadth of experience and outlook of the editors. Beyond the care and innovation needed in the refereeing, and the publication of good papers, how might research journals that seek to make research relevant add value? One way could be to help disseminate the impacts that followed research. Alongside citation and altmetric analyses, journals could publish narratives by researchers of what happened next, validated by testimonials from their partners or by other concrete evidence……….(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
Leave a Reply