1. Does Sharing of an Unpublished Thesis Create Enough Harm to Imprison Someone?
Posted by Charlie Rapple in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, this post highlights the case of Diego Gómez, a Columbian researcher facing prison for sharing someone else's thesis via Scribd. The case was brought by the thesis' author, but publishers' policies may partly be responsible.
The blog post says (quote): Statnews sees a connection between the issues at stake in Diego's case, and the work that we at Kudos and others including the STM Association are doing around fairer approaches to sharing of work online. These projects are focused on post-publication sharing; the case against Diego Gómez suggests we also need to think about pre-publication sharing. Which publishers still have policies that mean they won't consider papers / books developed from theses that have previously been made available online? Is this still a valid concern on behalf of the author in this case - has he really been harmed to the extent that another academic should be imprisoned?………………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Peer Mentoring Circles: A strategy for thriving in science
Academia can feel like an isolating career, particularly for those belonging to groups that are underrepresented by STEM. In their post in the BioMed Central Blog, Claire Horner-Devine, Cara Margherio, Sheri Mizumori and Joyce Yen discuss about a mechanism called Peer Mentoring Circles, which aim to provide participants with community, ongoing connection and a supportive environment.
The blog post says (quote): Peer mentoring circles are a unique and valuable source of mentoring as they offer participants access to ideas, information and new perspectives as well as an opportunity to develop problem solving and mentoring skills. Peer mentoring offers a complementary mentoring opportunity to traditional mentoring models. PMCs can serve as an antidote to the unequal power dynamics of senior mentor - junior mentee models that can exacerbate a sense of isolation, especially for women and people of color………………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. A Glimpse Into the Future of Peer Review
Peer review is at the heart of research, now and in the future. It is often accused of being slow, inefficient, biased and open to abuse. A post in the Publons Blog discusses the key recommendations for the future of peer review from the recently published SpotOn report: What might peer review look like in 2030?
The blog post says (quote): The report puts forward a number of recommendations to tackle these problems head on. It builds on discussions held at the SpotOn conference in London and focuses on one key question: How can peer review be improved for future generations of academics? Several recommendations came out of this. Transparency. Recognition. Training. Diversity. They're all in there - and Publons is working hard on all fronts. The newly launched Publons Academy is just one example, which arms new academics with the knowledge and practical skills needed to master peer review, and connect with relevant editors to deepen and add diversity to the reviewer pool. There's no one approach to improving peer review and it would not happen overnight. But there are simple steps that can bring balance back to the system………………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Does It Matter Whose Name Appears After the © When Using Creative Commons?
Authors are increasingly applying Creative Commons licenses to their content, when publishing it via Open Access. But after deciding to use a CC license, does it matter whether copyright is transferred to the publisher or if it is retained by the author. For some reasons, transfer to the publisher might be the right choice, notes Todd A Carpenter, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): According to the Creative Commons website, "You should think carefully before choosing a Creative Commons license." There is a lot of thought that went into crafting the CC license system, which should be respected, but the choices one makes are not without implications. Creative Commons might not be right for everyone, nor is it always the appropriate solution. Example is when a publisher who was paid for a certain licenses to be applied to content, and for that content to be distributed freely fails to honor those terms. Often, these are systematic or production errors which are corrected when brought to the publisher's attention. Occasionally, errors are perhaps not unintentional, but here too, there are forums for calling out those bad actors in the community. A lot has been made of identifying unscrupulous open access publishers and progress has been made on that front. On the whole, this seems to me to be a less frequently the case than is often presumed and those who get called out most viciously are likely not intentionally bad actors………………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. Advancing to the next level: the quantified self and the gamification of academic research through social networks
Measurement of performance using digital tools is now commonplace, even in institutional activities such as academic research. The phenomenon of the "quantified self" is particularly evident in academic social networks. In their post in The Impact Blog, Björn Hammarfelt, Sarah de Rijcke, Alex Rushforth, Iris Wallenburg and Roland Bal argue that ResearchGate and similar services represent a "gamification" of research, drawing on features usually associated with online games, like rewards, rankings and levels.
The blog post says (quote): The quantification and gamification of science and healthcare carries obvious dangers. Quantification reduces the complexity of research and healthcare quality to a few indicators, privileging influence over other value registers like relevance and ways of doing "good care", and can promote an understanding of the professional self as a product in competition with others. Over-reliance on algorithms may also hamper collegial quality control and intra-disciplinary conversations. Furthermore, there are consequences of gamification, such as goal displacement and cheating, which hardly benefit research or care………………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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