1. Open access to high energy physics assured to 2019 by SCOAP3
Open access publishing is now mainstream in biology and medicine, but it is less popular in the natural sciences. In her post in the BioMed Central Blog, Grace Baynes examines a partnership between CERN and Springer Nature that’s promoting open access publishing in high energy physics.
The blog post says (quote): SCOAP3 will continue to support open access publication of high-energy physics articles in eight participating journals. This includes two Springer Nature journals, Journal of High Energy Physics (published on behalf of SISSA) and The European Physical Journal C. (co-published with the Italian Physical Society). These journals were participating in SCOAP3 since the beginning, and we are a proud partner of this second phase with the same journals. Since January 2014, SCOAP3 has supported open access publication of more than 13,000 articles by about 20,000 authors from over 100 countries.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. The number behind the number: suggesting a truer measure of academic impact
The limitations of simple ‘citation count’ figures are well-known. In his post in The Impact Blog, Chris Carroll argues that the impact of an academic research paper might be better measured by counting the number of times it is cited within citing publications rather than by simply measuring if it has been cited or not.
The blog post says (quote): The academic research and policy agenda increasingly seeks to measure and use ‘impact’ as a means of determining the value of different items of published research. However, there is much debate about how best to define and quantify impact, and any assessment must take into account influence beyond the limited bounds of academia, in areas such as public policy. However, within academia, it is generally accepted that the number of times a paper is cited, the so-called ‘citation count’ or ‘citation score’, offers the most easily measured guide to its impact.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Love That Dirty Water - Are We Headed Toward a “Clean Science Act”?
The Federal Trade Commission’s complaints against OMICS Publishing feels like an important inflection point in the relationship between scholarly publishers and the government. This relationship has grown more complex over the past 20 years, as publishers have come under greater scrutiny with public and open access initiatives driving much of the engagement. Now, it seems so-called “predatory publishers” are falling under the watchful eye of the government, as well, notes Kent Anderson, in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Self-regulation seems to be weaker and less compelling than ever. Bodies like the ICMJE are becoming less influential as the journals market moves away from a few high-impact journals and toward OA mega journals, journal families, and consolidated businesses with their own dominant cultures. Governmental regulation is not new to the journals economy. But the friendly “hand on the shoulder” type of regulation may no longer be sufficient or well-enforced. This former quasi-governmental regulation of journals by the NLM via MEDLINE and PubMed has been eroded by a decade or more of looser standards promulgated to support PubMed Central’s rise. Other non-governmental regulatory aspects within the journals economy (e.g., having an impact factor, having an editor-in-chief) have also been loosened, dissembled, or weakened by a community focused increasingly on author satisfaction.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. What Are Predatory Open Access Journals And Why Should We Worry?
Two of Canada's well known publishing houses for medical journals (Pulsus Group and Andrew John Publishing) have been bought by OMICS International, a predatory publisher based out of India. This publisher is under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which has charged OMICS of making false claims and deceiving academics and researchers, notes Dr. Madhukar Pai and Eduardo Franco, in their post in the huffingtonpost.
The blog post says (quote): Predatory journals publish anything and pay little to no attention to serious ethical violations, such as fabrication of data and plagiarism. The science-free process used by predatory OA publishers does not allow anyone to verify or challenge research studies that may have serious design flaws or biases. This fact was demonstrated by a sting operation conducted by Science magazine in 2013. John Bohannon, a scientist who writes for Science, sent, using fictitious author names, completely flawed, fake manuscripts to 304 open-access publishers, including 121 from Beall's list. The flaws in the manuscripts were glaring and should have led to their rejection. In reality, 157 of the journals accepted the paper! For the publishers on Beall's list, a stunning 82 per cent accepted the paper.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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