1. How to Manipulate a Citation Histogram
Citation indexes need to provide standardised citation histograms for editors and publishers. Without them, it is unlikely that they will be widely adopted. At worse, it will encourage the production of histograms that selectively highlight or obscure the data, notes Phil Davis, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog
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The blog post says (quote): While Larivière and others call on editors and publishers to create their own citation histograms - a time-consuming process that is restricted to those with subscription access to a commercial citation service - a more acceptable solution to avoid selective and non-standard reporting across tens of thousands of journals would be to ask the citation services (Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Report and Elsevier’s Scopus) to plot them for users. These services would create a standardised citation histogram and include within the figure a stamp of authenticity. To ensure that these histograms are not counterfeit, they would link directly back to the issuing service.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Locks, Keys, and Firewalls — Why Internet Security Requires Digital, Analog . . . and Diligent Humans
Internet security seems to be crumbling before our eyes, and our media and leaders are not immune and lack a crucial understanding of how vulnerable a totally digital world can be. The answer may lie with analog technologies, says Kent Anderson, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog
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The blog post says (quote):
Analog systems - switches, plugs, and “airplane mode” - have many security advantages over digital systems. First, they demand local management, meaning intruders or scalawags need to overcome actual physical barriers like distance and doors and fences before they can access analog systems. Even terrain can become a major barrier to intrusion - putting a core system inside or atop a mountain can exhaust and defeat potential intruders. This is one reason vast data centers are often in the middle of nowhere. In comparison, the landscape of digital is flat, and the physical exertion required to break into a system with even hours at the keyboard is relatively light, and certainly not as arduous or costly as traveling to a faraway place to throw a switch. Abetted by computers, the cost of hacking continues to edge toward zero.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Why are interdisciplinary research proposals less likely to be funded? Lack of adequate peer review may be a factor
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Recent findings suggest interdisciplinary research is less likely to be funded than discipline-based research proposals. In her post in The Impact Blog, Gabriele Bammer looks at how interdisciplinary research is currently peer reviewed and argues different review processes may well be required to do justice to these different kinds of interdisciplinarity. Discipline-based researchers may be ill-equipped to evaluate the integrative processes that an interdisciplinary proposal plans to use.
The blog post says (quote): The discipline based unknowns that are relevant to the interdisciplinary research, such as estimating the number of heroin users (demography), assessing the ethics of heroin prescription (philosophy), and estimating the likely impact on the illicit drug market (economics) may seem pedestrian to discipline-based researchers, even though they are critical to assessing an interdisciplinary problem such as the feasibility of heroin prescription. Indeed in this project only the economists undertook research that was ground-breaking from a disciplinary perspective.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. What can publishers learn from Pokemon Go?
By now people have undoubtedly heard all the Pokemon Go stories and maybe they have even dodged a player or two, overly-focused on their phone while embarking on a virtual hunting expedition. In his post in the Digital Content Strategies Blog, Joe Wikert discusses that it’s nothing more than another time-wasting game but it offers some very important lessons for publishers.
The blog post says (quote): Stop and think about how something like Layar could be used to bring your static pages to life. Maybe you publish how-to guides, print is your dominant format and you’ve always wondered how you could integrate videos with the text. You’ve tried inserting urls but very few readers bother typing them in. QR codes are an option but they’re clunky and take up precious space on the page. Why not use AR to virtually overlay those videos on the page without having to dump in a bunch of cryptic-looking urls or QR codes?.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. The 10 principles of open research data
With the publication of the Concordat on Open Research Data, the UK further cemented its leadership position in promoting access to tax payer-funded research data. In his post in the BioMed Central Blog, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz discusses the 10 principles that promote access to and reuse of research data as an enabler of high quality research, while recognising the costs that can be involved.
The blog post says (quote): Publishers must continue to innovate and experiment with how the data underlying publications can be made more findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). Practically this means facilitating access to data during peer review and promoting the use of – and partnering with – data repositories. It also means promoting discipline specific data standards and providing new publication formats and content features, such as data journals and articles. An example of this within Springer Nature’s Scientific Data team is a Data Curation Editor (Dr Varsha Khodiyar) who works with authors to help maximise the discoverability and reuse of open research data.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
6. A Practical Guide to Altmetrics for Scholarly Communication Librarians
Posted by Natalia Madjarevic in the Altmetric Blog, this post focuses on examples and ideas for altmetrics services run by scholarly communication teams in academic libraries. This post covers the special role for Scholarly Communication Librarians in promoting altmetrics, specifically: embedding altmetrics services alongside open access support, integrating altmetrics into institutional repositories, and educating researchers on research data metrics.
The blog post says (quote): As a Scholarly Communication Librarian, you might also be running a research data management support service. This might include providing advice, training, technical infrastructure, data management plan guidance and policy support to researchers to help make their data well described, citable with persistent identifiers such as DOIs, preserved, reusable, reproducible and openly available wherever possible. Many institutions and funders now require research data assets to be made openly available according to policy requirements. A number of publishers also have data availability requirements: PLOS journals, for example, require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. Helping academics to meet these requirements is a key element of an RDM service.…………… (unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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