1. What use is academia for small businesses and community interest companies?
Pressures to demonstrate the impact of research has led to increasing numbers of academics looking beyond their peers for new audiences for their research findings, including to small businesses and community interest companies. But how can academia be of use to these groups? In their post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, Emily Rainsford, LJ Rawlings, Lauren Mistry and Eve Forrest share reflections on a successful collaboration and skills exchange between a social sciences researcher and community interest company Youth Employment UK, with perspectives from academic, community interest company, and funder.
The blog post says (quote): The co-production applications that have been discussed at length with partners beforehand are stronger and more nuanced in the impact they deliver. Another key success factor is making clear partners’ mutually beneficial outcomes. At the beginning of any project, researchers should consider things from the perspective of their collaborators. How much time will realistically be required? What are the advantages of being a part of the work? What are the tangible benefits of involvement? This need not necessarily be focused on monetary gains – is there any part of the project they could shape an approach to, or offer insight to others? Is there any help you could give them in return for in-kind support? Being mindful of these advantages can help a project have a lasting legacy........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. The Time for Open and Interoperable Annotation is Now
Annotation is increasingly being recognised as a valuable tool in scholarly communications, enabling increased engagement and collaboration and better metrics, and helping improve the quality of scholarly outputs. In their guest post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, Heather Staines and Alexander Naydenov discuss why.
The blog post says (quote): Of all aspects of FAIR, Interoperability might be the most important. Interoperable, standards-based annotation will allow researchers, students and readers to read and respond to each others’ annotations even if they are using different platforms and clients - in much the same way that email works today. Interoperability of annotation tools should also allow users to port their data from one tool to another or to archive their annotations securely for use later in another context. Most importantly, interoperability is a safeguard against providers who would try to lock-in users to a specific implementation, or worse, to a monolithic service. The Annotating All Knowledge Coalition, free to join, was formed in 2015 to bring together interested publishers, universities, and technology organizations to realize an open interoperable annotation capability within the scholarly world. Today, members are exploring the use of multiple tools from a user experience perspective, with the goal of someday achieving true interoperability.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Is It Time for Pre-Publication Peer Review to Die?
Pre-publication peer review seems to be as old as science communication itself. The idea is simple: qualified experts will examine your work to see if it passes muster for publication. Reviewers can spot potential problems with the experimental design or your interpretation of the data before the work is presented to the masses, discusses Bill Sullivan, in his post in the PLOS Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Many of the shortcomings may be remedied by post-publication peer review, which involves posting your paper on an online forum, such as Biorxiv, F1000 Research, or PubPeer, where others can read and comment on it. Importantly, one does not need to abandon pre-publication peer review; scientists can (and should) have their work reviewed by colleagues before posting to such sites. The crucial difference is that they can do this on their own terms, without a journal assigning reviewers of potentially questionable proficiency and commitment to the turnaround time. When the authors are satisfied with their paper, it can be published on a public server and further critiqued (and improved) as a living document through post-publication comments. Key advantages offered by post-publication peer review include the acceleration of science reporting, free access to all who wish to read and comment on the study, no publication fees, interactive discussion threads, and the ability to edit or update the study with new data.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Publish peer reviews
Long shrouded in secrecy, the contents of peer review are coming into the open. Jessica K. Polka, Robert Kiley, Boyana Konforti, Bodo Stern and Ronald D. Vale, in their post in the Nature Blog, call on journals to sign a pledge to make reviewers’ anonymous comments part of the official scientific record.
The blog post says (quote): Editors report that manually posting peer-review materials can take approximately 25 minutes per manuscript. This is obviously much less than the time spent coordinating, conducting and assessing reviews, but is still significant. Most publishing platforms are not set up to display, organise or assign digital object identifiers (DOIs) to reviewer reports and related materials, and making changes to such systems can be onerous. Still, they expect that journals could streamline these tasks and, potentially, build in transparent costs for dealing with extra work. Editors will have to learn to handle reviews containing inappropriate material, such as libellous comments or unpublished results, and to become comfortable with making some correspondence public. Many have already done so.......(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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