1. Metadata 2020: a community collaboration to advance metadata for scholarly communications
Metadata 2020 is a collaboration of scholarly communications stakeholders working towards richer, connected, reusable, and open metadata for all research outputs. Clare Dean, in her post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, explains what the collaboration's goals are, what common problems and opportunities for progress have already been identified, and how these are being addressed by six main projects.
The blog post says (quote): While some researchers are well-positioned to understand the importance and uses of metadata, there are many who remain uninformed, which contributes to the incompleteness and inconsistency of metadata deposited as research is published. This project looks to gain a deeper understanding of researcher perceptions and needs around metadata, with a view to developing resources to assist them and to enable other communities to better serve them. This group is led by Alice Meadows of ORCID and Michelle Urberg of Proquest. Mapping between the recommended concepts and schemas is an important step towards a single recommendation that is consistent across communities. Jim Swainston of Emerald Group Publishing leads the effort to map between schemas. This project also leads a sub-group of Metadata 2020 participants in the development of a metadata flow diagram, charting the flow of metadata in and out of types of organisations and systems throughout scholarly communications………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Competition and corruption in education: a lethal combination for academic integrity
Higher education is a competitive enterprise at every level - from student admissions processes to university ranking systems and competition for funding. In many contexts, access to education means jobs and wealth. The poisonous mix of competition, corruption and poor resources has the potential to create an environment where misconduct becomes the norm, rather than the exception, discusses Dr Tracey Bretag, in her post in the BioMed Central Blog.
The blog post says (quote): The Global Corruption Report: Education detailed a vast array of corrupt practices including "illicit payments in recruitment and admissions, nepotism in tenured positions, bribery in on-campus accommodation and grading, political and corporate undue influence in research, plagiarism, 'ghost authorship' and editorial misconduct in academic journals." When corruption combines with increasing competition in society, academic integrity becomes a casualty. There is a sense of pessimism and despondency for some in academe that there is simply no other way to get ahead than to fabricate, falsify, plagiarise, misrepresent, outsource, cheat and take unfair advantage. If 'everyone else is doing it', scholars may justify their behaviour in the same way that famous sports stars have done by arguing that they are simply responding to external pressures and creating a 'level playing field'………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Understanding "The Rules" of Content and Information Sharing in a Global Organisation
Sharing information across a global enterprise should be encouraged, but it's often stymied by old habits and information silos. It is best to reframe thinking about sharing from "Who needs to know?" - which is hard to define - to "Who's not permitted to know this information?" This way, people eligible to know certain information can access it, even if we didn't know they need it. Michelle Drabik, in her post in the CCC Blog, discusses three ways to start this transition.
The blog post says (quote): Employees across the enterprise must be educated about what they can and cannot share. For information created in-house, determine if there a business, legal, or regulatory reason to limit access to certain people or departments. If the information was published externally, determine if you have the rights to share it. Always work with the legal and IT departments to help users understand compliance and security requirements. Create rewards for global collaboration. Copyright Clearance Center traditionally put together end-user information services training and resources in the United States. This content would be shared with other regions, which each would adapt for their local users………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Clowns to the Left of Me… Jokers to the Right: The Independent Publisher in an Age of Mergers and Acquisitions
As many smart people have predicted, consolidation within scholarly publishing will continue to make big news well into 2019. Angela Cochran, in her post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, looks at what happens to societies and smaller publishers when the big competing publishers buy up the previously publisher agnostic service providers.
The blog post says (quote): Elsevier has made their intentions clear with acquisitions such as SSRN, bePress, and now Aries Systems, developer of the Editorial Manager suite of submission, peer review, and production tracking tools. Wiley has also made moves in this direction, albeit in a different way. Wiley acquired platform provider Atypon to build out their workflow tools. As a Wiley corporation, Atypon has purchased Authorea, Manuscripts.app, and a small company that became the basis of Scitrus (an electronic Table Of Contents [eTOC] personalization tool). These services are in addition to the Literatum platform that hosts more than 40% of English-language journals; a preprint server currently operated for the American Geophysical Union; and a forthcoming eReader. Atypon laid out this start-to-finish platform solution at their US User Group meeting this summer, which was attended by current customers and Wiley executives. It would be easy to say that Atypon is developing a world-class platform that cuts across the publishing continuum, but it would be more accurate to say that Wiley is developing a researcher-to-reader workflow solution………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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