1. Guest Post - Emerging Trends in the Academic Publishing Lifecycle
Posted by Christine Tulley in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, this guest post discusses how the academic publication lifecycle has undergone radical changes over the past several years. These changes have a significant impact on how scholarship will be written, published, promoted, and read in the future.
The blog post says (quote): Trends in both scholarly publishing as well as libraries' role in the research and publication processes confirm this shift from a linear process to a circular one. Research from both early career researchers across disciplines and experienced academics, in addition to a large scale study of academic publishing habits across the academic lifecycle conducted by Bec Evans and Chris Smith of Prolifiko, indicate the publishing process is no longer a linear process and the roles of libraries, publishers, and researchers have all developed in response to issues such as open access, REF guidelines in the UK and tenure and promotion processes in the US, and emerging support roles for academic libraries. As a researcher and faculty developer who specialises in moving authors from idea to publication, four significant shifts across disciplines have emerged in how ideas move from researchers to published research and back again to researchers as readers.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. The value of a journal is the community it creates, not the papers it publishes
When thinking about the value of journal publishing, they have a tendency to think in terms of costs per article and the potential for new technologies to reduce these costs. In their post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, Lucy Montgomery and Cameron Neylon argue that they should instead focus on the social life of journals and the knowledge communities they sustain. Taking this as a starting point they explore how changes to the business model of journal publishing have pushed existing forms of academic social organisation to their limits.
The blog post says (quote): The good being produced is the knowledge-making community itself. From a social knowledge production perspective this means that the value being created is collective community knowledge. Knowledge production is most efficient when this community, or "knowledge club", strongly overlaps with the club which makes up the journal. Journals can exist where this overlap is not strong. Journals like Science and Nature are financially viable and they create a kind of club. However, this is not a knowledge community in any meaningful sense. The authors of an article on the genome of an organism are not producing knowledge in concert with those of an article on the formation of stars. In these cases the "good" being produced is prestige, or brand value. Rather than being knowledge clubs, they are closer to "social network markets", in which the choices that individuals make, such as where to seek to publish, are driven by the actions of those with higher prestige in the network. Such markets are effective means for extracting resources out of communities.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Double vision in research? Medicinal chemistry and chemical biology
It is easy to challenge academics over the relevance of their research to society and its significance for the future. The specialisations of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, which are developed through heterocyclic chemistry, are as much open to challenge as anything else. Colin Sucking, in his post in the Open Access Government Blog, discusses the work undertaken at the University of Strathclyde that explores the combination of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology.
The blog post says (quote): Although heterocyclic chemistry has been around a long time this does not mean that there is no longer any interest or value in heterocyclic chemistry, quite the contrary. It is precisely because it is mature and capable of making highly sophisticated designed chemical compounds that it retains power and importance in science. New compound classes have been discovered with value in many different applications ranging from therapeutics to television screens. In both of these applications and everything on the spectrum of technology in between, there are new developments that depend upon heterocyclic chemistry. Here the author wants to point out not the physical manifestations of the chemistry in terms of compounds in bottles but a relatively new and powerful way of thinking about not only chemistry but also biology. From this approach, important new discoveries can emerge, as has been realised worldwide. It is an important aspect of how they structure and build their research programmes in health care at the University of Strathclyde.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Solving Four Common Academic Library Challenges
Academic library challenges can affect both the library staff and their students. Solving these challenges will help bring the staff's workflow and research path of their students to the next level. A post in the EBSCOpost Blog, explores suggestions and solutions to the four common academic library challenges.
The blog post says (quote): At present, college students have a sophisticated UX expectation and expect the academic library website to follow suit. Elements like responsive design, a search box front and center, organised paths to content like databases, e-books, etc., and an intuitive layout will help them start researching on the right foot. On the other side of this challenge is building and maintaining a library website with a web platform that is not only easy to use, but allows for proper and seamless integration of the other library-centric platforms, such as ILS or Discovery. One of the most common academic library challenges revolves around authentication. For the library users, logging in to access the library's resources and services is critically important. But having to re-authenticate again and again is a small task that can grow into a tiresome obstacle. Library users' workflows are changing; with a rise in remote students, no longer are users reliably connected to the institution's network when accessing resources. On the flip side, this type of "off-site" access requires library staff to have deeper technical knowledge of how to address remote students' information needs.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. Guest Post - Technological Support for Peer Review Innovations
Researchers and editors spend an estimated 15 million hours annually conducting and managing peer review for papers that are rejected. In an ideal world, this peer review could be transferred to other journals in order to help authors publish their work in a suitable journal. Jessica Polka, in her guest post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, looks at current technological capabilities for new innovations in peer review.
The blog post says (quote): Most researchers and editors agree that peer review is essential to knowledge creation, and many see it as a form of scholarship in its own right. Given its importance and potential value in helping readers interpret the context of a manuscript and the rigors of the editorial process, attendees at the meeting agreed that it makes little sense to keep private the content of reviews - with or without referee names. Meeting organisers summarised their thinking in an article accompanying the release of an open letter, now signed by more than 300 journals expressing their commitment to making it possible to publish the contents of their peer review process. While many signatories have been publishing this content for over a decade, the last year has seen the launch of new collaborations and platforms that enable more dynamic and immediate display of this content. However, having the intention to publish review reports is not enough. Journals need to consider whether their content management system will support not only technical needs, but also the necessary workflow changes.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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