1. Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting Crosses Boundaries, Borders and Aims to Break Down Barriers
The 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will be held at the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver, BC, June 1-3, 2016. Although its membership includes professionals from around the world, this is the first time SSP is meeting outside of the US. The theme for this year’s meeting is Crossing Boundaries: New Horizons in Scholarly Communication. In this release, posted on the Society for Scholarly Publishing website, Mary Beth Barilla, co-chair of the Annual Meeting Program Committee, notes that this year at the SSP, we will meet to examine new ways of bridging concepts and challenging assumptions about the marketplace, business models, and our individual roles.
The blog post says (quote): Organizations and individuals willing to step out of their 'comfort zone' are re-defining the world of scholarly publishing by breaking down silos, forming new partnerships, and expanding their focus to reach a global audience. Sessions at this year's meeting will focus on ways we can learn from these experiences and explore what lies over the horizon for scholarly publishing.…………(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Dealing with retractions
With an increasing number of retractions across the scientific literature, how can we keep on top of them? And even when retracted, how can we ensure the impact of the results does not continue to propagate? A new research published in Research Integrity and Peer Review assessed the citation network of an article before and after retraction. In his post in the BioMed Central Blog, co-author Paul van der Vet discusses the research and what's happening in the field to combat these issues.
The blog post says (quote): We investigated this scenario for one particular article published in Nature. Our results were published in the new BioMed Central journal Research Integrity and Peer Review. Although in our research (spoiler alert!) we did not find propagation beyond direct citations, I would be very surprised if it did not happen at all. Because citing a retracted paper may invalidate an argument, it is of the utmost importance to keep track of which papers are retracted and why. Literature search engines should ideally provide not only search results but also retraction information. However, with the exception of PubMed, most search engines still do not always provide an indication of the retracted status of an article (for details, see our publication). And no search engine provides information about why an article has been retracted……………(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. STM Future Trends 2020 provides publishers insights on the currents affecting them
The International Association of STM Publishers released its Future Trends for 2020 last week. The sea upon which publishers sit is choppy and full of cross currents, that could prove perilous or fortunate, depending on one's perspective and reaction, notes Todd A Carpenter, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Many topics from previous years have been sidelined in this version of the STM tech trends. The scholarly article used to be squarely in the center of publishing worldview and its vision of the future. For example, reflect on the "article of the future" effort a few years ago, which included many of the elements of this revised vision but it was packaged in the context of the traditional article. Other research objects have been incorporated as stand-alone objects into this new vision. Also, the atomization of content is drawn out, so content within the article that can be extracted rather than the package (of the article, the book or the journal), which is another trend that has been identified. Content is no longer viewed as being contained in a single form, but it is being imagined within a graph of scholarly outputs (described best by OAI-ORE)……………(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Are the 'gatekeepers' becoming censors? On editorial processes and the interests of the scholarly community.
Questions about the proper role of learned journals and of publishers were brought to the fore in a recent exchange over suggested edits to a book review. In his post in The Impact Blog, William St Clair shares his experience and the review in question and wonders whether some learned journals are becoming afraid to facilitate discussion of academic issues.
The blog post says (quote): My piece was sent in to the editors and cleared in the usual way, with a couple of editorial tweaks, some months ago. However, when the piece was about to go to press, they suddenly asked for two final paragraphs of the review to be removed. These paragraphs, see below, comment, among other things, on the dire effects on public access of the inward-looking publishing model adopted – despite the fact that the costs have mostly been met by the general public as taxpayers. They also point out how the project is at odds with everything that Godwin himself stood for. When I offered to discuss possible changes, the request to review was peremptorily cancelled……………(Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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