Don’t judge peer review by its occasional failings
Recent media coverage on ethical misconduct in scientific publishing has raised questions about the legitimacy of peer review. In this article, Adrian Mulligan, associate director of research and academic relations at Elsevier, writes that while peer review may not be a panacea for ethical misconduct in scientific publishing, it is… Read More
Why killing Live Book Search is good for the future of books
Live Book Search provided access to the huge collection of material scanned by the Open Content Alliance (OCA). Microsoft’s decision to dismantle Live Book Search and integrate all book search queries directly into the main Live search engine is seen as the right move for the company, according to Brewster… Read More
Gov web sites should focus on RSS, XML—not redesigns
It is observed that Government web sites tend to be slow, clunky, and far behind their private-sector counterparts. A new paper from researchers at Princeton University suggest that government officials abandon the dream of developing usable web sites, and instead focus on providing raw public data such as regulatory decisions,… Read More
Semantic Search: The Myth and Reality
Semantic search is an upcoming technology that has set the expectations too high. This article by Alex Iskold, Founder and CEO of AdaptiveBlue, a smart browsing and personalization company, discusses the myths and reality with regard to Semantic Search. According to the article, semantic search is going to help us… Read More
Open Access and Institutional Repositories: The Turkish Landscape
The development of the “Open Access” (OA) movement since early 1990s has been radically changing the scientific communication landscape. Within the last decade more universities and research institutions are recommending their scholars to make their works freely accessible through their web sites and/or institutional repositories (IRs). This article by Yasar… Read More
Digitizing Dissertations for an Institutional Repository: A Process and Cost Analysis
This paper by Mary Piorun, Associate Director and Lisa A. Palmer, Catalog Librarian, describes the Lamar Soutter Library's process and costs associated with digitising 300 doctoral dissertations for a newly implemented institutional repository at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Locally digitising dissertations or other scholarly works for inclusion in… Read More
Anthropology of/in Circulation: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies
In a conversation format, seven anthropologists with extensive expertise in new digital technologies, intellectual property, and journal publishing discuss issues related to open access, the anthropology of information circulation, and the future of scholarly societies. Among the topics discussed are current anthropological research on open source and open access; the… Read More
Quality of Pharmaceutical Industry Press Releases Based on Original Research
Press releases are a popular vehicle to disseminate health information to the lay media. While the quality of press releases issued by scientific conferences and medical journals has been questioned, no efforts to assess pharmaceutical industry press releases have been made. This article by Bindee Kuriya of the Department of… Read More
Finra, SEC rules constrain advisers in blogosphere
While blogs have today emerged as the quickest and easiest way to self-publish your content, some regulations such as FINRA and SEC consider blogs as mere advertising vehicles rather than discussion forums. According to industry experts because of disclosure and anti-fraud considerations, the information that advisers disclose on blogs requires… Read More
User-generated science
In Pre-Internet times, peer-reviewed journals were the best way to disseminate research to a broad audience. Even today, editors and reviewers cherry-pick papers deemed the most revelatory and dispatch them to interested subscribers worldwide. While the process is cumbersome and expensive, it has allowed experts to keep track of the… Read More
