Use of open access platforms for clinical trial data
In a study appearing in the March 22/29 issue of JAMA, Ann Marie Navar, M.D., Ph.D., of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined how shared clinical trial data are being used. Concerns over bias in clinical trial reporting have stimulated calls for more open data sharing. In… Read More
Copyright, Expectations, and Economics – Can Taylor Swift Help Us Find Our Backbone?
The story of Sci-Hub continues to grind. Portrayed by its founder as an insurgency based on economic necessity, the theft and posting of millions of scholarly articles and entire books, scraping and republication of major academic sites, and filching of an unknown number of academic login credentials represents potential economic… Read More
Europe agrees cross-border access to digital content by 2018
The European Commission has set new rules that remove geographic limitations on where EU residents can access their digital content such as digital books, video games, music and more. The move comes just a week after the EU agreed to end mobile roaming charges, starting this summer. It comes just… Read More
Bogus academic journals undermine science in SA
Predatory publishing, in which bogus journals publish academic research for a fee, threatens to undermine science in SA. This is the warning from academics at Stellenbosch University‚ who say Blade Nzimande’s Department of Higher Education and Training has wasted up to R300m on research grants to scientists whose work ended… Read More
South Africa: How to Fix the Academic Peer Review System
Peer review has long been a holy cow in the academic publication process. The idea of peer review is to hold academics' feet to the proverbial fire, ensuring that we publish only work of reasonable quality. But in fact, what the global academy has been clinging to for more than… Read More
Why academics compete to publish their work in ‘predatory journals’
Universities rely on published research to bolster the school's reputation as well as the researcher or academic's own prospects. However, as jobs at premier institutions become harder to obtain, experts suggest scholars have increasingly begun to submit research to these predatory journals knowing well they are not legitimate publications -… Read More
Transforming Information Into Knowledge In The Big Data Era
Simplifying access to the right information across the organisation has become the mantra for the successful, research-driven enterprise - but it is only the first step in an enterprise-wide knowledge management strategy. So, how do biomedical and drug discovery researchers effectively transform information into useful knowledge in the Big Data… Read More
Contribution statements and author order on research studies still leave readers guessing
Although many scientific journals try to provide more details about author contributions by requiring explicit statements, such contribution statements get much less attention than authorship order, according to new findings from a Georgia Tech-University of Passau team. The authors found that while researchers evaluating a paper consider contribution statements helpful… Read More
The Fallacy of Open-Access Publication
Advocates of open access are quick to bemoan the ‘paywall’ that keeps people from reading research findings. The adoption of open-access publication does not eradicate the paywall, but instead moves the cost burden in front of researchers themselves. Open access has been around long enough for us to recognise that… Read More
Who cares about scholarly communication?
Is there really anything that everyone needs to know about scholarly communication? At first blush, the answer might seem to be no. Scholars typically communicate mostly with each other: they create articles, books, white papers, and other scholarly products, not usually expecting that those writings will reach millions of people… Read More
