Journalology

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Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than piracy
2007-05-07 00:02:00
Five years ago, Tim O'Reilly of Web 2.0 fame noted down several thoughts about online information distribution. Although his comments are focussed on music, film and book publishing, many of them equally apply to journal publishing.My particular favourites are "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy", which captures the imperative of the open access movement, and "File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers". This could have been written about self-archiving.
More About: Piracy , Authors , Eater , Threat

What to do about late peer reviewers?
2007-04-28 17:17:00
Editors and authors are left in the lurch when reviewers are late in returning their reports or even fail entirely to return a report. Although reviewers are usually volunteers, they have made a promise to the journal and their scientific colleagues, and the failure to return a report can greatly lengthen and complicate the review process.Marc Hauser and Ernst Fehr writing in PLoS Biology have an idea of how to remedy this. "Reviewers that turn in their reviews late are punished, whereas those that arrive on time are rewarded". They suggest that "for every day since receipt of the manuscript for review plus the number of days past the deadline, the reviewer's next personal submission to the journal will be held in editorial limbo for twice as long before it is sent for review" and "for every manuscript that a reviewer refuses to review, we add on a one-week delay to reviewing their own next submission".I hate when reviewers are late, and it would be immensely satisfying to take ...
More About: Peer , Late , To Do

Journalology roundup #6
2007-04-28 15:46:00
Plagiarism is not fair play. "I beg to differ with the view ... that non-English-speaking researchers' plagiarism of scientific text should be dealt with leniently". There has been quite a lot of discussion on the World Association of Medical Editors list about plagiarism - I agree that it cannot be tolerated. Valid Consent for Genomic Epidemiology in Developing Countries. "we discuss the practical challenges of defining and obtaining valid consent for genomic epidemiological research in developing countries".Mistakes and misconduct in the research literature: retractions just the tip of the iceberg. "I recently wrote a systematic review of studies (published between 1972 and 2005) of growth in children taking stimulant medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and I was astounded by the poor quality of much of the research".Controversial fertility paper retracted. After determining the article was "duplicated," Fertility and Sterility bars corres...
More About: Roundup , Ology

Open access and the reuse of images
2007-04-28 15:46:00
Pedro on Public Rambling has written about the reuse of scientific images and notes that the Creative Commons license used by both BioMed Central and PLoS allows him and other bloggers to freely post images from our journals without the need to laboriously fill out forms or the worry of facing legal action: “From a user point of view this is absolutely liberating. I can not only read these manuscripts but I can use their pictures to comment on them and I can even think of creatively combining their content with other works”. All that is needed is an acknowledgement of the source of the figures (this wasn't given when an article was published in Cytometry Part A, hence this erratum).Pedro's comments were well placed. Shelley Batts on Retrospectacle, reports that she had a “tangle with lawyers ... over the 'fair use' of a figure ... In short, I was threatened with legal action if I didn't take it down immediately. I used a panel a figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figur...
More About: Open , Images , Access , Ages

Journalology roundup #5
2007-04-24 00:16:00
Science retracts major Arabidopsis paper. "Scientist acknowledges omitting data, but denies any impropriety". Another paper and probably a career bites the dust.The strike rate index: a new index for journal quality based on journal size and the h-index of citations. "The SRI explains more than four times the variation in citation counts compared to the impact factor". I've yet to read this properly, but it looks interesting. At some point we need to settle on some stable and useful alternatives to the Impact Factor. As an aside, I love Biomedical Digital Libaries! I would say that as it's a BioMed Central journal, but it's carving out a great niche, publishing some work of real interest to librarians, editors and others interested in scientometrics.NEJM punishes reviewer for breaking embargo. "The New England Journal of Medicine has banned Martin Leon, a cardiologist at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, from reviewing studies and contributing editorials or reviews for five...
More About: Roundup , Ology

Archivangelism - has the means become the end?
2007-04-20 23:36:00
Stevan Harnad has always been insistent on the need for immediate, free access to academic research, and he sees self-archiving as the means to this end.Now that he recognises that self-archiving may only be compatible with some publishers if there is a delay in access, Stevan (who is normally uncompromising, e.g. "OA itself is non-negotiable") seems to have accepted this fudge, which is not immediate free access: "Access to the immediate deposit can then either be set as Open Access immediately, or (in case of a publisher embargo), as Closed Access, provisionally". This is the "Immediate-Deposit & Optional-Access" (IDOS) policy. Even with a fancy name, and as Jan Velterop has noted, it's not open access.Stevan has been adamantly against the crystal-ball-gazing that predicts a loss in subscriptions resulting from self-archiving, but his own crystal ball predicts that following a universal adoption of 'IDOS' repositories, "Embargoes will disappear very soon thereafter" [my emphasi...
More About: Vangelis , Ivan

Arms trade and publishing - strange bedfellows
2007-04-20 22:56:00
Although the pen is mightier than the sword, involvement in publishing hasn't kept Reed Elsevier out of the defense industry.The conflict between on the one hand being involved in advances to aid the treatment of patients and on the other arranging the sale of lethal weapons has garnered increasing criticism.A letter organised by the Campaign Against Arms Trade pitted the Lancet against its own publisher, and the BMJ has waded in with a call for a boycott of the Lancet. This focus on the Lancet appears to be aiming to force a wedge between journal and publisher - imagine the fall-out if the Lancet left Elsevier?A petition on Idiolect mentions that "DSEi's 2005 official invitees included buyers' delegations from 7 countries on the UK Foreign Office's list of the 20 most serious human rights abusing regimes, countries like Colombia, China and Indonesia... Reed Elsevier arms fairs have featured cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions and torture equipment". Nice.Another petition ...
More About: Publishing , Strange , Strange Bedfellows