For Scientists, an Exploding World of Pseudo-Academia

“Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)” New York Times, 7 April 2013

This article about the predatory behaviour of pseudo-academic conferences and journals is being widely discussed on the internet (Richard Dawkins, Science-Based Medicine, etc.). Damages include high hidden fees, promotion of anti-vaccination and other agendas and possible theft of intellectual property.

“… some researchers are now raising the alarm about what they see as the proliferation of online journals that will print seemingly anything for a fee. They warn that nonexperts doing online research will have trouble distinguishing credible research from junk. “Most people don’t know the journal universe,” Dr. Goodman said. “They will not know from a journal’s title if it is for real or not.””

Read more...

Over 14,700 authors respond to Taylor & Francis open access survey

Research Information 15 April 2013
In response to the seismic shift in the publishing landscape brought on by open access (OA), Taylor & Francis has asked its author community for its views and behaviour related to the subject. The company received 14,769 responses.

The findings included:

• 79 per cent of authors still want traditional rigorous peer review of their work, all or most of the time when publishing OA;
• 68 per cent of authors are happy for their work to be reused for non-commercial gain; and
• It is important to 70 per cent of authors that the general public can access and read their work.

Read more

Read full report

F1000Posters

F1000Posters:  The Open Repository for Posters and Slides

F1000 Posters is a unique open access repository for posters and slide presentations across biology and medicine. By keeping the work visible long after a meeting has ended it maximizes the return on the time, effort and money invested in creating each presentation. We also accept depositions from local meetings (e.g. PhD student days).

F1000 Posters has received positive responses from presenters and societies alike, and we have support from leading journals and publishers including Nature, PNAS, Elsevier, BMJ, BioMed Central, PLoS, SAGE etc

Link to F1000Posters repository

 

F1000Research articles will be listed in PubMed, and deposited in PubMed Central

(Faculty of 1000: Biology and Medicine 14 January 2013) F1000Research, the first Open Science publisher, announces that articles published in its innovative publishing system will be listed in PubMed, the world’s largest and most-used biomedical literature database.

Read EurekAlert Summary

Link to F1000Research

Free for all: ARC-funded research now open to the public

The Conversation Alex O Holcombe Matthew Todd 9 January 2013

The ARC has announced that articles resulting from research they fund should be freely available for all to read, within 12 months of the articles’ publication. This policy is effective immediately.

In most cases, this open-access publishing will occur through electronic institutional repositories – university websites where one can freely download researchers’ articles. Search engines such as Google Scholar will automatically index these articles and link them to related research.

Read more

Link to ARC Open Access Policy

The open access journal as a disruptive innovation

Omega Alpha | Open Access Gary F Daught 14 December 2012 [Blog]

My level of sophistication is pretty basic, and I still try to avoid the math whenever possible. But the economics of academic publishing, particularly journals, has become strangely compelling to me as I have learned more about open access and the dissemination of scholarly research as a digital product in an online environment.

Read more

More publishers move towards CC-BY licence for OA articles

Research Information 15 November 2p12

Thanks to recent policy announcements about open access many more publishers are opting for the CC-BY licence but there are some reservations about the implications for authors.

Read more

Experts agree on need for OA quality indicators

Research Information 25 October 2012

International scientific community agrees on need for quality indicators for new open-access journals.

Read more

A plan to open up science journals

The Boston Globe Karen Weintraub 8 October 2012

Science publishing today is much like the pre-iTunes days of music sales, when customers who wanted just one song from an artist had to buy a whole album.

University libraries and companies have to buy yearlong subscriptions, called site licenses, to give ­researchers access to a handful of articles. But at several thousand dollars or more per subscription, even the richest libraries can’t ­afford to buy every scientific journal that’s published. And most researchers can’t justify the $30 to $50 single-article fee or the wait of weeks or months for an interlibrary loan.

So, libraries pay for material they don’t need, researchers are unable to access scientific papers they do need, and publishers produce content their audience can’t afford.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a researcher who said they did not have an access problem,” said Sinisa Hrvatin, a PhD candidate in biology at Harvard University. “The market is not optimized.”

Hrvatin and his college roommate, Robert McGrath, think they can solve the problem by incorporating an iTunes model of ­single sales. Reducing the cost of individual articles — with some restrictions to protect the publishing business — will help scientists keep up with research and help libraries hold down costs, say the pair, who have named their product ReadCube Access.

Read more.

Get noticed. Disseminate your research better.

Biggerbrains 31 August 2012

Use the many powerful online and traditional tools of research dissemination to communicate your research to your academic peers. Sharing research, accomplishments and ambitions with a wider audience makes you more visible in your fields. With greater visibility, you get cited more, you cultivate a stronger reputation and you promote your research, and career.

Read more.

Download the full text (PDF)