Academic publishing and scholarly communications: Good reads, August 2015
Our team of editors loves to stay on top of goings on in the academic publishing industry. We leave no stone unturned to bring you the content that helps you stay ahead of the curve, which translates into a lot of reading and referencing. We would like to share with you some of the most interesting bits of information our editorial team came across. So this is the first of our new monthly series that will give you a snapshot of what has been happening in the world of scholarly communications. Happy reading!
1. Researcher identification: Is it really possible for researchers to have a single account across all the platforms they use? In A Single User Account, Roger C. Schonfeld discusses the complexity brought in by multiple user identification codes used by researchers and how having one user account for everything could really simplify things for them.
2. Authorship: With increased collaboration, papers with over a thousand authors have become very common. This raises a very valid question: is this proliferation of named authors making academic authorship flippant and meaningless?
3. Science for the public: “Barriers between reporters and government scientists are making it harder for science writers to keep the public informed,” informs a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
4. Conference etiquette: Want to tweet? Ask the presenter first! Attendees of the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) were requested to gain consent from speakers before tweeting about their presentations, which led to heated debates about whether such a request is in favor of free speech using social media.
5. Data sharing: Is withholding your data a form of scientific misconduct? Nicole Janz argues that breaking professional standards in research by practicing data secrecy amounts to misconduct.
6. Retraction:
a. The recent mass retraction by Springer caused a stir in China because nearly all of the 64 papers seem to be authored by Chinese academics. Felicia Sonmez questions why China is in the spotlight when it comes to research misconduct.
b. According to a survey conducted by David Resnik, Grace Kissling, and Elizabeth Wager, more than one third of the world’s top-ranked science journals do not have a retraction policy.
7. Academic poaching: Many universities indulge in ‘poaching’ star faculty members in an attempt to boost their stature and state economies. Beryl Lieff Benderly discusses who benefits from this trend of academic poaching and its repercussions on academia.
For regular updates on important happenings in the journal publishing industry, watch our Industry News section.
Published on: Aug 31, 2015
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