In Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork, Whitney Trettien explores how seventeenth-century English publishers cut up and reassembled paper media into radical, bespoke publications, arguing that this ‘bookwork’ contributes to understan…
Category: Academic Publishing
For learned societies, diversity, equity, and inclusion should be a central focus
Reporting on the findings of a recent survey of learned society members, Jonathan Roscoe discusses how diversity, equity and inclusion has become an increasingly salient issue for learned societies and suggests how societies might adapt to be more incl…
The case against Revise and Resubmit
Extensive revising is required by many journals in the social sciences. It is expected that authors “revise and resubmit” (R&R) their manuscripts several times before they are accepted for publication, a process that is time consuming, demoralising…
Aspirational metrics – A guide for working towards citational justice
Is it possible to have a just politics of citation? Reflecting on their work to create a guide to fairer citation practices in academic writing, Aurélie Carlier, Hang Nguyen, Lidwien Hollanders, Nicole Basaraba, Sally Wyatt and Sharon Anyango*, highlig…
Judging journals by their covers – What journal titles and mission statements tell us about their publications
For new readers and potential authors of academic journals, the title and aims and purposes of the publication provide important information as to what readers should expect within. However, the quality of this information can be varied. Using a datase…
Book Review: Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson
In Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing, John B. Thompson explores the digital transformations that have turned book publishing on its head over the last 30 years. Offering a noteworthy study of recent changes to the publishing world, this w…
Pandemic publishing: rethinking editorial ethics during COVID
Researchers need to observe ethical standards during a pandemic, say Ben Kasstan,Rishita Nandagiri and Siyane Aniley, and journals should hold them to these standards. The pandemic has changed academic research. It has led to gender gaps in authorship,…
Citation counts reinforce the influence of highly cited papers and nudge us towards undervaluing those with fewer.
In the context of everyday research assessment citation counts are often taken as a simple indicator of the influence of any particular paper. However, all citations are not the same and can be deployed to achieve different ends. Commenting on a recent…
Democratising publishing or dodgy spammers? What ‘inclusive’ publishers tell us about the state of academic book publishing.
In disciplines where the academic book is the primary means for communicating research and establishing oneself in the field, academics may have a mental shortlist of desirable publishers. However, not everyone can access the most elite or reputable pr…
Eight components for ‘open social science’ – An agenda for cultural change
The open science movement has been gathering force in STEM disciplines for many years, and some of its procedural elements have been adopted also by quantitative social scientists. However, little work has yet been done on exploring how more ambitious …