Category: scholarly communication
The great convergence – Does increasing standardisation of journal articles limit intellectual creativity?
Drawing on a recent survey of forty years of research papers in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and interviews with authors, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Kean Birch, Thed van Leeuwen and Maria Amuchastegui observe an increasing homogenisat…
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…
What do researchers think about paying to publish open access – Findings from a global survey
Through different mechanisms pay to publish models have been established globally as one of the key routes to the open access publication of academic research. This model has introduced new kinds of inequalities into scholarly communication, but to wha…
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…
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 …
2021 In Review: The Culture of Academic Publishing
Responding to the necessities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerating application of the open paradigm to more and more aspects of research, academic publishing and the cultures that support it continue to be in flux in 2021. This review brings t…
Multilingualism is integral to accessibility and should be part of European research assessment reform
Developing research systems that promote diverse, multilingual and relevant research for different audiences is a key and often overlooked element in making research accessible. However, biases in traditional research assessment often place researchers…
‘It could be effective…’: Uncertainty and over-promotion in the abstracts of COVID-19 preprints
A defining feature of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scholarly communication has been the brief and intense surge in the production of preprints. This has had significant impacts on the ways in which new research findings have been reported and…
Rethinking the research seminar for a post-COVID world with Cassyni
Research seminars are a foundational part of academia and an important medium for communicating new ideas and research. However, national lockdowns and social distancing regulations have required research seminars to be translated at speed into digital…