The role of power is often neglected in accounts of scholarly communication and knowledge production, in favour of more idealised ‘scientific norms’. In this cross-post, Ruixue Jia, discusses how administrative power shapes academic research and publication in China and the wider implications an analysis of power might have for academic publishing practices. It has been well … Continued
Category: scholarly communication
What will the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic be for Early Career Researchers?
David Nicholas discusses the challenges facing early career researchers as a result of the pandemic and outlines how a new longitudinal, qualitative study involving 160 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from 8 countries will seek to understand how they fare over the next two years. In something of an oxymoron, we often look to new generations … Continued
COVID-19: Where is the data?
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has led many to argue that scholarly communication and publishing is undergoing a revolution, in terms of not only the wider opening of access to research, but also the data underlying it. In this post Julien Larrègue, Philippe Vincent-Lamarre, Frédéric Lebaron, and Vincent Larivière, discuss findings from their study … Continued
The open scholarship ecosystem faces collapse; it’s also our best hope for a more resilient future
The COVID-19 pandemic is significantly impacting universities and higher education institutions, reducing budgets and presenting new design challenges that will fundamentally alter how research and scholarship operate. Economic volatility is also constraining support for key systems and services that the academy relies on, especially those that are community-led. Kaitlin Thaney argues that there’s a need to converge … Continued
Without stronger academic governance, Covid-19 will concentrate the corporate control of academic publishing
Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a short term uptick in open research practices, both in response to the virus and the need for remote access to research and teaching materials. Samuel Moore argues that the long term impact of Covid-19 and its related economic impact will likely increase the corporate control of academic … Continued
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak highlights serious deficiencies in scholarly communication
As research and government responses to the COVID-19 outbreak escalate in the face of a global public health crisis, Vincent Larivière, Fei Shu and Cassidy R. Sugimoto reflect on efforts to make research on this subject more widely available. Arguing that a narrow focus on research published in high ranking journals predominantly in English has impeded … Continued
Retractions: the good, the bad, and the ugly. What researchers stand to gain from taking more care to understand errors in the scientific record
Retractions play an important role in research communication by highlighting and explaining how research projects have failed and thereby preventing these mistakes from being repeated. However, the process of retraction and the data it produces is often sparse or incomplete. Drawing on evidence from 2046 retraction records, Quan-Hoang Vuong discusses the emerging trends this data … Continued
2019 In Review: The culture of academic publishing
2019 has been a pivotal year for academic publishing and has seen many aspects of scholarly communication critically reassessed. This post brings together some of the top posts on the theme of the ‘culture’ of academic publishing that have featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. Who are you writing for? The role of community membership on authors’ decisions […]
2019 In Review: Communicating your research
From formal academic papers, to the use of emojis in social media, communicating your research can take many forms. This post brings together some of the top posts on research communication featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. The Art of Connection – To deliver a good research seminar you need to connect with an audience at a pragmatic, […]
How will the emerging generation of scholars transform scholarly communication?
Presenting evidence from the Harbingers Study, a three-year longitudinal study of Early Career Researchers (ECRs), David Nicholas assesses the extent to which the new wave of researchers are driving changes in scholarly practices. Finding that innovative practices are often constrained by institutional structures and precarious employment, he suggests that the pace of change in these areas is always going to […]