Drawing on a decade of data on academic publications, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto, Pablo Gómez Barreiro and Mark Hanson argue that an academic publishing industry based on volume poses serious hazards to the assessment and usefulness of research pu…
Category: scholarly publishing
Conflicting academic attitudes to copyright are slowing the move to open access
Where previously authors would typically assign rights in a scholarly work to an academic publisher, the open access movement has prompted a shift towards retention of rights and the use of creative commons licenses to control how works are used by publishers. This shift has the support of research funders, whose policies seek to ensure the widest possible readership. Francis […]
We Are Talking Loudly and No One Is Listening
By Daniella Lowenberg “Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest…
The future for academic publishers lies in navigating research, not distributing it
The world of scholarly publishing is in upheaval. As the open science and open research movements rapidly gain momentum, the access restrictions and paywalls of many publishers put them at odds with growing parts of the research community. Mattias Björnmalm suggests there is one way for publishers to once again become central, valued members of the research community: by pivoting […]
There are new frontiers for academic publishing but scholarly associations and faculty must seize the opportunities
Scholarly publishing faces daunting challenges. Rising journal costs have seen many universities have to make strategic cuts to library collections. To Kyle Siler, the digital world has opened new niches and frontiers for academic publishing, offering many innovative and diverse possibilities. But opportunities must be grasped by scientific professional associations that have arguably lost sight of ideals of accessibility and […]
Increasingly collaborative researcher behaviour is the real threat to the resilient academic publishing sector
Traditional academic publishing has been rumoured to be imperilled for decades now. Despite continued criticism over pricing and a growing open access movement, a number of recent reports point to the sector’s resilience. Francis Dodds suggests this is partly attributable to the adaptability of academic publishers but also highlights attitudes of researchers surprisingly committed to the status quo as another […]
Announcing Unpaywall: unlocking #openaccess versions of paywalled research articles as you browse
Today marks the official launch of Unpaywall, a web browser extension that links users directly to free full-text versions of research articles. Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem of Impactstory, the team behind Unpaywall, report on the successful pre-release phase, and explain how two decades of investment, a slew of new tools, and a flurry of new government mandates have helped […]
Cluster analysis of individual authors shows the diversity of scholarly research both between and within disciplines
Academic disciplines in the social sciences and humanities show considerable variation with regard to their publication patterns. But what of the authors within each of those disciplines? Are their publication patterns as similar as one might reasonably expect or do the same variations exist? Frederik Verleysen discusses the diversity among experienced scholars in Flanders based on their choice of publication […]