Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
I Published a Fake Paper in a ‘Peer-Reviewed’ Journal
I claimed that New Mexico is part of the Galapagos Islands, that craniotomy is a legitimate means of assessing student learning, and that all my figures were made in Microsoft Paint. Any legitimate peer reviewer who bothered to read just the abstract would’ve tossed the paper in the garbage (or maybe called the police).
Excerpt from ‘What’s Wrong with Social Science and How to Fix It’
Alvaro de Menard, which we accept as the nom de blog of a non-academic “independent researcher of dubious nature” and who is […]
What’s Wrong with Peer Review?
Academic capitalism exhibit a lack of transparency and accountability where it truly matters. Peer review and the ways in which journals often handle peer reviews are one key site of such intransparency and unaccountability.
Making a Modern Encyclopedia Into a Tool for Lifelong Learning
Creating a modern academic encyclopedia is a labor of love – years of effort that is both conceptual and physical, dozens or even hundreds of writers to corral and then try to control, the ever-present march of time threatening to date all your efforts before anyone see your work, and the possibility that even serious scholars might just Google their question rather than reach for a well-vetted volume.
Why Open Access Will Boost Publisher Profits
Shaun Khoo argues that whilst a shift to gold (pay to publish) open access would deliver wider access to research, the lack of price sensitivity amongst academics presents a risk that they will be locked into a new escalating pay to publish system that could potentially be more costly to researchers than the previous subscription model.
Examining Open Access and Commercial Success
If higher fees result in fewer academics wanting to publish with a journal, then it seems likely when a journal introduces or increases its fees, it should see a reduction in the number of articles published. But researcher Shaun Khoo did not find any evidence that this was the case.
#MeToo: Tackling Harassment in Academic Publishing
The #MeToo movement has slowly spread across to other sectors as people begin to come forward with their own stories of sexual harassment and bullying. In academic publishing, this conversation was in part started in February by Alison’s Mudditt’s powerful post on The Scholarly Kitchen. Muddit chaired a recent panel looking at sexual harassment, and ways to combat it, at the annual ALPSP conference.
How Should I Approach Reviewing an Article?
Most early career researchers receive little to no training on how to peer review, and it’s not always easy to find consistent or helpful guidance. Here, during Peer Review Week, Katrina Newitt offers some helpful advice on how to get started.
