Social Science Space

‘Scholars from the periphery’ often pay a price — unintentional but no less real — for their geography. In this […]

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*, highlight challenges to changing citation practices and point to ways in which authors and readers can work towards equitable citations.

Drawing on a dataset covering over a million user comments about their use of US National Academies consensus study reports, Ameet Doshi, Diana Hicks, Matteo Zullo and Omar I. Asensio find widespread use of open research in the public sphere.

Using a dataset of journals from the field of business, management, and accounting research,  Julián D. Cortés explores how the title and aims and purposes varies across journal, prestige, geography and publication model.

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.

Steven Lubet argues that while students have the right to call for academic boycott of Israeli institutions, their university has a responsibility not to award them academic credit for doing so.

The the latest Questions & Unanswers About Social Innovation seminar series put on by the Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation examined if the business model of academic publishing helps or hinders scholarly progress.

Shannon Mason and Margaret K. Merga argue that researchers should adopt more careful citation practices, as a means to broaden and contextualise what counts as ‘prestigious’ research and create a more equitable publishing environment for research outside of core anglophone countries.

A new blue-ribbon council convened by the United States’ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine aims to tackle questions about nettlesome issues like conflict of interest, measuring impact and handling retractions.

Academic staff have been working harder than ever, and after an incredibly tough 18 months they are now prioritizing their wellbeing as a top concern. What can academic publishers learn from this?

Review papers play a significant role in curating the scholarly record. Drawing on a study of close to six million research articles, Peter McMahan, shows how review papers not only focus and shift attention onto particular papers, but also serve to shape entire research domains by linking them together and outlining core concepts. As such, the constitutive role of review papers and those who write them warrant further attention.

The Indian University Grants Commission (UGC) has introduced a number of policies aimed at addressing issues around the robustness and quality of Indian research. One focus of these policies has been the introduction of mandatory publishing ethics training for Indian PhD students aimed at reducing unethical or predatory research and publishing practices. In this blogpost, Santosh C. Hulagabali, reflects on the successful development of this course in his own institution and how ethical training may influence scholarly communication more broadly in India.