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 […]
Credit Due? Opposing One Form of Institutional Support for an Academic Boycott
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.
Does the Business Model for Academic Publishing Promote Scholarly Progress?
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.
In Praise of Those ‘Less Prestigious’ Journals
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.
NAS Creates Council to Address Research Integrity and Trust
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.
Gearing Up or Burning Out? Survey Findings Show Wellbeing is Top Concern for Higher Ed Faculty
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?
Does Research Being in a Review Article Cannibalize Your Citations?
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.
Should We Mandate a Course in Ethics for All Research-Based PhD Candidates?
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.
Publishers: Changing the Names of Trans People in Their Own Work is Not Enough
Theresa Jane Tanenbaum argues that publishers must commit to correcting all of their records when a scholar changes their name and not just the ones that are easy to correct.
