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 […]
In Defense of the Edited Collection
Edited collections, are one of the most disparaged forms of academic writing, often written off as low quality, or a poor career choice. In contrast, Peter Webster argues for the unique benefit of edited collections, as a creative form of collective academic endeavor that does not sit easily within an academy that is averse to creative risk.
Size Still Matters: Discoverability, Impact and ‘Big’ Journals
One of the proposed advantages of open access publication is that it increases the impact of academic research by making it more broadly and easily accessible. Reporting on a natural experiment on the citation impact of health research that is published in both open access and subscription journals, Chris Carroll and Andy Tattersall, suggests that subscription journals still play an important role in making research discoverable and useful and thus still have a role to play even in open publication strategies.
John Ioannidis Responds to His COVID-19 Critics
“We felt it’s important to dissociate the specific paper from making policy recommendations, because this is taking things to a different level. Now, if you ask my opinion about whether it does have policy recommendations or implications separate from the study, I think what it says is that this is a very common infection, and very often it is asymptomatic, so it goes below the radar screen. “
Should We Welcome “CRediT Check?”
Getting named on a journal article is the ultimate prize for an aspiring academic. Not only do they get the paper on their CV (which can literally be money in the bank), but once named, all the subsequent citations accrue to each co-author equally, no matter what their contribution.
Academic Writing Needs More from Me, Myself and I
The move towards including the first person perspective is becoming more acceptable in academia, notes the University of Queensland’s Peter Ellerton, who adds, there are times when invoking the first person is more meaningful and even rigorous than not.
Why Academic Writing is Dry and Boring by Necessity
The necessity of rigorous if uninspiring academic writing is perhaps best illustrated with the story of a prominent 18th-century intellectual named Franz Anton Mesmer. He believed that illnesses were caused by blockages that interfered with the healthy flow of magnetic fluid through the body.
COPE Report Explores Publication Issues in HSS
A new report from the Committee on Publication Ethics, or COPE, offers an intriguing way to look at the differences between academic disciplines: what do journal editors routinely identify as struggles?
‘The Old Models Are Not Working’: A Librarian on the New Big Deal
The academic publishing paradigm is changing, driven in large part by calls for open access to publicly funded research. In this second of two parts, the university librarian for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains the thinking behind of a pilot program UNC inked with a major academic publisher.
