Tag Archives: Academic publishing

Springer and Macmillan. A Marriage Made in Heaven?

Holtzbrinck Publishing announces agreement to merge majority of Macmillan Science and Education with Springer Science+Business Media.

This is a strategic transaction by Holtzbrinck and BCP aimed at securing the long-term growth of both businesses. It will create a leading global science and education publishing house with the opportunity to better serve its authors, the research community, academic institutions, learned societies and corporate research departments, as well as to extend its reach within the education and learning markets.

Path Dependence and Academic Publishing

Publishing in academia still bears the imprints of the book age.
Just as in the story of the QWERTY keyboard, a system of academic publishing prevailed that works, but is suboptimal. The established system of academic publishing, from submission, review, and publication is in the eye of the socio-technological opportunities outdated. It takes too much time, it is too expensive and leads to an artificial scarcity of content. It no longer reflects the zeitgeist.

Not breaking news: many scientific studies are ultimately proved wrong!

When a theory is shown to be incorrect or a publication in error, it is all too easy to think that the scientist who came up with this theory is a liar or a dishonest fraudster intent on misleading the public for personal gain. Or as Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, puts it: Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth.


The Guardian, Occam's Corner.

Open data and open access – what society loses when knowledge is offline

Interesting enough, research shows that there is a weakening relationship between the impact factor and papers’ citations in the digital age. And that can have consequences, according to the authors: ”If this pattern should continue, it might bring an end to the use of impact factor as a way to evaluate the quality of journals, papers and researcher”.

Elite journals: to hell in a handbasket?

Once upon a time, journals were made of paper and ink. However, we left the dark ages of dead woods behind us and moved forward to an age in which authors don’t need to publish in journals (but still want to). There’s an increasing decoupling between the individual article and its publishing journal, created by search engines and electronic repositories.
SciAm Blogs. 

Are Some Current Open Access Mandates Backfiring on the Intended Beneficiaries?

The OA bargain is becoming a bit more fraught as more people get involved and as founding concepts are stress-tested by practical matters. If the OA movement remains dogmatic about the details, and is not willing to compromise or improve on ideas established years ago and never thoroughly validated on a large scale, it run some serious risks of losing support in the wider world.
Times Higher Education.

Open Access server of the German National Library of Economics

EconStor is the new Open Access server of the German National Library of Economics – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. EconStor provides a basis for the free publication of academic literature in economics. Any research facility wishing to publish and permanently preserve relevant publications in economics under the terms of Open Access can do so on EconStor. EconStor offers a full service for entire working paper series and e-journals. This includes the uploading of PDF files as well as the processing of all corresponding title data such as abstracts, keywords and JEL codes. Scholars have the option of self-archiving their so-called postprints (free author’s versions of articles from publishers’ journals) to make them accessible. At “Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO database)” authors can find out whether a publisher permits parallel, free publication of previously published articles as postprints on EconStor.

Interview with PeerJ Editor Fabiana Kubke

This is the second in our Series of Interviews with PeerJ Editors, giving them a voice to express their thoughts about academic publishing, open access and PeerJ. This time around we spoke to Fabiana Kubke who is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Medical Sciences (Department of Anatomy with Radiology) and a member of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Tech Therapy: Episode 104: Professor Sees ‘Moral Imperative’ for Open Access

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, argues that scholars have an obligation to publish their research in journals that make free copies available online. The Tech Therapy team talks with him about how the debate over open access to research has heated up in recent months, and invites journal publishers to give their views on next month’s podcast.
The Chronicle.

Academic Publishing Survey of funders supports the benign Open Access outcome priced into shares

Public sector funders finance ~80% of world’s academic research.
  • Proprietary survey of research funders reinforces our view of an earningsneutral transition to Open Access.
  • However, the OA discount in share prices has largely corrected; we lower our ratings for the first time in 3 years.
  • Downgrade Reed Elsevier Plc to N from OW (TP 720p) and Informa to UW from N (TP 440p); maintain OW on Reed Elsevier NV (TP EUR13.30).
HSBC Global Research.

World wide web creator sees open access future for academic publishing

Activists pushing for free, open access to academic papers will eventually defeat publishers who seek to lock scholarly findings behind paywalls, the founder of the world wide web said today. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who revolutionised the way we access information on the internet through the creation of the world wide web over 20 years ago, has been a vocal proponent for making data freely available while also protecting people’s privacy.