Scholarly Publishing Round-up November 2016

Scholarly Publishing Round-up November 2016

Federally Funded Research Results Are Becoming More Open and Accessible by Jerry Sheehan from the office of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Sixteen Federal agencies now require researchers to ensure free public access to peer-reviewed publications resulting from all newly funded research, with a delay of not more than 12 months after the publication date. These efforts to open up the results of Federally funded research promise to increase the return of Federal investments in scientific research, bolster the reliability of that research, accelerate scientific discovery, stimulate innovation, promote entrepreneurship, and enhance economic growth and job creation. 

The Inevitable Evolution of Bad Science by Ed Yong from the Atlantic. A simulation shows how the incentives of modern academia naturally select for weaker and less reliable results.

Perspective: Fix the incentives by Julia Lane. Nature, 537, S20 (01 September 2016). Science would move forward more effectively by tracing the activities of people rather than publications.

Reverberation index: a novel metric by which to quantify the impact of a scientific entity on a given field. by S. Kathleen Bandt and Ralph G. Dacey, Jr. The authors propose a novel bibilometric index, the reverberation index (r-index), as a comparative assessment tool for use in determining differential reverberation between scientific fields for a given scientific entity.

U.S. charges journal publisher with misleading authors by John Bohannon. Science. Vol. 354, Issue 6308 (07 Oct 2016).  In one of the first cases of its kind, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking action against a journal publisher accused of deceiving its authors. FTC is asking a federal judge to order OMICS Group Inc., the publisher of hundreds of open-access journals, to stop making false and misleading claims about its pricing, editorial staff, and peer-review practices.

Request for information (RFI): Including Preprints and Interim Research Products in NIH Applications and Reports. The NIH seeks input on the use of interim research products in NIH applications and reports, and the standards for reporting them. We want to know if interim research products can increase the rigor and impact of NIH funded research. We also want to know how to ensure that interim research products arising from NIH funds can be created and used with integrity.

MEDLINE Celebrates Its 45th Anniversary!

A New Look for Scopus.  Scopus has a new interface. 

Change to User Reporting of Errors in PubMed.  The PubMed Data Management System (PMDM), which allows publishers or their authorized representatives to update or correct nearly all elements of their citations, is now available. Users should now report basic citation errors in PubMed data directly to the publisher, including errors in author names, affiliations, or citation bibliographic information (such as date of publication, volume, issue, and page or e-location), typographical errors in titles or abstracts, and errors in grants or databanks.

Is More Recognition the Key to Peer Review Success? By Angela Cochran of the Scholarly Kitchen.