Featuring the story of open citations, the science of publishing, and the new open source peer-review platform.
The story of open citations via Figshare
The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) has made steady progress since its initiation in April 2016, having worked with publishers and researchers to make citation data on over 500 million academic articles freely accessible to researchers and developers, leading to a wealth of new tools. This presentation, delivered at this week’s PUBMET2018 conference, explains the importance of open citations, tells the story of the I4OC so far, and outlines their ambitions going forward.
What is journalology, and how does it help science? via Science Magazine
This article tells the story of Drummond Rennie, the British nephrologist come pioneer who founded the Peer Review Congress with the goal of turning scientists’ scrutiny on journals themselves, a discipline that has come to be known as ‘journalology’. Shocked by his experience as an editor at JAMA, where he saw ‘anecdotes following anecdotes’ into the annals of one of the world’s most highly regarded medical journals, Rennie resolved to do something about it. The Peer Review Congress was conceived of as a chance to study the functioning of the essential trappings of science – things like peer review, publication and impact – and identify areas for improvement. The latest congress, which is held in Chicago every 4 years, had more than double the number of attendees than the initial event. At 86 years of age, Rennie has said that this was the last of the congresses he will attend, but his legacy will surely continue and grow as the congress has done.
What’s the latest in open access publishing? via INFOdocket
This week, the Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) wrapped up its 10th event in Vienna. The conference covered a variety of research topics pertinent to open access, including open data, peer review and open access fees. Selected posters and presentations delivered at the congress can be found in the post, including the challenges for funders in meeting the FAIR datasharing principles, and transparency in peer review.
The new open source peer-review platform via Hindawi
A common problem found by publishers and researchers pushing for greater transparency and interoperability is that the tools that are fundamental to publishing are often proprietary, with limited interoperability with other systems. Hindawi, a new open-source peer-review platform launched this week, is being adopted by Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications. Built in collaboration with the Open Knowledge International, this is the first of a suite of open access publishing tools in the pipeline, designed to be used as tools for building increasingly efficient and open platforms by moving away from the current dependence of journals on proprietary systems.
