Academic publishing

Mining memories on the anniversary of the South Wales Miners’ Library

Editorial board of journal could quit after debate on publishing suffers delay

A publisher has launched a pilot with 21 UK universities to reduce their subscription costs in proportion to the amount of open access fees they pay

A climate scientist has distanced himself from newspaper suggestions that his paper on global warming was rejected by a journal for political reasons

Discoveries by laypeople are rare but free access to research results would increase the likelihood, says Richard Price

RCUK rules may mean UK scholars seeking to publish abroad lose out, report warns

By Carl Straumsheim, for Inside Higher Ed

Academic seeks to gather examples of cases where open access article fees have been paid but content remains behind a paywall

There’s an abundance of serious material outside the academy so why not use it, says Karen Harris

Will a low-cost, user-friendly open access journal steal the traditional publishers’ lunch?

Research funders worried about high open access fees charged by “hybrid” journals could refuse to pay fees above a set threshold, a report suggests.

Veteran academic authors share their hard-won tips

SMEs need tools as well as content to pinpoint research ‘nuggets’, says Elsevier chief

An eccentric approach helped build the Oxford University Press empire, argues Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Hope that ‘pioneering’ project could help solve gold problems

Academic publishers have launched their scheme to allow free access to research journals at public libraries

Publishers should encourage adoption of gold open access by reducing individual universities’ subscription charges as they pay more in article fees.

Cost-conscious institution rejects publisher’s ‘big deal’ on more than 1,000 journals

Loughborough academic alleges ‘process problem’ with journal’s trust-based system

Hefce launches review of digital publishing in the arts and humanities

The hardcore group of academics who print books on subjects sidelined by mainstream publishers

New libel laws come into force today that aim to protect academics from the threat of legal action when writing peer-reviewed material in journals

Publishing arm aims to disseminate research and ease budgetary pressures

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman has pledged to stop publishing in “luxury journals”, which he believes contribute to the “disfigurement” of science.

Adequate funding has been allotted for universities to meet the cost of open access, the government has maintained

Review rejects MPs’ criticisms of gaps in its data

‘Resurrecting the Book’ conference hears support for printed word

A formal body should be set up to coordinate efforts to implement open access, the Finch Group has recommended.

UK researchers should be permitted to publish in top international journals even if those journals are not compliant with open-access mandates.

Edinburgh University Press has bought Dundee University Press for an undisclosed sum.

Committee points to ‘gaps in qualitative and quantitative evidence’ for Finch report recommendations

A preference for gold open access over green is misguided and is due to multiple gaps in the evidence gathered for the Finch Report, MPs have said.

Advantages to making research freely available are still limited when publication is via gold journals

Half of scientific papers published in 2011 can be accessed online for free, a new study has suggested. 

In a significant victory for data miners, the open access publisher BioMed Central is to waive all copyright over datasets it publishes.

Fresh light on how academic libraries in low- and medium-income economies are contributing to universities has been shed in a new report.

By Scott Jaschik, for Inside Higher Ed

The UK funding councils have narrowed the scope of their proposed open access mandate for the post-2014 research excellence framework.

A library-focused effort aims to take monographs off the analogue shelf

Academics invited to publish papers, solicit reviews on new scholarly site

Michael Billig on the weaknesses of a discipline’s usage

The number of journals denied an impact factor for taking part in citation cartels has risen sharply this year, pushing up the total number of excluded journals.

Universities deciding mechanisms to apportion RCUK cash

Open access is a utopian pipe dream, says Richard Hoyle

Science ministers from the G8 group of the world’s richest countries have jointly endorsed the need to increase access to publicly-funded research.

Transition is both desirable and inevitable, Gabriel Egan argues

Hundreds of people have signed a petition protesting about new quarterly journal Porn Studies that is due to launch in spring next year.

A variety of schemes would allow the academy to reclaim control of its knowledge and labour, says Steffen Böhm

Getting image permissions for monographs is costly, slow and vexing

Adrian Furnham has had his share of peer review nightmares, but the frailties of the system have also worked in his favour

The publisher Elsevier has disassociated itself from an article by a trade association it belongs to that condemns proposed open-access mandates in several US states.

The government would like to see more publishers take up schemes that waive open access publishing fees for researchers from universities that subscribe to its journals, a senior civil servant has said.

Essex scholar raises fears over peer review integrity

A bill to reform the libel system in England and Wales is set to become law after completing its passage through the Houses of Parliament.

We must hold up a mirror to scientific peer review if we are to stamp out fraud and uphold the discipline’s reputation, argues Philip Moriarty

Exceptions in the UK funding councils’ open access policy will be made for researchers hired from abroad, the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s head of research has pledged.

The founders of Mendeley have insisted that selling the company to the controversial academic publisher Elsevier will result only in “good things”

Research Councils UK has removed from its guidance on its open-access policy an exhortation for institutions and authors to make sure a “proper market in article fees” operates.

In a further sign of the growing scientific prominence of data sets, Nature Publishing Group has launched a new open-access platform that will peer review and publish detailed descriptions of their contents.

Publication ethics committee issues new guidelines for peer review