Open Peer Review Closed

Nature Ends Experiment With Open Peer Review, as Responses Are Disappointing, from the Chronicle …while participation by authors was greater than anticipated, the posted remarks were disappointing. … Nearly half of the papers received no comments at all. Most of the messages made reasonable but minor points. Others, such as “nice work,” were far from useful. Once a decision had been made to accept or reject a paper, the entire.. Read More

Thoughts on one very small part of Weinberger’s Henderson Lecture

I went to see David Weinberger‘s talk on campus earlier today, and this post is a reaction to that. Before I go down that road though, let me just say that I really enjoyed the talk. I just finished reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined maybe 2 days ago. So that’s fresh in my mind, and of course I haven’t yet read his next book, Everything is Miscellaneous, because it isn’t.. Read More

The future of D-Lib

It’s the inevitable crisis of open-access publishing: sustainability. D-Lib Funding D-Lib has been suported by DARPA grant funding for the past 10 years, and now that funding has run out. As a result, our ability to continue to offer the magazine in anything like its current state without charge to either readers or authors may also be coming to an end. …at some point, we simply must find a way.. Read More

LISR rocks my world

And not just because I’m on the Editorial Board. Lili & I have a paper in press in LISR & they just sent me the proofs to correct. And lo and behold, you can make edits to the proofs right in the PDF file. Please note that proof corrections can now be annotated on-screen, which allows you to mark directly in the PDF file, and return the marked file as.. Read More

dLIST feeds my ego

I’ve recently discovered the joys of dLIST. This is particularly slow on the uptake of me, since Kristin has been telling me about it for over a year, & Scott is on the Advisory Board. Well, I’m slow but I get there eventually. Anyway I’ve started depositing preprints on dLIST. (See my author page.) Actually Scott beat me to it for the three papers we’ve co-authored. I mean, we know.. Read More

Wikipedia implements quality control

Growing Wikipedia Revises Its ‘Anyone Can Edit’ Policy, from the NY Times Those measures can put some entries outside of the “anyone can edit” realm. The list changes rapidly… 82 that administrators had “protected” from all editing, mostly because of repeated vandalism or disputes over what should be said. Another 179 entries… were “semi-protected,” open to editing only by people who had been registered at the site for at least.. Read More

Open Peer Review, again

I’ve written about the idea of open peer review here before, so this is exciting: ‘Nature’ Experiments With Open Peer Review, from the Chronicle The influential science journal Nature began on Monday an experiment with a new form of peer review, in which some reviewers’ names would be revealed to authors. During the three-month trial, the journal will allow authors to decide whether to participate in the open form of.. Read More

NIH Open Access policy, not so much

NIH Has Little to Celebrate on 1st Anniversary of Its Open-Access Policy, but Changes May Be on Way, from the Chronicle The public-access policy of the National Institutes of Health marked its first anniversary last week, and all involved in the debate agree that it has failed to create free online access to the biomedical literature. Not to say I told you so, but I told you so. Well, I.. Read More

Congress vs. the Association of American Publishers?

Bill Seeks Access to Tax-Funded Research, from the WaPo A smoldering debate over whether taxpayers should have free access to the results of federally financed research intensified yesterday with the introduction of Senate legislation that would mandate that the information be posted on the Internet. The legislation, which would demand that most recipients of federal grants make their findings available free on the Web within six months after they are.. Read More

Paleolimnology on Notice

Watching the Colbert Report now & he just did a bit where he put the Journal of Paleolimnology on notice. And he had Ric Ocasek on the show, groovily enough. Anyway, he referred to this article in the Journal of Paleolimnology: Nof, D., McKeague, I., & Paldor, N. (2006). Is There a Paleolimnological Explanation for ‘Walking on Water’ in the Sea of Galilee? Journal of Paleolimnology, 35(3), 417-439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10933-005-1996-1. And.. Read More