I’ve been thinking more about my post from yesterday. I wrote: I have to ask myself, would I be willing to review a manuscript by a senior faculty member, and just to make the stakes higher, someone I was considering as an outside reviewer for my tenure case? … Would I take that risk, not knowing if the manuscript would be good? If I took the job, would I be.. Read More
Thoughts on the the double blind review process
I’m thinking out loud here… Opinions expressed in this post may not reflect the opinions of the management, or indeed even of the author. I recently reviewed 2 article manuscripts for 2 different journals. Journal A, in its instructions for authors, claims to be refereed but not double- or even single-blind; journal B does claim to be double-blind. The manuscript I received from journal A had the author’s name right.. Read More
Reed Elsevier and the international arms trade
I learned about this from a post to the Dig_Ref listserv: Lancet calls for publisher to cut ties with international arms trade, from The Guardian Editors of the Lancet, one of the world’s foremost medical journals, have demanded that its corporate owner stop promoting the international arms trade. The journal’s publisher is Reed Elsevier, the multinational behind an arms fair opening in London next week. Understand, of course, that The.. Read More
Open JCDL
For those of you who weren’t at the brownbag yesterday, Gary talked about the upcoming JCDL, & had us all brainstorm a bit about it. Gary mentioned that the theme of the conference, Opening Information Horizons, was an attempt to implicitly play on the theme of open-source, open-access, open-science, etc. I suggested that one way to embrace that theme would be to implement open reviewing. That idea pretty much went.. Read More
We apologize for some serious cut-and-paste confusion
I’ve had 2 articles published in JASIST in recent months. I say this not to boast, but so that you have the background to what has turned out to be an incredibly confusing editorial snafu. Pomerantz, J. (2005). A Linguistic Analysis of Question Taxonomies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(7), 715-728. Pomerantz, J. (2005). A Conceptual Framework and Open Research Questions for Chat-based Reference Service… Read More
Google vs. Publishers, again
Google Answers Complaints About Project to Scan Millions of Books, but Publishers Are Not Won Over, from the Chronicle It is perhaps unfortunate that this headline starts with “Google Answers,” since that’s not at all what this is about, but maybe I’m being nitpicky. Responding to concerns from several academic and commercial publishers, Google has made minor adjustments to its vast project to scan library books, and Google officials say.. Read More
Kohl-Davis & Impact Factor
In the July issue of C&RL, Thomas Nisonger & Charles Davis have a paper titled “The Perception of Library and Information Science Journals by LIS Education Deans and ARL Library Directors: A Replication of the Kohl-Davis Study.” This is, well, a replication of the 1985 Kohl-Davis study, which ranked LIS journals based on the perceptions of LIS school deans and research library directors. Mostly because I was just curious (and.. Read More
Google Print, in hot water again
In this week’s exciting installment of Library Journal Academic Newswire, are these two articles: ALPSP joins Google Print battle, issues strong statement, and Google supporters plead their case. Here’s the Association for Learned Professional and Society Publishers’ “strong statement”: Google Print for Libraries — ALPSP position statement. Strong like noxious, I would suggest. Permitting publishers to ‘opt out’ is not an acceptable substitute for proper licensing in the first place….. Read More
Why are we still having this conversation?
I recently reread Paul Ginsparg’s article First Steps towards Electronic Research Communication, about the establishment of the physics e-print archive. I reread it partly because I’ve been thinking about institutional repositories lately, & partly because it’s 10 years old recently (the article is dated 19 April 1995). In it, Ginsparg writes: This “e-print archive” began as an experimental means of circumventing recognized inadequacies of research journals… This system provides a.. Read More
PLoS Bio impact factor
PLoS Biology finally has an impact factor! Measures of Impact, from PLoS Biology …why did anyone submit great work to a journal that didn’t even exist yet, from a publisher with no established reputation? The answer is that it was on the strength of promises made by our in-house editors and academic editorial board to uphold high standards and rigorous peer review, to launch an open-access alternative to the best.. Read More