Publishing and open access world links.

And, in this post, I link in things related to publishing and open access.

Randy Schekman won the Nobel Price, and dissed the glam mags (that is Nature, Science and Cell). Here is his The Conversation piece on how to break free from Glam. Not everyone took kindly to what he said. Here is Opiniomics considering that he may be a hypocrite, considering that he has published in the glams. But, perhaps before they were truly glam. Hypocrite or no, I think it is something that needs to be discussed even more than it is done. But, I don’t think it is really the glams fault. Glams wouldn’t be glams if there wasn’t a market clamoring for them. Like, those deciding on grants and careers looking at how many glossy covers. Yes, science as Hollywood. Vote for the sexiest research project of the year! Ronin institute articulated this well.

Related, here is Stephen Curry on the problem with the Glam Magazines. It is a commentary to a debate that he links in (confession, I haven’t watched. 2 hours!), but I think his commentary are worth it, sans watching.

Elsevier, the publisher that is the favorite hate-target it seems, started telling researchers and everybody else to take down the pdf’s to their own (Elsevier published) research. Which, well, they legally are allowed to do, as we regularly sign away our rights. But, it has been sort of a tacit custom that you get to keep your pdf’s on your home page. Sort of like being allowed to have multiple copies of your records I guess. I think it is time to consider better ways of publishing.

Here are some thoughts on that: First Micah Allen’s call for self-publication instead of via publishers. Then Shauna Gordon-McKeon’s 3-part series Chasing Paper from the OSC blog. Part 2 and 3 linked here. For full disclosure, I’m affiliated with the OSC blogs.

The PeerJ blog has a nice interview with Dorothy Bishop where they discuss open access, and her experience with PeerJ.

A Paper from PLOSOne compared post-pub peer review, impact factor and number of citations. None is a really good measure of, well, impact it seems. And, here something from Science critiquing the h-index.

More to come.