(9 Apr 2024) When Jonathan Goodman went looking for a paper published by the popular chemistry journal Heterocycles, he realised something odd. Not only was the paper he was looking for not available, all of the journal’s content had disappeared from the web. The Japan Institute of Heterocyclic Chemistry, which published Heterocycles, told Chemistry World that publication ceased last year and…
(19 Mar 2024) Christos Petrou, founder and Chief Analyst at Scholarly Intelligence, explored two research categories, a fast one (Biochemistry) and a slow one (Economics & Econometrics), showing the wild variation in performance among journals that have similar profiles. He also discussed how publishers have become more concerned about speed these days, but they are…
(19 Mar 2024) From Delta Think: Each year we survey the list Article Processing Charges (APCs) of a sample of major and significant publishers. Covering over 20,000 titles, and going back to 2016, our data set represents one of the most comprehensive reviews of open access pricing. To compare like for like, we analyze…
(29 Feb 2024) The landscape of scientific and technical publishing is undergoing a transformative evolution as major players harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their products and services. With a focus on improving efficiency, accuracy, and innovation, publishers are integrating AI-driven features and capabilities into their offerings, setting the stage for a new…
(12 Feb 2024) Unscrupulous researchers have many options for gaming citations metrics, new study highlights. In 2023, a new Google Scholar profile appeared online featuring a researcher no one had ever heard of. Within a few months, the scientist, and expert in fake news, was listed by the scholarly database as their field’s 36th…
(29 Jan 2024) The scholarly publishing sector is undergoing its second digital transformation. In the first, we saw a massive shift from paper to digital, but otherwise publishing retained many of the characteristics of the print era. In this current second digital transformation, many of these structures, workflows, incentives, and outputs are being revamped in favor…
(9 Jan 2024) The rising cost of academic publishing is causing consternation across the research ecosystem and prompting calls in Europe for a transition to not-for-profit publishing models. Rob Johnson argues that expecting emerging not-for-profit providers to offer a cheaper solution than commercial players is a surefire way to keep them small – or make them…
(30 Oct 2023) A key trend, obvious to any publishing consultant or acquisitions editor buried in a seemingly endless (and seemingly rising) stream of independent journals seeking a partnership with a larger publisher, is the ongoing and ever-increasing market consolidation that has been accelerated by the move to open access (OA). We all know this…
(9 Oct 2023) In 2022, Guillaume Cabanac noticed something unusual: a study had attracted more than 100 citations in a short span of less than two months of being published. Cabanac, a computer scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, initially flagged the study on PubPeer after it was highlighted by the Problematic Paper…
An algorithm that takes just seconds to scan a paper for duplicated images racks up more suspicious images than a person (3 Oct 2023) Scientific-image sleuth Sholto David blogs about image manipulation in research papers, a pastime that has exposed him to many accounts of scientific fraud. But other scientists “are still a little bit…