Academic publishing

California continues trailblazing push with major publishers but sees fundamental cost problem still unresolved

If authors are no longer required to justify their fundamental assumptions, where does that leave referees, asks Martyn Hammersley

Both journals and funders need to do more to support the gold route that authors want and open science needs, says Steven Inchcoombe

Letter urges Baroness Hale and Lord Reed to step back from Law Quarterly Review and Criminal Law Review until diversity improved

World’s biggest bibliographic database claims MetaDoor is ‘misappropriating’ its catalogue to drive it out of business

Academics rejected by university presses may turn to hybrid or self-publishers. But Harvey Graff’s experience suggests they should tread very carefully

Big publishers finding switch away from paywalls challenging, says European-led coalition

Lab-by-lab approach determining who gets credit and who doesn’t must be replaced by more comprehensive policies, researchers say

Female scholars grossly under-represented on editorial boards of public health and environmental science publications, says Cambridge-led study

Peer-reviewed open access entry aims to unite field burdened by outside political turmoil and internal disagreements over academic norms

Researchers need to be confident enough to lift the veil on the debate that is at the heart of scientific progress, says Rebecca Lawrence

High costs, opaque contracts and the difficulty of finding peer reviewers all point to the need for a divorce, says Robert Kaplan

The professionalism and collegiality with which editors used to respond to complaints has all but disappeared, says Harvey Graff 

Salim Abdool Karim welcomes increased transparency of research brought about by pandemic but says it has also brought its challenges

Nieces of nation’s incoming justice minister accused of faking research papers to help gain Ivy League admission

Universities seeking significant savings after Elsevier victory

Law experts call for broader effort to improve authors’ copyright interests

Scholars question whether open access platforms could step in to replace dominance of China National Knowledge Infrastructure

As a major publisher and information provider, Elsevier embraces its role in promoting diversity, say Ylann Schemm and Holly Falk-Krzesinski

The president of Seoul National University discusses the existential crisis facing higher education in South Korea

Study finds little ‘substantive’ change between 2002 and 2019 

Worldwide survey of scientists suggests almost two-thirds are now positive about their use

Academics call for rethink of latest Australian security intervention

In developing nations deemed too rich for fee waivers, subscription journals are the only publishing option, say three Brazilian scientists

New citation study overturns long-held belief that science is no laughing matter

Links to journals’ genuine websites should be added to the government’s database of reputable publishing outlets, says Rameez Mahesar

Temporary deal arrives on day of UK’s new open access policy, but raises issue of paying high price for ‘ego trip’ of Nature publication

Legitimate concerns about publishers’ grip on the academy will not be addressed if open access debate remains so polarised, says Amy Brand

Deal includes prestigious Cell Press and Lancet journals

East-West schism widened by Russian academia being cut off from world, says scholar

Grassroots effort by linguists seeks to lift up non-native English speakers, many of whom cannot afford professional proofreaders

Trials suggest that far from being mutually exclusive, both can play an important role, says Kim Eggleton

Audit of top psychology and neuroscience titles highlights relative lack of female editors and US dominance that may be harming science, say authors

Study analysing readability and citations suggests academics may have an incentive to keep their abstracts complex

Open access champion also proposes an IB for universities, as competition gives way to collaboration  

Establishing a peer review accreditation scheme would also help incentivise higher standards, says Arfan Ghani

Losses perceived for holistic views as communications modes show humanists embracing data-heavy styles of the hard sciences

Publishers need to examine their biases and universities their support mechanisms, say Avi Staiman, Marnie Jo Petray and Gaillynn Clements

PeerJ will give contributors ‘tokens’ to be redeemed against article processing charges

About one in 20 recent academic papers is a duplicate, with some articles being recycled as many as 27 times in different publications

Two separate studies, including one that looked at early Covid papers, suggest majority of alterations are minimal

Accurate reporting of results is important, but meaning is rarely distorted by orthographic or grammatical slips, says Adrian Furnham

Open access platforms are no substitute for peer-reviewed periodicals, says Maria Leptin

Rigorous ‘no deal’ planning paved way for significant concessions, says library head

Firms that sell co-authorship on papers accepted by reputable journals are likely turning over millions of pounds a year

World’s biggest digital library of Chinese journals under pressure over copyright infringement

MPs investigate role of journal publication in the early stages of the pandemic

Studying institutional success stories is socially useful and has nothing to do with selling out, say Matthew Flinders and Paul ’t Hart

Cathy Foley wants to extend access to scholarly journals beyond academia

More training, greater recognition and a wider geographical purview would help expand the reviewer pool, says Miriam Maus

The abolition of publishers and the bypassing of Big Tech is a prerequisite for maximising the power of science, says Andy Farnell

Close relationships between journal boards and most-published authors may explain speedy publishing times, says study

Scholar criticises lack of anonymised peer review at Law Quarterly Review

While progress has been hamstrung by lack of scale or regulatory force, advocates say the time has come

Major science organisation targets periodicals publishing too many papers or high proportion of brief articles

The crisis in peer reviewing can be overcome if journals and universities do more to incentivise it, say Dirk Lindebaum and Peter Jordan

UK universities could easily cope without Elsevier access for lengthy period, says Berkeley librarian who led system through two-year cut-off

Journals that are part of Cambridge University Press’ Research Directions ‘will better reflect the research lifecycle’ and interdisciplinary research

But study challenges idea that papers by colleagues of editors are of a lower quality

Publishing giant’s offer fails to meet goals of reducing costs and supporting rapid switch to open access, says sector