News coverage in India of open access papers

In a study published in November 2021, Teresa Schultz, of the University of Nevada, Reno, reported that gold, green and hybrid open-access (OA) modes of publishing of scientific papers were correlated with more mentions in the news. Gold OA refers to scientists publishing their paper in an OA journal, and green is when scientists publish … Read more

Are preprints reliable?

To quote from a paper published yesterday in PLOS Biology: Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal through April 30, 2020, representing the initial … Read more

Citations and media coverage

According to a press release accompanying a just-published study in PLOS ONE: Highly cited papers also tend to receive more media attention, although the cause of the association is unclear. One reason I can think of is a confounding factor that serves as the hidden cause of both phenomena. Discoverability matters just as much as … Read more

Preference for OA research by income group

Two researchers from Rwanda performed a “systematic computational analysis of the biomedical literature” and concluded in their paper that: … papers with authors based in sub-Saharan Africa, papers with authors based in low income countries, and papers resulting from international collaboration are all much more likely to be made openly accessible than papers that don’t have these … Read more

On that Poynter debate about stock images and ethical visual journalism

Response to Mark Johnson, Article about free images ‘contradicts everything I hold true about journalism’, Poynter, February 9, 2018. ∞ Let’s get the caveats out of the way: The article to which Johnson is responding did get some of its messaging wrong. As Johnson wrote, it suggested the following: “We don’t think about visuals BUT visuals are … Read more

Are the papers behind this year’s Nobel Prizes in the public domain?

Credit: Pexels/pixabay

Note: One of my editors thought this post would work for The Wire as well, so it’s been republished there. “… for the greatest benefit of mankind” – these words are scrawled across a banner that adorns the Nobel Prize’s homepage. They are the words of Alfred Nobel, who instituted the prizes and bequeathed his … Read more

Are the papers behind this year's Nobel Prizes in the public domain?

Credit: Pexels/pixabay

Note: One of my editors thought this post would work for The Wire as well, so it’s been republished there. “… for the greatest benefit of mankind” – these words are scrawled across a banner that adorns the Nobel Prize’s homepage. They are the words of Alfred Nobel, who instituted the prizes and bequeathed his … Read more

OA shouldn’t stop at access

Joseph Esposito argues in the scholarly kitchen why it’s okay for OA articles (which come with a CC-BY license) to be repackaged and then sold for a price by other merchants once they’re out in a paper. The economic incentive to reach new audiences could make that otherwise OA article into something that gets brought to … Read more

India’s OA policy: Learning from Ioannidis

India’s first Open Access policy was drafted by a committee affiliated with the Departments of Biotechnology and Science & Technology (DBT/DST) in early 2014. It hasn’t been implemented yet. Its first draft accepted comments on its form and function on the DBT website until July 25; the second draft was released last week and is … Read more