'Googling' or 'go ogling' - a question of context? - latest issue of Learned
Publishing now out www.learned-publishing.org
I've not yet quite got over Microsoft Word daring to suggest that I meant
'go ogling' when I wrote 'googling' - a classic example of an inability to
appreciate context (honest!). This and a couple of other almost irrelevant
examples (with pictures) are in this issue's editorial which is mainly a bit
more serious, and on the topic of whether 'content is king' or not.
Not that pride of place should be given to the editorial, since we have a
good mix of articles to tempt you in this issue, several of them free to
access. For example we have three case studies, which together are great
illustrations of innovations of technology, changing systems, or new
services. David Kavanagh has a piece on his scrazzl (sorry, Word, you won't
have that in your dictionary) which uses a combination of techniques, not a
million miles removed from text mining, to discover scientific product
information contained within scientific papers; Sally Sellwood of Editorial
Office Ltd tells us about outsourcing the editorial processing function -
either temporarily or permanently, particularly but not only for learned
societies - once upon a time I wondered whether this might be a function for
ALPSP when they first set up something called the ALPSP Publishing Centre
(APC), but it didn't turn out like that (more later); and then Simon Thomson
talks about another kind of APC (Author Payment Charge is just one of the
expansions) since his Open Access Key is a new intermediary to facilitate
payments for gold OA - bit of a surprise to me that the traditional
intermediaries, subscription agents, seem late in the game on this but I'm
sure they are getting there, so this is likely to be quite a competitive
space.
Back to ALPSP - in a trifle of self indulgence, it is celebrating its 40th
birthday (I wish I were - re mine) and we have a piece by Kurt Paulus, a
former editor of the forerunner of Learned Publishing (and much else
besides) who tells something of its story so far, but interspersed with his
own thoughts on the history of scholarly publishing over the period - always
worth catching up with what KP (neither a nut nor a cricketer) has to say.
'Access' is one of the most topical words in our world, and we have a very
thoughtful opinion piece from Alice Meadows, Bob Campbell and Keith
Webster, surveying some of the studies on the issue of Access. If you come
away feeling a little depressed at the standards set by public bodies in
commissioning and reporting tendentious research in the area, well, you may
be right, but it's good to see the issues all set down so clearly - how is
it that Australia seems to be better at this kind of thing?
Tendentious is not the word for Dave Nicholas and his CIBER team's account
of the use, after 10 years, of digital repositories - true, it's based on
physicists who (being one, so I know) can be unusual in their habits. Would
you find it remarkable if one of the main reasons for their non use is that
authors don't know about them, even now? You'll have to read the article to
see if that is in fact the case.
Finally, we have the last in our series of 'Selling to the BRIC' - this on
India by Rakesh Malik - we should have, it turns out, called the series
'Selling to the RBCI' given the order they came in, but that doesn't exactly
roll off the tongue.
Then, also related to marketing, we have a piece from Sharon Mathelus et al
from Wiley indicating how, they believe, promoting selected articles has
increased their usage and citation count - if it's confirmed by further
studies, it's interesting how 'access' doesn't seem to be the key
determinant, but rather visibility and awareness.
There's so much growth and change going on in China, and restructuring of
their publishing system, that we could fill each issue with papers I
receive - but it gives me the opportunity to be selective and pick those
that I think will really interest readers. Here we have one from Xiao-jun He
which not only charts the issues, but says what they are doing about it, and
how they think they can survive, in a fairly upbeat way.
Last, we have an interesting opinion piece by a real science editor, Paul
Baveye, on how we might get the best out of peer reviewers, or referees, if
we adopted his proposed 'Reviewer Effectiveness Index' - his formula turns
out to be CxUxP - but you'll have to read his piece to find out what this is
(but it's not Cambridge or Columbia University Press)
All that rounded off by a clutch of interesting book reviews
So happy ogling of LP. See you again in three months.
Alan Singleton
Editor-in-Chief, Learned Publishing
---------------
Learned Publishing Column 25 No 3 July 2012
www.learned-publishing.org
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