Category Archives: Journal publishing

MDPI – another OA publisher

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Frank Norman

I recently was alerted to the existence of an Open Access (OA) publisher that I had not heard of before:  MDPI. Their name stands for “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” and they are based in Switzerland. They publish more than 70 journals … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 6 Comments

Customer relations

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Frank Norman

Journal publishers are more interested in librarians than they ever used to be. The move to e-journals and big deals has changed the balance between individual and institutional  subscriptions, making libraries more important to publishers than, say, fifteen years ago. … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing, Libraries and librarians | Comments Off on Customer relations

In defence of reviews

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Frank Norman

Doug Kell, chief executive of the BBSRC, published an enormous review article in 2009 on iron chelation and disease. The review had 2,469 references. (D. B. Kell BMC Med. Genom. 2, 2; 2009). I’m not sure what the record for a single article is, … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | Tagged | 4 Comments

PLOS shift

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Frank Norman

Camel case (the practice of writing words with some inner uppercase letters) is one of my pet hates, as it demands sufficient finger dexterity to make sure you hit the shift key at just the right point in the middle … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 11 Comments

Megajournals

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Frank Norman

The trend towards Open Access has catalysed the creation of many new journals and new publishers. BioMedCentral, established in 2000, was a pioneer of open access publishing, launching a large number of journals. Public Library of Science (PLoS) initially established … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing, Open Access | Tagged | 11 Comments

Err … ology

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Frank Norman

Publication bias is the tendency to report positive results differently from negative or inconclusive results, resulting in a bias in the overall literature (see Wikipedia article and this tutorial at the Cochrane Collaboration). Afficionados of evidence-based practice and meta-analysers of research worry … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 12 Comments

How are your tweetations?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Frank Norman

A contentious paper came out towards the end of last year in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. That is a reasonably respectable title in its niche field and the author, Gunther Eysenbach, is a respected medical informaticist and e-health … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliometrics etc, Journal publishing | 8 Comments

They’re really not helping

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Frank Norman

Getting older and more forgetful is one of those things you just have to accept. Trying to remember where you left the keys, what day your niece’s birthday is, whether you need to catch the 143 bus or the 134 … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 13 Comments

Trashy journals

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Frank Norman

A Chinese couple published a couple of dozen academic journals, collecting a reported $1.5 million in publication fees from thousands of contributors. But, provincial authorities allege, the journals were fake. Only a few copies of each issue were printed, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 3 Comments

Subscription rage

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Frank Norman

Supermarkets are confusing places these days. There are two-for-one offers (BOGOF – buy one get one free) and variations thereon (buy two get one half price, etc etc), combo offers (buy three similar products together for a cheaper price than … Continue reading →

Posted in Journal publishing | 13 Comments