Taking Stock of the Feedback on Plan S Implementation Guide

In this interesting piece Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe reviews the feedback submitted in response to the Plan S consultation and highlights 7 themes that emerged from the thousands of pages submissions made to cOAlition S. Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders. Plan S requires that, from 2020, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.

Max Planck Society Ends Elsevier Subscription

The Max Planck Society, an enormous German research organization 14,000 scientists strong and comprising multiple research institutes, has ended its subscription to Elsevier journals, the organization announced in a statement on December 18. It did so in support of the German open-access initiative called Project DEAL, after unsuccessful attempts to negotiate an open-access agreement with the publisher. The organization’s digital library will no longer have access to Elsevier’s approximately 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, once the subscription expires on December 31.

Ten principles for the responsible use of university rankings

Ten principles for the responsible use of university rankings

University rankings are controversial. There is a lot of criticism on well-known rankings such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly referred to as the Shanghai Ranking, and the World University Rankings of Times Higher Education (THE) and QS.
Nevertheless, universities often feel that they are under pressure to
show a good performance in these rankings and universities may therefore
pay considerable attention to these rankings in their decision making.

The Ten Principles are intended to guide universities, students,
governments, and other stakeholders in the responsible use of university
rankings.

SAGE Research Methods now available from your Library

SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. Nearly everyone at a university is involved in research, from students learning how to conduct research to faculty conducting research for publication to librarians delivering research skills training and doing research on the efficacy of library services. SAGE Research Methods has the answer for each of these user groups, from a quick dictionary definition, a case study example from a researcher in the field, a downloadable teaching dataset, a full-text title from the Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series, or a video tutorial showing research in action.

What’s new in Open Access?

This a new blog by Danny Kingsley who is the Deputy Director, Cambridge University Library responsible for Scholarly Communication & Research Services. Her role focuses on establishing new policies and strategies for scholarly communication in the digital age. It looks like a useful way to keep up to date with developments in Open Access. "The world of Open Access moves fast and it can be difficult to keep up. We run regular updates for our community here at Cambridge and following a recent webinar, figured a blog about it might be a good idea too. Strap yourselves in, this is a bumpy ride." https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2011

The concept of research impact pervades contemporary academic discourse – but what does it actually mean?

Research impact is often talked about, but how clear is it what this term really means? Kristel Alla, Wayne Hall, Harvey Whiteford, Brian Head and Carla Meurk find that academic literature discusses research impact but often without properly defining it, with academic discourses mostly drawing on bureaucratic definitions originating from the UK. The authors highlight four core elements that comprise most research impact definitions and propose a new conceptualisation of research impact relevant to health policy.

To Catch a Predatory Publisher

Interesting piece here from the PLOS Science Communication Blog "I often wonder if other scientists wake up every morning to delete a deluge of spam messages from no-name journals and questionable conferences. Sometimes one of these emails will escape my extermination efforts and I end up reading it by accident. The invitations from so-called “predatory” publishers are so transparently fake and poorly written that a part of me finds their annoying overtures oddly amusing."

Academic Writing Workshop in the Library

When: Monday, October 16, 2017 - 10:00 to 12:30 Where: Training Rooms A&B, Maynooth University Library Academic Writing in the Social Sciences (Taylor & Francis in association with Maynooth University Library)

Microsoft Academic is on the verge of becoming a bibliometric superpower

Last year, the new Microsoft Academic service was launched. Sven E. Hug and Martin P. Brändle look at how it compares with more established competitors such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. While there are reservations about the availability of instructions for novice users, Microsoft Academic has impressive semantic search functionality, broad coverage, structured and rich metadata, and solid citation analysis features. Moreover, accessing raw data is relatively cheap. Given these benefits and its fast pace of development, Microsoft Academic is on the verge of becoming a bibliometric superpower.

So you’ve decided to blog? These are the things you should write about

The centuries-old tradition of writing for advocacy is continued into the digital era by blogging. But what should you be writing about? As part of a series previewing their new book "Communicating Your Research with Social Media", Amy Mollett, Cheryl Brumley, Chris Gilson and Sierra Williams consider the various different types of blog posts and how each might be used by academics.

Writing a peer review is a structured process that can be learned and improved – 12 steps to follow

Jo Wilkinson (Publons) asks an expert panel of researchers what steps they take to ensure a rigorous and robust review. Their advice has been compiled into 12 steps, relevant to both first-time peer reviewers and those keen to brush up on their skills.