Publishing
Vol 33(3), August 2007
By
Apr 20, 2008 - 11:14 PM

Physical Review Letters launches new feature to improve accessibility. APS News 2007;16(3):7.
Physical Review Letters launched a new feature in January (http://prl.aps.org). Each weekly issue has several papers designated as “Editors’ Suggestions”, intended to be papers that are well written and of interest to a wide range of physicists. How they are selected is described.

Altman M, King G. 2007. A proposed standard for the scholarly citation of quantitative data. D-Lib Magazine 13(3/4). doi:10.1045/march2007-altman.
The authors propose a universal standard for citing quantitative data that retains the advantages of print citations; adds other components made possible by, and needed due to, the digital form and systematic nature of quantitative data sets; and is consistent with most existing subfield-specific approaches.

Brecher J. 2006. Graphical representation of stereochemical configuration. Pure and Applied Chemistry 78(10):1897–1970.
Recommendations for the display of three-dimensional stereochemical information in two-dimensional diagrams in ways that avoid ambiguity and are likely to be
stereochemical configuration; explanation of which styles are preferred or should be avoided.

Chen F. Open access unnecessary for physicists. APS News 2007;16(4):12.
Letter giving the view that physicists do not need open access as they prefer to attack problems without comprehensively reading the literature. The author says: “the only time I access previous articles is when the referee forces me to”!

Gawrylewski A. New site pits “published” vs. “posted”: Nature Precedings raises questions over the value of sharing findings before submitting to peer review. The Scientist 2007 June 19.
Nature set up a new site, Nature Precedings, to post preprint articles which are not yet submitted to peer review. This experiment should be watched, particularly with respect to the consequences on scientific communication, publishing, and evaluation aspects.

Hooker B. The future of science is open (access). APS News 2007; 16(2):12.
Surveys open access from the perspective of a molecular biologist. Discusses open access archives/repositories and open access journals, including questions of financing and the desirability of including metadata to develop “open science”: Open (Access + Data + Source + Standards + Licensing) = Open Science.

Kiernan V. The embargo should go. APS News 2007; 16(3):8.
Discusses the arguments for and against the embargo system, under which science journals provide journalists with advance copies of newsworthy articles but set strict timelines on when that information can be shared. Concludes that the system does more harm than good in the reporting in newspapers of science advances. The article is adapted from the author’s 2006 book Embargoed Science (see http://www.press.uillinois.edu/)

Rodriguez MA,  Bollen J, Van de Sompel H. Mapping the bid behavior of conference referees. Journal of Informetrics 2007;1(1):68–82.
Analyses the possible factors influencing the bid behavior of conference referees. For instance, referee fatigue can be responsible for the quality of the peer review process: a valid study may be rejected or a fraudulent one may be accepted. Further studies and data are needed.

Symonds MR,  Gemmell NJ,  Braisher TL, Gorringe KL, Elgar MA. Gender differences in publication output: towards an unbiased metric of research performance. PLoS ONE 2006;1(1):e127.
Male scientists publish more than women, bringing into question the fairness of academic selection processes that rely heavily on publication quantity to rank scientists. But according to some measures, women’s work is cited more than men’s.

Warlick SE, Vaughan KTL. Factors influencing publication choice: why faculty choose open access. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2007; 4:1–12.
Interviews with scholarly biomedical faculty members at two US universities. Participants were chosen on the basis of their recent publication record in OA journals, and interviews were conducted to establish why they chose OA journals, what factors influenced those decisions, and their general attitude to open access. The authors conclude that although free access and visibility are incentives to OA publication, publication quality is the most important factor influencing the faculty members’ decisions.

Weinrach SG,  Thomas KR,  Pruett SR, Chan F. Scholarly productivity of editorial board members of three American Counseling and Counseling Psychology journals. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 2006;28(3):303–305.
Scholarly journals in professional and scientific fields communicate new knowledge, and editorial board members serve as gatekeepers of what information will be communicated. This study analyzes the scholarly productivity of the editorial board members of three major American counseling journals.


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