International Identifier for serials
and other continuing resources, in the electronic and print world

New Study Identifies Half-Life of Journal Articles

How do you judge how much a scientific study or academic article has been used?  Researcher Philip Davis is trying to provide some new answers to that question by taking a look at ‘usage half-life,’ in an effort to learn more about the academic publishing life cycle.

Complete study

Principles of Transparency

Several publishing associations are banding together over a new set of principles to tell the legitimate journals from the crowd of questionable editorial practices.

Peer reviewers urged to speak their minds

Presentation of a new peer reviewing model based on the reviewers’ private thoughts. In a common process, peer reviewers may be asked to stick to an objective assessment of whether a paper’s methods look sound. And this, the author thinks, can be damaging especially in some contentious fields.

Scientists Ambivalent About Open Access

Scientists overwhelmingly support the notion of making research papers freely available, but fewer publish their work in so-called open-access journals that make papers free immediately upon publication.