The IFLA Journal editorial committee and editor are pleased to announce the availability of its summer webinar series on how to publish in academic journals.  Conducted in a series of four events focused on various world time zones, these webinars aimed to provide LIS scholars and practitioners with an insider view of the journal editing process with perspectives from the editor, reviewers, and authors. Overall, the webinars offer a unique view of the academic publishing process and provide practical advice to authors on how to approach the academic publishing process. More than 400 members of the IFLA community were able to join the sessions live, and these are now freely available.

View the webinars

This is the third in a series of updates to provide information on the 2021 Journal Citation Reports release. Released originally as a print edition in 1975, Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR) is showing, in its latest edition, a continuous expansion of its contents and metrics toward greater breadth, context and transparency. In addition to refinements discussed in recent posts – expanded journal coverage as well as the new Journal Citation Indicator metric – the 2021 JCR offers a revamped user interface.

With the help of academic search engine optimization (ASEO), publications can more easily be found in academic search engines and databases. Authors can improve the ranking of their publications by adjusting titles, keywords and abstracts. Carefully considered wording makes publications easier to find and, ideally, cited more often. This article is meant to support authors in making their scholarly publications more visible. It provides basic information on ranking mechanisms as well as tips and tricks on how to improve the findability of scholarly publications while also pointing out the limits of optimization.

The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) facilitates cooperation between scientific communications stakeholders. In 2021, ICSTI focused on initiating new partnerships and renewing old ones to foster a greater and more diverse membership, and to move beyond mere cooperation to collaboration and mutual benefit amongst ICSTI members and partners. Look at their brand new website!

The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) study is gauging the extent and impact of predatory practices, identifying their root causes, and reviewing efforts to combat them. This study is led by an independent working group of international experts, counting notably Rabab Ahmed Rashwan, head of the ISSN National Centre Egypt. A vital part of the study is a survey for all members of the research community to raise their awareness of predatory journals and conferences across different geographies, disciplines and career stages. The IAP study will report at the end of 2021 and is anticipated to inform a further major study on research evaluation, which lies at the heart of many of the global research community’s challenges and for which predatory practices are a symptom.

Jean-Claude Guédon, Professeur honoraire at the University of Montreal, Canada, proposes to explore how scholarly publishing should relate to scholarly communication. Ostensibly aligned, publishing and communication have diverged. Journals and the concept of the “version of record” are not only a legacy of print, but their roles have changed: certain processes of scholarly publishing stand in the way of optimal scholarly communication. Taking full advantage of digital affordances requires moving in different directions. Platforms and “record of versions” will eventually supersede journals and their articles, and now is the time to make some fundamental choices.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) have announced a three-year collective action agreement that provides multi-year support for DOAJ from all fifteen member libraries. The BTAA is delighted to take collective action on behalf of its members to support DOAJ’s mission to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals. With this agreement, the libraries of the BTAA affirm their principled commitment to open scholarship for worldwide public good and a more equitable society.

When you are checking a journal, three of the initial checks to carry out are to find out if the ISSN number a publisher is using is recognized by the ISSN Portal. You may also check whether they are members of COPE and DOAJ. The Predatory Publishing team has developed a web page that enables you to check whether a journal is recognized by these organizations. This tool allows you to do an aggregated search of the three websites at once. The URL to access the web page is https://predatory-publishing.com/ISSNCheck/?issn=1234-5678. Please note you have to replace the ISSN at the end of the link with the ISSN you are looking up.

The Russian Federation has declared 2021 as a year of Science and Technology – which predicts an increase in the sphere of scientific publications, writes Julia Peregudova.

According to the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, Russia is 10th in the list of countries in terms of published documents in 2019. However, there are many obstacles that non-English speaking authors face before the successful publication in international journals.