Learned Publishing - April 2010 Issue Available

["Janet Fisher" <jfisher@pcgplus.com>]

Learned Publishing - issue 2 2010

All articles are free to all ALPSP and SSP members and to journal 
subscribers; in addition, editorials, reviews and letters to the 
Editors, as well as any articles where the author has taken up 
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======================================================
from the Editor:

Time flies and issue 2 is already available:

I'm no fan of the 'double entendre' - curious to have a French 
term for that most (in)famous type of exported British humour - 
in fact I can't stand it. Nevertheless, I admit to a qualm when I 
accepted an article which suggests you should not 'submit when 
hot', wondering what type of visitor we will get to our esteemed 
website. We always want more hits, but there are limits. But they 
will be disappointed - the verb is, as my old English teacher 
would say, in its transitive form, so you can perhaps guess what 
it's about.

But we do, like last time, have something from the dark side - 
no, I don't mean Open Access - but some very interesting 
experience with a major medical journal using CrossCheck looking 
for plagiarism.

Open Access does get a fair share - but not polemic, from either 
side, but some facts and case studies - one on exactly what is 
happening with 'traditional' publishers, and the other from an 
Open Access publisher who is increasingly cooperating with 
societies either to transform journals or start new ones - guess 
who.

If you're at a publisher of any size, you've probably had either 
the Marketing or IT person bemoan the multiplicity of databases 
that you have and the, no doubt, duplication between them - this 
is sometimes followed up with a request for an enormous sum of 
money to create a new single de-duplicated database which 
contains everything you know about any relationship of any sort 
you might have with anyone, all in one place. And your heart 
sinks. There's now a new breed of system to try to counter that 
depression. It's more like creating an 'overlay' on existing 
systems rather than starting again - we have an article on the 
system from one of the leaders in this field.

This time we have some quite meaty book reviews - two quotes 
'(the book) makes for painful reading when compared to the 
clarity of so many others....' And 'The book is extremely 
specialised. It is also preachy, pedantic, and obtuse.' Not 
exactly pulling their punches. Makes you want to rush out and 
read it (the review, not the book) doesn't it?

And we have a nicely balanced review of Houghton's opus comparing 
his findings across UK, Netherlands and Denmark (that's not the 
work referred to in the above paragraph) - written by the 
Director of the Research Information Network - that's got to be 
worth a look - so much so we'll make it Open Access (like three 
other articles in the issue)

Hybrid OA gets a mention too - it came as a bit of a shock to me, 
a year or two ago, when I heard that library link resolvers would 
often only resolve at a journal level, so might not give access 
to OA articles in unsubscribed journals. So we hear more about 
the KBART initiative and how it might help.

More facts, too, on the actual costs of journals - this time in 
the humanities, based on an intensive survey of 8 US journals - 
not entirely removed from OA either, since it gives some insight 
into the troubles they would have if they want to go Gold OA.

Continuing the attempt to prove we're not stuck in a world of STM 
journals, we also have both an editorial on e-books and a piece 
on e-book standards.

We're not just about publishers, either - on libraries, there's a 
timely article on a pretty huge (over 800 libraries) 
international study on how they are coping in these difficult 
times - with some upbeat messages amongst the doom and gloom.

We do publish research too, and, if your stats are up to it, 
there's an interesting article about referee/reviewer agreement, 
or lack of it - do they agree more if the reviews are more open? 
The answer is 'no', just to help you in case your statistics are 
not that special.

Stats are also required for an article looking at Self-citation 
in Chinese Journals. This is something they clearly know has to 
be taken seriously, and they do so take it - incidentally, if you 
happen to be like me (or as I was) and not know the difference 
between self-citing and self-citation, this will put you 
straight.

We started this commentary with low humour, so let's end on a 
higher plane. Where else in media on publishing will you find 
articles that not only quote, but develop points made by such as 
Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis (1627) and travel, via Vannevar 
Bush, ARPANET, and Woodstock (!), ending up at Berners-Lee and 
the World Wide Web.

Well, we couldn't let the 20th anniversary of www pass without a 
mention. I once spent a whole day with Tim at CERN in the 1980s, 
but that's a story for another time - or maybe not.

Alan Singleton
Editor, Learned Publishing
editor@alpsp.org

Janet Fisher
North American Editor
us-editor@alpsp.org

All articles are free to all ALPSP and SSP members and to journal 
subscribers; in addition, editorials, reviews and letters to the 
Editors, as well as any articles where the author has taken up 
the 'ALPSP Author Choice' OA option, are now free to all.  If you 
would like to receive an email alert or RSS feed every time a new 
issue goes online, all you have to do is sign up at 
http://alpsp.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp

To obtain free access to the journal, ALPSP members should access 
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