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Michael Taster

December 23rd, 2024

2024 In review – The culture of academic publishing

1 comment | 6 shares

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Michael Taster

December 23rd, 2024

2024 In review – The culture of academic publishing

1 comment | 6 shares

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

In the first of our annual reviews we explore the culture of academic publishing. In previous years this review has been dominated by fundamental issues surrounding open access policy. While questions around the future of open research remain, 2024 has seen an increasing focus on the infrastructures and mechanisms underpinning open research. From funding models, to digital identifiers and group authorship, 2024 has been about how academic publishing can be more sustainable, equitable and useful for authors and readers. Here we bring together ten top posts from the LSE Impact Blog in 2024, but if you still want more, you can find all our coverage of academic publishing here


Not-for-profit scholarly publishing might not be cheaper – And that’s OK

The rising cost of academic publishing is causing consternation across the research ecosystem and prompting calls in Europe for a transition to not-for-profit publishing models. Rob Johnson argues that expecting emerging not-for-profit providers to offer a cheaper solution than commercial players is a surefire way to keep them small – or make them fail.


Open access works – 420 million citations show OA outputs are cited by more researchers from more places

Open access is built on the promise that more people are able to access and use research. Putting this to the test, Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Cameron Neylon and Lucy Montgomery explore where citations come from for 19 million research outputs and find that open access is indeed working as it is meant to – allowing more researchers from more places to use research.


Randomisation can resolve the uncertainty at the heart of peer review

Peer review decisions are definitive, and depending on the style of peer review practiced at a journal, reviewers can usually make one of three recommendations: accept, reject, revise and resubmit. Discussing a new study into the levels of certainty reviewers have making these choices, Adrian Barnett suggests how embracing this doubt could improve peer review processes.


Preprints at a crossroads – Are we compromising openness for credibility?

Bringing together a range of studies into various aspects of how preprints interact with the wider information ecosystem, Natascha Chtena, Juan Pablo Alperin, and Alice Fleerackers argue that the speed, accessibility and low barriers to entry that preprints offer to scholarly communication risk being undermined by attempts to make them more aligned to traditional academic publications.


The best peer review reports are at least 947 words

Based on an analysis of the relationship between peer review reports and subsequent citations, Abdelghani Maddi argues that longer and hence more constructive and engaged peer review reports are closely associated with papers that are more cited.


Is group authorship a better way of recognising team-based research?

Reflecting on the challenges and benefits of publishing research under a group name, Robert Thibault argues group authorship, although at present poorly supported, could be an important means of realigning rewards and recognition in scholarly communication.


Case studies are vital to monitoring the development of open science

As a recent consultation on how to monitor open science practices drew to a close, Louise Bezuidenhout, Paola Castaño, Sabina Leonelli, Ismael Rafols and Andrea Vargiu argue that if monitoring frameworks aim to capture the widest dimensions of open science as a practice they should include case studies.


Citation indexes make research more unequal

When Garfield first launched his Science Citation Index in 1965, many criticised its unequal geographical coverage of the world’s scientific literature. Almost 60 years later, the problem has not gone away. Drawing on their recent paper David Mills and Toluwase Asubiaro examine the regional disparities within Scopus and Web of Science.


A DOI is not enough – Can practice research be captured by libraries and archives?

The recording and indexing of research plays a vital role in how it can be found and used, but what happens when the output from a research project is not a written document, but a performance, series of events or an artistic work? Holly Ranger, Jenny Evans and Adam Vials Moore discuss findings from a series of projects exploring how these forms of practice research can be better documented and made more accessible to researchers and research users.


The digital scholarly record is at risk

In the past the preservation of the scholarly record relied on physical print publications being archived in multiple places by different institutions. In principle this holds true for digital preservation, where a number of organisations work to preserve the scholarly record. However, drawing on a study of Crossref DOI data, Martin Eve finds evidence to suggest that the current standard of digital preservation could fall worryingly short of ensuring persistent accurate record of scholarly works.


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Image Credit: LSE Impact Blog.


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About the author

Michael Taster

Michael Taster is the managing editor of the LSE Impact Blog.

Posted In: Academic publishing | Annual review | Open Access | Open Research

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