Anniversaries inevitably lead to introspection and retrospection. As it dawned upon the editorial and production team here at the Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) that our journal was twenty years old, I was cast back to my own first encounters with JEP, circa 1996, when it was already a mature publication of one year. I was a just entering the field of librarianship, in the School of Library and Information Science, now School of Information, at the University of Michigan and encountering the World Wide Web in its earliest days. As my wheels began to turn about what forms of publication might be possible through that Web, a colleague at the library pointed out that our adventurous university press had put a journal on line that was all about electronic publishing. That, I thought, was pretty cool.
Monthly Archives: December 2015
If You Give a Monkey a Cookie: Research Suggests Giving Causes a “Warm Glow”
While the end-of-year holidays are meant to be a time of gratitude and love, many of us know that they can also be stressful. Holiday shopping can be especially anxiety-provoking—between agonizing over which color sweater
Librarian
“The University of Nevada, Reno Libraries seek an enterprising and public services oriented librarian to coordinate the development and implementation of a sustainable approach to scholarly communications. The successful candidate will collaborate with faculty and staff on a variety of scholarly communications issues including: open access, copyright, fair use, database and media licensing, and digital preservation. The selected candidate will have outstanding communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills and the ability to cope with the ambiguities of fair use and other aspects of scholarly communication….”
Open Scholarship wish list
“Knowledge Exchange, a European partnership to improve services for higher education and research, recently held a conference on Pathways to Open Scholarship. The conference briefly looked back at the first ten years of KE and its achievements. But the main focus was looking forward. As the conference was held in Helsinki in December, it seemed appropriate, as a starting point for future planning, to write a wish list for Santa Claus on behalf of Open Scholarship. A conference report will be written in the clear light of the new year which will look at who might take what actions to deliver any presents which have not magically appeared under the tree. And also to further identify the many “presents” (services, advice and technologies) which already exist and are just waiting to be opened. Perhaps we need an Open Scholarship version of Dickens’ famous “A Christmas Carol” where gloomy ghosts of the past and the present frighten us with potential disaster but a happy ending is possible if change happens and action is taken. What are the actions and who should take them? Who will fund them? Meanwhile, here is our wish list (with some questions for us all to consider)….”
Repository Support Administrator at Leeds Beckett University
“We are seeking a graduate with knowledge of repository software and/or research support systems and with an understanding of current developments around research related tools and technologies in the HE sector. The successful candidate will also have some knowledge of open access publishing….”
Feminist Public Intellectuals Project | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
“In keeping with the consistent mission of Signs to matter in the world, the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project seeks to engage feminist theorizing with pressing political and social problems via three open-access, online-first initiatives: Short Takes, Currents, and Ask a Feminist. Given the fragmentation of feminist activism and the persistent negative freighting of the moniker “feminist,” the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project seeks to genuinely reimagine what role a journal can play in provoking activism. This multipronged tack brings into conversation feminist public intellectuals with academic experts, activists with scholars in an effort to spark conversation, debate, and critical feminist discourse….”
Appropriate journal use in the modern age
“The sheer variety of ways to use AJP means that there are right and wrong ways to use it—or at least, better ways and worse ways. That’s because the way you access a journal nowadays can have unforeseen consequences. If you’re not careful, using AJP incorrectly may even jeopardize your access to it! Let me explain….In the old days, I would typically go to the library and make however many photocopies were needed and then pass them out in class. But it is much more convenient today to simply download the PDF and either email it to the class or upload it to a course-management web site from which the students can download it themselves. But this procedure is potentially problematic and is precisely what you should not do, no matter how tempting it might be. Why? Because when you follow this procedure, your library will record only your access to AJP (assuming you used an institutional subscription to access the journal). An entire classroom full of students will end up accessing the journal and yet none of these uses will get counted in the library usage statistics. [And low usage statistics could lead librarians to cancel the subscription.]…So how should you assign such a reading to students? The key is to have the students download the article themselves directly through the library’s access portal….”
State Copyright Resource Center Launched by Office for Scholarly Communication | Harvard Library Portal
“The State Copyright Resource Center, a site recently launched by the Office for Scholarly Communication, aims to clarify the ambiguity around the copyright status of state-produced works. This project was spun out of a query to Harvard Library’s copyright advisor, Kyle K. Courtney, from the Frances Loeb Library at the Graduate School of Design, which was working to digitize a collection of rare state urban planning reports and other state documents. The site provides information on relevant polices, cases, and legislation, and assesses the copyright status of government publications in each state. It is designed not only to help the Harvard community, but to serve as an invaluable resource nationwide for those working to disseminate and preserve state government information.
Even though the US Copyright Act acknowledges that works produced by the US federal government cannot be eligible for copyright protection, the law is different for documents created by state governments. Among states, the procedure varies. Some pursue copyright interest in the documents they produce (such as posters, surveys, pamphlets, flyers, photographs, and other materials), while others lack clear legal guidance in this matter. This new resource brings together the sources of law in each state to answer those questions in a living document, updated with the most current information available….”
Editor-in-Chief, PLOS ONE Job at PLOS
“On behalf of PLOS, Kaufman Wills Fusting & Company (KWF) is seeking applicants and nominations for a visionary editor-in-chief to lead PLOS ONE, the largest scientific journal in the world.
PLOS ONE’s editorial mission is to accelerate discovery by publishing all scientifically rigorous research, regardless of novelty, and without any restriction on access or reuse.
As the leading open access journal, PLOS ONE has pioneered publication criteria focused on high ethical standards, transparent reporting, and the rigor of the methodology and conclusions reported. The rigorous peer review process that upholds these criteria is powered by an editorial board of more than 6,000 academic experts who evaluate submissions and oversee peer review. Academic Editors are supported by a strong partnership with in-house editorial staff to ensure fast, fair and professional peer review and adherence to the journal’s standards.
PLOS ONE’s broad scope provides an open access platform to publish primary research in many disciplines, multi-disciplinary research, negative results and replication studies. The breadth of topics and large readership (more than 11 million monthly article views) facilitates the discovery of connections. PLOS ONE offers a natural home for scientific communities that support open science and seek a better editorial service to advance research in their areas.
The Editor-in-Chief, PLOS ONE, is responsible for setting the editorial course of the journal for the short and long term, providing excellent service to authors and readers, and improving scholarly communication….”
Nature promotes read-only sharing by subscribers
This seems like quite the step forward for such a big part of the science community. What do you think?
Discussion on Nature: here
Caught in the Trap – Nurse Author & Editor
In August 2014, International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) launched an initiative designed to inform the nursing community about the emergence of online open-access journals published by individuals or companies who scam academic writers, hoping they will fork over money, or lend their good names, to support “journals” that exist only to make a profit at the expense of unsuspecting authors. INANE published a position paper in Nurse Author & Editor (INANE Predatory Publishing Collaborative, 2014) that explained the deceptive practices used by these publishers and emphasized the characteristics of sound editorial and publishing practices that authors can use to assess any journal that they might consider for publication. As authors, we also explained this situation at length in our recently published book, Writing in the Digital Age: Savvy Publishing for Healthcare Professionals (Nicoll & Chinn, 2015).
Open Knowledge Announce Plans for Open, Online Database of Clinical Trials | OpenTrials
“Open Knowledge today announced plans to develop Open Trials, an open, online database of information about the world’s clinical research trials funded by The Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The project, which is designed to increase transparency and improve access to research, will be directed by Dr. Ben Goldacre, an internationally known leader on clinical transparency.
Open Trials will aggregate information from a wide variety of existing sources in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the data and documents related to all trials of medicines and other treatments around the world. Conducted in partnership with the Center for Open Science and supported by the Center’s Open Science Framework, the project will also track whether essential information about clinical trials is transparent and publicly accessible so as to improve understanding of whether specific treatments are effective and safe….”
OpenTrials | All the Data, on All the Trials, Linked
“OpenTrials, a collaboration between Open Knowledge and Ben Goldacre (Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford), will aggregate information from a wide variety of existing sources, and aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the data and documents on all trials conducted on medicines and other treatments around the world….”
On the 12 Days of Science, PLOS ONE Gave to Me…
It’s starting to get colder in San Francisco, and the year-end holidays are soon to be upon us. This has made all of us on the PLOS ONE team excited to spend some time with
New journal – “Animal Sentience” – on the other-minds problem
The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior ? unless they tell us. This is the ?other-minds problem.?
Within our own species, thanks to language, the other-minds problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or ?mind-reading? capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science and supplemented by cognitive neuroimagery. Together, these make the other-minds problem within our own species a relatively minor one.
But we cohabit the planet with other species, most of them very different from our own, and none of them able to talk. Inferring whether and what they feel is important not only for scientific but also for ethical reasons, because where feelings are felt, they can also be hurt.
Animal Sentience [ASent] is a new international, interdisciplinary journal devoted to the other-minds problem across species. As animals are at long last beginning to be accorded legal status and protection as sentient beings, ASent will explore in depth what, how and why organisms feel. Individual ?target articles? (and sometimes précis of books) addressing different species? sentient and cognitive capacities will each be accorded ?open peer commentary,? consisting of multiple shorter articles, both invited and freely submitted ones, by specialists from many disciplines, each elaborating, applying, supplementing or criticizing the content of the target article, along with responses from the target author(s).
The members of the nonhuman species under discussion will not be able to join in the conversation, but their spokesmen and advocates, the specialists who know them best, will. The inaugural issue launches with the all-important question (for fish) of whether fish can feel pain.
ASent is a publication of the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy (HSISP). Based in Washington DC, HSISP?s mandate is to advance the application of scientific and technical analysis and expertise to animal welfare issues and policy questions worldwide. The HSISP is an affiliate of The Humane Society of the United States, the world?s largest animal protection organization.
ASent is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal. Thanks to HSISP sponsorship, ASent need not charge either publication fees to authors or subscription fees to readers.
Authors’ opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher or editors.
The table of contents of the inaugural issue of ASent follow below. Commentaries by scientists, scholars, practitioners, jurists and policy-makers are invited on any of the target articles (in bold); continuing commentary is also invited on the commentaries and responses. And of course the journal now calls for the submission of target articles. All target articles are peer-reviewed and all commentaries are editorially reviewed. Open peer commentary is intended particularly for new target articles written specifically for ASent, but updated versions of articles that have appeared elsewhere may also be eligible for publication and open peer commentary.
(Open peer commentary is modelled on the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), of which the editor-in-chief of ASent was also the founder and editor-in-chief for 20 years.)
Harnad, Stevan (2016) Inaugural Editorial – Animal sentience: The other-minds problem Animal Sentience 2016.001
Safina, Carl (2016) Animals think and feel: Précis of Beyond words: What animals think and feel (Safina 2015) Animal Sentience 2016.002
Key, Brian (2016) Why fish do not feel pain Animal Sentience 2016.003
Balcombe, Jonathan (2016) Cognitive evidence of fish sentience Animal Sentience 2016.008
Braithwaite, Victoria A. and Droege, Paula (2016) Why human pain can?t tell us whether fish feel pain Animal Sentience 2016.009
Broom, Donald M. (2016) Fish brains and behaviour indicate capacity for feeling pain Animal Sentience 2016.010
Brown, Culum (2016) Comparative evolutionary approach to pain perception in fishes Animal Sentience 2016.011
Chella, Antonio (2016) Robot fish do not need sentience Animal Sentience 2016.012
Dinets, Vladimir (2016) No cortex, no cry Animal Sentience 2016.013
Haikonen, Pentti O. (2016) On the sentience of fish Animal Sentience 2016.014
Hart, Paul J.B. (2016) Fighting forms of expression Animal Sentience 2016.015
Jones, Robert C. (2016) Fish sentience and the precautionary principle Animal Sentience 2016.016
Manzotti, Riccardo (2016) No evidence that pain is painful neural process Animal Sentience 2016.017
Mather, Jennifer A. (2016) An invertebrate perspective on pain Animal Sentience 2016.018
Ng, Yew-Kwang (2016) Could fish feel pain? A wider perspective Animal Sentience 2016.019
Seth, Anil K. (2016) Why fish pain cannot and should not be ruled out Animal Sentience 2016.020
Striedter, Georg (2016) Lack of neocortex does not imply fish cannot feel pain Animal Sentience 2016.021
Key, Brian (2016) (Response I) Going beyond just-so stories Animal Sentience 2016.022
Balu?ka, Franti?ek (2016) Should fish feel pain? A plant perspective Animal Sentience 2016.023
Burghardt, Gordon (2015) Mediating claims through critical anthropomorphism Animal Sentience 2016.024
Derbyshire, Stuart W.G. (2016) Fish lack the brains and the psychology for pain Animal Sentience 2016.025
Elwood, Robert W. (2016) A single strand of argument with unfounded conclusion Animal Sentience 2016.026
Gagliano, Monica (2016) What would the Babel fish say? Animal Sentience 2016.027
Godfrey-Smith, Peter (2016) Pain in parallel Animal Sentience 2016.028
Gonçalves-de-Freitas, Eliane (2016) Pain and fish welfare Animal Sentience 2016.029
Merker, Bjorn (2016) Drawing the line on pain Animal Sentience 2016.030
Panksepp, Jaak (2016) Brain processes for ?good? and ?bad? feelings: How far back in evolution? Animal Sentience 2016.031
Rose, James D. (2016) Pain in fish: Weighing the evidence Animal Sentience 2016.032
Segner, Helmut (2016) Why babies do not feel pain, or: How structure-derived functional interpretations can go wrong Animal Sentience 2016.033
Shriver, Adam J. (2016) Cortex necessary for pain ? but not in sense that matters Animal Sentience 2016.034
Sneddon, Lynne U. and Leach, Matthew C. (2016) Anthropomorphic denial of fish pain Animal Sentience 2016.035
Stevens, E. Don (2016) Why is fish ?feeling? pain controversial? Animal Sentience 2016.036
Van Rysewyk, Simon (2016) Nonverbal indicators of pain Animal Sentience 2016.037
Wadiwel, Dinesh Joseph (2016) Fish and pain: The politics of doubt Animal Sentience 2016.038/
Key, Brian (2016) (Response II) Falsifying the null hypothesis that ?fish do not feel pain” Animal Sentience 2016.039
Brown, Culum (2016) Fish pain: An inconvenient truth Animal Sentience 2016.058
Damasio, Antonio and Damasio, Hanna (2016) Pain and other feelings in humans and animals Animal Sentience 2016.059
Devor, Marshall (2016) Where is pain in the brain? Animal Sentience 2016.060
Diggles, B. K. (2016) Fish pain: Would it change current best practice in the real world? Animal Sentience 2016.061
Edelman, David B. (2016) Leaving the door open for fish pain: Evolutionary convergence and the utility of ?just-so stories? Animal Sentience 2016.062
Walters, Edgar T. (2016) Pain-capable neural substrates may be widely available in the animal kingdom Animal Sentience 2016.063
King, Barbara J. (2016) Animal mourning: Précis of How animals grieve (King 2013) Animal Sentience 2016.004
Botero, Maria (2016) Death in the family Animal Sentience 2016.040
Fox Hall, Tara (2016) Anticipatory grief Animal Sentience 2016.041
Gardiner, Martin (2016) Modulation of behavior in communicating emotion Animal Sentience 2016.042
Glymour, Clark (2016) The object of grief Animal Sentience 2016.043
Probyn-Rapsey, Fiona (2016) Love?s claim on grief Animal Sentience 2016.044
Proctor, Helen (2016) Monkey say, monkey do, monkey grieve? Animal Sentience 2016.045
Ristau, Carolyn (2016) Evidence for animal grief? Animal Sentience 2016.046
King, Barbara J. King (2016) (Response) Understanding emotional suffering Animal Sentience 2016.047
Broom, Donald M. (2016) Considering animals? feelings: Précis of Sentience and animal welfare Animal Sentience 2016.005
Chandrasekera, Charukeshi (2016) From sentience to science: Limits of anthropocentric cognition Animal Sentience 2016.048
Clarke, Nancy (2016) Sentience and animal welfare: Affirming the science and addressing the skepticism Animal Sentience 2016.049
Copeland, Marion W. (2016) Life in translation Animal Sentience 2016.050
Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will (2016) Linking animal ethics and animal welfare science Animal Sentience 2016.051
Duncan, Ian J.H. (2016) Is sentience only a nonessential component of animal welfare? Animal Sentience 2016.052
Durham, Debra (2016) The science of sentience is reshaping how we think about animals Animal Sentience 2016.053
Rolle, M.E. (2016) Animal welfare and animal rights Animal Sentience 2016.054
Rowlands, Mark (2016) Mentality and animal welfare Animal Sentience 2016.055
Sammarco, Andrea L. (2016) Is humanitarianism recent? Animal Sentience 2016.056
Broom, Donald M. (2016) (Response) Sentience and animal welfare: New thoughts and controversies Animal Sentience 2016.057
Lachance, Martine (2016) Breaking the silence: The veterinarian?s duty to report Animal Sentience 2016.006
Ng, Yew-Kwang (2016) How welfare biology and commonsense may help to reduce animal suffering Animal Sentience 2016.007