Accommodating coercion: Authors, editors, and citations
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733323000380
ABSTRACT: Some editors try to artificially inflate their journals' citation count by coercing authors, telling them to add citations referencing their journal even though the review process did not identify any bibliographical shortcomings. However, coercing authors for citations does not, by itself, inflate a journal's citation count; for coercion to be effective, authors must comply with the editor's demands and add those superfluous citations.
In this study, we suggest that editors might use their publication authority to sort by or motivate compliance by accepting manuscripts of authors who acquiesce and rejecting studies by those who do not. Data was collected by conducting a survey of academics and includes responses of over 1000 scholars who have been coerced, our results suggest that acquiescence is positively associated with the publication decision, authors who added the coerced citations report significantly greater publication success than those who resist.
In addition, we find that authors who acquiesce to coercion also report being more likely to submit to coercive journals in the future and to add superfluous, journal-specific citations before submitting manuscripts. We close with a brief discussion about the ethics of coercion and policy changes that can help reduce these abuses... (
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Papers that get more media coverage ‘less likely to replicate’
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/papers-get-more-media-coverage-less-likely-replicate
INTRO: The more media coverage that an academic paper gets, the less likely its findings are to be successfully replicated, according to a study focused on psychology scholarship.
The
study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 30 January, says that ideally “media should cover credible and rigorous research. Yet in reality, the mainstream media tends to highlight research that finds surprising, counterintuitive results.”
“Media attention and replication success are negatively correlated,” it concludes... (
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Leaked: EU member states set out to reform scientific publishing
https://sciencebusiness.net/news/Un...r-states-set-out-reform-scientific-publishing
INTRO: EU countries want to ensure the scientific publishing industry is fair and sustainable as it moves towards
open access models, according to the first draft of council conclusions seen by Science|Business.
EU governments are working on a joint statement on the future of open access publishing, to be adopted under the current six-month Swedish presidency of the Council of member states. The conclusions are calling for immediate and unrestricted open access publishing to be “the default mode in publishing, with no fees for authors.”
The EU has been pushing open access policy for years through various initiatives and political statements, and it’s made a lot of headway... (
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