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Potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers

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There is a lot to keep in mind when deciding where to publish and it takes time to investigate individual journals and explore their websites. Not everyone considers the same things as important to them. For some it is about a journal’s prestige while for others it is about the audience that they can reach or about ensuring that their work is open access and available freely to all.

Unfortunately, there are publishers out there that are less than honest and provide false or misleading information about who they are and the impact that they have on a field. There are also publishers with hidden fees that send out invoices to authors after publishing their papers. These are commonly referred to as predatory publishers and they have fooled many a researcher.

One site that can help is Beall’s List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publishers. Jeffrey Beall uses a set of criteria to create this list that makes a lot of sense. I urge you to take a close look at these publishers before deciding to send them your work.

Cited reference analysis

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When it comes to evaluating scientific papers, citation counts are mentioned more often than not. A paper can be cited for a variety of reasons but it is generally agreed that citations are one of many indicators of impact. There are a number of resources that are either free or subscribed to by the Library for looking up citing references, such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science.

The authors of The Wisdom of Citing Scientists discuss the limitations of citing references for assessing the usefulness of papers. For example, one cannot assume that a paper with few citations has been widely read and critiqued. It is possible that the paper was not found by others or that it did have some influence on future writings. They argue that cited references in a paper tell a more complete story, revealing a scientist’s preference for particular journals and theoretical approaches, and his/her ability to identify relevant, current, and high quality publications. As librarians we are always stressing the importance of examining the reference list of a paper so it was quite nice to see this articulated.

Google Scholar includes WoS citations

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GoogleScholar_Turret_Sept6_2013

The “Cited by” option in Google Scholar now includes a link to citations in Web of Science. Take a look under the reference to the article in this screen shot. Google found 7289 citations from all sorts of items on the web, but also links to the 701 citing articles in the multidisciplinary database, Web of Science. I was using Google Scholar today to send references over to EndNote but this is a nice new feature that I will be sure to explore further.

Intro to physics online – lab included

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There are any number of free introductory science courses available as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). This one, however, is the first that I’ve seen that includes a laboratory component. It looks like all that you need to participate in Introductory Physics with Laboratory from Coursera is a smartphone with a camera or a webcam to capture video. They will provide the open source software for analyses.

Let me know if you give it a go.

Science meets wizardry

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Universal

Last April I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal in Orlando. I have to admit, it was pretty neat. Now, thanks to Google and Warner Brothers Studios in Hertfordshire, everyone is welcome to Diagon Alley on Google Maps. How cool is this for Harry Potter fans?

If you have ever thought about making your own custom maps take some time to explore Google Maps and Google Earth tutorials. That is, after you have spent some time exploring the virtual exhibits in Diagon Alley. Just drag the street view symbol (little person) onto the map and away you go!

1000000000000000 bytes

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Who doesn’t love Internet Archive? I am a big user of the Wayback Machine, where they are capturing and archiving websites back to 1996. Take some time to explore thier site and you will certainly find something in the audio, video, or text archive (they recently hit 10 petabytes). For example, I have been listening to a radio mystery series called Mr. and Mrs. North that aired on CBS from 1942 to 1954. What I didn’t realize about Internet Archive is that they are collecting print books with the goal of archiving one copy of every book ever printed – watch this video – it will blow your mind.

Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo.

Particle physics videos from TEDxCERN

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Two guys walk into a bar – they just happen to be CERN scientists and they can help explain Higgs boson excitation of the Higgs field.  This particle physics video is one of a series of five videos from TEDxCERN. Waltch all five on the TED blog for a little on the birth of the universe, the history of the web and big data, dark matter, and antimatter.

Google Scholar Metrics

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We have blogged in the past about metrics for measuring impact, such as the well known Journal Impact Factor, and more recently Altmetric, so I thought that I would bring your attention to Google’s lists of top publications. As part of the Google Scholar Metrics offerings they have rankings of the top 100 publications in several languages.

Google has added categories and subcategories for the English language rankings, so now you can look up the top publications in, for example, Geophysics in the Physics & Mathematics category, or Robotics in the Engineering & Computer Science Category.

The usual suspects are there in the list, like Science, Cell, Nature, Physical Review Letters, but you may find some interesting results. How amazing is it that arXiv (open access e-prints in physics, mathematics, computer science) is frequently listed by the separate subject areas?

Happy Monday!

Altmetric for Scopus

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AltmetricForScopus

The next time that you find an article of interest in the Scopus database, click on the title and look for this Altmetric for Scopus box. The article will get a score, based on how much attention or buzz it is getting online. For example, this article was mentioned by 18 tweeters and was saved by seven individuals to their Mendeley references. You can read the tweets and see how many of them are coming from the general public, versus scientists, practitioners, or journalists and bloggers. The app will also tell you how the article ranks and if the Altmetric score is good compared to other articles that came out around the same time and from the same journal. Alternative metrics like these are great for going beyond the standard citation count, h-index, or journal impact factor, and can provide some realtime feedback.