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Duncan A. MacRae

Duncan A. MacRae's Blog (7)

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Congratulations! Your manuscript has been rejected.

Has there ever been a moment in history when publication rejection was so easy to stomach? Have authors ever been presented with so many attractive alternatives to having their work appear in an established publication? As a regular part of promoting my publishing consultancy, I write opinion pieces and submit them to various journals. It’s not a weekly or even monthly endeavor, but it has provided an opportunity to not only communicate to potential clients, but perhaps more importantly, to exp… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on June 17, 2009 at 2:04pm — No Comments

Limited participation: the Achilles Heel of social media models?

In the past few weeks, several stories have emerged in the MSM regarding the limited participation of users in some forms of online social media. As anyone who has stood before a roomful of people and asked for a "show of hands" can tell you, only a select number of people are confident enough to draw attention to themselves. And it seems that online social media is not exempt from that phenomenon. Last month I… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on June 9, 2009 at 5:17pm — No Comments

The Twitter peer review may be coming. Will quality fall victim to brevity?

Several articles over the past month have commented on the application of Twitter to the peer review process. The advantages being instantaneous feedback and brevity. On Martin Fenner's blog, the tone was one of both inevitability and enthusiasm--neither of which I share. Since when is brevity, or for that matter speed, the goal of the peer review process? It may be the hallmark of our… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on June 4, 2009 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

Will on demand publishing eliminate the 'edition' nomenclature?

On demand publishing has great promise for self-publishing societies, in particular those that have found the high cost of initial inventory a potential roadblock. Traditionally, titles would be republished as new editions as new information demanded a significant update to the existing version. In the interim, there was a movement towards supplemental material being distributed via CD-ROM (then online u… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on June 2, 2009 at 4:50pm — No Comments

Online publishing and the value of user comments

Rich Apodaca posts an interesting piece on the Depth First blog regarding the use of reader feedback in scientific publishing. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) allows readers to directly comment on individual articles as part of their open access initiative, and a recent study by Nascent categorizes the nature of those comments. I'm always interested in the success or failure of initiatives that rely heavily upon the participation of the audience. Part of the article discussion examines the… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on May 28, 2009 at 2:37pm — No Comments

Free content is “completely and blindly idiotic”

An AP article illustrates that some publishers may be coming to their senses when it comes to rejecting the free-distribution model that has dominated the Internet landscape. The killer quote:
"To just give it all away on a Web site is completely and blindly idiotic."
As it applies to STM publishing, this thinking will have to prevail if highly-specialized publi… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on May 26, 2009 at 2:33pm — 3 Comments

Finding the right incentives for reviewers

Reading the Times Higher Education article on the struggles of finding expert reviewers for grant proposals brings to mind the same old problems facing academic publications and managing editors. "We are teetering on the brink of the system breaking down," said Nigel Brown, former director of science and technology at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and now vice-p… Continue

Added by Duncan A. MacRae on May 25, 2009 at 10:20am — No Comments

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