Cabells today launches this new blog site, The Source, which brings the original posts and news coverage from our popular bi-weekly newsletter to a wider audience. Simon Linacre introduces the new site along with some wider thoughts on scholarly communications.
Earlier this week I attended the annual Research 2 Reader Conference, which has earned somewhat of a reputation in recent years for, as one delegate put it, “emitting more light than heat.” R2R, as it has become known, aims to use the judicious mix of publishers, librarians and scholarly communication bodies that attend to try and move many of the conversations forward that often become bogged down in the rhetoric and corporate-speak that blight so many other events.
True to their mission, the organizers did well to focus minds on the two big discussion points of the day in Plan S and Sci-Hub. Inviting Science Europe’s Marc Schlitz, one of the key people involved in progressing Plan S, to give the opening keynote ensured plenty of coverage on the first day through the usual social media channels. Later, two willing volunteers tried to pull apart the moral conundrum that is Sci-Hub and its use by debating mano-a-mano whether it did more harm than good for scholarly communications. (Good won by a nose on the votes.)
Communicating what?
What struck me during the event was that, as with other major debates such as Brexit or climate change, the communication is done most effectively in the ‘bubble’ in which the debating parties exist, with little or no apparent engagement from the people that the matters at hand actually impact? For both Plan S and Sci-Hub, the views and narrative from the perspectives of academics, authors, early career scholars, and editors are drowned out by the ‘professionals’ in scholarly communication.
And so, beginning today, we are going to try and change things.
Welcome to the first blog published directed to our new, dedicated blog page designed to represent the different views and voices of those in the trenches of scholarly communications. Many of you will have received our newsletter The Source every two weeks, and this will continue to share curated news from multiple sources around the world about academic publishing and higher education. However, to develop engagement with our readers and highlight their interests and concerns, we have established this blog and hope to add real color to the debates around such issues as Plan S.
New era
In addition to regular blog posts from myself, colleagues and invited guests, we will also be including:
- highlights of related research Cabells has undertaken or supported
- details of ongoing news and activities through our dedicated Twitter account
- access to a rapidly growing set of free resources aimed at improving best practice in research, publishing and scholarly communications in general.
Since its founding over 40 years ago, Cabells services have grown to include both the Journal Whitelist and Journal Blacklist, manuscript preparation tools, and a suite of powerful metrics designed to help its users find the right journals, no matter the stage of their career. Our new blog has been put together with your needs front and center, and we invite you to get onto the comment section and let us know what you are thinking!
P.S. If you would rather comment directly, please feel free to email me at simon.linacre@cabells.com and hopefully we can start to create some interesting new posts.
For more information about Cabells, visit https://www2.cabells.com/.
