Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, Before we kick off another bumper issue I want to quickly revisit the lead story from last week: the discussion of the subscribe-to-open (S2O) model. Last week I said that EDP Sciences “would cease S2O on one of its journals” and linked through to a 2023 press release. However, I hadn’t clocked that in June 2024 the same journal, Radioprotection, announced that it was moving back to S2O. This might suggest that the S2O model worked as...
8 days ago • 17 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, I’ve recently returned from my summer vacation; in this week’s newsletter I’ve tried to summarise the key news stories and opinion pieces from the past 3 weeks. If you’ve been away too, hopefully it will help you to catch up. The newsletter has two new sponsors: ChronosHub and Origin Editorial. I’m able to spend time creating this newsletter because of the sponsors’ financial support, for which I'm very grateful. Thank you to our sponsor,...
15 days ago • 16 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, Those of us living in the northern hemisphere are now firmly into the summer holiday season. You’re receiving this email earlier than usual because my family and I are about to head off on vacation. You won’t hear from me for a while. If you get Journalology withdrawal symptoms, you can always browse the archives. Thank you to our sponsor, Digital Science Writefull uses AI to automate publishers’ language-related tasks and make these...
about 1 month ago • 11 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, I started off last week’s newsletter with a comparison of the volume of research articles published in the first halves of 2023 and 2024. There were a couple of things that didn't feel quite right to me and with the help of a Journalology reader I dug a bit deeper. Last week I wrote: IEEE Access has dropped by 34% too, for reasons that I don’t understand. My former Nature colleague downloaded the raw data file and found that the...
about 1 month ago • 14 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, We’re now firmly in the second half of 2024; I wanted to take stock and assess what’s happened, at a macro level, in the first six months of this year. This was prompted, in part, by a LinkedIn post this week by another consultant, Rob Johnson. He posed some questions that I didn't know the answer to, so I did some digging. I used Dimensions (Digital Science) to search for research articles published in the first 6 months of this year (H1...
about 2 months ago • 15 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, This newsletter is nearly 2 years old now and, as a result, I’ve been revisiting topics that recur every year. In issue 34 I covered the 2022 Springer Nature annual report. In today’s newsletter I delve into the 2023 report. It’s rare to read an annual report from an organisation (any organisation) that doesn't contain spin, and the Springer Nature report is no different. However, there are some interesting nuggets in there that I’ve...
about 2 months ago • 14 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, This week’s newsletter discusses Wiley’s new(ish) CEO (and his remuneration package), flat fee institutional models, and whether big brand journals harm research. I also assess the potential for MDPI’s new journal, Pets. So there’s lots to look forward to, but first a message from this week’s sponsor. Thank you to our sponsor, Digital Science Exciting news from Digital Science! We are proud to announce the launch of the Altmetric Journal...
2 months ago • 15 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, On July 4th UK citizens voted for a change of government and made a lawyer from a working-class background Prime Minister. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, our US friends celebrated kicking the Brits out so they could make their own electoral decisions, while worrying what might happen if a billionaire with a criminal record gets re-elected. Today, French citizens are voting in a pivotal election that’s being observed closely...
2 months ago • 15 min read
Subscribe to newsletter Hello fellow journalologists, Last week I wrote about the problems that indexers face when dealing with journals that don’t make binary reject / accept editorial decisions, such as eLife. A representative from Clarivate gently reminded me that the 2023 impact factors (which were announced a week or so ago) are based on papers published in 2021 and 2022. Since eLife started its new editorial model in 2023, the latest impact factor reflects papers accepted under the...
3 months ago • 14 min read