Self-reliance and a wish to set the agenda might explain concerted push to produce domestic journals. Over the past two decades, China has risen to become the world’s largest producer of scientific knowledge. According to Digital Science’s Dimensions database, last year there were almost 830,000 papers featuring researchers based in China, representing around 15% of […]
publishing
Frontiers’ journals saw large scale retractions—where does that leave the publisher’s reputation with researchers?
Frontiers, like other for-profit open access publishers, has struggled with a perception it has low editorial standards and weak peer review. But is that true? In September 2023 Frontiers—one of the world’s largest open access scientific publishers, with a stable of 230 journals covering just about every field of science—retracted 38 papers. All had been […]
Catching up on open access
A decade ago, Canada was at the forefront of open access publishing. Now critics say those policies are due for a drastic rewrite. The days of the traditional, subscription-based scholarly journal seem to be numbered. Around the world, research funders are adopting ever-more expansive policies requiring the researchers they fund to make the results of […]
Largest-ever study of journal editors highlights ‘self-publication’ and gender gap
Analysis shows that some researchers publish a considerable proportion of their own work in journals they edit. The gender gap among senior journal editors is bigger than many people thought, and some editors publish a surprising number of their own papers in the journals that they edit, finds the first study to look at these […]
The rise of preprints
How COVID-19 has transformed the way we publish and report on scientific research. Peer review, despite its flaws, is one of the most important pillars of the scientific process. So preprint servers, which make scientific papers that have yet to be reviewed or published available online, have been slow to catch on in many fields. […]
Sci-Hub downloads show countries where pirate paper site is most used
Researchers worldwide are accessing papers using the site — but China tops the chart, with more than 25 million downloads over the past month. Download figures for Sci-Hub, the popular but controversial website that hosts pirated copies of scientific papers, reveal where people are using the site most. The statistics show that users accessing Sci-Hub […]
CMAJ drops paywall
Starting today, all new Canadian Medical Association Journal content is now freely available online, with older material becoming available on March 1, 2020. Previously, CMAJ research articles, editorials and news stories were freely available, and other content including commentaries and practice articles were only fully available after one year. Dr. Andreas Laupacis, editor-in-chief of the […]
Envisioning the scientific paper of the future
After years of writing about scientific papers, I’m actually a co-author on one – about the future of the scientific paper. Consider for a moment the rate of advancement in the scientific understanding of DNA. It is formidable; from Fredrich Miescher’s nuclein extraction in the 1860s to Rosalind Franklin’s double helix X-ray in the 1950s […]
Image irregularities found in prominent scientist’s papers
Irregularities have been documented in dozens of research papers by Xuetao Cao, a high-profile Chinese scientist and champion of research integrity. Xuetao Cao, a biomedical engineer, is the president of Nankai University in Tianjin and a former president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. On Nov 13, Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist who dedicates her […]
Laupacis aims to bring patient perspective to CMAJ
Dr. Andreas Laupacis, who will take over as editor in chief of the CMAJ Group of publications on Oct. 7, intends to continue his longstanding push to increase the involvement of patients in health care when he takes up his new post. “I think it is important that the journal also involves patients in helping […]