Not since the printing press has a media object been as celebrated for its role in the advancement of knowledge as the scientific journal. From open communication to peer review, the scientific journal has long been central both to the identity of academic scientists and to the public legitimacy of scientific knowledge. But that was not always the case. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, academies and societies dominated elite study of the natural world. Journals were a relatively marginal feature of this world, and sometimes even an object of outright suspicion. The Scientific Journal tells the story of how that changed. Alex Csiszar takes readers deep into nineteenth-century London and Paris, where savants struggled to reshape scientific life in the light of rapidly changing political mores and the growing importance of the press in public life. The scientific journal did not arise as a natural solution to the problem of communicating scientific discoveries. Rather, as Csiszar shows, its dominance was a hard-won compromise born of political exigencies, shifting epistemic values, intellectual property debates, and the demands of commerce. Many of the tensions and problems that plague scholarly publishing today are rooted in these tangled beginnings. As we seek to make sense of our own moment of intense experimentation in publishing platforms, peer review, and information curation, Csiszar argues powerfully that a better understanding of the journal’s past will be crucial to imagining future forms for the expression and organization of knowledge.

Becoming Metric-Wise: A Bibliometric Guide for Researchers aims to inform researchers about metrics so that they become aware of the evaluative techniques being applied to their scientific output. Understanding these concepts will help them during their funding initiatives, and in hiring and tenure. The book not only describes what indicators do (or are designed to do, which is not always the same thing), but also gives precise mathematical formulae so that indicators can be properly understood and evaluated. Metrics have become a critical issue in science, with widespread international discussion taking place on the subject across scientific journals and organizations. As researchers should know the publication-citation context, the mathematical formulae of indicators being used by evaluating committees and their consequences, and how such indicators might be misused, this book provides an ideal tome on the topic. - Provides researchers with a detailed understanding of bibliometric indicators and their applications - Empowers researchers looking to understand the indicators relevant to their work and careers - Presents an informed and rounded picture of bibliometrics, including the strengths and shortcomings of particular indicators - Supplies the mathematics behind bibliometric indicators so they can be properly understood - Written by authors with longstanding expertise who are considered global leaders in the field of bibliometrics

A Nobel Prize–winning cancer biologist, leader of major scientific institutions, and scientific adviser to President Obama reflects on his remarkable career. A PhD candidate in English literature at Harvard University, Harold Varmus discovered he was drawn instead to medicine and eventually found himself at the forefront of cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco. In this “timely memoir of a remarkable career” (American Scientist), Varmus considers a life’s work that thus far includes not only the groundbreaking research that won him a Nobel Prize but also six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health; his current position as the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and his important, continuing work as scientific adviser to President Obama. From this truly unique perspective, Varmus shares his experiences from the trenches of politicized battlegrounds ranging from budget fights to stem cell research, global health to science publishing.

Provides access to citations of journal articles, books, and dissertations published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, literary theory, dramatic arts, folklore, and film since 1963. Special features include the full text of the original article for some citations and a collection of images consisting of photographs, maps, and flags.

Aimed at academics, academic managers and administrators, professionals in scientometrics, information scientists and science policy makers at all levels. This book reviews the principles, methods and indicators of scientometric evaluation of information processes in science and assessment of the publication activity of individuals, teams, institutes and countries. It provides scientists, science officers, librarians and students with basic and advanced knowledge on evaluative scientometrics. Especially great stress is laid on the methods applicable in practice and on the clarification of quantitative aspects of impact of scientific publications measured by citation indicators. - Written by a highly knowledgeable and well-respected scientist in the field - Provides practical and realistic quantitative methods for evaluating scientific publication activities of individuals, teams, countries and journals - Gives standardized descriptions and classification of the main categories of evaluative scientometrics

Higher Education is in a state of ferment. People are seriously discussing whether the medieval ideal of the university as being excellent in all areas makes sense today, given the number of universities that we have in the world. Student fees are changing the orientation of students to the system. The high rate of non repayment of fees in the UK is provoking difficult questions about whether the current system of funding makes sense. There are disputes about the ratio of research to teaching, and further discussions about the international delivery of courses.

Innovative technologies are changing the way research is performed, preserved, and communicated. Managing Scientific Information and Research Data explores how these technologies are used and provides detailed analysis of the approaches and tools developed to manage scientific information and data. Following an introduction, the book is then divided into 15 chapters discussing the changes in scientific communication; new models of publishing and peer review; ethics in scientific communication; preservation of data; discovery tools; discipline-specific practices of researchers for gathering and using scientific information; academic social networks; bibliographic management tools; information literacy and the information needs of students and researchers; the involvement of academic libraries in eScience and the new opportunities it presents to librarians; and interviews with experts in scientific information and publishing. - Promotes innovative technologies for creating, sharing and managing scientific content - Presents new models of scientific publishing, peer review, and dissemination of information - Serves as a practical guide for researchers, students, and librarians on how to discover, filter, and manage scientific information - Advocates for the adoption of unique author identifiers such as ORCID and ResearcherID - Looks into new tools that make scientific information easy to discover and manage - Shows what eScience is and why it is becoming a priority for academic libraries - Demonstrates how Electronic Laboratory Notebooks can be used to record, store, share, and manage research data - Shows how social media and the new area of Altmetrics increase researchers' visibility and measure attention to their research - Directs to sources for datasets - Provides directions on choosing and using bibliographic management tools - Critically examines the metrics used to evaluate research impact - Aids strategic thinking and informs decision making