Researchers and those in academia sooner or later come across the scientific editor: the gatekeeper of scientific journals. The editor plays a key role in the publishing process, working closely with authors and reviewers to implement an unbiased peer-review process that upholds rigorous standards. They are often experienced scientists and experts in their field who ensure that the published resea ...[Read More]
Elisabeth Bik is as brave as they come. She has been threatened personally and professionally by people she’s never met, only because she dares to critique some of the most widely read and published scientific papers in the world. The Dutch microbiologist discovered her unique skill of spotting – manually, with her naked eye – plagiarized text and fabricated images that otherwise go unnoticed in p ...[Read More]
If you are a scientist you probably know the value of a good, well designed image. The right graph or diagram can help the reader to really grasp the meaning of a complicated theory or process, help to illuminate a critical piece of data, or highlight a key finding. But whilst much advice exists about how to create effective, accessible images, what about photographs? In our early training, ...[Read More]
Earlier this week EGU’s Policy Officer, Chloe Hill was lucky enough to sit down with one of the many advocates for Open Access publishing on EGU’s Publications Committee: Ulrich Pöschl. Whilst all the members of our Publications Committee are fully committed to making EGU’s journals accessible and open, Ulrich has a unique perspective on this, as he is also the initiator and co-c ...[Read More]
Contemporary science faces many challenges in publishing results that are reproducible. This is due to increased usage of data and digital technologies as well as heightened demands for scholarly communication. These challenges have led to widespread calls for more research transparency, accessibility, and reproducibility from the science community. This article presents current findings and solut ...[Read More]
Open access publishing has become common practice in the science community. In this guest post, David Fernández-Blanco, a contributor to the EGU Tectonics and Structural Geology Division blog, presents one facet of open access that is changing the publishing system for many geoscientists: preprints. Open access initiatives confronting the publishing system The idea of open access publishing and fr ...[Read More]
Scientific research is no doubt enriched by interdisciplinarity and collaborations which cross borders. This, combined with the scarcity of academic positions and the need to further ones horizons by experiencing varied research environments, leads many scientists to relocate (if only on a short term basis) to a country which is not their own. In today’s post, freelance science writer Rober ...[Read More]
Editors of scientific journals play an important role in the process research publication. They act as the midpoint between authors and reviewers, and set the direction of a given journal. However, for an early career scientist like me (I only defended my PhD in early December 2016) the intricacies of editorial work remained somewhat mysterious. Many academic journals tend to appoint established, ...[Read More]
In this guest blog post, Nick Arndt, Professor at the Institut des Sciences de la Terre, Grenoble University, reflects on the pressures on academics to publish more and more papers, and whether the current scientific output is sustainable. Imagine a highly productive car factory. Thousands of vehicles are built and each is tested as it leaves the factory; then it is stored in an enormous parking l ...[Read More]