Ground-breaking Open Research Platform, Octopus, to Launch (Jisc, June 24)
“Octopus aims to enable fast, free and fair publishing of research that is open to all and focuses on the intrinsic quality of research. It sets out to avoid researchers being tempted to ‘sell good stories’ in their work, and instead rewards them for rigour and specialism.” Read more
Hijacked-journal Tracker Helps Researchers to Spot Scam Websites (H. Else, Nature News, June 22)
“Hijacked journals — scam websites that impersonate legitimate titles — have duped unsuspecting researchers out of author fees for years. Now, a tool will help researchers to check the validity of titles they are considering before they submit their work. The online spreadsheet, called the Retraction Watch hijacked journal checker, lists more than 150 titles and associated web addresses of allegedly hijacked journals. It has been put together by Anna Abalkina, an economics researcher at the Free University of Berlin, and scientific-misconduct blog Retraction Watch.” Read more