The first time I flew over the North Atlantic was quite an experience. Through the clouds, I could see some little white boats out sailing in the sea. It was puzzling: from 30,000 feet, those boats must have been huge for me to be able to see them at all.

I have a new article out in the Journal of Data and Information Science (Taylor 2022), on a subject that will be familiar to long-time readers.

Many aspects of scholarly publishing are presently in flux. But for most journals the process of getting a paper published remains essentially the same as decades ago, the main change being that documents are sent electronically rather than by post. It begins with the corresponding author of the paper submitting a manuscript — sometimes, though not often, in response to an invitation from a journal editor.

Embracing identity in Peer Review The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark focus is the importance of both a speedy dissemination of research (something our participation in the C19 Rapid Review Consortium has tried to tackle), and the need to be able to trust the validity of this information.

Two days ago, I wrote about what seemed to be an instance of peer review gone very wrong. I’ve now heard from two of the four authors of the paper and from the reviewer in question — both by email, and in comments on the original post — and it’s apparent that I misinterpreted the situation.

THIS POST IS RETRACTED. The reasons are explained in the next post. I wish I had never posted this, but you can’t undo what is done, especially on the Internet, so I am not deleting it but marking it as retracted. I suggest you don’t bother reading on, but it’s here if you want to.

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Our latest post features Mario Malički, a former visiting scholar and ongoing collaborator at the ScholCommLab.

A month after I and Matt published our paper “Why is vertebral pneumaticity in sauropod dinosaurs so variable?” at Qeios , we were bemoaning how difficult it was to get anyone to review it. But what a difference the last nineteen days have made!

Today marks the one-month anniversary of my and Matt’s paper in Qeios about why vertebral pneumaticity in sauropods is so variable. (Taylor and Wedel 2021). We were intrigued to publish on this new platform that supports post-publication peer-review, partly just to see what happened.

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a while, about my changing ideas about scholarly publishing. On one hand, it’s hard to believe now that the Academic Spring was almost a decade ago.