From: "Scott-Lichter, Diane" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2012 13:34:05 -0400

E-book formats are a mess – who says so?– latest issue of Learned
Publishing now out

www.learned-publishing.org

Thad McIlroy, that’s who. And he should know. In case you thought EPUB
3.0 solved it all at a stroke (or have no idea what I’m talking
about), do check out his trenchant opinion piece in the October issue
and see whether you agree. Amazon do get a bit of a kicking – but they
are big boys and girls, and I’m sure can take it.

Somewhat related, if you are one of those knowing that making your
‘stuff’ available on mobiles is important, but either don’t know how
to start or whether you are doing it the right way, another opinion
piece by Charlie Rapple can give you some pointers and help avoid some
traps in thinking for the unwary. If, instead or as well, generally
revamping your website is important to you, then David Payne and
Daniel Berhane’s case study on the use of the Drupal content
management system for the BMJ could also prove useful – 6 million page
views and 1.5 million unique visitors a month are a few more than they
get at ALPSP or even Learned Publishing, but we can hope, and the
issues are not just those of scale or volume.

We always like to have something on the naughty parts of publishing,
especially if it’s not publishers who are at fault – this time we have
a pretty large study on plagiarism, not, as we’ve had a lot in the
past, about the basic detection, but on what view you take of it? That
is, for example, say you detect some duplication between papers, how
much is acceptable with or without attribution? Helen Zhang and
Xiaoyan Jia have conducted a global (both Anglophone and
non-Anglophone) study to see what journals actually do – you’ll find
some interesting differences in attitudes and approach, particularly
between stm and humanities and social sciences – but of course I’m not
going to tell you what they are.  One crucial component is knowing who
the author is or purports to be (and more on that in our next issue!)
– but for many other reasons too it’s good to be able to identify and
track authorship – and that’s where the project ORCID (acronym
explained in the text of course, but do note that there’s no ‘H’)
comes in, in an article by five authors led by Laurel Hank – (so I’ll
no longer be able to claim credit for all those biochemistry papers
written by my namesake) – its core mission is to provide  unique and
persistent identifiers, where individuals own their own record.

Peer review is another perennial favourite for us, and we have another
Chinese author whose paper extends beyond China (unusual but very
welcome), where Xiangyi Zhang takes a fairly straightforward look at
any differences in response between Chinese and non-Chinese reviewers
– results are perhaps not what you would expect…

Two more meaty research articles which help inform the readership
about different aspects of the whole publishing process. First, those
two great luminaries of measurement of what researchers actually do,
Carol Tenopir and Donald King,  this time aided and abetted by Rachel
Volentine, have looked at article and book reading patterns in six UK
universities – but of course with all the series data that they have
from previous studies they can track and compare this over time and
over national boundaries – they do all that and try to draw out some
points for publishers. Then we have one of our rather rare items from
the library world. We all know about COUNTER, and how it is used to
measure and judge serial usage, but perhaps not on how much it is
employed in France? Well, now you can find out in Cherifa
Boukacem-Zegmouri and Joachim Schopfel’s  piece – would you be
surprised to learn that many French ‘vendors’ (to use the library
term) don’t provide usage statistics?

In this review of the contents we started with a ‘trenchant’ piece by
Thad. In amongst the book reviews which come at the end (always free
to access, as is the editorial), you’ll find something equally
trenchant from Dave Nicholas who takes a look at 2 books from the
library and information world, partly to see if and how they do
comprehend the wider domain in which they sit….

Lastly, a mention for the editorial from my co-editor Diane
Scott-Lichter, obviously a Paul Simon fan – not sure I should call her
Still Crazy After all These Years, but she’s certainly valuable –
you’ll need to check her piece out if you want to find out what she’s
saying and what I could possibly mean.

See you again in three months.

Alan Singleton
Editor-in-Chief, Learned Publishing

---------------------------------

Learned Publishing Volume 25 No 4 October 2012
www.learned-publishing.org

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