PubTech Radar Scan: Issue 2
A weekly[ish] summary of all things Academic Publishing Tech with occasional sprinklings of Open Science developments, Marketing Tech and Journalism Tech.
Peer review
Emerald Publishing is piloting a crowd review process with Filestage to enhance the peer review process and improve the quality and speed of publishing. SYNLETT have been using a similar process for a number of years [video explainer here].
Flaminio Squazzoni et al. want the academic publishing community to work together to build infrastructure and share data that will allow scholars to study peer review processes.
Search
Google has launched a new structured data element for image license metadata that will allow Google Images to show a licensable image label in the search results. Search Engine Land has a good summary of this new metadata framework.
CORE has done a tremendous bit of work to integrate various external databases. This work allows researchers to find connected records in one or more institutional repositories, Crossref, ORCID, Microsoft Academic Graph and other available datasets when applicable.
Christine Stohn and Alex Humphreys have shared their slides about the future of search and discovery online from #NISOPlus20. The slides showcase the fascinating work being done by JSTOR Labs and Ex Libris to help researchers search for non-textual content .
Dynamic paywalls and access control
Digital Science’s Dimensions, Papers, Figshare and Symplectic have announced that they are among the first scholarly platforms to implement the new Get Full Text Research (GetFTR) service (effectively a kind of dynamic paywall).
Journalism.co.uk has a piece on how Deep BI are using algorithms to predict subscription cancellation and keep readers engaged using dynamic paywalls. “"We are using a machine learning-based propensity score that looks at recency, frequency and volume, as well as up to 100 other indicators," said Góra, explaining that volume means both the number of articles read and the time spent engaging with the content.”
Zendy, which aims to provide individuals with the easiest possible access to relevant and trusted academic literature and make access to paid content affordable has launched in the United Arab Emirates.
A new startup, Cala, is aiming to create Classpass for access to academic journals at a single affordable price.
Penn State University has launched a new mobile app which provides single sign-on access to the learning management system, e-mail, shuttle bus tracking, campus maps, grades, class schedules, tuition bills, library services. These apps may become very powerful gatekeepers to all academic services in the future.
Other developments
According to Research Information Nick Fowler and Steven Inchcoombe have set up something called the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative. SNIS will bring publishers and institutions together to solve cyber challenges threatening the integrity of the scientific record, scholarly systems and the safety of personal data. “The group will explore, for example, how the dangers related to Sci-Hub use can be included in information literacy and other library outreach programs.”
Scholarly ran an experiment with Future Science Group to find out if summarisation tech can help authors draft their manuscripts. Mixed results but it’s early days for this kind of technology.
Tomáš Foltýnek et al. have published a preprint reviewing the performance of 15 plagiarism checking services.
The new issue of the JournalismAI newsletter has been published. It includes a video of a talk about AI technologies at UK venture firm Hambro Perks which includes a section by Polis director Charlie Beckett about the impact of AI on news media. Many similarities between News Publishing and Academic Publishing here. [Sign up for the JournalismAI newsletter here].
Nieman Reports looks at how the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Danish digital magazine Zetland and others are using narrated articles to complement text and podcasts and retain subscribers. I’ve seen a few experiments from publishers using this kind of tech for journal articles but it’s not mainstream yet. I’ve also heard plenty of anecdotal evidence about students/researchers using text-to-speech conversation software to listen to articles in the gym or whilst commuting so there may well be some opportunities for publishers here.
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