Springer has entered into a partnership with Università degli Studi di Palermo to publish a new English-language book series. The UNIPA Springer Series is a unique cooperation that will showcase research from five core disciplines: medicine, biomedicine and life sciences; engineering and physics; mathematics, statistics and computer sciences; business, economics and law; and human, behavioral and social sciences. The topics addressed may come from one specific research field or have a multidisciplinary approach.

UNIPA Springer Series will offer peer-reviewed scientific research in a broad range of publications including monographs, edited volumes, handbooks, advanced textbooks, conference proceedings, professional books and SpringerBriefs. All publications in the series will be available as eBooks on the online platform SpringerLink (link.springer.com) and in print format. The series is managed by an editorial board made up of researchers from the University of Palermo and international key opinion leaders appointed by Springer. Academics from the University of Palermo as well as other universities around the world can publish their work in the series.

Prof. Roberto Lagalla, Rector of the University of Palermo, said: “Partnering with Springer, an expert innovator in publishing, gives our institution a chance to improve the quality of our research. We will have the invaluable opportunity to be more visible at an international level, even in those countries that may have eluded us so far. Furthermore, we will be able to reach more readers through one of the most visited distribution networks on the web. This exposure will also give our researchers the chance to receive more input from the international community, thus stimulating further discussion.”

Francesca Bonadei, Executive Editor, Mathematics and Statistics at Springer, said, “With this partnership, initiated by Springer’s Nicholas Philipson, Editorial Director, Business, Economics and Statistics, we aim to support the university in selecting and promoting the valuable research conducted there by an extended community of scholars, educators and students.”

Antonella Cerri, Executive Editor, Clinical Medicine at Springer, said, “Springer is proud to introduce to the international scientific community this peer-reviewed book series, which will publish across a spectrum of editorial models in research fields developed at the university. This cooperation represents a unique partnership in the Springer portfolio.”

SAGE a leading independent academic and professional publisher today announced the acquisition of two new Science History Journals. History of Science and Journal for the History of Astronomy, formerly published by Science History Publications Ltd, will be published by SAGE as of March 2014.

History of Science, edited by Iwan Rhys Morus, Aberystwyth University, is one of the forerunning journals publishing peer reviewed research on the history of science, medicine and technology. Article topics cover discussions around methodology, and reviews of the current state of knowledge within the discipline. The Journal for the History of Astronomy, edited by Michael Hoskin, University of Cambridge, is the only journal devoted to the history of astronomy. Its articles focus on fields including the history of mathematics and physics and the use of historical records in the service of astronomy. SAGE will also be hosting the archives of both journals back to Volume 1.

“We are delighted to include these two leading titles in our growing portfolio of journals on the history and philosophy of science,” said Karen Phillips, Editorial Director, SAGE. “Over many decades, both journals have published authoritative, high quality material to guide, support and inform researchers within both history of science and astronomy. In an increasingly competitive journals environment, we will ensure the journals continue to grow their readership and impact.

“It is over fifty years since we first published History of Science, which was soon followed by Journal for the History of Astronomy. Science History Publication Ltd was set up as an independent publishing firm to be the home for both of these journals. The editorial teams at both are, however, delighted, to now be passing these journals to SAGE, a publisher whom we know will ensure their long term sustainability and impact within the market”, commented Michael Hoskin, Founding Editor.  “We believe that SAGE shares our commitment to promoting research of the highest quality and supporting access to a wide breadth of information. We look forward to seeing these journals grow and develop a successful future with SAGE.”

The new websites for each journal can be accessed here (History of Science) and here (Journal for the History of Astronomy) respectively.

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of information for businesses and professionals, today announced the launch of its 2014 Academic Reputation Survey. This is the fifth consecutive year of the survey, which is conducted to gain a clearer understanding of the global research landscape and to inform the renowned Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The survey will open on March 3 and run till the submission deadline on April 18.

The survey, which is the largest of its kind, takes a unique approach to data-gathering and analytics by directly engaging more than 300,000 academics and researchers to gain a more accurate view into the institutional research sphere. The respondents are asked to identify the institutions they consider to be the best in terms of research and teaching, in specific regions, as well as globally. Responses form a key building block, along with scholarly output, citation patterns and funding levels, for the Thomson Reuters Global Institutional Profiles database, the industry’s gold-standard resource used to power the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, which are published in October.

Respondents are asked to answer questions in six subject areas: engineering and technology; physical sciences; life sciences; clinical, preclinical and health; social sciences; and, arts and humanities.
To prevent language or translation bias, the survey is offered in nine languages: Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, English, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Spanish.

“We are pleased to continue the Academic Reputation Survey with Times Higher Education and expect to see even more participants this year as awareness of the survey spreads,” said Gordon Macomber, managing director, Thomson Reuters Scientific & Scholarly Research. “This initiative is critical in providing the academic community with an honest, user-based assessment of the global research landscape. It gives academics and researchers the opportunity to highlight what they see as the strongest universities within their fields.”

Thomson Reuters InCitesTM, the company’s customized, web-based research evaluation solution and platform in which Global Institutional Profiles resides, was designed to create data-driven profiles of research-focused universities by combining citation data from the Web of Science, the premier research platform for information in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with information provided by the institutions and scholarly community.
Learn more about the 2014 Academic Reputation Survey, InCites and Web of Science.

SAGE, the global independent scholarly and professional publisher, announced today the acquisition of The Goodwin Group International, LLC, publisher of MD Conference Express®, the first publication to subject medical conference highlights to the rigorous test of peer review.

The acquisition will strengthen SAGE’s ability to disseminate peer-reviewed content in medical disciplines and will complement SAGE’s current portfolio of more than 150 medical journals published on behalf of more than 100 medical societies.

MD Conference Express reports are written entirely from primary source materials, with content selected in partnership with the scientific planning committees of the conferences themselves. The presenting faculty is invited to review and comment on the short summaries, which are then subjected to rigorous peer review by an advisory board of experts from top medical institutions around the world. This process ensures that the resulting summary articles are of top quality and free of any commercial bias. MD Conference Express’ unique approach to conference highlights reporting has earned the trust and collaboration of some of the world’s most important medical societies in both Europe and North America. MD Conference Express consistently delivers evidence-based reporting with peer-reviewed integrity.

Blaise Simqu, President and CEO of SAGE said, “MD Conference Express has developed a unique model for rapid global dissemination of the most important research presented at medical conferences. Their commitment to high-quality peer-reviewed content will be a valuable complement to SAGE’s medical journal portfolio and will allow SAGE to offer medical societies a way to enable research presented at their conferences to quickly inform further research and clinical practice.”

Jennifer Goodwin Schünemann, Founder and President of The Goodwin Group International, said, “As an independent publisher with a commitment to the high-quality dissemination of research, SAGE is the perfect home for MD Conference Express. The backing of SAGE will enable MD Conference Express to expand our offering to include many more conferences, while maintaining the rigorous standards upon which our partner societies, medical researchers, and physicians rely.”

The MD Conference Express publishing program will continue to be lead by Jennifer Goodwin Schünemann from their Woburn, MA office and will be supported by SAGE staff based in the company’s principal offices in Los Angeles, CA, Washington DC, London, Singapore and New Delhi.

More and more academic papers that are essentially gobbledegook are being written by computer programs – and accepted at conferences

Like all the best hoaxes, there was a serious point to be made. Three MIT graduate students wanted to expose how dodgy scientific conferences pestered researchers for papers, and accepted any old rubbish sent in, knowing that academics would stump up the hefty, till-ringing registration fees.

It took only a handful of days. The students wrote a simple computer program that churned out gobbledegook and presented it as an academic paper. They put their names on one of the papers, sent it to a conference, and promptly had it accepted. The sting, in 2005, revealed a farce that lay at the heart of science.

But this is the hoax that keeps on giving. The creators of the automatic nonsense generator, Jeremy Stribling, Dan Aguayo and Maxwell Krohn, have made the SCIgen program free to download. And scientists have been using it in their droves. This week, Nature reported, French researcher Cyril Labbé revealed that 16 gobbledegook papers created by SCIgen had been used by German academic publisher Springer. More than 100 more fake SCIgen papers were published by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Both organisations have now taken steps to remove the papers.

Hoaxes in academia are nothing new. In 1996, mathematician Alan Sokal riled postmodernists by publishing a nonsense paper in the leading US journal, Social Text. It was laden with meaningless phrases but, as Sokal said, it sounded good to them. Other fields have not been immune. In 1964, critics of modern art were wowed by the work of Pierre Brassau, who turned out to be a four-year-old chimpanzee. In a more convoluted case, Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France’s best-known philosophers, was left to ponder his own expertise after quoting the lectures of Jean-Baptiste Botul as evidence that Kant was a fake, only to find out that Botul was the fake, an invention of a French reporter.

Just as the students wrote a quick and dirty program to churn out nonsense papers, so Labbé has written one to spot the papers. He has made it freely available, so publishers and conference organisers have no excuse for accepting nonsense work in future.

Krohn, who has now founded a startup called Keybase.io in New York that provides encryption to programmers, said Labbé’s detective work revealed how deep the problem ran. Academics are under intense pressure to publish, conferences and journals want to turn their papers into profits, and universities want them published. “This ought to be a shock to people,” Krohn said. “There’s this whole academic underground where everyone seems to benefit, but they are wasting time and money and adding nothing to science. The institutions are being ripped off, because they pay publishers huge subscriptions for this stuff.”

Krohn sees an arms race brewing, in which computers churn out ever more convincing papers, while other programs are designed to sniff them out. Does he regret the beast he helped unleash, or is he proud that it is still exposing weaknesses in the world of science? “I’m psyched, it’s so great. These papers are so funny, you read them and can’t help but laugh. They are total bullshit. And I don’t see this going away.”

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia