It’s a phrase often heard at the end of a meeting: what are our next steps? When I worked as a web editor and project manager we called them action items (which is, admittedly, corporate jargon, but also makes them sound kind of fun). What does each person at the meeting need to do to [...]

Yesterday I was flabbergasted to read about the Research Works Act (hat tip to @CopyrightLibn and @RepoRat), legislation which is strongly supported by the Association of American Publishers. As described on the AAP website: The Research Works Act will prohibit federal agencies from unauthorized free public dissemination of journal articles that report on research which, [...]

It was shocking at the end of April when The Scientist reported that Elsevier had published a scholarly-journal-like series that was actually advertising paid for by Merck. The peer-reviewed-like articles in the journal-like object were either reprints or summaries of articles that reported results favorable to Merck drugs. There were also “review” articles that had [...]