Category Archives: Uncategorized

Richard van Noorden has an important report http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763 Two science publishers have withdrawn more than 120 papers after a researcher in France identified them as computer-generated. According to Nature News, 16 fraudulent papers appeared in publications from Germany-based Springer, and more … Continue reading →

After my recent post on MDPI there has been a flurry of comments on this blog and I have also received a few private mails. Some are accusatory either of me or other correspondents. To clarify my position: I have … Continue reading →

In the next few posts I shall address some common myths about Content Mining (TDM). Many are implicitly or explicitly put to by Toll-Access Publishers (TAPublishers). The most serious myth is that it’s not important. Actually it’s important to everyone. … Continue reading →

Several commenters have asked whether the software we write is Open? YES ALL OF IT UPDATED DAILY All our software is aggressively Open Source or Free, written with a primary purpose of making information universally free. I call it LIBERATION … Continue reading →

I intend to submit the following Freedom Of Information request to the 26 leading UK universities (“Russell Group”). The excellent http://whatdotheyknow.com makes this very easy as it gives the addresses and actually sends the request.  The Universities have to answer … Continue reading →

I have just seen Jeffrey Beall’s “analysis” of MDPI http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/18/chinese-publishner-mdpi-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers/#more-3072 and wish to respond immediately. I will not respond to all Beall’s criticisms. Beall has set up a site where he lists questionable (aka predatory) Open Access publishers who have … Continue reading →

Andy Howlett and Mark Williamson in our group have been developing fantastic software. It can read the whole scientific literature and analyse it in minute detail. One of the things we are starting with is chemistry. ChemVisitor (part of AMI2) … Continue reading →

I used to live on the edge of the Somerset levels and as boy cycle throughout them… see image from Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) I am including in full a post from an OKFN list [after these paragraphs] , inviting people to … Continue reading →

Richard Smith (http://blahah.net/about.html ) has posted a very brave piece about how to create a revolution to change the process of scholarly publishing. http://blahah.net/2014/02/11/knowledge-sets-us-free/. Before I start, I know Richard and when unembargoed will enthusiastically blog his ideas about a marketplace … Continue reading →

[Note I have switched laptops and this has caused delay – also I cannot yet do formatting]. Earlier this week I strongly criticised Nature News and Richard van Noorden (/pmr/2014/02/10/natures-recent-news-article-on-text-and-data-mining-was-an-unacceptable-marketing-exercise-i-ask-them-to-renounce-licensing/) for a post about Elsevier’s click-through licences. My concern was … Continue reading →