By Bertil F. Dorch og Charlotte Wien

The purpose of the peer review is to ensure that nothing that does not have sufficient scientific quality finds its way into the columns of the scientific journals. The peer review process found this form around 1950, and so far only a single of Albert Einstein's more than 300 scientific works underwent peer review (which made him complain to the editor)[In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien

Are you in the mood for procrastinating and in need for some publications for your CV? Then we have a - not very recommendable - but easy and quick recipe. [In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien & Jon Tennant

The scientific publishers have become a para-academic money machine that not only milks research for billions, but also promotes questionable research practices. How did it go so wrong? [In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien & Asger Væring Larsen

Our peer reviewer was thrilled. He called our article 'excellent' and gave it top marks for originality, described it as 'a significant contribution to the field of research', praised it for its clarity and for the deep insight into the research field that the text reflected. However, one cannot fully understand the reviewer's enthusiasm when considering the content the article. [In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien & Bertil F. Dorch

The Danish Research and Education Libraries pay each year, in the nearly 40.000.000 Euro to what one could call a "para-academic industry" for access to the scientific literature and for data on research production. Our mother institutions - the universities – probably pays even more to these companies: First, they pay the salaries and operating expenses for the researchers enabling them to produce scientific literature, which they then give free of charge to the scientific publishers. [In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien and Kjeld Møller Pedersen

A counting-weighing regime has been established at the universities. It almost encourages ethically questionable optimization strategies for researchers, it undermines the integrity of research, and it is taking place increasingly. We hope that this heralds a much needed paradigm shift in academia. A shift where the overly simplified quantitative methods used for calculating the quantity and quality of research which has gained more and more momentum in the academic world over the last 15-20 years are abandoned. Because it remains a fact that the value of a researcher cannot be measured solely on the number of publications and citations. [In danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Asger Væring Larsen

It’s known that a lot of money is being spent on APC’s – or Article Processing Charges. Often it is the author who pays through grants or the funding comes from the universities. But how much money are we talking about? We simply don’t know, and we cannot know until the expenses for APC’s are recorded and reported in a systematic way. Several projects have tried to estimate the magnitude, but these are hand held and not scalable or repeatable on an annual basis. We need agreements with the publishers that ensures transparency of the flow of money from universities and researchers to the publishers. [In Danish] … Continue reading Continue reading →

By Charlotte Wien & Bertil F. Dorch

It was a bit of a hand grenade that the French research minister Madame Minister Frederique Vidal threw into the' letter box' of the research world at the opening of this year's European Research Library Conference, announcing that she had allocated approximately 113 billion DKK to revolutionize the assessment criteria for French researchers and ensure that all French research is made free and available free of charge. It sounds a lot of money, but is very reasonable because investment can be quickly re-enrolled and create better correlation between universities management and individual researchers goals.[In Danish]
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By Charlotte Wien & Kjeld Møller Pedersen

The number of authors on scientific papers are booming. The record is now 5,154 authors behind one article. Rumor has it, that some scientists are optimizing their own performance through systematic negotiations of authorship​s. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes less fortunate – but one thing​ is sure: As a researcher you need many journal articles and citations on your CV in order to survive.[In Danish]
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