Category: Scholarly Communication Services
Mega Journals 2: Promising or Predatory?
— by Fanny Liu Introduction In the previous post, we discussed major characteristics and the niche of mega journals, such as open access, wider scope, soundness only peer-review and higher acceptance rates. In this post, we will focus on some controversies. Concerns “Soundness-only” peer review: Yet to be defined? Senior executives and editors of mega…
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Mega Journals 1: Inception and Ideal
— by Fanny Liu Introduction Since the establishment of PLOS ONE in 2006, a number of mega journals emerged, such as BMJ Open, IEEE Access, PeerJ, Scientific Reports, and more. While mega journals have secured a niche in scholarly publishing, there are also concerns and controversies. Characteristics Mega journals have some major characteristics (Björk, 2021;…
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Opening the Gates: HKU Authors’ Odyssey in Open Access Publishing
— by Fanny Liu Introduction Similar to last year, this year we present an overview of open access publications by authors from the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Data Source Data were extracted from InCites on 11 February 2025. Publications included documents indexed in InCites Dataset (with ESCI) and with organization name “University of Hong…
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Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 2: HKU Author’s Choice of Creative Commons Licenses
— by Fanny Liu Introduction In the previous post (Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 1: Which Creative Commons License Works the Best for an Author?), we discussed the different Creative Commons licenses and publishers’ licensing agreements. In this post, we will focus on the choices made by HKU (the University of Hong Kong) researchers. Choice…
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Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 1: Which Creative Commons License Works the Best for an Author?
— by Chloe Ng As illustrated in the previous blog post (Open Access in Progress: An Overview of Participation of HKU Authors in Open Access Publishing), more and more HKU authors are publishing their research outputs open access. When an author submits manuscripts to journal publishers, one of the important decisions to make is selecting…
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Flourish: Visualizing Data in an Easy and Engaging Way
— by Vivian Qiu Flourish is an online data visualization tool that can help turn complex datasets into engaging and informative visuals in an easy way. In this blog post, we will introduce what Flourish could do for you, its advantages and how to use it. 1. What is Flourish Flourish empowers users to transform…
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Unmasking and Combating Publishing Malpractices 2: Citation Manipulation
— by Fanny Liu In the previous post (Unmasking and Combating Publishing Malpractices 1: Paper Mills), we discussed publishing malpractices focusing on the issue of paper mills. While traditional fraud and misconduct continue to exist, “post-production” manipulations, i.e., manipulations regarding the publication process and the impact, rather than the content of the publication, come into…
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From Citations to Success: Trend Analysis of HKU Research Performance with Essential Science Indicators 2024
— by Chloe Ng In our previous analyses of the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) research performance using Essential Science Indicators (ESI) data in 2022 and 2023, we highlighted the strong presence of HKU scholars across various disciplines. This blog post will look into the five-year trend of HKU’s research performance, overviewing the change in…
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Unmasking and Combating Publishing Malpractices 1: Paper Mills
— by Fanny Liu Academics are faced with a pressure to consistently and frequently publish research to sustain or advance their careers, which incentivizes quantity over quality. This “publish-or-perish” mentality has brought potential negative impacts to scholarly research, for example unethical publishing behaviour compromising scientific integrity. Misconduct in science is “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in…
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The Evolving Landscape of Open Science: Where are we now?
— by Florence Ng In an age where information flows more freely than ever, the concept of Open Science has emerged as a transformation of scientific research over the past several decades. Open Science is a movement aimed at making the scientific research process and activities, including but not limited to protocols, data, codes and…
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