Stories by Bonnie Swoger

The editors at Scientific American have decided to go in another direction with their blog network. As a result, our Information Culture blog will no longer be hosted on this network.

News articles about scientific research often have misleading headlines meant to grab readers. News articles about scientific publishing are rarely subject to the same forces simply because relatively few people are interested.

A few days ago, we learned that another spoof paper (PDF) had been accepted to an ostensibly peer reviewed journal. The paper was a simple repetition of the words "Get me off your f***ing mailing list" for 10 pages, complete with section headings and appropriate figures.

While the switch from print to digital publishing has been embraced by younger researchers and students, older faculty are a little more nervous about the impact of this (nearly complete) transition.

I have systems set up to help me keep track of most of my personal information (files, images, etc.). Sometimes, these systems break down, especially when I get busy or overwhelmed.

The modern scholarly publication system serves as the primary means of communicating scientific results, typically through peer-reviewed articles.

While there has been some high quality news reporting about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it is also easy to find vague, misleading or erroneous information about the disease and the outbreak.

In an information-rich age, one of my main functions as a librarian isn't helping people find material, but helping them evaluate the material they find.

My recent post about specialized dictionaries got me thinking about the fun books and sites I have encountered about words and language. I thought I would share a slightly off-topic post about my geeky love for words and language.

I used to keep a small dictionary in my bedside table, another in the end table near the couch, one on my home office desk and another on my desk at work.

This summer, scholars will use the break from teaching to submit manuscripts, review papers and develop new ideas. But even as the major functions of scholarly publishing march on, scholars, publishers and librarians start to ask, "What does the future of the scholarly journal look like?" Perhaps we should be asking a different question.

While librarians at many academic institutions are considered faculty, many of them are also 12 month employees: we don't get the summer off.

In the US, most colleges and universities will be finishing up spring classes about now, and final projects are coming due. The Works Cited section of a paper is typically left until last, and students often underestimate how much time it will take to put one together.

Scholarly scientific publishing has a lot of traditions that are not transparent to the reader such as peer review or the non-payment of authors.

Over the past couple of days, I have been reviewing some citations for student projects.  Several of the students submitted citations in which they expressed confusion over what page numbers to include.

Last week, I was asked by an acquisitions editor at a publishing company to review a 2 page proposal for a new reference work that would be available in print and electronically.

In the early days of scientific societies (i.e. the 17th century), scientists would share their experimental results with each other at meetings, and receive feedback about their experiments in person.

Scholarly scientific publications have a pretty standard structure: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References.

When I tell people I am a librarian, they automatically think they understand how I spend my day: they imagine a lot of book stamps, telling people to be quiet, and having time to read.

Last month, I mentioned that authors posting copies of their articles online need to think about two big questions in order to determine whether they are acting in accordance with a copyright transfer agreement or publishing contract: What version of your article do you want to post online?

Yesterday afternoon, I spent some time in the stacks of my library looking for books to remove from our collection. The euphemisms used to describe this process make me laugh: librarians weed books from their collections or deselect them.

Recently, Elsevier has come under fire for exercising it’s rights under copyright law by asking various platforms to remove copies of articles published in its journals.

That’s the question researchers are asking after Elsevier’s latest PR debacle. It’s generally not a good idea to piss off the people who give you their time, effort and intellectual property for free.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the USA, a time to be thankful for, well, just about anything. It is my favorite of all the major holidays because it involves mostly food and not a lot of stuff (gifts, decorations, etc.) Here is my list of the science information things that I am thankful for this year: [...]