Worldwide, governments have started to ease or end the Covid-19 restrictions, signaling the beginning of the end of a pandemic which, according to the WHO, infected over 400 million people and caused 5.8 million deaths, not to speak of the devastating disruptions it caused to public and economic life.

Researchers spend a lot of time doing peer review, and by a lot we are talking about over 100 million hours per year (estimate for 2020 by Aczel et al.). It is a complex and time consuming process that is often presented as a pillar to science dissemination, because of its function to scrutinize research papers to check whether they contain any flaws, oversights, or they meet certain criteria for novelty or advance, before the article appears in

This post is the last in a four-part series by Jennifer Gibson. The first post, on the shape and impact of research communication is available here. Reactions from readers are very welcome. Please use the commenting function.

Scholarly publishing at times seems to want to hold on to some outdated processes. At the top of my list is the dreaded RFP (Request for Proposals) process. In the scholarly comms world, consultants send these out on behalf of publishers that are seeking solutions or services. My career involves designing and building publishing technology and so I have been on the receiving end of many RFPs for developing new platforms.

This post is the third in a four-part series by Jennifer Gibson. The first post, on the shape and impact of research communication is available here. Reactions from readers are very welcome. Please use the commenting function. Before I dive into this part of the discussion, I’d like to credit Damian Pattinson and Stuart King at eLife, with whom I worked to develop the three first tenets below in 2020 and 2021, as eLife's core values.

The FORCE11 attribution working group held a workshop during the 2021 FORCE conference to explore some ethical aspects of using Contributor Roles (CRs). This workshop provided an overview of various CRs and their practical values in terms of providing a better recognition of the wide range of scholarly contributions.

If anyone thought that 2022 was going to be a time of peace and harmony in open access, some of the last salvos of 2021 will surely have put that to rest.

This post is second in a four-part series on a modern system for research communication, by Jennifer Gibson. The first post, on the shape and impact of research communication is available here. Reactions from readers are very welcome. Please use the commenting function. ________________ Now, as I wrote a moment ago, I have some strong ideas about how research communication should work, which you might guess based on my work to date.

What if we could start all over again? Knowing what we know now, about the needs for research and the opportunities to improve the human condition, about the power of the Internet, and about the importance of the global village, what would we want publishing to look like? How would we use instant online sharing? How would we tap into experts in other corners of the globe?

Today we are announcing Upstream . And if you’re reading this, you’re already a part of it! Upstream is a community blogging platform designed for Open enthusiasts to discuss… you guessed it: all things Open. It’s a space for the whole community to voice opinions, discuss open approaches to scholarly communication, and showcase research.