The myth around academic publishing every researcher should know
A peek into the future of manuscript formatting.
A few years back, I was showing my 4 year old niece how to build an aeroplane using Lego blocks. After patiently waiting for me to complete, she took the finished piece from me. She immediately pulled it apart and started putting the blocks together to build the Lego aeroplane on her own.
I chuckled to myself. “What a waste of my efforts”!
Funnily enough, this instance serves as a perfect analogy whenever someone asks me about the publishing process in the academic industry.
The formatting problem
Anyone who has submitted a research paper would know the hours spent in formatting. Worse, re-formatting is another big concern for researchers applying to multiple journals. Each journal follows its own format for submission, resulting in repetitive work.
With a lack of standards and more than tens of thousands of journals present, this is a persistent issue.
The problem has become so acute that, in a survey carried out by Elsevier’s Research and Academic Relations department, one in three researchers identified ‘preparing manuscripts’ as the activity they found most frustrating and time-consuming.
When researchers get frustrated with formatting!
After spending time and effort on your paper, you would assume that the formatted manuscript is what the publishers utilize for the final print, right?
But what actually happens will baffle you.
The reverse engineering
Submission process is initiated when a researcher submits the doc file (called source file).
Publishers send this source file to companies called composition suppliers who convert it into XML. The conversion into XML guarantees a definitive archive of the publication.
The suppliers use this XML to re-generate the document with all the formatting requirements set by the publisher. All the formatting you had done is ignored, and done once again by the typesetters.
It is like you assemble a cycle and give it to someone, only for them to dismantle it before re-assembling it again!
Is there a way out?Yes. If authors can supply XML directly.
How could this happen?
If they use a writing interface which automatically creates XML in the background as they write. XML-at-source is the terminology.
Using XML-at-source, it’s possible to auto-format and re-format a research paper in seconds. The paper will continue adhering to journal guidelines. This will significantly reduce time and effort that will make the authors happy.
This will also get rid of all the re-engineering involved that will make the publishers happy.
To generate this kind of value, we at Typeset, have been building a platform for the research community. We take care of pain in the authoring process, so that you can focus on your research.
Source: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/09/28/interview-mdpi-lessons-learned-20-years-open-access-publishing Among various highlights of this year’s SSP Annual Meeting , I unearthed a few well-kept mysteries about MDPI , Swiss-based open-access (OA) journal publisher. Launched 21 years ago by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, a chemist who graduated from ETH Zurich, MDPI started off as something very different than a publishing house. Despite cycles of controversy , MDPI continues to grow, now employing more than 900 people across seven offices. Their CEO, Dr. Franck Vazquez, joined MDPI just three years ago, after an academic career in life and health sciences. Vazquez, recently appointed to the OASPA board , met with me between SSP sessions to share their story. Tell me about your journals, what disciplines do they address? Am I correct in my understanding that they are all gold OA titles? MDPI launched as a repository for rare chemical samples and, from the s...
Source: http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/04/02/a-rough-guide-to-spotting-bad-science/ A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science Click to enlarge A brief detour from chemistry, branching out into science in general today. This graphic looks at the different factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science – it was inspired by the research I carried out for the recent aluminium chlorohydrate graphic , where many articles linked the compound to causing breast cancer, referencing scientific research which drew questionable conclusions from their results. The vast majority of people will get their science news from online news site articles, and rarely delve into the research that the article is based on. Personally, I think it’s therefore important that people are capable of spotting bad scientific methods, or realising when articles are being economical with the conclusions drawn from research, and that’s what this graphic aims to do. Note that this is not a comprehensive overview, no...
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