How did PubCred go over at the ESA meeting? Aug 9. 2010 | Comments (0)
Along with the launch of the ESA's new online journal, PubCred was the talk of the hallways at the ESA Meeting (don't just take my word for it--that's what several members of the Publication Committee told me!) There was a lot of feedback to digest, and I'll post a summary soon.
UPDATE: I won't speak specifically about what was said at the ESA Publications Committee meeting, except to thank Scott Collins, the committee chair, for inviting me to join the discussion. For me, the big take-home from my many intereractions at the ESA meeting was the need to collect (appropriately anonymized) data, in order to better-quantify the problem (or even prove beyond reasonable doubt that one exists!), and fine-tune the solution. Journals already have a fair bit of relevant data, but they actually don't have all the data one would ideally want because no one journal has a complete picture of what any one individual does. For instance, if I don't review at all for journal A, maybe that's because I review a lot for journal B. One interesting suggestion on how to obtain data on individuals is to treat it as a social science research project, and collaborate with social scientists who have experience collecting such survey data.
Owen will be attending the BES Meeting in the fall, and after that we should have a better sense of what the appropriate next steps are.
-Jeremy