2015 Academic Reputation Survey

Thomson Reuters released its 6th annual Academic Reputation Survey:
“Exploring Scholarly Trends and Shifts Impacting the Academic Reputation of the World’s Leading Universities”. 

The report analyzes the key trends and shifts in global research influencing institutions’ academic standings. It covers 65,000 academics from 6,500 universities in 105 areas of study.

AAUP Faculty Salary Survey 2014-2015

Busting the Myths, the annual update to the Staff and Faculty survey from the AAUP has been released. You can search the results from 4700 colleges and universities from the Chronicle of Higher Education page, sort by types of schools (very high research, business and management schools, men vs women salary etc.)

PNAS 100th anniversary

2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). January 1915 was the first issue, click below to view an animated timeline:

PNAS timeline

2015 List of Predatory Publishers

As of January 2017, J. Beall has shut down his blog.

5th update to the annual list of predatory publishers by J. Beall, librarian from the University of Colorado Denver. In addition the usual lists, there are now a list for Misleading Metrics and one for Hijacked Journals

Top Non-Fiction Books: a consensus cloud

From Information is Beautiful, another visualization of top non-fiction titles from various sources

Non-Fiction Books everyone should read:

See Novels everyone should read.

The peer-review scam

Last month Nature posted an article: Publishing: The peer-review scam, it lists the existing weaknesses in modern publishing systems and details how editors are trying to plug the holes.

Top 100 most cited papers

The Journal Nature has partnered with Thomson Reuters Web of Science database to determine the top 100 most cited papers.

Looking at 100 years of data, and the 58 million items stored in the Web of Science database, 3 articles have been cited more than a 100 000 times, all published prior to 1980, all in the biology field.

Google Scholar came up with an alternative ranking, click to see the comparison for 10 papers.

2014 Nobel prizes predictions from Thomson Reuters

The first 2014 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medecine will be announced shortly.

Like every year Thomson Reuters uses its citation analysis tools to predict the winners. Click for the press release and full list.

Click here for the methodology.

The state of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education

Educause has released a report this month: 'The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives" 

"On average, LMSs have been in place for eight years, and 15% of U.S. higher education institutions are currently planning to replace their LMS within the next three years."

Google Scholar Profiles new look

Google Scholar Profiles have a new look for the new academic year.
Here are some of the new features, read the entire post.

• Publications are taking the center stage
• Aggregate citation metrics are moving to the sidebar
• "Follow" button is in a more prominent spot
• Printing a clean version of your profile is easier