On the importance of being a data-savvy librarian

In the last years a sense of the importance of making all data related to scientific research open, shareable and therefore reusable, has spread in all the areas of scientific research. As this has generated a need to develop policies, infrastructures and services in order to assist researchers in creating, collecting, manipulating, analysing, storing and preserving datasets, this is a unique opportunity for libraries to play an active role in the research process.Librarians, along with their traditional skills, such as their ability to retrieve and organize information, consult and teach, should develop an understanding of the technical aspects of data management, developing new skills and capabilities

"Predatory" publishers: to recognize them is to avoid them

Predatory publishers, characterised by unscholarly publishing practices, affect all authors and librarians around the globe. These publishers try to exploit the Open Access movement for their own economic interests, soliciting a fee to publish without meeting scholarly publishing standards. Even though this phenomenon has been widespread for several years, there are still many authors who are not sufficiently familiar with this problem. In this article, we discuss the recent initiatives related to the most important tools to help them to recognize and avoid predatory publishers

Publications and new products

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Adoption of Web 2.0 tools among STM publishers. How social are scientific journals?

The use of social media has increased dramatically among scientific researchers, due to their free availability and ease of use. Consequently, publishers have now embraced Web 2.0 features to promote and share the content of their publications and to enhance their visibility and use, as these Web tools are a powerful marketing and promotion channel. Publishers also aim to create a closer relationship with their audience by providing tools to facilitate communication between users of their platforms. Due to the rapid evolution of Web 2.0 technologies, there is little data available on the adoption of these tools among publishers. The purpose of this study is to examine the availability of social media tools by science publishers

Discussing the future of open peer-review: a survey of journals in the JCR Public, Environmental and Occupational Health category

The journals listed in the JCR Public, Environmental and Occupational Health category are examined by the authors in order to check how many of them practice some kind of Open Peer-Review (OPR). An overview of the different OPR methods identified is given: a variety of practices considered as OPR even though the number of journals using them is very small. Furthermore, the possible future evolution of OPR is examined

The impact of COVID-19 on scientific publishing

This article proposes an analysis on the impact that COVID-19 pandemic is having on the process of scientific publishing in academic journals. It will specifically describe the response of the scholarly publishing community to meet the pressing demand from authors and researchers wishing to disseminate, as rapidly as possible, information on the virus. Its aim is to provide an overview for the community of librarians and information specialists about publishing in the COVID-19 era

Publications from International Organizations on Public Health

The Publications from International Organizations on Public Health section includes a wider selection of the most recent publications edited by the main international organizations active in the field of public health, such as: the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the World Health Organization (WHO)

The Bibliosan 2.0 project: online tools for librarians, researchers and health professionals

This article describes the approach used by the Bibliosan 2.0 team (in a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health)in developing the Bibliosan 2.0 website (http://bibliosan20.wordpress.com/) aimed at offering guidance and advice toour users for the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. To complement the website, we decided to deliver filteredinformation through Web 2.0 tools such as our blog, Twitter, Delicious and Zotero. To do so, we adopted a very targeted,strategic approach in selecting which tools to present, keeping in mind that our audience is made up of librarians,researchers and health professionals