By
Barbara Gastel
| 29 Aug 2010
Greetings again. I hope you’ve had a good week.
I’ve been doing some back-to-school shopping. Earlier this week I bought a new book on a subject I’m teaching. Today I bought new issues of science magazines to use as examples in classes. And last week I bought some green pens.
Green pens? Why green pens?
When grading students’ writing, I like to write comments in green ink. Red ink sometimes seems harsh and angry, at least to American students. Black ink or …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 21 Aug 2010
Greetings again. I hope that all is going well for you.
For many of us, a new school year will begin soon. Here at Texas A&M University, the fall semester will begin August 30. A Chinese colleague said classes at her university also will begin then.
For some in the AuthorAID community, the start of the school year means entering graduate school—for example, a master’s degree program or a doctoral program. Congratulations to the new graduate students!
Graduate …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 15 Aug 2010
[Note: This week’s blog post is from Joan Marsh, president of the European Association of Science Editors. The post includes a link to a valuable set of guidelines. Thank you, Joan! —Barbara]
The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) is an international community of individuals from diverse backgrounds, linguistic traditions, and professional experience who share an interest in science communication and editing.
EASE organizes a Congress every 3 years and …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 08 Aug 2010
Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.
I'm pleased to say that the AuthorAID Resource Library now includes Portuguese translations of 5 AuthorAID presentations. The topics are
By
Barbara Gastel
| 31 Jul 2010
Greetings again. I hope that all is going well.
Recently an AuthorAID blog post addressed the question “How are peer reviewers chosen?” The current post addresses a related question, also from the Tanzania workshop: “What instructions do peer reviewers receive?”
The answer differs among journals. Some journals just tell reviewers to evaluate the paper. Other journals …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 24 Jul 2010
[Note: This week’s blog post is from Katie Metzler, who is an editor at SAGE, a major publisher of research. In the post, Katie introduces a research-methods resource that could interest many AuthorAID members. Thank you, Katie! –Barbara]
Do you have questions about research methods? Do you want to discuss research methods with others in your field?
Then consider signing up for Methodspace (www.methodspace.com), a …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 18 Jul 2010
[Note: This week’s blog post is from Bernard Appiah, AuthorAID graduate assistant. Bernard recently attended an international conference at which he gave a demonstration titled “AuthorAID at INASP: An ICT-enabled mentoring project helping developing-country researchers to publish their work”. Below, Bernard reports on the …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 11 Jul 2010
Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well. I’m glad to see that 2000 people now are registered for AuthorAID.
Last month at the AuthorAID research-writing workshop in Tanzania, people asked many excellent questions. One question was the following: How do journal editors identify suitable people to serve as peer reviewers?
After presenting my answer, I realized that other members of the AuthorAID community might have the same question. Therefore, here is my …
By
Barbara Gastel
| 04 Jul 2010
Greetings again. I hope that all is going well.
I’m back in the United States, and things are going busily for me. Tomorrow I start giving a 3-week research writing workshop, mainly for researchers from Mexico. I also have summer-school teaching and other work.
As planned, this week my blog post is about the AuthorAID Train-the-Trainers Workshop on Teaching Research Writing. This workshop was in Tanzania on June 25, after a 4-day
By
Barbara Gastel
| 27 Jun 2010
Greetings again. I’m writing this blog post in Qatar, en route back from Tanzania to America.
Normally, I don’t watch television while writing blog posts. I don’t even listen to music while doing so. I just concentrate on writing.
Right now, though, Ghana and the USA are playing in the World Cup competition. They’re 2 of my favorite teams—because I’m from the USA and my graduate student Bernard Appiah (the AuthorAID graduate assistant) is from Ghana. So I have the …
Publishing in open access journals
Posted by Neeru Gupta at 15 Sep 2008 12:59 PM
Please allow me to take this opportunity to promote to readers the benefits of publishing their research in an open access journal. One of the critical steps in publishing scientific papers is identifying a target journal. Publishing in an open access journal means the paper will be freely and universally accessible, including to researchers in low and middle income countries who might otherwise not have access to high-quality research due to financial barriers of (traditional) journal subscription fees.
Specifically, in the health/medical field, there are a number of peer-reviewed open access journals supported by BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/). A select few of these journals have World Health Organization staff as an editor-in-chief, including "Human Resources for Health" (http://www.human-resources-health.com) and "Population Health Metrics" (http://www.pophealthmetrics.com). These journals normally levy a processing charge per article accepted for publication, however researchers from poorer countries can request a waiver from the article-processing charge. Articles published in BioMed Central journals are permanently archived in an internationally recognized open access repository.
Neeru Gupta,
Department of Human Resources for Health,
World Health Organization