Evolución histórica de la Revista Peruana de Parasitología y tendencia de otras revistas de parasitología de América Latina

La Asociación de Parasitología del Perú (ASOPERA fue creada como Sociedad Peruana de Parasitología por iniciativa del Dr. Hugo Lumbreras en una sesión de almuerzo el 30 de noviembre de 1970, y el primer Consejo Directivo provisional fue presidido por el Dr. Luis Gonzales-Mugaburu, un notable parasitólogo peruano.
Autor: Cabrera, Rufino
Source: Asociación de Parasitólogos del Perú
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10757/558259

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.
Source: Plos One
URL: Full text

Primer ejemplar de la Revista Anales de la Facultad de Medicina (1918)

Primer ejemplar publicado por la Revista de la Facultad de Medicina Humana, Universidad Naconal Mayor de San Marcos.
Fuente: Facultad de Medecina, UNMSM (2015)
URL: Texto completo

Significant increase in funding for health care assistance in developing countries seen since 1990

Since 1990, high-income countries distributed nearly $458 million in funding for the maintenance and improvement of heath care services in developing countries, according to recently published data in JAMA.
Source: JAMA
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The Problem(s) With Credit for Peer Review

Offering career credit to researchers for performing peer review seems like a no-brainer, right? Peer review is essential for our system of research, and study after study confirms that researchers consider it tremendously important. Funding agencies and journal publishers alike rely on researchers to provide rigorous review to aid in making decisions about who to fund and which papers to publish. On the surface it would seem to make sense to formalize this activity as a part of the career responsibilities of an academic researcher. But as one delves into the specifics of creating such a system, some major roadblocks arise.

One such problem falls into the realm of volunteerism and motivation. Right now, most academics see performing peer review as a service to the community. It’s important to the advancement of the field and so they volunteer their time. If instead we turn peer review into a mandatory, career requirement that is rewarded with credit, it changes the nature of the behavior. If we set standards (you must do X peer reviews per year) people will then work to those standards rather than the more generous acts we see today, where good samaritans (and good reviewers) take on much larger workloads.

Economists suggest that incentives (a form of reward) changes motivation, some of which will be actualized by real behavioral change. Educator Alfie Kohn talks about how behaviors change in light of offering rewards in one of his books on parenting:

Source: Scholarlykitchen

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