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One of the backbones of the life sciences, taxonomy —the science of biodiversity—suffers from multiples impediments, including the use of bibliometric indexes by organizations. These days such indexes play a big role in the scientific decisions. However, what for-profit companies, which own these bibliometric platforms, have to do with science? …

The Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA) calls on scholarly publishers to open their abstracts, and specifically to deposit them with Crossref. Unrestricted availability of abstracts will boost the discovery of research. 34 publishers have already agreed to support I4OA and to make their abstracts openly available. I4OA is also supported by a large number of research funders, libraries and library associations, infrastructure providers, and open science organizations. …

While the position of a scientific journal editor is interesting and rewarding, since it puts us in touch with the pulse of academic output, it also poses many challenges. It is necessary to give the journal a face, to guarantee the publication quality, to find reviewers willing to work anonymously and for free and to ensure the journal’s financial sustainability. This post deals with just one of the challenges: ensuring a quick response to the authors about the submitted manuscripts. …

The need to reproduce research results for the sake of science transparency and credibility goes through numerous challenges. An article published in Nature indicates that, in order to obtain better results from reproducibility tests, it is important to establish protocols in agreement with the authors of the original study and to align expectations. Registered Reports, submitted to peer review before the experimental stage of the study, present themselves as a promising solution for successful reproducibility tests. …

Open science and open access are not synonymous with accessibility. Thus, the policies and guidelines of the SciELO Network Publication Model, with the cooperation of journal editors and persons with disabilities, will be gradually reviewed regarding submission criteria, structures, and content of scientific articles. …

For the second time, the Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências was surprised to find out that about one quarter of the papers of an issue were gone missing from the Jornal Citation Reports platform, a problem that should come to the attention of the publishing and evaluation industry. Some objective ways to appraise the performance of specific volumes or areas of a journal are presented. …

Open access... and everything. Finally, what happened 20 years ago and felt like a utopia of copyright pirates is becoming irreversible, like a tsunami. Publishers and scientific information cannot ignore the theme of open access, so that they can compete and don’t stay out of this market. Things are changing and there’s no going back. …

Vibrant scholarly communities are sustained by publishing outlets that allow researchers to address diverse audiences. Whereas, attention is often focused on international publication, much of this work is supported by publications that address national and regional audiences in their own languages. In this post, Elea Giménez Toledo, Emanuel Kulczycki, Janne Pölönen and Gunnar Sivertsen explain the importance of bibliodiversity to sustaining knowledge ecosystems and argue that bibliodiversity is essential to ensuring that the transition to an open book future continues to support the creation of situated knowledge. …

Charles Pessanha is not only a key name in the history of DADOS, a journal he edited for more than three decades and still helps editing, but also from every one of the Brazilian scientific publishing body. In 2019, our former Editor-in-Chief and active Editor Emeritus was doubly honored, first with the “Prêmio da ANPOCS de Excelência Acadêmica em Ciência Política” and, second, with an interview for the organizing team in charge of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the graduate program of IESP-UERJ, where Charles has worked and obtained his master's degree. Next, there is a video of the interview in which he talks about his personal history, his life as a journal editor, the inception of SciELO and the current challenges of Brazil’s Social Sciences. …

The value and potential of data re-use and the associated methodology of qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) is often overlooked. Dr Anna Tarrant and Dr Kahryn Hughes propose, that as COVID-19 limits opportunities for qualitative research for the foreseeable future, now, more than ever the social sciences need to address the under-use of existing qualitative data. …