india 2004 14 the taylor & francis news...

The new journals and reference work platform for Taylor & Francis

Introducing Taylor & Francis Online

View our new site at

www.tandfonline.com for training resources, FAQs and more.

area of publishing has responded to the challenges of digital technology, and embraced many opportunities offered, it has been journals publishing.

Since the year 2000, it is estimated that the journals industry has invested over £2 billion in technological systems, as well as innovated in areas such as electronic online editorial systems, author tools, production workflow, plagiarism checking, content management systems, online content platforms, global sales management, and many more elements (“Access to Research Outputs: A UK Success Story,” PA, STM, ALPSP, London, 2010).

The world has changed, business models are changing, and the social, economic, and political context of research information publishing is changing, but the fundamentals haven’t. The other major philosopher who employs a river image is Wittgenstein. He distinguishes between the movement of the waters on the riverbed and the shift of the bed itself; and he states that the bank of the river consists partly of hard rock subject to no alteration or to only an imperceptible one, and partly of sand, which may get washed away, or perhaps more sand will be deposited.

For our purposes, the moving waters could be seen here as representing the changing journal content and its surrounding context and technologies, and the riverbed as the basic structure of scholarly communication with the solid rock and the more mutable sand. Will the rocky riverbed itself change, with some of the river banks getting swept away – a true paradigm shift heralding a new age of scholarly communication – or is it all just the sand and shingle moving around with the flow of the waters?

Scholarly publishing involves groups of researchers judging what is worthwhile work through conference presentations, sharing drafts and research outputs, informal discussion and ultimately peer review; publishers then convert this material into readable and/or functional form and distribute it to groups of researchers

Heraclitus of Ephesus can truly be considered the Publisher’s philosopher. He elaborated the doctrine of change being central to the universe. Change does indeed seem to have been endemic in the publishing and research communication worlds since the beginning of the technological and industrial wave based on the invention of

the microprocessor in 1971. For the past twenty years or more, every time publishers have gathered together, the talk has been of nothing but change – changes in technology, economic and political context, library finances, the legal context around intellectual property, and sociocultural change. Although there is a real tradition and continuity in our industry, we can take another image from Heraclitus, that even though a person steps in the same river, those who step into it are always washed by different waters: “each individual atom of water, does not constantly change; the totality of things constantly changes” (Roger A. Shiner (1974) “Wittgenstein and Heraclitus: Two River-Images,” Philosophy, 49, 191–197).

This period since 1971 has also witnessed the current industrial wave based on information and communication technologies (ICT), initially leading to process revolutions in our industry, and increasingly now, as we truly enter the deployment phase in the 2010s, to new products emerging. This digital revolution has driven a paradigm shift in our industry from print-based manufacturing to online service provision, causing major disruptions for both markets and products. As with any technological revolution, there are both threats and opportunities which arise from these “waves of creative destruction.” If one

The Taylor & Francis News Bulletin

active in that field through journals; researchers read and cite the work, citing papers of most relevance, and so create a hierarchy of importance for papers, journals, and authors; in turn, this influences future submission behavior, creating a strong positive feedback loop. Put another way, there are huge volumes of communication between researchers about their work. Publishers convert this into formal, version-of-record papers – which are the building blocks of future science.

The journal age was launched by Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, in 1665, establishing the four principles of registration, peer review, dissemination, and archive. These have been the constants, the unchanging immutable bedrock of scholarly communications – yet are there signs, for example, in the rise of the scientist’s blog and phenomena such as “peer review lite” in some new publication venues, that they represent a riverbed which is eroding? Together these 350-year-old principles provide the basis of scientific authority – the definitive, authenticated version of the material output from a scholar’s research. It provides a context in which information and knowledge claims can be elaborated, disseminated, and brought into the broader academic and scientific realms. Citations are a positive act of further engagement with that material, and are seen as one of the best proxy measures of a work’s quality.

To these principles should now be added further key publishing requirements which a resourceful publisher is best placed to provide, namely discoverability, visibility, and access – and which can be characterized as representing a new, more permanent deposit on the riverbed and river banks. This involves steering a publication’s audience to the right content and conversely to ensure that that content reaches the right networks. This will

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Strategic Analysis is a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, a leading policy think tank based in New Delhi with a 50 year legacy. The institute and the journal are quite inseparable – the former creates the environment for debate, discussion and interface between policy makers and analysts, and the latter offers the intellectual space for expression for public dissemination. The journal lives because the institute exists. But despite the progress and acceptability to strengthen the national security

thinking, there continues to be a gap between research and policy, and the syntheses of ideas into policy action.

We of course don’t live in a perfect world where crucial policy decisions would be informed by timely and relevant research inputs and enriched by effective dialogue between academia and policy. Theoretical concepts once they travel to real life practices are far less comforting than when conceived. In a messy world of policy process, conceptual underpinnings often fall like ninepins.

Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha, Managing Editor, Stragetic Analysis

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India

2004–14

Dr David Green, Global Journals Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis Group

BRIDGING THE POLICY-RESEARCH DIVIDE

ZEN AND THE ART OF JOURNAL PUBLISHING















Taylor & Francis India is celebrating 10 years as a branch office in 2014. This decade, and the years preceding it as a liaison office, has been marked by an increasing engagement with the Indian academic publishing space. Backed by a 216-year legacy of high-quality content, we have catered to academic, professional and textbook markets, successfully merging local expertise with global networks in South Asia.

Taylor & Francis is one of the largest social science publishers in the world, and one of the leading publishers of online journals and eBooks. Publishing on South Asia forms a significant part of this programme under the well-known Routledge imprint, and is complemented by our South Asian publishing programme, Routledge India Originals (RIO). RIO has over 300 books on both mainstream and new and emerging areas relevant to the South Asian context, and publishes reference works, academic monographs and series as well as annuals. Another important resource in the area is the recently launched South Asia Archive, a fully searchable digital archive encompassing millions of pages of valuable research and teaching materials, providing online access to documents ranging from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century.

India today is the third largest market, after the US and UK, for Taylor & Francis globally. Our business is characterized by a balanced approach with both print and online growing steadily. A plethora of new products, including over 5,000 new books, 1,800 journals and 45,000 eBooks as well as a backlist of over 60,000 titles, continue to make a mark in both Scientific, Technical & Medical (STM) disciplines and Humanities & the Social Sciences.

Today with over 100 employees, T&F India provides local expertise and global support to academic societies, authors and editors; sources both books & journals in India for the global publishing programme; provides targeted and robust marketing support for all our products and supports key global reference

projects from India.

Responding to the specific needs and expectations of our customers, Taylor & Francis Group offers an extensive social media presence including diverse forums, such as Twitter, Pinterest and many others to reach out and connect.

The Taylor & Francis Journals Editorial Roundtable

Supplemental material can mean anything from tables to datasets, filesets to presentations, video to audio files. Including supplemental material with your article makes it more discoverable, and Taylor & Francis has implemented a number of initiatives to ensure it is effectively included, or linked to, within the article abstract.

Why include supplemental material with your journal article?

1. It makes your article more discoverable, giving people another route to find your research.

2. Other researchers can cite your supplemental material, increasing the impact of your work.

3. Funders are able to identify clear links to data, ensuring you meet your funding requirements.

4. Your supplemental data is effectively preserved.

5. Research shows that articles with supplemental material are downloaded and cited more often.

For more information, please visit: http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/supplementalMaterial.asp

Dr. Sharmistha Gooptu, Editor, South Asian History and Culture Given that we live in an age where there is an explosion of information and research via the internet the idea of ‘impact’ on the part of any author hinges on the essential aspect of ‘discoverability’ and the concerned publisher’s ability and interest in guiding authors to engage a broader spectrum of readers, both within and outside their fields of study. Our journal South Asian History and Culture, which was started in 2010 and is now in its fifth year has from the very first year of its existence tried to broaden its impact through engagement via multiple platforms and by means of audio-visual technology, and that in a significant part also encompasses social media and social networking sites.What are the campaigns that we have been part of? And how do these enhance authors’ impact and engagement?For instance, from December 2013 to April 2014 South Asian History and Culture was part of Routledge’s Asia in Focus campaign which was an article collection that focussed on research touching on countries across Asia, and aimed to give readers an insight into the breadth of research published in the Asian studies journals.

The article that was included in the campaign from South Asian History and Culture was one published in its issue ‘Misplaced Ekistics: Islamabad and the Politics of Urban Development in Pakistan’, author Markus Daeschel, and the article got 64 downloads of a total of 2812 full text downloads for the entire campaign. It suggests that the article in question was able to signpost the journal to readers looking out for published research on Pakistan, and potential contributors in the field of Pakistan studies, which is among the lesser developed fields of South Asian studies, even though there remains an abiding interest in Pakistan, its society and politics.Subsequently, we published two special sections on modern Karachi (Pakistan). The articles from that collection have been among the most downloaded ones for 2014, and have been marked out for use in future promotional campaigns on existing platforms and through the Area Studies Facebook and Twitter pages. This kind of engagement through multiple platforms effectively takes forward the journal’s commitment to promote research on the lesser developed areas of South Asian studies.

India

2004–14

THE AUTHOR: IMPACT, ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL MEDIA

TAYLOR & FRANCIS INDIA CELEBRATES 10 YEARS

ENHANCING YOUR ARTICLE WITH SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Another campaign undertaken to raise the Asian Studies journal’s list on Facebook and Twitter was the Article of the Day campaign which selected key articles from the most recent issues of journals and promoted them for a day. For South Asian History and Culture, we promoted Neilesh Bose’s article ‘Defying the perpetual exception: culture and power in South Asian Islam’. Such drives have worked to introduce the journal to new readers and potential contributors, and have enhanced the impact and engagement of

different authors beyond their expected constituencies.

In addition we have done podcasts of the guest editors of our special issues and used them online to promote new special issues and new themes of research and study.A note: a noticeable mindset among academics, especially in the longer established disciplines of history or literature studies that social media is something not best suited to the seriousness of academic enquiry, or rather more suited to those in the more contemporary fields of media studies or journalism. It is a thinking that needs to be discouraged by editors and publishers alike, if we are to encourage authors to achieve maximum impact and engagement. The case of the South Asia Archive – engagement and impactThe South Asia Archive, a digital archive of 5 million pages–the largest repository of online archival materials on South Asia was created by the editors (Boria Majumdar and Sharmistha Gooptu) of South Asian History and Culture in collaboration with Routledge. The archive remains linked with the journal South Asian History and Culture right from its inception as part of the same ‘history and culture’ platform. The journal now carries special articles written by academics referencing the archive and commenting on its contribution to developing research in the field of South Asian studies. The same articles have been promoted by the journal, and guiding potential researchers to newer source materials, and enabling the discoverability of older authors and commentators.

Journals like Strategic Analysis fundamentally fall in the category of an ‘enlightened function’ to transport research and conclusion to the doors of policymaking. Both in content and style, Strategic Analysis is similar to Survival of the IISS and Foreign Affairs of the Council on Foreign Relations – hospitable to new ideas and to authors who might not be in the ‘mainstream’; critiquing policies but avoiding vagaries; focusing purposefully on sound policy options but not representing any consensus of beliefs. While it is not a theoretical journal, it is not averse to applying theoretical yardsticks to practical complications of practice.

Having been involved in the editorial of the journal for a decade now, research and analyses on issues that are increasingly interconnected, intertwined and complex bears an undismissive burden or a challenge of imperfection – imperfect information; imperfect expert assessment; imperfect processing of data and the imperfect strategic discourse itself.

As the Managing Editor of the journal, which is fundamentally policy-oriented, I am alert to the entrenched debate in the Indian academic and policy community on whether policy making can live without evidence which is constantly being contested; without the rigour of research which is time consuming; and without the conceptualisation and theoretical underpinnings which confuses rather than brings clarity to policy. Though uncomfortable in saying this and crude it may be but policy process is a quest of power rather than the search for truth. This is a reality one cannot ignore. But I am equally convinced that policy making should not become a runaway train and be based on assumption and hunch or trial and error. To every policy there pertain a complication and an unraveling and thus policy process needs to be continuously informed, sensitised and bolstered.

There are challenging times for the editorial of Strategic Analysis which will not only need to continuously focus its content on policy development and stress on interpretation, but to foresee emerging strategic trends and encourage new ways of thinking and finding approaches to deal with the complexity.

Finally, a sound and successful policy lies in the process of iteration, i.e. returning to the research questions, methods, and data, which leads to new ideas, revisions and improvements. This is something that neither the policymaker, nor the analyst should ignore and certainly no policy-oriented journal should dismiss.

(After completing his doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a stint as a journalist with The Pioneer, Uttam Sinha joined the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi in 2001, and soon after, became member of the editorial board of Strategic Analysis of which now he is the Managing Editor since 2012. He holds an adjunct position at the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research, Benares Hindu University where he is engaged in teaching and guiding research. He is also involved in many Track 2 initiatives at the policy level. His expertise includes climate change, transboundary water issues and the Arctic region.)

partly entail making content easily discoverable via search engine optimization (SEO) and by enabling key functionalities of a smart platform. Article-level marketing push and pull are the key to driving usage, citation, impact, and reputation.

In the connected, open, digital world, we must now add to the principles of scientific authority those of lay popularity – the public engagement and lay audience impact of the scholar’s work. Government and funders, significant new players in the scholarly communication world, wish research output to be unlocked from the ivory towers and for public access to be enshrined in new dissemination models. Ensuring public engagement with the academic and scientific worlds and their outputs is not simply a matter of generating promotion and publicity via traditional news outlets and new channels of social media. There has been a view of the Internet and the “containers” of digital content that, “if you build it, they will come’.” There has been an explosion of platforms, repositories, and the upsurge of “predatory Open Access publishers” (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) where there is no indication as to the version, level of peer review, validation or authority and trust mechanisms attaching to this content. The professional publishing groups including T&F have developed important mechanisms around the version of record and the integrity of trusted peer-review content (http://www.crossref.org/crossmark/).

As the work of groups such as Sense about Science emphasizes, there is a clear need in a world of so much information for the broader public, practitioners, and policy makers to be able to have tools to assess a diversity of information and knowledge claims resulting from research. With so many publication venues now available, trust factors become so much more significant. We are a lead publisher collaborator in a major research study funded by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which aims to look at mechanisms of trust in the digital world.

In future postings we will examine some of these projects and processes that we are involved in, which provide a solid bedrock for the future, even though the currents of change are so strong.

Please do follow me on my new Twitter account @zenpublisher


BRIDGING THE POLICY-RESEARCH DIVIDE

ZEN AND THE ART OF JOURNAL PUBLISHING

The idea of a society of Indian ceramists was first conceived by Sirdar Krishen Singh in the year 1921. Subsequently, T. W. Talwalkar, after returning to India towards the end of 1927 and being impressed with the activities of the American Ceramic Society, felt the need for a similar kind of society in India.

The inaugural meeting, attended by a handful of people from the glass and ceramic fields, was held in the Library Hall of the Chemistry Building of Banaras Hindu University on April 15, 1928. This meeting thus laid the foundation of the Indian Ceramic Society.

The Journal of the Indian Ceramic Society was first published in September, 1928, which is now known as the Transactions of the Indian Ceramic Society (hereafter Transactions). The Transactions has been published since 1941, and Prof. H. N. Roy (Banaras Hindu University) was its first Editor. It is the most important journal in glass and ceramics being published in India, and has been in constant and continuous circulation for more than 70 years.

The journal publishes current scientific research, technology and industry-related news on glass and ceramics. It covers subjects such as the chemical, mechanical, optical, electronic and spectroscopic properties of glass and ceramics, and characterization of materials belonging to this family. Original research papers, topical reviews, opinions and achievements, as well as industry profiles for are invited for publication. Most of the published papers are received from India and the South Pacific region including China. In India, around 2,000 members including students subscribe to the journal.

Besides having a wide readership in India, the Transactions is also an internationally renowned journal. It features in the Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition published by Thomson Reuters, and has an impact factor of 0.233 for the year 2013. It is abstracted and indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch) and Materials Science Citation Index; and is abstracted also by Ceramic Abstracts (The American Ceramic Society) and Chemical Abstracts (The American Chemical Society).

The journal entered a new publishing model beginning from Volume 71, Number 1 (2012). Along with its existing print version, the Transactions is now being released simultaneously in the electronic version online by the Taylor & Francis Group. This collaboration has enabled the journal to reach a wider audience across the globe.

(Dr. S. K. Bhadra received his Ph.D. from Jadavpur University. He joined CSIR-CGCRI (Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute) at Kolkata in 1984 where he is currently Chief Scientist. He has been leading a group working in advanced areas of fibre optics, photonics and nonlinear optics. His most recent work has been on the fabrication of specialty fibers (including Photonic crystal fibers) and in super continuum generation. He is the recipient of Deokaran award in glass given by the Indian Ceramic Society. Dr Bhadra is also one of the recipients of the prestigious ‘Most Significant CSIR Technology of Five Year Plan Period Award 2012’ for commercialization of EDFA (Optical Amplifier) technology in the country.)

TRANSACTIONS OF THE INDIAN CERAMIC SOCIETY: CELEBRATING 70 YEARS IN PUBLICATION

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Dr. Shyamal Kumar Bhadra, Honorary Editor, Transactions of the Indian Ceramic Society

There will be some of you out there who use Twitter prolifically but also a great many who hear colleagues talking about it and think ‘where do they find the time?’ or ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ Those who do use Twitter regularly are evangelical about it, so for those who are still in the ‘I know what Twitter is but I haven’t got the faintest idea where to start’ camp, here’s a quick guide on how to get started (and for those that still need convincing, why researchers should use it). I’m a researcher. How is using Twitter going to benefit me? A search in Google will come up with a long list of academics explaining how Twitter has benefited their research, before and after publication. There are some great articles and blog posts which explain how you can use it to connect with other academics in your field, ask questions (‘crowdsourcing’) and spread the word about the type of research you’re undertaking. But what happens after publication? This is where Twitter can be one of the most valuable tools you can use to publicize your work, reaching people who may never have heard of you or your research before, increasing downloads of your article, citations (in time) and impact. Working in tandem with your publisher, you can have a very discernible effect on the reach of your article and the really exciting bit is that you can see the impact immediately. And one of the best things about Twitter is you can tweet, check your feed, and have information come to you wherever you are, so long as you have a smartphone or tablet in hand. To show how it has impacted on journal articles, here is a recent example of how topic, active academic, and use of social media can come together to raise the profile and impact of their research. So how do I get started? 1. Signing up to Twitter and creating your profileCreating your account is quick and easy but it pays to take time to craft your profile page . Your username can be your own name (e.g. @JohnSmith) or something a bit more esoteric (e.g. @mathsgenius). Do remember, though, if you use your own name it will be easier for others to associate you with your Twitter account. Use your profile to tell people about your research and experience, what you teach, and what your interests are. Link to your blog or website too, so people can explore more, and try to add a photo so people can recognize your tweets immediately on their feed. 2. Following me, following you…So you’ve created your profile and Twitter has prompted you with whom to follow – what do you do? Following the right people and organizations automatically personalizes your Twitter feed (the list of tweets that come up on your home page) and also the recommendations that Twitter makes to you. You are bound to have a list of colleagues who already use Twitter, so you can start with these. But what about people you admire? Or organizations you have an interest in? Media outlets you enjoy reading already, whether online or in paper format? Once you get started you’ll realize there’s a wealth of connections you can make, are interested in, or have some kind of affiliation to. And by following some of the prolific tweeters you’ll get a feel for how others craft tweets, the style that is often unique to Twitter, and the shorthand used by everyone on it. Which brings us on to…3. Writing that first tweet (and the one after that, and after that, and after that)If you’ve never used Twitter before there are probably a few things that have stopped you in the past, some of which might have been ‘how are you meant to use a hashtag?’, ‘what’s a retweet?’ and ‘what on earth can I say in 140 characters or less that anyone is going to be interested in?!’. So putting your prejudices aside, here are some tips: • Tweet about what you’re researching, how it’s going, why people should be

interested and link to your article, website, blog, videos; so that the reader can build a picture of why they should be interested in your research.

• Shorten hyperlinks using sites such as bitly.com or tinyurl.com. • Engage in Twitter conversations – retweet what you find interesting. • Engage in Twitter conversations, Part 2 – respond to tweets, giving your view and

remember to always include the username of the person you’re responding to (e.g. @JohnSmith).

These are just some starter tips; you can also direct message people, thank people if they retweet you, ask questions, or tweet your thoughts from conferences you are at. Once you get into it, Twitter is weirdly addictive - got a few websites that you visit every day? You’ll quickly find Twitter is added to them. Judging whether the effort is worth itYou’ve created your account, started tweeting about your latest journal article, and now want to know whether all this extra work is having any impact. There is an easy way to check this. As a Taylor & Francis author, you’ll have access to ‘My authored works’ once you create an account and sign into Taylor & Francis Online. From here you can see how many times your article has been viewed and cited. Now here’s a challenge – pick your latest article and send some tweets about it. Tweet about the challenges you faced in writing it, what you found most interesting or surprising, ask some questions around the main thrust of the research, or try and draw some of your followers into a Twitter conversation on the topic of the article. And try to use hashtags if you can to draw people in. Give it a week and then check your article views. Have they increased? We’ll guarantee they have if you’ve followed all of the steps above. For all its clichés, social media really is changing the way we communicate and, as researchers and academics, we want our work to be discoverable and for people to engage with it. So give it a go and tell us how you got on – we’re @tandfauthorserv and we want to hear about your Twitter experience.


for Authors

Find all the information you need on: (http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/)

for Societies, Associations, and Institutes

Contact us at [email protected], or visit (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/society/) with your enquiries regarding potential publishing collaborations

TWEET YOUR RESEARCH: A HOW TO GUIDE

india 2004 14 the taylor & francis news...

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