Impact factor is a big deal for scientific journals. The impact factor score is based on the average number of citations a journal receives – an approximate measure of how important and relevant a journal is to the scientific community. For a journal (along with its editors and authors) impact factor can determine distribution deals, grant funding, and the overall success of a publication. Although the impact factor score is mathematically calculated for each journal, in the end its foundation is laid by one organization: Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports.

Three Wiley-Blackwell nursing journals, The Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, recently detected cases of plagiarism in published articles written by Professor Scott J.M. Weber, a now former assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. After investigation, Wiley-Blackwell issued a retraction of seven articles after concluding Weber had liberally borrowed previously published research without attribution.

This week I saw a new discussion on the ALPSP LinkedIn page, "what are the biggest issues facing publishers?" Many of the comments posted from the publishing and research communities within that discussion as well as other discussions on the web correspond with the findings released in our latest report. The report is called, Pressure to Publish: How Globalization and Technology are Increasing Misconduct in Scholarly Research.

Science Reporting and journalism have changed quite a bit over the last several decades. In the past, there were only a few central news sources that people got their scientific information from. For example, viewers would tune into the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite to get their daily or weekly update on scientific discovery and innovation.

One of the most valuable tools that bloggers and digital content publications use as a source for edits is their user community. When a writer or organization either doesn’t have the resources for a standard editor or can’t cover the sheer volume of published works, they can  turn to their readers to point out grammatical errors, perform fact checking, and even scan content for cases of plagiarism.