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Peer review highly sensitive to poor refereeing, claim researchers (physicsworld.com): Scholarly peer review is the commonly accepted procedure for assessing the quality of research before it is published in academic journals. It relies on a community of experts within a narrow field of expertise to have both the knowledge and the time to provide comprehensive reviews of academic manuscripts. While the concept of peer review is widely considered the most appropriate system for regulating scientific publications, it is not without its critics..     Click here

Universities too focused on research (bbc.co.uk): Science Minister David Willetts has said the research-teaching balance has "gone wrong" in universities, after defending cuts to science research. Addressing vice chancellors, he said he was shocked by how little teaching was valued in lecturers' promotions..     Click here

When is self-plagiarism ok? (the-scientist.com): Some scientists and publishers argue that it's "unavoidable" for scientists to re-use portions of their own text (not images or data, of course) from previous papers, and doing so may even be good practice. But others disagree, including many journals -- who have retracted papers in response.     Click here

Trends in the finances of UK higher education libraries: 1999-2009 (rin.ac.uk): The last decade has been a period of unprecedented change for university libraries. The rapid growth in numbers of students and staff across the higher education sector has been accompanied by the move to a substantially-digital environment, with some fundamental changes in how libraries and their users operate.     Click here

Semantics and Analytics Unlock Value in Social and Online Content (intelligent-enterprise.informationweek.com): Facebook, LinkedIn, Trip Advisor, and Twitter -- social media -- are almost incidental, replaceable tomorrow if another platform proves more attractive, powerful, and agile. (Think AOL and MySpace.) It's content that is king, the message delivered via the blog/e-mail/news/forum medium, generated by corporations and individual producers, traveling a two-way street between them and information-consumer audiences, who in turn comment, repost, and remix at will.     Click here