Keep calm and carry on: moral panic,predatory publishers,peer review,and the emperor's new clothes

The moral panic over the impact of so-called predatory publishers continues unabated. It is important, however, to resist the urge to simply join in this crusade without pausing to examine the assumptions upon which such concerns are based. It is often assumed that established journals are almost sacrosanct, and that their quality, secured by peer review, is established. It is also routinely presumed that such journals are immune to the lure of easy money in return for publication. Rather than looking at the deficits that may be apparent in the practices and products of predatory publishers, this commentary invites you to explore the weaknesses that have been exposed in traditional academic journals but are seldom discussed in the context of predatory publishing. The inherent message for health and medical services staff, researchers, academics, and students is, as always, to critically evaluate all sources of information, whatever their provenance.     

Using Quality Systems to Improve Performance

Many organizations have adopted a wide variety of approaches in introducing selected practices for achieving control of the quality of their products and services. Some of these piecemeal applications of the Quality Sciences have been successful–to varying degrees and for a time. However, the only approach that achieves long-term success is that requiring a complete cultural change in most organizations– involving a refocusing of all activities performed by everyone toward mutually intersupportive efforts to reach a common objective. In a word, a Quality System is required. In this paper, I have attempted to portray the basic considerations involved in developing and installing such a system. This is accomplished by describing some of the background of the system concept, certain of the internal and external features of a Quality System, and, to complete the picture, a semi-fictitious recital of the experiences of a company that has decided to embark on the Quality System journey.     

Direct memberships in foreign copyright collecting societies as an entrepreneurial opportunity for music publishers – needs,challenges, opportunities and solutions

Journal of Cultural Economics - In the competitive, increasingly international music business, publishers are developing new ways to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the monetization of the...     

A Symbiosis of Access: Proliferating STEM PhD Training in the U.S. from 1920–2010

Minerva - Over the course of the 20th century, unprecedented growth in scientific discovery was fueled by broad growth in the number of university-based scientists. During this period the American...     

Culture without “world”: Australian cultural policy in the age of stupid

In March 2013, after six years of consultation, an Australian Labor government launched the national cultural policy document, Creative Australia. In July 2013, a Coalition government was elected, Senator George Brandis became Minister for the Arts, and the policy was dumped. With it went cross-party consensus about funding rationales and measurement strategies, with disastrous consequences for the cultural sector. This cautionary tale of gaffes, pay-back and abrupt changes of direction, highlights the fragility of policy memory that condemns artists and arts managers to a never-ending reinvention of the evidentiary wheel. Our paper examines the problem of collective understanding (“world”) in cultural policy-making in Australia, exacerbated not only by the short-term electoral cycles which undermine long-term cultural outcome timescales, but by a fixation on what Hannah Arendt calls “the peculiar and ingenious replacement of common sense with strict logicality”. Evidence of value is only meaningful when it occurs in a policy memory that can fully avow it and respond in appropriate ways. Measurement methods are over-determined by epistemology and by experience. We argue that the balance between these determinants of effective cultural policy-making has been lost. An emphasis on numerical data – especially economic data – has forced arguments for culture into a decontextualised register of quantitative proof. Recent events in Australia suggest that different, more direct ways of engaging with cultural policy-making are required for the problem of collective understanding to be successfully assayed.     

Could Slackline Training Complement the FIFA 11+ Programme Regarding Training of Neuromuscular Control?

The current study compared changes in neuromuscular control between slackline training and the stabilization training elements of the FIFA 11+ programme. Twenty-five students in 2 groups performed a 12-unit training programme. The slackline training group (n?=?13) exclusively trained with a slackline. The stabilization training group (n?=?12) practised exercises as described in the second part of the FIFA 11+ programme. Improvements in balance were assessed using three tests for dynamic, quasi-static, and perturbed postural control: the star excursion balance test (SEBT), the closed-eye single-leg stance, and the MFT S3-Check. Both groups significantly improved the stability and sensorimotor index of the MFT S3-Check (p?<?.001), their range on the SEBT (p?<?.001), and the duration of closed-eye single-leg stance (p?<?.001). The group?×?training interaction was significant for the MFT S3-Check (stability index: p?=?.042; sensorimotor index: p?=?.004) and the SEBT (dominant leg: p?=?.003; averaged both legs: p?=?.016), with the slackline training group showing a larger training effect than the stabilization training group. The results of the present study suggest that slackline training offers similar – or better – improvements in neuromuscular control as the FIFA 11+ warm-up programme. If compliance with the FIFA 11+ programme is declining, then slacklining might offer an alternative approach to reach the training goals of improved sensorimotor control.     

In Pursuit of Chinese Music

<正>They already spent half a lifetime researching and promoting Chinese traditional music, and continue to do so today: Frank Kouwenhoven, a Dutch journalist, m...