In their very own words: authors and scholarly journal publishing

This paper presents the results of a major investigation by questionnaire of author attitudes towards scholarly publishing, which was funded by the Publisher's Association. Altogether, the views of nearly 4,000 authors were obtained and this paper concerns just those thousand or so authors who accepted the invitation to write freely about their own personal feelings and experiences. Using QSR N6 textual analysis software, their comments were processed and themes extracted. While the rest of the questionnaire, which was formed of closed‐question, tick‐box type questions, clearly must have had some impact on their thinking, the authors had considerable latitude in regard to what they could say. The paper provides a unique opportunity to hear their views directly. The pressing topics turned out to be (in rough order of concern): the peer‐review system, copyright, journal prices, alternative business models for journal publishing, big deals, Elsevier, electronic publishing and digital journals.     

Looking for love in all the wrong places: Accessing sexual and reproductive health information via the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature

The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature has been described as a cultural barometer. It supports scholars of history and culture by providing access to ideas circulated via the mass media in earlier times, but its own coverage and indexing practices also reveal attitudes and values toward issues of the time. The Progressive Era (1900–1924) coincides with the founding and growth of the Readers' Guide. Examining how the Readers' Guide directed readers' attention to matters of sexual and reproductive health in its first quarter century demonstrates changes in social attitudes and has implications for scholarly work. The array of index terms required to locate information on this topic indicates both barriers to information access for contemporary readers as well as challenges for present-day scholars concerned with recovering information of the era.     

The system of intellectual support for making decisions by planning and training

The paper is devoted to the problem of the qualitative training of management specialists. New methods and instruments permitting the quality of accepted decisions to be heightened are described. It is suggested to use an SISDM containing the functions of the system as an instrument for planning decisions and training in decision making with the use of computerized methods for the active teaching of the method for the analysis of concrete situations and management games.     

Analysis of publications of the pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russia Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials”

The pilot issue of the data collection of the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Industry of Nanosystems and Nanomaterials” gives an approximate view of the state of this field of science at the beginning of 2007. The topics of articles in the pilot issue are analyzed. The directions of development of nanotechnologies are shown. The basic types of nanomaterials, the methods of their production, and their properties and applications are given.     

The competitiveness of scientific research and measures to increase it

In this paper, the consideration of the problem of the competitiveness of scientific research as an independent scientific line in the context of the science of science, whose main methodological instruments could be the adapted economic concepts of competitiveness and clusters, as well as mathematical models of competitive interactions (including models described in the terms and equations of population dynamics) and the methods of scientometric analysis, is proposed. It is shown that solution of the problem of increasing the competitiveness of post-Soviet scientific research falls within the domains of information communication. In addition, the role of the international movement for public access to scientific knowledge in increasing the competitiveness of scientific research is considered.