Welcome to Things we read this week, a weekly post featuring articles from around the internet recommended by BMJ Labs.

Publishing

• Ernesto Priego is wondering about how to make the editorial workload of a small journal with limited resources manageable whilst ensuring no unnecessary delays in getting accepted content publicly available.
• Are you working on innovative technologies to improve science communication, science policy, or public understanding of science? Submit your work to the interactive poster session of the #SpreadingFacts conference [Deadline 3 November].
• The Taylor & Francis researcher survey 2019 interesting set of numbers, for example “The many initiatives and services developed to encourage the growth of open access are not yet reaching the consciousness of researchers. 66% of researchers didn’t recognize any of 11 different initiatives presented to them, from the 2002 Budapest Open Access Declaration (12% awareness) to the Open Access Button (2%). Just 5% of researchers are aware of Plan S.”
• Earlier this month the PPA organised a breakfast briefing hosted by the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and curated by Byte The Book to discuss Blockchain and how it might invigorate consumer publishing.
• The International Center for Journalists’ 2019 survey of the State of Technology in Global Newsrooms. Some interesting parallels and contrasts between STM publishing. The summary is “The use of fact-checking and social media verification tools is on the rise, while many newsrooms are securing their communications to protect themselves and their sources. Journalists are also using a multitude of new techniques and platforms to better engage their audiences – and earn their trust.” 
• Edward Christopher has a piece on BMJ Opinion about How can medical students avoid predatory journals
• Bianca Kramer and co discuss Open Citations at Force2019. If someone can find grant funding to support the extraction/processing of archive citations then we’ll open up more references. We’ve funded some work in this area but there’s a significant cost and it takes time to get the extraction process up and running and check the outputs, etc.
  

Innovation

• Steve Blank on why Companies Do “Innovation Theater” Instead of Actual Innovation. Those who view STM publishers as not being innovative will find much to support their view here: “If the company is large enough it will become a “rent-seeker” and look to the government and regulators as their first line of defense against innovative competition. They’ll use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models. The result of monopolist behavior is that innovation in that sector dies — until technology/consumer behavior passes them by. By then the company has lost the ability to compete as an innovator.”
• This graphic from The Passion Economy and the Future of Work caught my attention. It’s awkward to think about academics as “knowledge influencers” but once you do the potential value of services like Kudos become much more obvious.