Crossmarks

Papers are not sacred – this what I have been advocating even after having personal distress after commenting on a PLoS ONE paper. Nevertheless, the new Nature editorial supports my view

What is needed, instead, is a system of publication that is more meritocratic in its evaluation of performance and productivity in the sciences. It should expand the record of a scientific study past an individual paper, including additional material such as worthy blog posts about the results, media coverage and the number of times that the paper has been downloaded.

where Crossmark may jump in

… there is no such thing as a “final version” of a scholarly publication. A scholarly publication can be enhanced, amended, corrected, updated, withdrawn and even retracted. The publisher, in its role of certifying the scholarly literature, has a duty to keep the scholarly record sound and free from fraudulent or incorrect data.

CrossMark is currently in a pilot phase while several publishers have added CrossMark logos to their live publication sites. Unfortunately, CrossMark accepts only comments, enhancements, corrections, updates, by a “publisher (who) must be a CrossRef member in good standing”. So, although science blogs are vital for scientific progress, they are out of this game (by now).