What counts as an academic publication?

"What is it that sets academic publications apart from articles on The Conversation? Peer review might be your first answer. While The Conversation is built around a journalistic model, there is a big growth in online, open-access journals each with different approaches to peer review. But peer review is impossible to define and reviewing research before it is published can be fraught with problems. This is part of the reason why so many published research findings are false. Alternative publishing models have developed in response to this. Open access and post-publication peer review are now common. This new regime raises questions about what defines academic publishing. Blog posts and journalistic articles can be open access and subject to post-publication peer review, but are they scholarly? New publishing models have also developed their own shortcomings. One problem is the proliferation of predatory open access publishers. Some of these appear happy to accept randomly generated articles for publication, apparently following peer review ... So, what should be considered scholarly output? The key to quality research is that we know what went into producing the reported results. All empirical work should be preceded by a published protocol. This should set out – transparently – the methods that were used. Without one, it’s difficult to reproduce research findings and identify errors. There are plenty of journals that will now publish protocols, such as BMJ Open, PeerJ or SpringerPlus. But publication of a protocol in an open access repository would be sufficient – it isn’t necessary for it to appear in a peer-reviewed journal ... And so peer review itself should also be transparent. Pre-publication peer review reports should be open and accessible through the journal or a service like Publons, a facility for researchers to record their peer review activity. Mechanisms to support post-publication peer review should also be supported. Reviewers should be identifiable as experts in their field. PubMed Commons is an example of such a tool.  Peer review is important, but I believe that post-publication approaches can be more effective. An additional benefit of open evaluation is the potential for better metrics ..."