Comments on: Gladwell & Nielsen: The Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas

By: The 2009 STM Frankfurt Conference « The Scholarly Kitchen

The 2009 STM Frankfurt Conference « The Scholarly Kitchen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:05:42 +0000

[...] The talk was based on, and closely followed, his blog post of the same title. As this post has already been covered in the Scholarly Kitchen, I will only highlight a few points from the talk [...]

By: Eric Hellman

Eric Hellman — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:37:05 +0000

While I enjoyed reading Nielsen's post, in the end I decided its analysis was wrong. Newspapers aren't competing with news blogs, they're competing with Craigslist, Zillow, and the rest of the internet. More at Spherical Livestock and the Alleged Disruption of Scientific Publishing.

By: Headline Commentary June 29- July 6 | Health Content Advisors

Headline Commentary June 29- July 6 | Health Content Advisors — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:15:21 +0000

[...] » Gladwell & Nielsen: The Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas « The Scholarly Kitchen [...]

By: Playing Two Ends Against the Middle « The Scholarly Kitchen

Playing Two Ends Against the Middle « The Scholarly Kitchen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:28:32 +0000

[...] Kent Anderson mentions in his post Gladwell & Nielson: The Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas, Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s forthcoming book, “Free: The Future of a [...]

By: Janice McCallum

Janice McCallum — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:12:24 +0000

I agree with Kent and the commenters that publishing scientific research differs from publishing newspapers. The former has a smaller more specialized audience and the latter has broad appeal, which conforms better to an advertising supported model.

However, the larger issue that needs to be recognized is that IT is affecting the economics of publishing in all domains. A blogger who writes about scientific research may not be able to compete with an established STM publisher on the basis of content quality. But, an STM publisher who adopts better, cheaper, faster publishing technology can compete with an established STM publisher who fails to use IT effectively. The more technically savvy publisher can produce at a lower cost and charge less. More important, the technically advanced publisher can focus on higher-value info products that offer analytic tools and other features that the low-tech publisher cannot. If the market is willing to pay for the value-add tools, the tech-savvy publisher can afford to discount the basic info and sell the high-value tools for a premium.

I commented on Nielsen’s blog and also commented on the Gladwell/Anderson debate on Henry Bloget’s blog (www.businessinsider.com) and also lay out my thesis that all digital content is becoming commoditized in my article: “Health Content is Rapidly Losing Its Value” on my blog.

Note, it’s not just content that becomes commoditized once it is digitized, knowledge workers whose expertise becomes codified in electronic decision support systems become commoditized, too. See Tom Lee, MD’s article, which is referenced in my article.

By: Mark Anderson-Wilk

Mark Anderson-Wilk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:37:47 +0000

I agree. Science publishing is inextricably tied to science research, and most academic researchers are still working in a model where the incentive is to get grants and publish in peer-reviewed venues. So it seems questionable to compare science publishing to newspapers or tech companies. It is generally in the interest of most publicly funded granting agencies to make new research findings freely available to the public. I believe part of research funding should be dedicated to improved new methods of communicating the findings to broader audiences (the direction is already going this way with NSF grant requirements, etc.), so that the research teams in collaboration with science publishers are offering “free” high-quality communications that would compete with or exceed any for-profit, derivative efforts in credibility, audience-focusing, tech-savviness, and production quality.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:26:29 +0000

Mark Cuban weighs in on Gadwell v. Anderson here, and Seth Godin gives his opinion here.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:16:50 +0000

Nielsen’s article has some good food for thought, but it’s also flawed in many ways. I get the feeling he’s a little too “in the bubble” to see things objectively. If you write a science blog, read and comment on other science blogs, correspond with science bloggers, you start thinking the whole world is doing the same. But the number of scientists who read any blogs, let alone science blogs is vanishingly small, the number of science bloggers even smaller. The rising influence he points to so far doesn’t exist.
The experiments he praises are nearly all proving to be expensive and unsustainable. JOVE and SciVee both had to move to traditional publishing models after losing money hand over fist. The Nature Network has become an expensive clubhouse for a small number of scientists. Mendeley has no obvious business model and is completely dependent on the traditional science publishing industry for its content. Most academic publishers can’t afford to spend years and millions of dollars on failures like these.

The other big problem is trying to draw parallels between science publishing and newspaper/blog publishing. The motivations for the readers and the writers for both are very different. Scientists write formal papers because those are the currency of the realm, not because it’s fun. I’m not convinced that an informal network of people blogging can play that same role.

And I would also contend that the real competitors for newspapers are other newspapers that are free online. Yes, some functions of newspapers have been taken over by blogs–gossip, niche reporting on particular fields, classified ads. But for real news reporting, how many blogs are doing original quality news reporting? Nearly all are just linkblogs pointing to formal news agencies. The real problem for newspapers is that in attempts to cut costs, they’ve lowered quality, and eliminated everything that differentiates them from one another. They’re entirely replaceable with each other as they all just print the same wire feeds. They’re ubiquitous and free, so online ad rates are too low to support their publication. If they try to charge for access, readers will just switch to the another identical paper that remains free.