The Scholarly Kitchen

As we drift into a scholarly economy with centralized payment mechanisms and greater dependence on government funding, are we truly setting ourselves up for long-term independence and success? Continue reading →

Do publishers need to integrate the creation, management, delivery, and discovery of different content types? What best meets customer needs, optimizes resources, and encourages innovative new content products and services? Continue reading →

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers recently launched a consultation, requesting feedback from all stakeholders about their draft principles on article sharing on scholarly communication networks. Find out more about how and why these principles are needed and what the consultation hopes to achieve, n this interview with Fred Dylla, Executive Director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics, and project lead for the initiative. Continue reading →

Gender equality is about more than just evening up the numbers. It’s about ensuring everyone has the confidence or the courage to take opportunities. Continue reading →

Charlie Rapple, cofounder of Kudos, joins The Scholarly Kitchen. Continue reading →

The use of Mechanical Turk in research may generate misleading data and false information. Do we need to guard against such mechanical methodologies? Continue reading →

As North American university presses struggle with identity, and seek to redefine their place in the publishing ecosystem, it is worth exploring the activities, and outlook of the American University in Cairo Press through the eyes of its Director, Nigel Fletcher Jones. What can we learn from this publisher, who has ambition, optimism, and a recent track record of significant growth? Continue reading →

What would it cost for someone to acquire a full set of all peer-reviewed journals, including backfiles? This question was put to a number of experts, but there appears to be no answer to it. We don’t know what everything would cost. Continue reading →

While more scientific information than ever is available, science itself is struggling for funding, for cultural footholds, and for priority in society. What has gone wrong? Continue reading →

Late last year, Nature Publishing Group embarked on an experiment to allow users to share content. Some commentators accused NPG of using controlled sharing to snoop on customers. In this post, Phill Jones explores the difference between aggregated usage data and spying on users. Continue reading →

Would adding a big flatscreen TV to my office might make a difference? Yes, in big and important ways. Continue reading →

Publishers have underestimated how disruptive mobile technology potentially can be. We are likely to see an entirely new ecosystem develop with the smart phone at the center. Continue reading →

Is there (ever) a good time to overhaul a publishers’ production system? If you care about your journals’ Impact Factor, the answer is “yes.” Continue reading →

The second public access plan from a US federal funding agency has been announced. Some first impressions… Continue reading →

Because so much of scholarly communication takes place via the internet, this week’s announcement by Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Tom Wheeler in support of Net Neutrality and regulation of the internet should be viewed as a positive thing for our community. Continue reading →

The last remaining lawsuit brought by Edwin Mellen Press founder Herbert Richardson against librarian Dale Askey has now reportedly been settled. Continue reading →

The benefits of personalizing discovery are already playing themselves out in the consumer space, suggesting tremendous opportunities for using data to personalize the research process. Given the scale of data needed for effective personalization, the implications of changing discovery processes will cascade through the scholarly ecosystem. Continue reading →

The project manager has become a critical part of success in a publishing world with more complex systems, processes, and vendor relationships. But finding a good one is still a challenge. Continue reading →

Technology is great, but does it deserve top billing? Leon Wieseltier’s essay in the New York Times as well as articles by other academics raise a challenge to the information industry as a whole. Continue reading →

PeerJ’s first Impact Factor is not expected to surpass 2.000. Without the scale of PLOS ONE, PeerJ may need to seek a larger, diversified buyer. What the journal has to offer other publishers is less clear. Continue reading →

James Garner’s television detective warned us about Google and Facebook way back in 1978. If only we’d listened… Continue reading →

2015 has already started with a bang and we think there’s more to come, as you’ll see from the Chef’s responses to the question: What do you think will have the biggest impact on scholarly publishing in 2015? Continue reading →

The infrastructure for complying with public access mandates is well under way, but a critical component for identifying funding agencies could use a little work. Continue reading →

Publishers have to distinguish between features, products, and businesses. Not all features can become full-fledged businesses. Sometimes the best business case for a feature is to link it to an established business, where it adds value to assets that are already in place. Continue reading →

The Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) meeting in Europe is 10 years old, but feels as fresh and frisky as some of the meetings in the US used to. This report touches on some of the most interesting threads of two days’ worth of interesting presentations and conversations. Continue reading →

A charming short film about the history and importance of the fruit fly Drosophila as a model organism in biomedical research. Continue reading →

The collection of end-user data is going to become more important for all publishers and may serve to describe those publishers that will be most successful in the coming years. Although data-collection is often thought to be a malignant instance of “Big Brotherism,” it may in fact be benign when implemented thoughtfully. Continue reading →

The University of California Press has announced two new open access publishing initiatives, one a monographs program and the other an OA mega journal. Here UCP director Alison Mudditt answers some questions posed by the Kitchen about these new initiatives. Continue reading →

The merger of Macmillan and Springer holds many lessons and some interesting twists. More than anything, it indicates a future in which scale continues to confer advantages. Continue reading →

The administrative burden stemming from funding agency and institutional access policies is just beginning. Can we reduce the severity of this storm with careful planning and collaboration? Continue reading →

A social media campaign may have little (if any) effect on article readership, a recent study reports. Continue reading →

Fifteen years later, the authors of the “Cluetrain Manifesto” attempt a relevant update, with 112 new “clues.” Yet, they miss the biggest clue of all — the Internet is no longer sacred and its users know it. Continue reading →

We are likely to see increased mergers and acquisitions activity in the publishing world this year, and scholarly publishing is not exempt from this. There are many reasons for this, including such fundamental factors as low interest rates, but one reason is the growth of open access mandates from funding agencies, which is disrupting the way many organizations do business. Continue reading →

An odd find from earlier this week — the video CNN plans to play at the end of the world. Continue reading →

Despite recent criticisms, peer review remains central to scholarly communication – but identifying and maintaining a steady stream of trained and knowledgeable peer reviewers is increasingly challenging. With researchers under more pressure than ever to publish or perish, some journal editors would like to see more support and recognition for peer review from their institutions and funders. Continue reading →

There’s no such thing as “too big to fail,” and this applies to libraries as much as it does to car makers, steel companies, and search engines. My guess is that Ozymandias never saw it coming. Continue reading →

A Spanish court’s decision around Google News suggests that the barter arrangement with Google and other general search engines — in which they pay nothing to license our content — may have a more viable financial future. Continue reading →

Some professional societies need to be persuaded that open access publishing may be in their interest. The best way to do this is to provide data on the publishing ecosystem, including such things as the number of articles of interest to a society that appear in other venues and the practical implications of not having an OA option for prospective authors. Continue reading →

We’re off for the holidays, and offer this look back at 2014 in lieu of new posts. See you in 2015. Continue reading →

Find out what the Chefs learned in 2014 and share your most important lessons! Continue reading →

In this article we take a look at the start-up incubation business of Digital Science. Robert Harington acts as your unreliable narrator through a revealing conversation with Timo Hannay, Managing Director of Digital Science. Continue reading →

The emerging spectre of cyberwar and cyberterror has real implications for academic and scientific publishers, who already deal with the side effects and may become targets in the future. Continue reading →

An appreciation of the book as physical object. Continue reading →

When thinking about open access to content, is it appropriate to equate disabling downloads with lack of support for the visually impaired? Continue reading →

Altmetric’s annual top 100 list provides an opportunity to see what science reached the general public and to think more about what information altmetrics really provide. Continue reading →

University presses have long had programs in journal publishing, but some of these programs have declined a bit in recent years. There are steps a press can take to strengthen its journal publishing program. Continue reading →

A recent study finds that academic press offices exaggerate claims in their press releases about published research. Worse, the vast majority of these find their way into subsequent reporting. Continue reading →

It’s Friday, the sky outside the window is increasingly grey and I find myself staring off into space as the year winds to a close. But if you’re going to sit mesmerized in front of a screen, then why not watch something mesmerizing, like an large bag of plastic balls being dumped onto an escalator: … Continue reading →

Revisiting a holiday classic: ‘Twas the month before Christmas, and by listening hard, you can hear Joe Esposito yearn for a library card. The reasons are simple, yet give publishers pause. No wonder Joe’s only hope is with Santa Claus. Continue reading →

Flickr users were enraged when the company tried to reuse their CC BY licensed photographs by selling prints. This once again points out the confusion that content creators have regarding copyright and what the various CC licenses really mean. Continue reading →