The Scholarly Kitchen
Latest Post
The 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes
It’s that time of year again. Every year Harvard University’s glorious Sanders Theatre plays host to the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. I was there, along with my 13-year old son, armed with dozens of pieces of paper, for ready assembly into paper airplanes and ready to revel in a couple of hours of sublime silliness. Here is my report. Continue reading
Today's Specials and Featured Items
A session at ALPSP shines a light on why publishers are caught in an impossible situation — satisfying customers who demand different things at different times, and who are not aligned around the ultimate benefit they all seek to deliver. Continue reading
Research4Life’s Richard Gedye discusses publisher contributions to UNESCO’s International Day for Universal Access to Information. Continue reading
We typically classify publishers as Old Media and New Media, but now we have companies that are part of a new paradigm, the Dat Media company. Such companies sit above both Old and New, studying patterns in usage and in the databases of information aggregated by publishers. Continue reading
Citation network maps may indicate when gaming is taking place. Proving intention is a different story. Continue reading
Learn how and why different organizations are recognizing the work of their reviewers in this video to celebrate the theme of Peer Review Week 2016 — #RecognizeReview. Continue reading
Today’s contribution to Peer Review Week 2016 is an interview with Maryann Martone of Hypothes.is, which examines the important — but often overlooked — role of annotation in peer review. Continue reading
Next up in our series of posts celebrating Peer Review Week 2016 is a conversation about peer review in the humanities and social sciences. Chefs Alison Mudditt and Karin Wulf, together with Mary Francis of the University of Michigan Press, discuss the differences and similarities between peer review in HSS and STEM disciplines, and between reviews for books and journals in HSS. Continue reading
In the second post in our series to celebrate Peer Review Week 2016, guest author Tom Culley of Publons looks at the critical role played by editors in the peer review process and asks how we can better recognize it. Continue reading
As we celebrate Peer Review Week, this post summarizes some of the reviewer preferences along with ways to boost recognition for peer review activities. #PeerRevWk16 Continue reading
What better way to end the week than with a look at a few compilations of the “world’s coolest libraries”? Continue reading
Looking forward to Peer Review Week, we asked the Chefs “What is the future of peer review?” #PeerRevWk16 Continue reading
The new book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” calls out many worrying trends in the application of big data, with particularly salient entries on higher education rankings, for-profit universities, the justice system, insurance, and employment. Continue reading
Emory Professor and journal Editor in Chief Gary Miller offers a long term view of the scholarly literature and offers thoughts on the important values worth preserving in the shift from print to digital. Continue reading
Think persistent identifiers are a bit boring? Think again! PIDapalooza, the first open festival of persistent identifiers, aims to challenge that view. Find out more, including how you can get involved. Continue reading
A look at the evolution of comic book fonts, once driven by the physical nature of the books and now moving into new digital possibilities. Continue reading
INASP’s Jon Harle looks at the United Nation’s Global Goals and explains why they matter to publishers. Continue reading
There have been several recent studies of what it costs to publish academic monographs, but they all mistake the cost of production with the cost of publication. This post summarizes the issues and suggests a very simple way to calculate the cost of publication. Continue reading
Ever wondered what early-career publishing professionals are worried about, wishing for, and planning to do–and how you can encourage them to keep doing those things within your organization? The Society for Scholarly Publishing wondered, too, and deployed a subcommittee of professionals (early-career and otherwise) to find out. Here are some of their findings, presented by Early Career Subcommittee co-chairs Emma Brink and Matt Cooper (both of Wiley). Continue reading
This summer’s blockbuster movie “Ghostbusters” is, amazingly, about academic peer review and the quality of scholarly publishing. Is it possible that the specialized world of scholarly communications now has mass appeal? Continue reading
Observational studies claiming an open access citation advantage just keep coming, despite problems in reproducibility and a lack of adequate controls. Are we in for a similar literature on the subject of the impact of social media on readership and citation? Continue reading
What should publishers know about researchers and their work? Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf follow up a post earlier this year about “Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know about Scholarly Publishing.” Continue reading
Annual reports from publishing organizations always have a marketing slant, even when they are required filings with governmental bodies. But some are more marketing-oriented than others, and should not be mistaken for transparency, but rather tend toward rationalization. eLife’s recent report, challenging others to be as transparent, is itself opaque and purposeful. Continue reading
Some etymological fun — English words that seem like they should be related but aren’t. Continue reading
Does anyone ever set out to get a job in scholarly publishing or does it just happen? This month the Chefs offer their advice to job seekers. Continue reading
An interview with MacKenzie Smith and Ivy Anderson, discussing the recent Pay It Forward report on the economic impact of a shift to Gold open access for scholarly journals. Continue reading
Higher Impact Factor, faster publication, and weaker data availability policies may be drawing authors away from PLOS ONE. Continue reading
In 1979, a study at the University of Pittsburgh Library found that 40% of the books added in the previous six years had not circulated. 37 years later, we librarians still cite that number and many of us use it (among other factors) to justify moving in the direction of patron-driven acquisition. A critic of that practice argues that many subsequent circulation studies contradict the Kent Study. But do they? Continue reading
Last Friday’s post looked at visualizations for the relative sizes of celestial objects. But for most of us, a Blue Supergiant Star remains something of an abstract concept. This week, a look closer to home. Continue reading
A presentation to the 2016 ISMTE US Conference. Something of a “state of our industry” overview, or perhaps, everything I needed to know I learned from the other bloggers at The Scholarly Kitchen. Continue reading
A presentation to the ISMTE conference. The argument is that strategy is an integral part of business operations and must be used to measure all activity within an organization. A three-step process for strategic planning is included. Continue reading
A recent article by a young researcher, “I’m a serious academic, not a professional Instagrammer”, has spawned a range of responses under the #seriousacademic hashtag. Charlie Rapple summarizes, and considers why it is that “serious” academics might choose not to use social media. Continue reading
Is there a role for a curated, remixing approach to developing next generation textbooks. Robert Harington investigates the role of curated open textbooks in teaching today’s students, looking at some of the available tools, the way in which instructors utilize such tools, and issues around fair use of content. Continue reading
How does a new visualization of the size of the universe stack up to the classic standard? Continue reading
This summer, Project MUSE announced that it is developing its ability to host and distribute open access (OA) ebooks. Project MUSE’s director Wendy Queen spoke with me recently about this program and some of the broader strategic issues we should be contemplating. Continue reading
Internet security seems to be crumbling before our eyes, and our media and leaders are not immune and lack a crucial understanding of how vulnerable a totally digital world can be. The answer may lie with analog technologies. Continue reading
A new study from the University of California system confirms much of what we already knew about open access, particularly the increased financial burden it places on productive universities. Continue reading
Citation indexes need to provide standardized citation histograms for editors and publishers. Without them, it is unlikely that they will be widely adopted. At worse, it will encourage the production of histograms that selectively highlight or obscure the data. Continue reading
How much is the privacy of academics worth? Judging by the behavior of most people, seemingly very little. Continue reading
Launching a new journal is a lot of work. This post looks at the basic “to do” list of logistical details that need to be done to successfully launch a new journal. Continue reading
Revisiting Michael Clarke’s 2014 post on the two drivers of growth in STM and scholarly publishing: site licensing and global expansion. As successful as these activities have been, however, we appear to be nearing, if not a peak, at least a plateau. Institutional library budgets have not kept pace with the growth in global research output. At the same time, institutional market penetration is nearing saturation for many publishers.
So the question is, where is the growth going to come from? Continue reading
Product development has surged back into the fore, in both incremental and paradigm-shifting ways. Yet, some cultures still struggle with it, and the need for the right teams and approaches — especially marketing and sales — remains high. Continue reading
The much-maligned practice of “double-dipping,” in which a publisher received revenue from both subscriptions and APCs, is likely to remain with us for some time, as publishers learn to turn APCs into larger and more varied revenue streams, even as they create the impression that the APCs offset subscription costs. Continue reading
Authors
Angela Cochran
Alice Meadows
Alison Mudditt
Ann Michael
Charlie Rapple
David Crotty
David Smith
Joseph Esposito
Jill O'Neill
judyluther
Karin Wulf
Michael Clarke
Phill Jones
Rick Anderson
Phil Davis
Robert Harington
Roger C. Schonfeld
Kent Anderson
Scholarly Kitchen
Todd A Carpenter
The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is "[t]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking." SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing.
......................................
The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.
Authors
The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is "[t]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking." SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing.
......................................
The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.
