September 2015 - The Scholarly Kitchen

Libraries and Consortia in the Context of a Publisher’s Strategy

Professional societies are facing growing resistance to place their publications in libraries. This results in these societies seeking arrangements with the largest commercial publishers, whose sway with libraries and especially library consortia is significant. Libraries have demonstrated a clear preference to work with the larger publishers over the smaller ones. This leads to increasing concentration and market power in the academic publishing industry.

When Pragmatism Collides With Fundamentalism-PLOS Hikes Publication Fees

Why did such a small price increase arouse such a big reaction from open access advocates?

Welcome to Peer Review Week!

Welcome to the first – but hopefully not the last – Peer Review Week: an opportunity to celebrate the fundamental role played by peer review in scholarly communications, and the many diverse efforts to improve and support it.

The IgNobel Prize Celebrates an Anniversary

The 25th Annual IgNobel Prize Ceremony captured on video.

The Global Gold Open Access "Flip": A Realistic Plan or Magical Thinking?

Is a flip to a Gold OA world as easy as a recent paper suggests?

Ask The Chefs: How Has The Move To Distributed Networks Impacted Scholarly Publishing?

The digital era has increasingly led to distributed networks and a move away from centralized locations for both people and data. As our ability to communicate, participate, and share has increased, how has our ecosystem changed?

Proof of Concept, Proof of Program, and Proof of Scale in Scholarly Communication

New scholarly-communication initiatives have to do more than just demonstrate proof of concept: they have to demonstrate ongoing sustainability (what we might call “proof of program”) and the ability to create desirable products in the amounts needed (what we might call “proof of scale”). What do these look like when they’re achieved, and how are some recent initiatives doing?

Viva VIVO! Thinking More Broadly About the Scholarly Communications Infrastructure

Inspired by this year’s VIVO conference, this post looks at why we need a better understanding of how the scholarly research infrastructure works today in order to keep improving it for the future.

The Jetset Lifestyle

A look back to the days when air travel meant something other than a colossal headache.

Revisiting: The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore

Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2014 post on the importance of editors–how much of what we see as a failure of “peer review” is really a failure of editorial oversight?

Validating Author Services Providers: Q&A with Donald Samulack

A proposed coalition aims to help authors identify reputable service providers. In this Q&A with Donald Samulack, the justification and way forward for such an effort is discussed.

Library Publishing Redux: An Unprecedented Example of a Scholar/Library/Publisher Partnership

A collaborative venture between Oxford University Press and the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library exemplifies a new approach to library publishing, one that could be replicated elsewhere with relative ease and that offers potentially huge benefits to scholarship.

What Is “Publishing” if Even a Library Can Do It?

Libraries increasingly provide a wide range of publishing activities, but are there some areas where libraries are not active? It appears that libraries are unlikely to play a large role in publishing that is based on end-user demand.

Back to School

John Oliver’s guide to the upcoming year for students.

Peer Review Week – A Celebration!

Peer review is fundamental to scholarly communications – not just journal articles, but conference papers, grants, promotion and tenure, and more. Four organizations plan to honor it through a Peer Review Week later this month – we hope you’ll join the celebrations!

The Scholarly Kitchen

Archives: September 2015