Rick Anderson is Associate Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication in the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. He has worked previously as a bibliographer for YBP, Inc., as Head Acquisitions Librarian for the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and as Director of Resource Acquisition at the University of Nevada, Reno. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards and is a regular contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen. He has served as president of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), and is a recipient of the HARRASSOWITZ Leadership in Library Acquisitions Award. In 2015 he was elected President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing.
Cabell’s International has stepped into the gap left by the demise of Beall’s List, providing a new predatory journal blacklist that promises to perform the function of identifying and calling out scam publishers more consistently and transparently. How is it doing so far?
For years, we in libraries have been predicting the imminent demise of the manifestly-unsustainable Big Deal — and yet it has persisted. Now that may be changing.
It may seem as if it would be difficult to defend or justify a blatant piracy operation like Sci-Hub. But it can be done, if you’re willing to overlook certain facts and advance certain tenuous moral arguments.
Hypotheses that flatter our own preconceptions and biases are incredibly seductive, and the temptation to accept them at face value can be nearly irresistible. But in a world that seems to be drifting away from analytical rigor and fact-based decision-making, the ability to resist that temptation is more essential than ever.
Green OA has not had a significant effect on subscriptions. What does — and doesn’t — that mean for subscriptions in the future?
What, if anything, should be done about the fact that the Open Access movement embraces not only a variety of definitions of the term “open access,” but also a diversity of visions as to what constitutes an acceptable future for access to scholarship?
Fifteen years after the term was coined, we still don’t have a single agreed-upon definition of Open Access (OA). What are the implications of this diversity of views within the OA movement, and how much does it really matter?
Is Greta Van Susteren right in taking universities to task for building “huge libraries” and in characterizing them as “vanity projects” that have been obviated by the growing online availability of books and other scholarly resources? Obviously not — that’s the position of an ignorant philistine. Except…
Would a systemwide “flip” to open access by means of universal article-processing charges work? David Shulenberger argues that it would not, and he may be right — but not for the reasons he gives.
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?