Open Access, Academic Freedom, and the Spectrum of Coercive Power
Who has the most power to take choice away from authors?
Tipping the Scales: Is Impact Factor Suppression Biased Against Small Fields?
The suppression of three economic history journals reveals more about Clarivate’s methods than citation manipulation.
Libraries and Archives: A Humanities Take on Discovery
Scholars are interested in discovering libraries and archives as institutional producers of knowledge, not only using them as providers of resources.
Interview: The BMJ’s Patient Review Initiative — A Novel Expansion of Peer Review
Kent Anderson looks at an innovative approach to peer review that has expanded, changed review approaches, and impressed authors.
The Global Battle for Attention and Authority – Have We Already Lost?
As we learn more on an almost daily basis about the growing power and influence of social media and Facebook in particular, Alison Mudditt spoke recently with Siva Vaidhyanathan about the intricate relationship between media and democracy, and the critical role that cultural institutions – including scholarship, publishers and libraries – need to play in countering this pernicious hold on our attention.
Has Google Become a Journal Publisher?
Google’s journal about artificial intelligence (AI) coming from editors and authors associated with Google and Google Brain raises questions about conflicts, vanity publishing, and Google as a media company.
Can Blockchain Withstand Skepticism? An Inquiry
The buzz around blockchain is mounting. But does it fit with scholarly publishing’s incentives and practices?
Preprints and Citations: Should Non-Peer Reviewed Material Be Included in Article References?
Preprints are early drafts of a paper before it has gone through peer review. Should non-peer reviewed material be included in published article reference lists? If so, how can we make that clear to readers?
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part Three — Blockchain, RA21, Privacy, and Trust
We continue to battle the tidal wave of data with a bucket brigade of individual privacy settings. Maybe it’s time to pause and consider a state-level solution, ala Estonia.
Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Preprint Badges!
By incorporating post-publication validation badges into preprints, bioRxiv begins to transform itself from a preprint server into a publishing platform.
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part Two — The Subscription Model
Business models that exploit vulnerabilities are unfair. Can a model that aligns producer and consumers help fix the Internet?
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part One — Open Citations
With so much broken by the Internet, we may be moving into a mode of fixing things. Are open citations part of the solution, or more of the problem?
Algorithms Are Opinions Embedded in Code
Would an AI-driven peer review system improve objectivity? Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction explains the biases and subjectivity inherent in algorithms.
Book Review: “Technically Wrong,” by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
A new book explores how biases and broken systems get built into technology products and platforms.
The Wake-up Call — Looking Back at 2017, and Some Factors Affecting 2018
2017 may have been a watershed year for the Internet and its future. What did we learn? And what factors may shape 2018?