Publishers of subscription and open access scholarly content are facing downward pressures on pricing. Angela Cochran explores some of the hidden costs associated with a professional publishing operation and asks whether some of the tasks currently done by publishers should be absorbed elsewhere.
What do statements of support for UC reveal about open access publishing, institutional priorities, and the role of library-publisher contracts?
Curtis Kendrick, Dean of Libraries at Binghamton University, raises questions about whether cost-per-use is the appropriate metric for measuring the comparative value of library subscriptions.
An interview with Jason Lorgan, executive director of campus stores at @UCDavis, about the university’s innovative new textbook-affordability program.
The value of the big deal has declined. Will libraries drive down its price — or help publishers prop up its value?
How does scholarly communications benefit from coopetition, the cooperation of competitors? Come see what the Chefs said and tell us your thoughts!
Could scholarly publishers’ skills and capacity be re-positioned to serve researchers at earlier stages in the research process, “upstream” of publication? Charlie Rapple shares findings from a survey of the communications needs of almost 10,000 researchers.
Michael Eisen’s bold visions for eLife emerge on Twitter. We consider two of his proposed initiatives.
Today, the MIT Press is issuing a new research report, Mind the Gap: A Landscape Analysis of Open Source Publishing Tools and Platforms. It provides an inventory of some 52 ongoing open source publishing initiatives and a thoughtful analysis of the open source community in publishing — tracking its development without shying away from its struggles.
The second of two posts on the roles of e-books in scholarly publishing, focused on how e-books fit into the mission and the business model of university presses and what that might mean for authors and readers.
Bringing the authority of the academy to a broad audience should be second only to original research itself, especially if the research community hopes to retain or even increase the public’s support for the esoteric work that goes on behind the laboratory walls.
As community-owned and -led efforts to build scholarly communications infrastructure gain momentum, what can be done to help them achieve long term sustainability?
What roles are e-books now playing, and what roles will they play, in scholarly disciplines for which books are a primary, often the apex, scholarly form? The first of two posts about e-books and university presses.
EMBO’s Bernd Pulverer looks at the revised Plan S Implementation Guidelines.
Springer Nature is leading in the effort to preserve library subscriptions by syndicating its content and, in doing so, would establish ResearchGate as perhaps the foremost service for the distribution of scholarly content. Analysis by @lisalibrarian and @rschon.