Whither Portable Peer Review?
Three companies (Rubriq, Axios Review, and Peerage of Science) have working models for external peer review. Has any one of them found a model for success?
The Future of Authorship
Dismayed by the loss of trust in facts, and seeming preference for half-truths that appears to be driving our political present, Robert Harington decided to catch up on his reading over the weekend, and stumbled across a stimulating article in Publishers Weekly, entitled How to Sell Nearly a Half-Million Copies of a Poetry Book, by Anisse Gross.
Postdocs Promoted As Paid Reviewers
Paying a living wage for reviews could provide postdocs with a temporary career alternative. But it won’t come cheaply and it will likely result in an uncompetitive journal with little chance of success.
STM Week 2016 — Stray Thoughts on Security, Open Access, and Data
A few take-aways from STM Week, including London Information International — why publishers have to take security seriously, why OA may need to itself be disrupted, and why we might want to rethink the “content business” positioning we have.
What We Tell Society Publishers About Open Access
We are often called upon to discuss open access to society publishers. This is what we tell them.
CiteScore–Flawed But Still A Game Changer
The real innovation of CiteScore is not another performance metric, but a new marketing model focused on editors.
Peering across the Copyright DMZ
A new book reviews various instances of piracy in the media industry and proposes using Big Data analyses as a means to manage it.
Economics, Silicon Valley, and Information Warfare — Is Accuracy Becoming a Luxury Item? Or a Casualty?
Information warfare is both tactical and strategic, with much of its success stemming from the weakened economics of the current information economy. Scholarly publishers have experienced this in many ways, from Google Scholar to predatory publishers to pre-print archives — all answers to the calls for “free information” and all revealing tactical and strategic vulnerabilities as accuracy and facts become luxury items in the information war.
Turnarounds, Pivots, and Repositioning: A Presentation to the Charleston Conference 2016
A presentation to the Charleston Conference in November 2016 on managing turnarounds in the scholarly communications area. The panelists come from very different areas of the industry: a library publication, a university press, and a distribution company.
How’s That "Abundance" Thing Working Out For You?
The age of information abundance may have fundamental flaws — barriers to entry that create false equivalence; dissemination tools that conflate fake information with responsible sources; self-reinforcing loops of conspiracy and paranoia; and social fragmentation that makes societal disruption more likely. What can be done? Here are a few ideas.
What We Can Learn from Fake News
Fake News is making headlines as questions about how dubious stories may have influenced the US election. This post explores the damage done to reputable news organizations and what scholarly publishers could learn from the whole thing.
Why Technology Will Not Get Cheaper
The long-desired hope that digital publishing will be cheaper gets more cold water, as infrastructure and personnel costs continue to rise, with no real end in sight.
The Fallacy of ‘Sound’ Science
“Sound methodology” suggests an ideal match to a scientific question that never quite exists. So why do some publishers use it?
Revisiting: Why Hasn’t Scientific Publishing Been Disrupted Already?
Six-plus years later, it’s time to revisit Michael Clarke’s now-classic post about disruption, or rather the lack thereof, in scientific publishing.
Managing the Cost Burden — Is the Pendulum Swinging Back to the Individual Market?
The pendulum for revenues swung from personal subscriptions to institutional subscriptions with the rise of digital options. With growth capped, a new mix of access options is likely to emerge.