More information emerges about PubMed Central, its processes, its relationship with eLife, and its role as a technology provider. Overall, it looks like certain OA friends get special treatment, and the processes you think occur are often short-circuited and may not even be tracked.
Value-based pricing of unique journal products may make sense from a revenue perspective, but not from a sustainability perspective. What are the options?
Publishers have lost ground in the public debate of the role of publishing in scholarly communications. A new strategy is needed, one that emphasizes preemption, cooptation, and innovation.
Last week, PubMed Central became the primary and sole publisher of eLife content, putting its competition with publishers, its manipulation of PubMed indexing criteria, its competition with publishing technology companies, and its clear OA bias into stark relief.
Funder-sponsored journals raise important conflict of interest questions, and may be fundamentally untenable in an industry that requires independent third-party evaluation of research reports.
“Author-service” journals sound like a straightforward proposition, but when you contemplate how authorship is a minority activity by a minority of practicing scientists and science practitioners, it becomes much less clear that author service is enough to support robust publishing practices.
Joe Esposito, with his colleagues Kizer Walker and Terry Ehling, has been working on an analysis of patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) for the past year. Joe has been posting early drafts of sections of the report on this research on the Kitchen. The full report is now available and can be downloaded here.
AAP and Google have reached a confidential settlement over Google Books. But the larger Authors Guild case remains.
Purchasing a college textbook can be a very expensive proposition. Why are these textbooks so expensive? The reason lies in the very structure of the industry, where instructors make decisions they don’t have to pay for.
A recent attempt by SPARC and others to assess “How Open Is It?” shows how complex OA publishing is, but also fails to accurately represent the potential complexities in many areas.
While some hope that OA will create a more accessible literature, new data about NSF funding and some logical extrapolations suggest it may actually exacerbate the Matthew Effect, choking off opportunities to publish for those without the funding necessary.
The flood of OA journals and publishers continues worldwide, but the number of articles is still small in any field.
By allowing free commercial use of OA articles, current CC licenses may shift costs to researchers, presage an unsustainable information economy, and ultimately work against their stated goals. A commercially viable option might actually prove more sustainable.
Trade groups often start with their audience in mind, but over time devolve into self-centered agendas. Will the new Internet Association fall into this time-tested trap?
While the effect of piracy on some book sales is still debatable, college textbooks lose sales when online file-sharing becomes prevalent. A recent examination of the situation in a market outside the U.S. provides a laboratory example.