Is PubMed Central Complementing or Competing with Journal Publishers?
Articles deposited into PubMed Central responsible for drawing readers from journal site, a study finds.
Online Isn't Cheap, We Know — But An Environmentally Problematic Energy Hog?!
A new analysis suggests that energy costs and carbon footprints for online could surpass those of older media types. Oddly, copyright might be part of the solution.
Open Access Embargoes — How Long Is Long Enough?
Most publishers offering delayed free access to journal articles set their embargo period more than a decade ago. Is it time to revisit the access embargo?
Are Open Access Initiatives "Catastrophic" for Commercial Publishers?
An analyst frets that Elsevier might suffer from the trends in OA publishing and its mandates. But there’s no logical or practical reason to believe this.
Monkey Business — Equal Work Demands Equal Pay
When someone is treated unfairly — through pay discrimination — it’s so obvious, even a primate knows it.
Are University Block Grants the Right Way to Fund Open Access Mandates?
While block grants may be a preferred way to disperse money to fund public access mandates, their actual use may cause problems for researchers and universities.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 2: How?
After exploring why the library requires redefinition, this second part of a two-part post offers a new taxonomy for allocating library functions and roles.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 1: Why?
With changes in the scholarly communications world, many old questions for the library are unsettled once again, and many news ones arise. In this first part of a two-part post, we’ll ask the questions.
Udacity Redux: And Then There Was Credit
Udacity students can now transfer credits to Colorado State. Is this the start of something big?
And Another Thing — A Postscript to the Proposed List of 60 Things Publishers Do
In addition to what publishers do directly for authors and readers, they foster many collaborative and philanthropic efforts around the world.
Dictionaries, Maps, and Waste — Thoughts on Publishing Economics, Digital Economics, and Human Frailty
“Waste” is hard to define, and therefore hard to eliminate. And it’s not just a print phenomenon. Perhaps we need more than the minimum because the world is unpredictable, our abilities are finite and fleeting, and intellectual work is fairly extravagant.
Short-form Publishing — A New Content Category, Courtesy of the Internet
The publication of short works opens up new opportunities for academic publishers that heretofore have had to choose between the forms of the article on one hand and the full-length book on the other.
Bury Your Writing — Why Do Academic Book Chapters Fail to Generate Citations?
Books and book chapters have a competitive disadvantage in citations, but it’s not accessibility that makes the difference — there are more reasons, and more changes needed.
“A Hazard of New Fortunes” — A Review
A review of William Dean Howells’ 1890 novel, “A Hazard of New Fortunes,” which is about finding new business models for media businesses. The book describes an economic landscape that is eerily similar to our own.
The "Facebook Fallacy" and Whipsaw Attitudes Toward Web Advertising
Facebook’s IPO has disappointed many, but to think that it presages a complete meltdown of the online ad market is a bit of an overstatement.