This Is a Generic Brand Video, Now With Video
The perfect brand video comes to life.
Does Creative Commons Make Sense?
Axiomatically more complicated than copyright, built to provide no legal cover, and possibly put in place by the technocrats in Silicon Valley, does Creative Commons make sense for the creative class?
Publish or Perish: Is Publishing the Career it Once Was?
A sense of gloom hangs over academic publishing these days. As library budgets are cut, and the fear of OA mandates cutting profit margins clouds publishers’ sense of their place in the world, what is it like to be a publishing professional in this era of climate change?
CC-BY, Copyright, and Stolen Advocacy
Even with the protections of traditional copyright, an author may lose control of his original work and see it misappropriated and used for hateful ends. So is it any wonder that many authors have concerns about being required to publish under CC-BY?
+1 Deer: The Latest Trend in Social Media via The Onion
The Onion’s ever-entertaining fake news service offers up this perfect explanation of the current state of social media, as the established companies scramble to remain relevant.
What Does "Unsustainable" Mean?
We breeze by the statement that “scholarly publishing economics are unsustainable,” without contemplating what it actually means, how deep it goes, and why it has been allowed to get this way.
A Survey of University Presses
A survey of university presses on selling books directly from their Web sites shows that for most presses, sales hover around 1% of total volume, but a concerted effort to improve Web marketing could increase that figure to 3% or perhaps even more.
Wellcome Money — In This Example of Open Access Funding, the Matthew Effect Dominates
A surprising set of recipients dominate a list of APC payments released by Wellcome Trust, suggesting that OA is not leading to a reshaping of the industry but perhaps merely driving further consolidation.
Everybody Wants a Netflix for Books
There will never be a “Netflix for books” if by that term one means a comprehensive collection. Book aggregations must serve the overarching needs of the publisher to generate revenue and are thus best viewed as simply one channel among many.
This One Doesn’t Scale — One Big Reason Why Online Advertising Is Comparatively Limited
Online advertising fails to match print advertising in its scalability, slowing the transition to online for major journals and capping the potential for online subscription prices to be offset in a manner similar to print’s legacy business.
Layers Upon Layers — Taking Advantage of the Great Infrastructure Build-Out of the Twenty Aughts
The infrastructure layers that are emerging specifically for scholarly publishers, authors, and readers are yielding new services and even more layers. What’s next? And what’s missing?
Privacy and the University Press
As university presses become more involved with D2C marketing, they are going to confront the need for clearly articulated privacy policies. The time to put those policies in place is now.
Occam's Reader: An Interview
Interlibrary loan is a complex and difficult issue in the realm of ebooks. A new tool called Occam’s Reader hopes to simplify the process for libraries, provide better service to users, and reassure publishers worried about rights management.
The Scam, the Sting, and the Reaction: Labbé, Bohannon, Sokal
Editors keep allowing nonsense and gibberish to be published in their journals and conference proceedings. How many exposés and sting operations will it take before scholarly publishing begins effectively to police itself?
Inadvertent Innovation
While we usually think of innovators as visionaries with big ideas that challenge the very assumptions of the way we conduct our lives, many innovations seem to happen almost by accident. The challenge is how to make these accidents occur more often and to benefit from them.