Consolidation among publishers has been a trend for more than 30 years. Mergers may be gargantuan, such as the announcement last fall of Random House and Penguin, or they may be very small. Mergers and acquisitions have taken place across […]
The limits of tax breaks for the rich and the myth of “job creators” are examined in this excellent TED Talk.
More on the shake-up at PLoS — how rare these types of departures are, why a board might make such a move, and how unsatisfactory every scenario but the most obvious becomes once you begin to run scenarios.
More internal PubMed Central emails show quite clearly that PMC is wasting taxpayers’ money solving problems publishers have already solved.
PLoS has announced the departure of both its CEO and CFO, but has provided no explanation of what led to the management change. PLoS should explain the situation to all its shareholders.
There is a predictable path for society publishers as they explore their options. Their programs may be under pressure today, leading many of them to seek alliances with large commercial firms, though many societies are unhappy to do so.
Eighteen years ago, Mosaic ushered in the potential for a sea-change in publishing based on technological prowess and scale. Today, the “open” label covers a set of disparate incentives under a single blanket, one that funders, government, and technology companies are all under, each for its own reason.
A summary with slides of a presentation for the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP). The argument is that professional societies are now fighting on three fronts: with the new open access mandates, with the large commercial competitors, and sometimes internally when governance is an issue.
The recent sale of Mendeley exposed surprisingly naive perspectives on the company’s clear and inherent goals. Other venture capital plays are afoot in scientific publishing and academia. When will we stop being the prey?
The journals business has not been disrupted and does not appear likely to be disrupted for some time. Journals publishers continue to dominate the institutional market and are seeking to coopt Gold OA services.
A clever way to sell institutional site licenses and Gold OA together helps one publisher find the fulcrum amidst uncertainty.
Elsevier acquires Mendeley, changing the game significantly, perhaps for most of us.
The sheer number of new marketing programs for books makes it hard to determine just how much a book costs. This post details all the factors involved with pricing.
An analysis of publishing costs continues the theme of accountability and transparency, but perhaps focuses too much on the containers of information rather than how and why the containers are filled in the first place.
A library group reveals that its plans to launch an open access romance portal have fallen through.