What Price Progress: The Costs of an Effective Data Publishing Policy
The hidden costs of data availability policies.
The Future of Writing: Tightening Up our Communications, From Just Not Sorry to SEO
Charlie Rapple wonders if controversial browser plug-in Just Not Sorry might have some useful tech behind its current gender-baiting application.
The Graduate Student’s Career – A Christmas Morality Tale
It’s easy to think that scientific ethics are straightforward and that results that aren’t robust end up in the literature because some people give into the temptation to cheat. The reality is more complex. If you were in this situation, what would you do?
Dear Joe: Not-for-profit Publishers in “The Economy”
Robert Harington discusses Joe Esposito’s Scholarly Kitchen article from June 2015, entitled “The Mixed Marriage of For-profit and Not-for-Profit Publishing”, in context of his own experiences in the world of society publishing.
Mr. Market is a Brilliant Editor
Of the many ways to measure the quality of a publication, one that is often overlooked are the workings of the marketplace itself. Purchases for published material is made in large part on the basis of the quality of that material, making the marketplace something of an editor of genius. This mechanism incorporates all other metrics, from impact factor to altmetrics. Unfortunately, the marketplace is not free to exercise its judgment when many participants seek dominant and even monopolistic control.
The Dissertation Mess: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities
The broad online availability of theses and dissertations creates difficult tensions between the individual rights of authors, the rights of educational institutions, and the responsibilities that both have to global scholarship and the collective good. How can we resolve those tensions?
PubMed Central Boosts Citations, Study Claims
Researchers claim that PMC boosts citations by 26%. A closer look at the paper reveals serious data and analysis problems. Can we collectively design a better study?
For Open Access Monographs, Peter Pays Paul. Who Pays Peter?
Gold open access for monographs is based on the notion that provosts will pay for what librarians will not. This seems like an improbable model for scholarly publishing. Publishing that is not based on end-user demand is not likely to have strong support in lean times.
Revisiting: Governance and the Not-for-profit Publisher
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s classic post on how the governance of not-for-profit publishing entities plays a large role in those entities’ success or failure.
MOOCs Rise from the Ashes
The MOOCs seem to have faded from view. In large part this is because they were so relentlessly overhyped when they first appeared. But now various forms of online education have begun to get traction in the marketplace. An essay by Clay Shirky points out how online education is operating today and its implications for higher education.
Ask The Chefs: How Does The Increased Use of Adjunct Faculty Affect Scholarly Publishing?
How does a differentiation between faculty on separate tracks for research or educational roles will drive change in the reward system? How might it impact scholarly publishing?
The Death of the Collection and the Necessity of Library-Publisher Collaboration: Young Librarians on the Future of Libraries
Applicants for a recent conference scholarship wrote essays that tended strongly to depict the traditional collection as dead and collaboration between librarians and publishers as essential to the library’s future. Do they herald a generational shift in mindset among librarians?
Guest Post: CCC’s Roy Kaufman on Growing Your Open Access Business in an Environment of Peak APC Pricing
CCC’s Roy Kaufman looks at the economic difficulties of the gold open access market, and suggest other pathways for revenue expansion.
People Make the Difference: Steering a Start-up to Success
A panel at the Charleston conference featured three CEOs of start-ups, who shared their experiences in creating and running a completely new organization. All of these companies are computationally sophisticated, so advanced technologically that it is hard to image established companies taking on their challenges. Another common theme is the importance of hiring and retaining the very best people, a matter in which start-up CEOs tend to be obsessive.
Revisiting: Splitting the Difference — Does an Editorial Mutiny at a Journal Do Much Long-term Damage?
The recent editorial board defection from an Elsevier journal brings up issues raised in Todd Carpenter’s 2013 post on editorial boycotts and declarations of independence. They generate a lot of heat, but what do the data say about the actual success of the new journals compared to the journals that were overthrown.