Indirect Economic Impacts of Public Access Policies for Journals
What happens to non-subscription revenue streams under funding agency public access policies? Will broadening access to articles result in higher subscription prices?
Estimating the Adverse Economic Impact of Imposed Embargoes
This is a research report, based on a grant from the American Society of Civil Engineers to explore the potential for adverse economic impact on journals from imposed public access embargoes
The Jack Andraka Story — Uncovering the Hidden Contradictions Behind a Science Folk Hero
The story of a teenage science whiz who used free information sources to create a novel cancer screening test may be full of holes. Whether it is or not, it no longer seems the clear, happy story the media wanted to tell.
A Brighter Future for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences?
Journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences are often seen as the poor relations compared with their counterparts in science, technology, and medicine – but perhaps that is starting to change.
Taking Stock In the Kitchen: A Look Back at 2013
A look back at 2013 in The Scholarly Kitchen.
PubMed Central Revealed — Reviewing and Interpreting the Findings of a Surprising 2013
As requested, here is a summary of all the things found so far through the FOIA requests regarding PubMed Central — from eLife to BMC to JMLA to conflicts of interest to coverups. It’s quite a fetch.
Whose Dissertation Is It, Anyway?
Another association of historians has recommended that students be allowed to impose limited embargoes on their dissertations. And so the question arises again: whose work is the dissertation, and who should control it?
Getting Open Access Embargoes Right: Rational Policy Must Be Evidence-Based
A new study, out today, takes a broad look at the usage lives of scholarly journal articles. The information it contains is vital for achieving the balance necessary for Green OA policies to work.
Parting Company with Jeffrey Beall
Although Jeffrey Beall has done us all a good service by coming up with his list of predatory publishers, his arguments against open access publishing have become shrill and reveal that he is expressing a political viewpoint that obscures the many gradations of opinion concerning scholarly publishing.
The End of an Era for Academia.edu and Other Academic Networks?
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Elsevier has issued a sweeping series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take down notices regarding Elsevier-published content to Academia.edu, a file-sharing network for researchers and other academics.
This has prompted a storm in the Twittersphere, a response from Elsevier, a number of commentaries on blogs and list-serves, and a truly bizarre article from CNET. Academia.edu for its part is reportedly encouraging authors of affected papers to sign this Elsevier boycott petition despite the fact that their own terms of use prohibit the posting of content that infringes on the copyright or license of publishers such as Elsevier.
Is this a footnote or the end of a chapter in the annals of digital science publishing?
This Takes the Prize — Editor of New Luxury OA Journal Boycotts Luxury Subscription Journals
The editor of eLife, on the eve of accepting his Nobel Prize, publishes an article designed to give his journal a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the errors, lack of disclosure of his incentives, and inappropriate dismissal of incentives made the social graph light up with derision.
What Does “Federally Funded” Actually Mean?
Under Open Access mandates, what constitutes a “federally funded” paper?
How PLoS ONE Can Have It All
PLoS has an interesting opportunity before it to push its most robust service, PLoS ONE, very aggressively for growth. PLoS can do this by lowering the cost of publishing fees, which would make it increasingly hard for other publishers to match them for a Gold OA service. This could result in PLoS ONE becoming the default OA publishing option for all STM publishing.
An Anonymous Challenge to the Copyright Clearance Center
A somewhat strange anonymous letter raises questions, both intentional and unintentional, about the Copyright Clearance Center.
Will 2014 Be the Year of the Individual Paywall for Publishers?
As revenues from alternatives decrease and digital revenue sources prove insufficient, publishers are finding that straight-up asking readers to pay may be the best approach going forward.