The clear benefits of the subscription model make it enticing even for those who supposedly abhor it. And while it’s right to try to make it as efficient as possible, it will likely be with us for a long time to come.
Two thought-provoking articles published last week in JAMA make compelling and complementary arguments to the rhetorical power of both numbers and words in conveying the message of science.
The US government’s requests for information are of great importance for the future of academia and scholarly publishing. If you’re a traditionalist who sees open access as the downfall of civilization, an advocate who thinks information must be free, or someone who falls somewhere in between, this is your chance to create the future you’re seeking.
General purpose technologies are broadly applicable, and when they double in effect like IT has been doing for decades, they can start taking fast tracts of land. Is there anything safe as we “Race Against the Machine?”
A review of the novel “A Novel Bookstore” by Laurence Cossé, which imagines an ideal bookstore and the policies required, including peer review, to make such a venture possible.
We’ve lived long enough with the proposition that OA publishers compete with traditional publishers. Perhaps they do not. Some major indicators suggest a non-competitive coexistence.
Does the future belong to the small and nimble, the flexible mid-range, or the large and powerful? The Chefs reflect on this question in our second installment of this monthly feature.
A study of matched content in student papers submitted to Turnitin reveals where students turn for sources but is unable to distinguish instances of plagiarism from valid scholarly use.
The decline of bookstores has made discovery increasingly difficult. One solution is to create a new kind of bookstore, which is effectively a showroom and community center for the celebration of the book.
The prevalence of ghost authorship in the medical literature may be in decline, a new study reports. Is the issue really social or is authorship partly a problem of definition?
The commodity nature of the OA service seems to predict certain structural aspects, including lower prices and bigger journals.
The governance of not-for-profit publishing entities plays a large role in those entities’ success or failure.
Article reprints can be a considerable source of income for some medical journals and there is some worry that this source of income presents a conflict of interest for publishers.
The orphan works problem is finite. Current practices will chip away at the number of orphans. It is unlikely that more orphans will be created in the future because it is so easy for publishers now to hold onto rights and keep books available in some form.
Attempts to game a journal’s Impact Factor can result in being de-listed from the Journal Citation Report. Most offenders learn their lesson and return to normal citation behavior.