Guest Post: The American Chemical Society on the Shared Cybersecurity Concerns of Universities and Publishers
Jack Ochs from the American Chemical Society discusses the significant increase in cybersecurity threats to both publishers and libraries.
Scholarly-Communication Reform: Why Is it So Hard to Talk About, and Where are the Authors?
Why is it so frustrating and difficult to talk about scholarly-communication reform, and why do those conversations seem to involve virtually all members of the scholcomm ecosystem except for authors?
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em…Elsevier to Purchase Sci-Hub
Exasperated over ineffectual attempts to shut down Sci-Hub, an illegal article sharing website, Elsevier has decided to purchase the service for an undisclosed sum.
Ask The Chefs: What Is The Biggest Misconception People Have About Scholarly Publishing?
What is the biggest misconception people have about scholarly publishing? That’s what we asked the Chefs this month. Now we’re asking you. What did we miss?
Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know About Scholarly Publishing
After many and long conversations among colleagues within and beyond the Scholarly Kitchen
about what researchers need to know about scholarly publishing, Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf compiled a list of what we think to be the most urgent issues.
Sci-Hub: How Does it Work?
Sci-Hub is a pirate website that enables users to access content that is held behind publisher paywalls. This is how it works.
The Illicit Love Affair between Open Access and Traditional Publishing
At the recent PSP conference there was a panel on the cost of complying with the many new open access mandates from funding bodies. The panel explored the cost of compliance and how to reduce those costs. The current regulatory regime is complicated and administratively expensive, but the mandates will continue to be promulgated because the people calling for them are not the ones that have to implement them.
Guest Post: Kent Anderson UPDATED — 96 Things Publishers Do (2016 Edition)
Kent Anderson returns to update his essential list of just what it is that publishers do.
NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What "Public Domain" Means
The New York Public Library has now opened up hundreds of thousands of their digitized public-domain documents to unrestricted access and reuse, encouraging members the general public to exercise all the rights in those documents that the law gives them. Why aren’t more academic libraries doing the same thing?
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?
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.
Another Big Win for Google Books (and for Researchers)
Google wins in court (again) as the Second Circuit of Appeals rules that its mass book digitization program qualifies as fair use. But Google is a commercial entity! And their files might get hacked! And their library partners are even more susceptible to copyright pirates than Google is! Yes, said the court, but. . .
Guest Post: Alison Mudditt Interviews Geoffry Crossick on An Age of Challenge and Opportunity: The HEFCE Report on Monographs and Open Access
Alison Muddit interviews Goeffrey Crossick about his report on the future of open access monographs.
The Curse of Monkey Island
The photographer who got picked on by Wikimedia over his photo of a Back Crested Macaque, resulting in a claim of public domain for the image, has now been sued by PETA who claim that the monkey should hold the copyright and that he should pay damages. You couldn’t make it up.
Revisiting: Is Access to the Research Paper the Same Thing as Access to the Research "Results"?
Is access to the research paper really the same thing as access to the research results themselves? Are funding agencies creating a false equivalency by confusing the two? And does this confusion favor researchers in some fields over others? Revisiting a 2013 post to re-examine these questions.