Economics

Guest Post: Research4Life’s Richard Gedye — How Publishers are Quietly (Too Quietly?) Supporting UNESCO’s Universal Access To Information Day

Research4Life’s Richard Gedye discusses publisher contributions to UNESCO’s International Day for Universal Access to Information. Continue reading →

Book Review — The Traps of Big Data Revealed in “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil

The new book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” calls out many worrying trends in the application of big data, with particularly salient entries on higher education rankings, for-profit universities, the justice system, insurance, and employment. Continue reading →

How Much Does Publishing Cost?

There have been several recent studies of what it costs to publish academic monographs, but they all mistake the cost of production with the cost of publication. This post summarizes the issues and suggests a very simple way to calculate the cost of publication. Continue reading →

The Early Career Professionals are All Right: Discussing the Findings of the 2016 SSP Early Career Professional Survey

Ever wondered what early-career publishing professionals are worried about, wishing for, and planning to do–and how you can encourage them to keep doing those things within your organization? The Society for Scholarly Publishing wondered, too, and deployed a subcommittee of professionals (early-career and otherwise) to find out. Here are some of their findings, presented by Early Career Subcommittee co-chairs Emma Brink and Matt Cooper (both of Wiley). Continue reading →

Annual Reports — What Do They Actually Tell Us?

Annual reports from publishing organizations always have a marketing slant, even when they are required filings with governmental bodies. But some are more marketing-oriented than others, and should not be mistaken for transparency, but rather tend toward rationalization. eLife’s recent report, challenging others to be as transparent, is itself opaque and purposeful. Continue reading →

The Costs of Flipping our Dollars to Gold

An interview with MacKenzie Smith and Ivy Anderson, discussing the recent Pay It Forward report on the economic impact of a shift to Gold open access for scholarly journals. Continue reading →

Scientific Reports On Track To Become Largest Journal In The World

Higher Impact Factor, faster publication, and weaker data availability policies may be drawing authors away from PLOS ONE. Continue reading →

A Quick Tour Around the World of Scholarly Journal Publishing

A presentation to the 2016 ISMTE US Conference. Something of a “state of our industry” overview, or perhaps, everything I needed to know I learned from the other bloggers at The Scholarly Kitchen. Continue reading →

The Future(s) (plural) of Publishing

A presentation to the ISMTE conference. The argument is that strategy is an integral part of business operations and must be used to measure all activity within an organization. A three-step process for strategic planning is included. Continue reading →

Curation Nation: Thoughts on the Future of Textbooks

Is there a role for a curated, remixing approach to developing next generation textbooks. Robert Harington investigates the role of curated open textbooks in teaching today’s students, looking at some of the available tools, the way in which instructors utilize such tools, and issues around fair use of content. Continue reading →

Locks, Keys, and Firewalls — Why Internet Security Requires Digital, Analog . . . and Diligent Humans

Internet security seems to be crumbling before our eyes, and our media and leaders are not immune and lack a crucial understanding of how vulnerable a totally digital world can be. The answer may lie with analog technologies. Continue reading →

The Pay It Forward Project: Confirming What We Already Knew About Open Access

A new study from the University of California system confirms much of what we already knew about open access, particularly the increased financial burden it places on productive universities. Continue reading →

Revisiting: Peak Subscription

Revisiting Michael Clarke’s 2014 post on the two drivers of growth in STM and scholarly publishing: site licensing and global expansion. As successful as these activities have been, however, we appear to be nearing, if not a peak, at least a plateau. Institutional library budgets have not kept pace with the growth in global research output. At the same time, institutional market penetration is nearing saturation for many publishers.

So the question is, where is the growth going to come from? Continue reading →

Life on the Launch Pad — The Ups and Downs of Product Development, and Why It’s Hard to Achieve Orbit

Product development has surged back into the fore, in both incremental and paradigm-shifting ways. Yet, some cultures still struggle with it, and the need for the right teams and approaches — especially marketing and sales — remains high. Continue reading →

For Scholarly Communications, Double-dipping is Double the Fun

The much-maligned practice of “double-dipping,” in which a publisher received revenue from both subscriptions and APCs, is likely to remain with us for some time, as publishers learn to turn APCs into larger and more varied revenue streams, even as they create the impression that the APCs offset subscription costs. Continue reading →

Wellcome Money — Involvement with F1000 Opens Door on Sketchy Peer Review, COIs, and Spending Decisions

With a new partnership with F1000, Wellcome embraces sketchy peer review standards, deep conflicts of interest, and financial support of a private, commercial enterprise. Worse, the entire thing seems redundant, avoidable, and unnecessary. Continue reading →

Textbooks in Academic Libraries: The Publisher’s Case

This post presents a case for why publishers would want to participate in a program to sell textbooks to academic libraries. The plan would include a means for publishers to retain their profitability, albeit on a lower sales volume, by taking advantage of digital technology and by “repairing” some broken elements in the current marketplace, e.g., the market for used and pirated books. Continue reading →

Academic Libraries and the Textbook Taboo: Time to Get Over It?

Has the time come for academic libraries to start thinking seriously about providing textbooks to their student patrons? A few are already doing so–why not more? Continue reading →

Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Journal Publishing and the University Press

University presses are not well positioned to thrive in journal publishing because they have not adopted any of the (relatively few and common) business strategies that are necessary, given market dynamics, for success. I do not put forth this thesis lightly. I have great affection and admiration for university presses, their value — craftsmanship, attention to detail, “getting it right”— and their mission. This is not admiration from afar: I served, in the formative years of my career, at the University of Chicago Press (Chicago), where I learned the tools of the trade and many of the practices and protocols of scholarly publishing still in use today. But after nearly two decades of observing university presses, from within and without, this thesis seems to be inescapable. Continue reading →

Brexit: Risks to the Knowledge Economy and the Money Scrum

Last Monday, the British public defied expectations and narrowly voted to leave the European Union. What will be the consequences for the academic community and scholarly communication. Here we look at just two of the potential issues. Continue reading →