Guest Post – MDPI’s Remarkable Growth
Despite controversies, MDPI has flourished and are now the 5th largest scholarly publisher in the market. Christos Petrou offers an analysis of their enormous levels of growth.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back — The Pandemic’s Impact on Open Access Progress
The COVID pandemic may leave us stuck between a growing consensus that open science is the superior way to drive progress and an inability to invest what may be needed to make it happen.
Good vs. Evil? Finding the Right Mix of For-Profit and Not-for-Profit Services
Today, Joe and Roger analyze the variety of firms to which the academy can outsource scholarly communication and adjacent priorities: consortia, societies, and commercial enterprises.
What Do Libraries Keep When They Cancel the Big Deal?
How do libraries decide which titles to keep when they cancel the Big Deal? What do the results look like? A look at seven libraries that walked away by @lisalibrarian.
Guest Post — Building Resilient Learned Societies in an Age of Pandemic and Fear
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, learned societies are facing some challenges that call for adaptive-transformative resilience. Guest author Trevor Perry-Giles discusses steps societies must take in crafting a “new normalcy” for sustainability.
Utility, Morality, Strategy, and Scholarly Communication
Should the library focus first on serving its local constituency, or on changing the scholarly communication ecosystem? No matter how we answer this question, the implications will be complex.
Forecasting the US Higher Education Market: A Primer
As scholarly publishers reforecast and consider strategic directions, here is a primer on the US higher education market
Scientific and Scholarly Meetings in the Time of Pandemic
As professional and academic societies scramble to cancel meetings or move them to online formats in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Michael Clarke discusses considerations for both maintaining revenues and engagement.
What Will We Learn About Scholarly Publishing as a Result of COVID-19?
In the coming months and years, we will have an opportunity to study the affects of the COVID pandemic on scholarly publishing. Angela Cochran explores questions related to the participation of women in scholarship, funding changes, resource issues, and the future of research enterprises.
Does Research Have Any Value in a Refugee Crisis?
How does research translate into societal impact, particularly in light of a refugee crisis?
A History of Panic Buying
A humorous look at how the human brain consistently reacts to crisis in a similar manner — by hording toilet paper.
Measuring the Success of Transformative Agreements
I asked twelve publisher/customer pairs how they will measure the success of their transformative deals five years from now. The responses were very interesting.
Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?
One way or another, the #scholcomm community is going to choose either a diversity of publishing models or a monoculture, because it can’t have both. How will this choice be made, and by whom?
Guest Post — An Update to OhioLINK’s Affordable Textbooks Initiative
Gwen Evans from OhioLink looks at the positive results of the consortium’s statewide affordable textbooks initiative.
ACM’s New Open Access Agreements: A Q&A with Scott Delman
A conversation with Scott Delman of ACM about the publisher’s recently-announced deal with four major US research universities.