Using free government infrastructure that’s not available to everyone else raises questions of fairness, which lead to questions of harm. But who is harmed may be both obvious and subtle.
Providing free access to online books has no effect on sales and citations but increase online downloads. A critical review of the study’s research proposal three years ago foretold these very results.
Thoughts on the future of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
An updated version of the “60 Things Publishers Do” list, recognizing a baker’s dozen of contributions provided via comments, other Chefs, and a changing world.
New documents show that the Director of the NCBI was deeply involved in getting eLife launched on PubMed Central, that NLM staff were uneasy about the shortcuts taken to make it happen, and that eLife was largely driving the bus throughout.
An interview from April 2012, which remains as relevant today in explaining the incentives driving much of the behavior in academic research centers and scientific and scholarly publishing.
It is challenging to come up with an open access program for books that is financially sustainable. One strategy has been proposed by Unglue.it, which uses crowdfunding to purchases copyrights from authors.
Why does PubMed preferentially link to PMC versions in its search result lists? Emails from 2011 suggest it’s specifically to generate more traffic to PMC and show off NLM services.
The debate on Green OA continues, as many people challenge the premise that the existence of Green OA articles will result in the cancellation of subscriptions to those articles.
As the US government shuts down, what happens to the scholarly materials it distributes?
Patents generating millions in revenues for Princeton University leave Princeton, NJ, feeling like it’s carrying an unfair burden. Now, the courts are going to weigh in.
The design and construction of article performance measures can reveal deeply held biases.
Green Open Access can lead to the cancellation of subscriptions to journals. The environment for OA, however, is full of nuance and resists easy characterization.
Three Scholarly Kitchen chefs talk about the uses and misuses of the term “disruption” in describing what’s going on in the scholarly publishing market.
Why do ebooks—and e-information generally—cause such teeth-grinding rage and rhetorical hysteria in some people?