Vitamins, Painkillers, and the Entrepreneurial Library
What does it mean for libraries to be competitive and “entrepreneurial”? And is the very concept a Trojan horse for neoliberalism? Does it matter?
Divided We Fall — How a Fragmented Media Space Affects Academia and Scholarly Publishing
The general fragmentation of media and society has profound implications, and may explain to some extent the fragmentation being seen in higher education and scholarly publishing.
Bitcoin: A Solution to Publisher Authentication and Usage Accounting
The technology developed to create a crypto-currency may be used to solve two intractable problems in scholarly publishing: authenticating users and counting usage.
The Partnership Between Q and U
More language nerdery, probing the origins of the pairing of the letters Q and U in English.
Sci-Hub and Academic Identity Theft: An Open Letter to University Faculty Everywhere
When entities like Sci-Hub invite you to share your network credentials in order to help create free access to licensed scholarly publications, they’re asking for more than access to research. What they’re asking for may also give them access to your email account, your course management program, your tax documents, and more. Here are some things to think about before you decide to share that network user ID and password.
Andrea Powell – an interview with CABI’s Chief Information Officer
Robert Harington interviews Andrea Powell, Chief Information Officer at CABI, revealing an inspiring advocate and leader across publishing and technology sectors.
Science Credibility: The Media's Role
John Oliver offers a scathing look at the poor practices of media in scientific reporting.
What the Heck is Amazon up to Now?
Although Amazon is a central player in many areas of publishing and media, it is hard to predict where it will head next. This makes it hard to plan to compete with it. On the other hand, Amazon has some typical ways that it behaves when it enters a market and strategic planners can learn from them.
A History of Nothing
An animated look at the history of zero.
Cheap As Chips, and Other Expressions Explained
A short video explaining the meaning behind and origins of common words and phrases.
A Multiplicity of University Publishing
There continue to be calls to consolidate all publishing activity in a single organization or unit. The various participants in scholarly communications often are hostile to the very idea of competition. But the evidence is otherwise: a diversity of publishing venues, all operated independently, yield better and more innovative results.
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.
Library-Institution Misalignment: One Real-World Example
There seems to be a significant disagreement between academic libraries and their own host institutions with regard to an important rule change proposed by the Department of Education. That disagreement has implications that go way beyond the rule itself.
We’re not Drop-outs, We’re Quitters. There’s a Difference!
It was a little while back now that a controversial blogger attacked one or more of the authors of the Scholarly Kitchen for being former academics, questioning whether such people should be working in publishing. In today’s post, Phill Jones argues that such rhetoric contributes to a stigma that is damaging to the health of academia.
Gravitational Waves Explained
Physicist Brian Greene explains a recent scientific breakthrough to Stephen Colbert.