Boundless Textbooks used to offer free alternatives to popular and expensive college texts, using information available on the open Web. Then came the inevitable lawsuit, and an out-of-court settlement. What does the Boundless program look like now?
A recent non-controversy once again shows how much confusion exists around what exactly Creative Commons licenses actually mean.
April sees the first Advancing Research Communication & Scholarship conference, described by the organizers as providing a “broad and collaborative forum for addressing and affecting scholarly and scientific communication. Find out more about this new meeting in our interview with two ARCS 2015 Board members, Robin Champieux and Jill Emery
While more scientific information than ever is available, science itself is struggling for funding, for cultural footholds, and for priority in society. What has gone wrong?
Would adding a big flatscreen TV to my office might make a difference? Yes, in big and important ways.
A charming short film about the history and importance of the fruit fly Drosophila as a model organism in biomedical research.
The collection of end-user data is going to become more important for all publishers and may serve to describe those publishers that will be most successful in the coming years. Although data-collection is often thought to be a malignant instance of “Big Brotherism,” it may in fact be benign when implemented thoughtfully.
Find out what the Chefs learned in 2014 and share your most important lessons!
A new report, commissioned by London Higher and SPARC Europe, tries to quantify the costs undertaken by UK higher education and public sector research institutions in complying with open access mandates. The resulting numbers are quite interesting.
We’ve all had someone special that we met or worked with that went out of their way to offer us advice, give us much-needed context, or maybe the encouragement to keep pushing forward. What advice are you thankful for?
Simple things are often more complex than we initially think, and the push for faster publication may be an expensive and risky trend to follow too much further.
Guest Chef Phill Jones returns to discuss the lessons learned at the Frankfurt STM panel meant to introduce publishers to the realities of the lives of postdocs.
There are many reasons to be cheerful in the world of scholarly publishing. Taking a cue from Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and his song, Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3., this post describes an example of good things afoot in the library community. It is up to you to provide parts 1. and 2.
Three different items recently published discuss the current state of thinking about discovery tools for purposes of research. Which one captures the right mindset? What should content providers be doing to support discovery?
A new book by the creator of xkcd takes crazy questions about science and tackles them with verve, humor, great illustrations, and great examples of how to break down even the strangest problems.