The editor of eLife, on the eve of accepting his Nobel Prize, publishes an article designed to give his journal a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the errors, lack of disclosure of his incentives, and inappropriate dismissal of incentives made the social graph light up with derision.
As consumers, we are often seduced by the apparent simplicity of the products we use. This can lead us to believe that products are as easy to make as they are to consume — and that is a mistake.
A somewhat strange anonymous letter raises questions, both intentional and unintentional, about the Copyright Clearance Center.
The pursuit of transparency and use of disclosures in place of actual ethics may be creating a culture of accommodation rather than one fostering independence. Where does transparency belong?
In a decision that may have deep and wide-ranging implications for the publishing industry and for future applications of the fair use doctrine, Judge Denny Chin has dismissed the Authors Guild’s eight-year-old lawsuit against Google over its Google Books project.
The PMC NAC, facing controversies about its oversight functions and seeing the focus of its oversight embroiled in a public scandal, said nothing about these topics at its latest meeting.
A long, thoughtful essay by a UK academic contemplating open access merits attention, for obvious and subtle reasons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why do ebooks—and e-information generally—cause such teeth-grinding rage and rhetorical hysteria in some people?
Recent comments on a post about Gold OA in the UK dissected a lot of assertions we commonly see, and bear a closer reading.
While open access remains a hot topic in our industry, we may not be discussing the most difficult aspects. Worse, OA proponents themselves may not be answering some of the questions that are now arising as a broader swath of academics, scientists, and administrators become aware of OA.