Is copyright infringement malum prohibitum (wrong only because it’s prohibited) or malum in se (morally wrong in and of itself)? Interestingly, scholcomm commentators and legal reference materials often characterize it as the former–while both statute and case law treat it like the latter, classifying it as “property theft” and regularly awarding its victims both statutory and punitive damages.
Haggling for cheaper content today will certainly have hidden and unpleasant costs — large and small — down the road.
A new kind of predator is taking advantage of unsuspecting authors. In this post, Angela Cochran discusses the forged acceptance letters received and what publishers can do to help authors avoid this costly and embarrassing pitfall.
The buzz around blockchain is mounting. But does it fit with scholarly publishing’s incentives and practices?
At a press conference on Friday last week, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unsealed indictments of nine Iranian citizens. This sentence is an odd way to start a Scholarly Kitchen post, admittedly. What makes this case interesting to […]
In part 2 of Nancy Roberts’ and Phill Jones’ collaboration, Nancy, the founder of Business Inclusivity lays out the starting point for an emerging manifesto on diversity based on the recent workshop at the Researcher to Reader conference.
What might the recent backlash to revelations about how Facebook was exploited mean for the scholarly ecosystem?
At the end of February, Nancy Roberts of Business Inclusivity and I co-organized a workshop on diversity for the Researcher to Reader conference. In this post I explore my motivations for doing so and talk about why I think so few men seem comfortable participating in these discussions.
In honour of International Women’s Day, Time’s Up, #MeToo, and a range of recent initiatives trying to tackle equality in the workplace, Charlie Rapple provides thoughts on how to avoid inappropriate comments and behaviors that unintentionally give offense.
A recent study of the spread of lies on Twitter is an important advance, but the authors missed a potentially huge factor, and one we can’t ignore.
Silicon Valley’s advertising model has been exploited, and free information’s price is more apparent. Will we be saved by subscription model innovations?
In 1940, the AAUP published a Statement on Academic Freedom. In 2018, it’s time for it to be updated–and some items clarified.
We continue to battle the tidal wave of data with a bucket brigade of individual privacy settings. Maybe it’s time to pause and consider a state-level solution, ala Estonia.
We have all been shocked and disgusted by painful stories of harassment over recent months, so why have we heard nothing from our own industry? As many can attest, sexual harassment is just as real and pervasive in scholarly communication as elsewhere. It’s time for us to own this and to begin working together to eradicate this behavior for the next generation of women.
Business models that exploit vulnerabilities are unfair. Can a model that aligns producer and consumers help fix the Internet?