Data.gov: Selling the Government and Democratization of Information
Open data initiatives by many governments will change balance sheets for publishers who have shifted toward this revenue source. Will the social benefits emerge?
When Did Print Become an Input?
When print is an input every other content product inherits prints DNA and can’t help looking and acting a lot like its parent.
Measuring Up: Gaining Customer Insight vs. Getting Lost in Business Complexity
Creating a complete view of your customer as publishing changes to include variant distribution models and service levels will be vital. Getting it done requires new skills and abilities.
PowerPoint Karaoke, the SSP Annual Meeting, and Dueling Presenters: Contribute to the Chaos
A sadistic challenge has been created for two presenters at the upcoming SSP Annual Meeting. Get in touch with your Marquis de Sade of PPT, and up the ante for us.
E-Readers Will Take Centerstage If Prices Drop, Yet Publishers Still Have Two Left Feet
E-readers are poised to go mainstream, yet publishers continue to be wallflowers. Haven’t we learned to dance at all during this last digital decade?
The Stick and the Carrot: Why Direct Incentives in Science are Dangerous
Reputation — fragile, cumulative, and indirect — is the reward of science. Direct compensation to motivate specific behaviors is a dangerous proposal.
Twitter’s Business Services Enter Beta Testing, Focus on Commercial Uses for Short Messages
One year later, Twitter’s business services plans seem to be rolling out.
Creating an Incentive: Can Social Media Offer Enough Carrots to Entice Scientists?
Scientists seem uninterested in participating in social media offerings, as the rewards offered are generally of insufficient value to warrant the effort required. Instead of just hoping that scientists will suddenly see the value in your product, why not offer incentives for participation?
Can New XML Technologies and the Semantic Web Deliver on Their Promises?
I recently read a paper from Los Alamos National Labs (LANL), “Using Architectures for Semantic Interoperability to Create Journal Clubs for Emergency Response.” Without diving too deeply into the technical weeds, what the paper describes is: [A] process for leveraging emerging […]
Friday Fun: Bill Murray Reads Poetry to Construction Workers
While building a new poetry center, construction stops so Bill Murray can share a few poems (and jokes) with the workers. A lovely moment, captured in video.
Has Publishing Revealed the Achilles’ Heel of Webist Political Philosophies?
Does the power of prestige and prestige-granting organization confound the politics of the Web?
Traditional Measures of Quality: Irrelevant, Miscast, Outdated, and Inhibiting?
How we measure quality may be a form of vestigial elitism, stemming from the print age. And it may be holding us back.
A Future of Touch and Gestures: New Interfaces Driving Scientific Information Presentation
Image by jdlasica via Flickr For scholarly publishers, librarians, and readers, the article remains the coin of the realm — a text-based narrative that strips data of all but its most superficial aspects and doesn’t integrate itself into the body […]
Lessons for Publishers: Listen, Learn, and Experiment
In less than a minute, essential advice for survival today and success tomorrow.
Is OUP’s “Anti-Google” Just a Half-Million Words of Filter Failure?
The OUP has launched Oxford Bibliographies Online, hoping to filter major fields down to a high-quality, peer-reviewed reference kick-start. But does a wordy filter actually filter in the networked world?