Read and Publish: Is It Good for the Academy?
Will Read and Publish models transform the scholarly journal publishing business? And if they do, will it be good for the academy?
The New Plugins — What Goals Are the Access Solutions Pursuing?
The apparently different approaches Kopernio, Unpaywall, and Anywhere Access are taking might have a common assumption at their hearts — the status quo.
Libraries and Archives: A Humanities Take on Discovery
Scholars are interested in discovering libraries and archives as institutional producers of knowledge, not only using them as providers of resources.
Rival Ecosystems: The Increasingly Porous Boundary between Institutional and Consumer Markets
Institutional and consumer markets are becoming more closely linked because of Amazon’s powerful value proposition, making it necessary for academic book publishers to create consumer services of their own.
Guest Post: Challenges for Academics in the Global South — Resource Constraints, Institutional Issues, and Infrastructural Problems
For social science and humanities researchers in many parts of the world there are significant barriers to conducting and sharing research, in some cases more so than for science and medicine. In this guest post, Dr. Naveen Minai provides a perspective as a gender studies researcher in Pakistan.
Advocating for Change by Limiting New Business: An Interview with BTAA’s Kimberly Armstrong
Library consortia are taking stronger positions with scholarly publishers, not just in Europe but in North America as well. In this interview, Roger Schonfeld speaks with Kimberly Armstrong about BTAA’s principles, concerns, and tactics.
Good Data, Bad Data, You Know I’ve Had My Share: Library Book Acquisition Patterns
We have had assumptions about the academic book market that probably are just not true.
One Author’s Novel Approach to Article Self-Publishing: An Interview with Allyson Mower
An author found that the relevant journals were unwilling to publish an article of historical research that found evidence for a surprising and somewhat controversial proposition about the founding of the University of Utah. So what did she decide to do with her article? Something rather unusual, it turns out.
The Core vs. the Crowd — Why Barriers to Entry May Help Restore Trust
A history of the rise of coercive media suggests that raising barriers to entry may be a remedy. Could a business model shift do most of the work for us?
The Latest in Search: Do New Discovery Solutions Improve Search as well as Retrieval?
We have seen a surge in scientifically minded search engines and browser extensions that aim to supercharge content discovery — have they cracked the code in mainstream search and retrieval of scholarly literature?
Will Europe Lead a Global Flip to Open Access?
There appears to be no realistic path forward that achieves Europe’s 2020 open access targets without resulting in substantial revenue reductions for existing publishers. Will Europe miss its OA target? Or will publishers miss their revenue targets?
Counting the Holes in the Swiss Cheese: “Read and Publish” Discovers America
The read-and-publish business model has been introduced to the U.S. by MIT and the Royal Society of Chemistry. It has implications for publishers, however, that must be studied carefully.
Will the European Big Deal Contagion Spread to North America?
The European academic sector has taken a stronger consortial negotiating posture, resulting in Big Deal cancellations. Today, equity investors and analysts want to know: Will this contagion spread from Europe to North America, resulting in global pandemic?
Guest Post: Building an Inclusive Culture in Scholarly Publishing is “Everybody’s Everyday Work”
Jocelyn Dawson reviews the panel on Building an Inclusive Culture in Scholarly Publishing from the recent SSP Annual Meeting.
Has Google Become a Journal Publisher?
Google’s journal about artificial intelligence (AI) coming from editors and authors associated with Google and Google Brain raises questions about conflicts, vanity publishing, and Google as a media company.