The Scholarly Kitchen
Metrics and Analytics
Old Media, New Media, Data Media: Evolving Publishing Paradigms
We typically classify publishers as Old Media and New Media, but now we have companies that are part of a new paradigm, the Dat Media company. Such companies sit above both Old and New, studying patterns in usage and in the databases of information aggregated by publishers. Continue reading
Visualizing Citation Cartels
Citation network maps may indicate when gaming is taking place. Proving intention is a different story. Continue reading
Is More Recognition the Key to Peer Review Success?
As we celebrate Peer Review Week, this post summarizes some of the reviewer preferences along with ways to boost recognition for peer review activities. #PeerRevWk16 Continue reading
Book Review — The Traps of Big Data Revealed in “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil
The new book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” calls out many worrying trends in the application of big data, with particularly salient entries on higher education rankings, for-profit universities, the justice system, insurance, and employment. Continue reading
When Bad Science Wins, or “I’ll See It When I Believe It”
Observational studies claiming an open access citation advantage just keep coming, despite problems in reproducibility and a lack of adequate controls. Are we in for a similar literature on the subject of the impact of social media on readership and citation? Continue reading
Seven Things Every Scholarly Publisher Should Know about Researchers
What should publishers know about researchers and their work? Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf follow up a post earlier this year about “Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know about Scholarly Publishing.” Continue reading
Scientific Reports On Track To Become Largest Journal In The World
Higher Impact Factor, faster publication, and weaker data availability policies may be drawing authors away from PLOS ONE. Continue reading
Vindicated by Its Critics: The Kent Study in Light of Other Research on Library Circulation
In 1979, a study at the University of Pittsburgh Library found that 40% of the books added in the previous six years had not circulated. 37 years later, we librarians still cite that number and many of us use it (among other factors) to justify moving in the direction of patron-driven acquisition. A critic of that practice argues that many subsequent circulation studies contradict the Kent Study. But do they? Continue reading
The Future(s) (plural) of Publishing
A presentation to the ISMTE conference. The argument is that strategy is an integral part of business operations and must be used to measure all activity within an organization. A three-step process for strategic planning is included. Continue reading
The Size of Things (and the Power of a Consistent Frame of Reference)
How does a new visualization of the size of the universe stack up to the classic standard? Continue reading
How to Manipulate a Citation Histogram
Citation indexes need to provide standardized citation histograms for editors and publishers. Without them, it is unlikely that they will be widely adopted. At worse, it will encourage the production of histograms that selectively highlight or obscure the data. Continue reading
Ask The Chefs: What is The Role of Social Media in Scholarly Publishing?
The role of social media in scholarly communications is a continuous debate. Is there value? See what the Chefs have to say and then let us know what you think! Continue reading
Optical Illusions — Shifting to Citation Distributions Only Makes It Easier to Fool the Eye
A proposal to substitute graphs of citation distributions for impact factors introduces many problems the authors don’t seem to have fully grasped, including unintentionally bolstering the importance of the very metric they seek to diminish. Continue reading
Will Citation Distributions Reduce Impact Factor Abuses?
Publishing a histogram of a journal’s citation distribution won’t alleviate Impact Factor abuse. At best, it will be ignored. At worse, it will generate confusion. Continue reading
Detecting (and Stopping) Robot Pirates
Designed to act like humans, pirate robots avoid detection by keeping download requests low, cycling through journals, and jumping from publisher to publisher. Continue reading
Building a Repository in Partnership with Elsevier: The University of Florida’s Perspective
The University of Florida and Elsevier have entered into a partnership to build links between the institutional repository and ScienceDirect, which has received quite a bit of criticism in recent weeks.I have found it useful to try to understand the different sides of what seems to me to be a debate about how best to utilize the increasingly mature infrastructure and programmatic capacity for scholarly communications. Continue reading
Libraries May Have Gotten the Privacy Thing All Wrong
What can academic libraries learn from Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn? The aim of this merger is to collect end-user data from corporate accounts. Libraries are facing a similar situation when publishers develop end-user strategies that compromise the privacy of library patrons. Continue reading
Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business
IP authentication is the most important mechanism for authorizing access to licensed e-resources resources. Substantial business and policy issues for libraries and publishers alike connect up to IP authentication. Today, there is substantial interest in eliminating IP authentication, so it is timely to examine the implications if we were soon to see its end. Continue reading
The Publishing Industry is Mature, but Publishing Companies are Not
While it certainly is the case that scholarly publishing is a mature business, some of the companies operating in this industry have found new avenues for growth by expanding beyond the publication of content into data science. This is an opportunity that is only available to the larger companies with enlightened management. Continue reading
Bitcoin: A Solution to Publisher Authentication and Usage Accounting
The technology developed to create a crypto-currency may be used to solve two intractable problems in scholarly publishing: authenticating users and counting usage.
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Authors
The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is "[t]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking." SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing.
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The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.
