A recent UKSG conference explored what researchers need from scholarly communications, and whether the provisions of publishers, libraries and others are keeping up. Once again, the biggest frustration is rooted not in publisher / library services but in institutional structures for recognition.
The age of information abundance may have fundamental flaws — barriers to entry that create false equivalence; dissemination tools that conflate fake information with responsible sources; self-reinforcing loops of conspiracy and paranoia; and social fragmentation that makes societal disruption more likely. What can be done? Here are a few ideas.
Fake News is making headlines as questions about how dubious stories may have influenced the US election. This post explores the damage done to reputable news organizations and what scholarly publishers could learn from the whole thing.
Is Greta Van Susteren right in taking universities to task for building “huge libraries” and in characterizing them as “vanity projects” that have been obviated by the growing online availability of books and other scholarly resources? Obviously not — that’s the position of an ignorant philistine. Except…
“Sound methodology” suggests an ideal match to a scientific question that never quite exists. So why do some publishers use it?
The pendulum for revenues swung from personal subscriptions to institutional subscriptions with the rise of digital options. With growth capped, a new mix of access options is likely to emerge.
Are the APC levels set for high-end OA journals too low to be sustainable? Are there other ways that might help high-end OA journals pay their way?
With greater awareness of the foibles and failings of scientific publishing, weaker self-regulation systems, and a trend toward governmental regulation of funding, is external regulation of the scientific journals system now inevitable?
Robert Harington references our current altered state in politics as a tool to reflect on the need to invoke balance in publishing innovation, and growth.
Would a systemwide “flip” to open access by means of universal article-processing charges work? David Shulenberger argues that it would not, and he may be right — but not for the reasons he gives.
A session at ALPSP shines a light on why publishers are caught in an impossible situation — satisfying customers who demand different things at different times, and who are not aligned around the ultimate benefit they all seek to deliver.
Research4Life’s Richard Gedye discusses publisher contributions to UNESCO’s International Day for Universal Access to Information.
There have been several recent studies of what it costs to publish academic monographs, but they all mistake the cost of production with the cost of publication. This post summarizes the issues and suggests a very simple way to calculate the cost of publication.
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?
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.”