There seems to be a significant disagreement between academic libraries and their own host institutions with regard to an important rule change proposed by the Department of Education. That disagreement has implications that go way beyond the rule itself.
Robert Harington comments on a New York Times article by Kate Murphy , published on Sunday 13th March, 2016, suggesting that when journalists write such an article they, do not fan the flames of fundamentalism, recognize the complexity at hand, and understand that there is a constructive debate to be had.
With no clear benefits to researchers, a frustrating user experience, and no penalties for non-compliance, ClinicalTrials.gov is becoming increasingly irrelevant to clinical researchers and the world at large with each passing day. What does this mean for public access to research results? Is an obligation to patients putting themselves at risk in trials being breached? Why has it failed to live up to its potential?
On the three year anniversary of the OSTP Public Access memo, AIP’s Fred Dylla takes a look at the significant progress made.
Sci-Hub sets a reprehensible example, but publishers cannot be content simply to stamp out such services. In order to evolve the industry into the future, publishers have to provide services that make Sci-Hub and its ilk seem old-fashioned and inconvenient to use.
Amazon is reportedly poised to get into the open educational resources game. This could be huge, and not just for the most obvious reasons.
At the recent PSP conference there was a panel on the cost of complying with the many new open access mandates from funding bodies. The panel explored the cost of compliance and how to reduce those costs. The current regulatory regime is complicated and administratively expensive, but the mandates will continue to be promulgated because the people calling for them are not the ones that have to implement them.
A new OA monograph series takes a discipline-specific approach to funding, licensing and editorial work.
A spate of open access “big deals” marks a shift from global offsetting to local offsetting. But the secretive nature of these deals makes them difficult to interpret.
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on distinguishing between features, products, and businesses. Not all features can become full-fledged businesses. Sometimes the best business case for a feature is to link it to an established business, where it adds value to assets that are already in place.
Last week’s surprisingly successful social media campaign was a winning event for libraries, archives, and museums.
An interview with librarian and open access skeptic Jeffrey Beall. He discusses his work, the criteria for declaring an organization a “predatory publisher,” and how he would fix the scholarly communications system.
[Editor’s note: This is the edited text of a presentation that Joe Esposito gave as a keynote at the PSP conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 3, 2016. The slides for the presentation are embedded at the end of the text. […]
How a shrinking journals receives an artificial boost to its leading citation indicator.
Kent Anderson returns to update his essential list of just what it is that publishers do.