Trouble at Hand — How Mobile Devices Perpetuate Weak Business Models
The rise of mobile is cementing business model expectations and driving new monopolies, but the ethics, incentives, and consequences of these models need to be considered.
Independence Lost — Taxpayer Funding and Information Access Take a Dark Turn
We once assumed taxpayer-funding meant information availability. The new US government is now actively hiding scientific data, imperiling our understanding of the world.
Updating Asimov — How Do We Regain Control In the Digital Age?
Algorithms behave in ways even their creators can’t understand, yet they dominate how we share and see information. Do we need a “Three Laws for Algorithms”?
The Art of the Beall
After deleting his predatory publishing list, librarian Jeffrey Beall reemerges into the spotlight with a self-published book about art forgeries.
The Tincture of Time — Should Journals Return to Slower Publishing Practices?
Most journals have adopted rapid publication processes, but with the rise of preprint servers and new trends among readers, maybe they can return to a slower, more considered pace.
Ebooks, Innovation, and the Rebel Within
In every publishing organization you need a rebel. Robert Harington talks with Peter Krautzberger, project lead for MathJax and rebel, about his views on Web publishing, ebooks and mathematics.
Collision Course — Why Are Funders Straying from Their Lane?
Funders have shifted their focus, and are funding, investing in, or launching initiatives that compete with publishers and constrain researchers. What changed?
The Tyranny of Amusements — Science, Spectacle, and the Lowly PDF
Do scholarly and scientific publishers risk more than they realize when they embrace modern media spectacle and seek to marginalize the PDF?
Supply, Demand, and the Subscription Model in Scholarly Publishing — An Analysis
An overview of usage trends across libraries and journals indicates that usage is generally stable or up, archives remain of interest, and consumption doesn’t align with authorship or funding.
Journals and Politicians — A Marriage for Mutual Benefit? Or a Temporary Alignment of Interests?
President Obama has published three articles in six months in three of the world’s most prestigious scholarly journals. Is it appropriate? With these precedents, what happens when the politics of the President conflicts with the politics of science?
Intellectual Craftsmanship and Scholarly Engagement — JSTOR’s Ideas for Redesigning the Digital Monograph
There’s not a need to re-design the scholarly monograph itself. There’s a need for tools that can better facilitate a connection between author and reader.
A Stocking Stuffer for Christmas
A recommendation of a wonderful short story by Joseph O’Neill, which should serve as a stocking stuffer this Christmas.
The Future of Authorship
Dismayed by the loss of trust in facts, and seeming preference for half-truths that appears to be driving our political present, Robert Harington decided to catch up on his reading over the weekend, and stumbled across a stimulating article in Publishers Weekly, entitled How to Sell Nearly a Half-Million Copies of a Poetry Book, by Anisse Gross.
Postdocs Promoted As Paid Reviewers
Paying a living wage for reviews could provide postdocs with a temporary career alternative. But it won’t come cheaply and it will likely result in an uncompetitive journal with little chance of success.
Economics, Silicon Valley, and Information Warfare — Is Accuracy Becoming a Luxury Item? Or a Casualty?
Information warfare is both tactical and strategic, with much of its success stemming from the weakened economics of the current information economy. Scholarly publishers have experienced this in many ways, from Google Scholar to predatory publishers to pre-print archives — all answers to the calls for “free information” and all revealing tactical and strategic vulnerabilities as accuracy and facts become luxury items in the information war.