Is #DeleteFacebook Going to Change Academic Life and Scholarly Publishing?
What might the recent backlash to revelations about how Facebook was exploited mean for the scholarly ecosystem?
Ask The Chefs: How Do You Stay Informed About Scholarly Communications?
With so much going on around us, staying informed and sifting through information is more critical than it’s ever been. See how the Chefs stay informed about scholarly communication.
Artificial Intelligence and the Infrastructure of Surveillance Authoritarianism
Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufecki provides a stark view of the potential future of artificial intelligence (AI) and the possible dystopia toward which we are heading.
Blindspot — Was a Key Factor Missed in the Study of Viral Lies?
A recent study of the spread of lies on Twitter is an important advance, but the authors missed a potentially huge factor, and one we can’t ignore.
Celebrating a Decade — It’s Been 10 Years of the Scholarly Kitchen Today
Over the past decade, the Kitchen has flourished, with more great things to come as we celebrate this important milestone.
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part Three — Blockchain, RA21, Privacy, and Trust
We continue to battle the tidal wave of data with a bucket brigade of individual privacy settings. Maybe it’s time to pause and consider a state-level solution, ala Estonia.
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part Two — The Subscription Model
Business models that exploit vulnerabilities are unfair. Can a model that aligns producer and consumers help fix the Internet?
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part One — Open Citations
With so much broken by the Internet, we may be moving into a mode of fixing things. Are open citations part of the solution, or more of the problem?
The Varieties of Lock-in in Scholarly Communications
There are various ways that customers get locked in to services in scholarly communications. These methods are longed for by publishers and disliked by customers, but they naturally emerge as a part of the economy.
All the News That Fits — What’s Really Driving Altmetric’s Top 100 Articles List?
The Altmetric “flower” is an icon, and the annual Top 100 list a much-anticipated event. But is the flower really a stalk?
Book Review: “The New Analog” by Damon Krukowski
Is “signal” meaningful in the absence of “noise”? Damon Krukowski asks what important things have been lost in our transition from analog to digital media in his book, “The New Analog”.
Puppetmasters — Who Is Pulling the Strings in the New Information Economy?
Information manipulation is not new, yet everything is different. How do governments, preprints, algorithms, and our own responsibilities intersect? Where does peer review come in now?
Guest Post — Academics and Copyright Ownership: Ignorant, Confused or Misled?
Elizabeth Gadd takes a look at the contradictions between scholarly culture and copyright culture, and the cognitive dissonance created.
Book Review — “World Without Mind,” by Franklin Foer
Franklin Foer’s new book is a bracing account of the current information economy, the monopolies and motivations at its heart, and the weakening of democratized knowledge.
“Technology is Not Neutral” — How Online Companies Manipulate Billions of Minds
A former Google employee explains the tricks that online companies use to manipulate users and suggests there’s a better way.