A review of top journals in 18 fields show they are on a variety of platforms, suggesting cognitive burden for users which may be driving them to aggregated options with unified user experiences.
Open access (OA) publishing seeks to eliminate paywalls for users. It has largely succeeded, but new diversions and distractions built into the commercial Internet may create new barriers that will be harder to deal with.
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”?
Science’s historical progress can’t be assumed. It has to be reclaimed, re-established. That’s more difficult in a fragmented information space geared for extremism.
A new survey provides an updated view of how and why researchers are using scholarly collaboration networks. Charlie Rapple shares key findings.
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.
In the kind of digital community envisioned by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, information literacy skills ought not to be treated as an afterthought.
The new book by Tom Nichols, “The Death of Expertise,” is not perfect, but it is an important exploration of existential threats to science, education, and representative democracy.
In the quest to measure everything, authors are now presented with all kinds of metrics. This post reviews common sources for citation, attention, and usage metrics. Not all the tools are up for the job leaving authors wondering how to quantify the impact of their work.
It was named as one of the top apps of 2016 by both The New York Times and Time magazine. But what makes it cool?
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.
Quantitative analysis of researchers’ use of scholarly networks shows that they are more likely to be used for individual interests than for collaborative purposes.
How much privacy are you willing to relinquish for convenience? How much effort are you willing to expend for security? This month we asked the chefs: Where Is The Balance Between Security, Authentication, Marketing, and Privacy?
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.
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.