While open access remains a hot topic in our industry, we may not be discussing the most difficult aspects. Worse, OA proponents themselves may not be answering some of the questions that are now arising as a broader swath of academics, scientists, and administrators become aware of OA.
New evidence suggests that US taxpayers are not the major beneficiaries of the NIH Public Access Policy, and that even within the NIH, there has been some unease about the situation.
In this “Stick to Your Ribs,” we revisit a post by Joe Esposito about not-for-profit governance, and the broader concept of the value of expertise.
Revisiting an attempt to list the things journal publishers do.
Back in 2009, I wrote a post about the death of the television schedule. In the post, I discussed shelf life versus participation value for content, highlighting the rare entertainment events like sports that continue to offer a semblance of […]
How well does the scholarly publishing field fare in terms of the number of women in leadership roles compared with others?
A new book about the role of governments in long-term R&D and market-creation functions should send shockwaves through the political system over the coming decades. Fortunately, you can read it now.
Librarian Jeffrey Beall talks about his list of predatory open access journals, the potential pitfalls of article-level metrics, and more.
A long-term observation among physicians and their relationship with the scientific literature leads to thoughts about the risks we run with our increasing focus on authors and funders — the producers, not the consumers.
A new essay by Rick Anderson proposes that libraries begin to focus more strongly on special collections and migrate away from the collection of commodity content. This would have a dramatic impact on the structure of the marketplace for scholarly materials and would be more disruptive than anything currently being bandied about. That may not be a bad thing.
Is access to the research paper really the same thing as access to the research results themselves? Are funding agencies creating a false equivalency by confusing the two? And does this confusion favor researchers in some fields over others?
Scholarly Kitchen chef Alice Meadows discusses the challenges, and opportunities, for scientific societies in an Internet era.
An interview in IEEE Spectrum with Jaron Lanier touches on the perils of free information, including shrinking the information economy, creating a few powerful players, and providing the government free tools of power.
A recent statement by the American Historical Association is generating heated debate about the rights and best interests of junior scholars, the market dynamics for scholarly monographs, and the competing needs of publishers, libraries, authors, and readers.
New documents obtained via an ongoing FOIA request show that PubMed Central spends most of its money tagging author manuscripts, and that its stricter rules for NIH authors may double its costs.