What Will You Do When They Come for Your Proxy Server?
RA21 aims to replace IP address authentication (and proxy servers) with federated identity authentication – but have we thought through the implications?
Book Review: “Technically Wrong,” by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
A new book explores how biases and broken systems get built into technology products and platforms.
Discovery Should Be Delivery: User-Centric Principles for Discovery as a Service
Library discovery can only succeed in reaching a high market share if it is intensely user-centered. Articulating user-centric principles for discovery has enabled the University Library to Illinois to evolve a discovery environment that meets the needs of its community of users.
The Wake-up Call — Looking Back at 2017, and Some Factors Affecting 2018
2017 may have been a watershed year for the Internet and its future. What did we learn? And what factors may shape 2018?
The End of Aperta: Journal Submission Systems Remain Challenging
Why is it so hard to build a good journal article submission system?
Workflow Strategy for Those Left Behind: Strategic Context
An emerging duopoly for the new class of scientific research workflow products could marginalize publishers large and small to the benefit of the Big Two. This first of two pieces provides the strategic context, while tomorrow we will review options for those publishers at risk of being left behind.
Ask The Chefs: What Is The State Of Innovation In Scholarly Communications Today?
Are we innovating in scholarly communications? What does it mean to innovate? This month the Chefs explore innovation. Come let us know your thoughts!
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?
Enriching Book Metadata is Marketing in the Digital Age
A study of how enriching keyword metadata improved sales of 4 publishers points to changes in how we should view marketing of books online.
A View from the Outside — Trends and Challenges Consultants See in Scholarly Publishing
Input from more than a dozen consultants portrays an industry struggling to adapt to a dramatically different and rapidly changing information economy.
Lava Lamps and Internet Security
How one company uses a decidedly analog technology to generate random numbers for encryption.
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?
Innovative Research and Creative Output: From Ideas to Impact
Evolving forms of digital scholarship such a 3-D images, multimedia, and geographic data are relatively new elements in the scholar’s workflow. These formats appear in stark contrast to the legacy books and journal articles required for career advancement within the […]
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.