Looking Forward to "The Best of the Scholarly Kitchen: The Second Course!"
The Chefs are closing out this year’s SSP Annual Meeting. We hope to see you there!
MIT Media Labs Creates ZeroN — A Zero-Gravity Tactile Interface
A floating object that can act as a light source, a camera, a tracer of previous movements? Amazing.
Ask the Chefs: "Are We a Service Industry Or a Product Industry?"
We often talk about products and services, but which is our primary value base?
ClinicalTrials.gov — Too Many Studies Are Registered Late, Published Late, and Smaller Than Planned
Registering clinical trials after enrollment has commenced may lead to the perception that medical researchers are peeking.
The Open Access Price Wars Have Begun
A new open access publishing service, Peerj, has been started by Peter Binfield, formerly the publisher of PLoS ONE. This augurs a price war among author-pays OA services.
Watching the Winds — Breezy and Revealing Visualizations of Our Most Common Weather Companion
Science data can be beautiful.
IT Arrogance vs. Academic Culture — Why the Outcome Is Virtually Certain
Claims that technological innovations can smash cultures and revolutionize the fundamentals of scientific communication mistake superficial changes for deep changes. Technology alone isn’t enough. In fact, it seems that publishing changes technology.
Google's New "Scholar Metrics" Have Potential, But Also Prove Problematic
Google’s new “Scholar Metrics” promise to make the h-index viable for journals on a large scale. But problems exist in their approach, some of them easily handled, some not.
Post-Publication Peer Review: What Value Do Usage-Based Metrics Offer?
A PLoS ONE article recently went viral, hitting the front page of Reddit and garnering an amazing amount of reader interest. This was great news for the journal and the paper’s authors, but raises questions for the notion of post-publication […]
The Portal Problem, Part 2: The Plight of the Library Collection
In my previous posting, I focused on what I believe to be dim prospects for the Encyclopedia Britannica as it transforms from a set of printed volumes into a networked online information portal. My skepticism stems from the fact that […]
E-books in the Academy — A Story of Limitations and Affordances
The current crop of ebooks simply don’t do many of the things that scholars require, leading scholars to urge libraries to continue to collect print books. Perhaps a new kind of service is required to get more scholars to migrate to all-digital solutions.
The Article — Not Quite Dead Yet
UKSG Coverage – The Future of Scholarly Journals: slow evolution, rapid transformation – or redundancy? @CameronNeylon and @Michael_Mabe debate at #UKSGlive
The Portal Problem, Part 1: The Plight of the Britannica
Did the Encyclopedia Britannica stop printing because of the limitations of print? Or is there something more pernicious at the roots of Britannica’s problems?
Innovation — A Word Cheapened
Scott Berkun challenges a common assumption — that being innovative is desirable. Instead, he suggests other things to be, including clear, smart, and savvy.
Comments — The Weakest Part of Blogs, the Weakest Part of Online Journals
Post-publication peer-review systems are still something fancied here and there. But with comments failing on blogs everywhere, especially as traffic grows, more bloggers are talking about new approaches — ones that focus on invited experts, quality opinions, and high standards. Where have we heard that before?