Ask the Chefs: "What's the Most Important Print Subscription You Haven't Canceled?"
Even in the digital age, some print products are hard to give up. What is the allure?
Mobile Access — Publishers Must Catch Up With User Adoption Trends
Mobile access is reaching an inflection point, but publisher solutions to mobile access are still lagging.
The Hall of Mirrors — Trying to Explain Why Users Value Free Content Differently
Why would free content be differentially accessed across versions of it, and across publications? A dive into PLoS data leads to a potentially reassuring answer.
A Small Meal — Mini-Cheeseburger Kit Requires Assembly, Only Has 96 Calories
After indulging in Thanksgiving festivities, what better than a small meal, made painstakingly and without all those nasty calories. Best of all, no preservatives!
What Can Publishers Learn from Indie Rock?
While the recording industry generally gets a bad rap for managing the transition to online distribution, there is one niche that has flipped the model and uses old distribution techniques to sell music across multiple formats. That niche is indie rock and there are some lessons for publishers.
What PubMed Central's Drag on Publisher Traffic Could Mean Financially
When you think through all the effects stealing traffic has on online publishing businesses, PubMed Central’s competitive presence looms large — whether you sell subscriptions, ads, or APCs.
Math and Discipline — Why Nate Silver's Accuracy Isn't About "Big Data"
“Big data” isn’t what the Nate Silver story highlights. It highlights data curation, management, analysis, publication, iteration, and integrity, none of which “big data” guarantees.
These Data Are Different from Those — Data Equivalence and Identification Issues
As communications in science begin to incorporate data elements more routinely, the standards for describing these, versioning these, and preserving these have to be considered. And we will all have to learn how to use data labeling processes correctly.
Open Access — What Do Authors Really Want?
Open access publishing is a viable option, with gold OA gaining traction. But concerns remain, and funding is uncertain.
"Owa, mein Arsch" — When Water's State Is More Set Than It Appears
“Look before you leap” may only be the beginning!
Quantifying OA Complexity
A recent attempt by SPARC and others to assess “How Open Is It?” shows how complex OA publishing is, but also fails to accurately represent the potential complexities in many areas.
The Financial Burdens of the CC-BY License for Scholarly Literature
By allowing free commercial use of OA articles, current CC licenses may shift costs to researchers, presage an unsustainable information economy, and ultimately work against their stated goals. A commercially viable option might actually prove more sustainable.
Responsive Web Design Comes to Scholarly Publishing
JSTOR recently announced that it has reconfigured its user interface using responsive design techniques. While nascent in STM and scholarly publishing, the user interface design world has been abuzz with the potential of responsive web design for some time and a number of sites using responsive web design techniques are now appearing.
Wikipedia's Writing — Tests Show It's Too Sophisticated for Its Audience
Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopedia for everyone, but its core version is too difficult for most readers, and even its Simple English offshoot falls short of its readability goals.
Is PubMed Central Complementing or Competing with Journal Publishers?
Articles deposited into PubMed Central responsible for drawing readers from journal site, a study finds.