The End of Aperta: Journal Submission Systems Remain Challenging
Why is it so hard to build a good journal article submission system?
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.
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”.
Access vs. Accessibility in Scholarship and Science
Ideally, we want science and scholarship to be not only available to the general public, but also comprehensible to them. But the challenges to doing so are real, and may vary both by discipline and by study type.
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.
ResearchGate: Publishers Take Formal Steps to Force Copyright Compliance
Robert Harington interviews James Milne, Chair of the newly formed Coalition for Responsible Sharing, on action being taken against ResearchGate.
Naiveté Scene — Open Source vs. Scale in Scholarly Publishing
Once again, the term “open” requires further thought to probe the pros and cons. With open source, we may be once again doing things that make the big bigger and the small less relevant.
Publishing the 23andMe Way, Part One: Building the Database
The genetics testing copany 23andme presents an interesting example of a new kind of data publishing.
A Confusion of Journals — What Is PubMed Now?
PubMed is found to contain predatory journals and publishers, likely reflecting a long-term and broader problem, which only adds to the confusion about what exactly PubMed represents at this point.
MECA – A New Manuscript Exchange initiative
A new initiative has been launched to define best practices for simplifying transfer of submitted manuscripts across publishers and systems.
Tracking the Evolution of Reference Resources
A new study from Oxford University Press further documents the decline of reference resources, a category of scholarly material more than ready for an innovative era in its evolution.
The Trance of Dysfunction — Why Trolls Have Come to Dominate Discourse
Trolls dominate for many reasons — economics, technology, our predilection for sordid entertainment. But they’ve chilled online discourse and damaged civil exchanges, even making some publishers reluctant to take full advantage of the potential of the Internet. Are we ready for v2.0 of commenting?
Platform Diving — Top Journals, UX, and the Lure of Harmonization
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.
Design Matters: Why Are So Many Cartoon Characters Yellow?
Why do so many animators choose yellow for their characters?
Should We Stop with the Commenting Already?
No matter what we call it, commenting on scholarly publications has a spotty record of success. Despite the mediocre results, journals, databases, and third party sites keep trying to get authors and readers to engage in this way. This post explores different models and the challenges online commenting faces.