The Future of Writing: Tightening Up our Communications, From Just Not Sorry to SEO
Charlie Rapple wonders if controversial browser plug-in Just Not Sorry might have some useful tech behind its current gender-baiting application.
Greetings from the Age of Abundance
A farewell to 2015, and some thoughts on why our culture has, in an age of abundance, slowed down so much.
MOOCs Rise from the Ashes
The MOOCs seem to have faded from view. In large part this is because they were so relentlessly overhyped when they first appeared. But now various forms of online education have begun to get traction in the marketplace. An essay by Clay Shirky points out how online education is operating today and its implications for higher education.
Ask The Chefs: How Does The Increased Use of Adjunct Faculty Affect Scholarly Publishing?
How does a differentiation between faculty on separate tracks for research or educational roles will drive change in the reward system? How might it impact scholarly publishing?
Virtual Reality and the Scholarly Publisher
This time, Virtual Reality is not a gimmick. This post summarises my investigations and thoughts on the possibilities for VR in the context of scholarly publishing. Plus there’s a quick primer to get you started.
The Death of the Collection and the Necessity of Library-Publisher Collaboration: Young Librarians on the Future of Libraries
Applicants for a recent conference scholarship wrote essays that tended strongly to depict the traditional collection as dead and collaboration between librarians and publishers as essential to the library’s future. Do they herald a generational shift in mindset among librarians?
Guest Post: Richard Fisher on The Monograph: Keep On Keepin’ On*, Part Two
In Part Two, Richard Fisher looks at the past, the present and the future of monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences.
Guest Post: CCC’s Roy Kaufman on Growing Your Open Access Business in an Environment of Peak APC Pricing
CCC’s Roy Kaufman looks at the economic difficulties of the gold open access market, and suggest other pathways for revenue expansion.
People Make the Difference: Steering a Start-up to Success
A panel at the Charleston conference featured three CEOs of start-ups, who shared their experiences in creating and running a completely new organization. All of these companies are computationally sophisticated, so advanced technologically that it is hard to image established companies taking on their challenges. Another common theme is the importance of hiring and retaining the very best people, a matter in which start-up CEOs tend to be obsessive.
Autotuning Science
The latest clip from Symphony of Science sets famous astronomers to music.
Open Access at a Crossroads
There’s no denying the growth and increased acceptance of the concepts of open access in scholarly publishing. But the repercussions of the business models and methodologies chosen for OA are just beginning to be recognized.
Another Big Win for Google Books (and for Researchers)
Google wins in court (again) as the Second Circuit of Appeals rules that its mass book digitization program qualifies as fair use. But Google is a commercial entity! And their files might get hacked! And their library partners are even more susceptible to copyright pirates than Google is! Yes, said the court, but. . .
Return of the Big Brands: How Legacy Publishers Will Coopt Open Access
Open access publishing has gone through a number of stages. Though different people will classify these stages in diverse ways, one way to view this is to say that since the initial period of advocacy for open access, commercial interests have entered this market and are now prepared to augment their positions by leveraging their elite brands, using them, as it were, to draw manuscripts for a family of cascading products.
What is an Academic Journal?
We spend much time these days wondering when the academic journal as we know it will cease to exist. Robert Harington discusses the role of the journal in light of a fascinating new venture in the field of mathematics – the overlay journal Discrete Analysis.
Ask The Chefs: How Has The Move To Distributed Networks Impacted Scholarly Publishing?
The digital era has increasingly led to distributed networks and a move away from centralized locations for both people and data. As our ability to communicate, participate, and share has increased, how has our ecosystem changed?