They Know We Know They Know: Does Sci-Hub Affect Library Subscriptions?
So does Sci-Hub lead libraries to cancel journals, or doesn’t it? Maybe the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.
One Author’s Novel Approach to Article Self-Publishing: An Interview with Allyson Mower
An author found that the relevant journals were unwilling to publish an article of historical research that found evidence for a surprising and somewhat controversial proposition about the founding of the University of Utah. So what did she decide to do with her article? Something rather unusual, it turns out.
Difficulty In Finding Reviewers Taints Editorial Decisions
Journal editors are more likely to reject papers when they experience trouble recruiting reviewers, reports a new study.
What If Academic and Scholarly Publishers Paid Research Authors?
It’s a question that has lurked around the edges of our campfire for a while — what if publishers paid authors of research papers? Quickly, it becomes clear why this is very unlikely to happen — for financial, ethical, and practical reasons.
Sensationalism or Legitimate Worries? Examining the Cottage Industry of Journal Criticism and Science Alarmism
We’re in a thicket of stories proclaiming “science is broken” and that stealing articles isn’t stealing because, publishers. This cottage industry of journal bashing and science trashing has reached a crescendo. What drives it? And what more important stories are being missed in the maelstrom?
Revisiting: The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2014 post on the importance of editors–how much of what we see as a failure of “peer review” is really a failure of editorial oversight?
Revisiting: On the Likelihood of Academia “Taking Back” Scholarly Publishing
Revisiting Rick Anderson’s 2013 post on what the options for the academy to take control of scholarly publishing, and whether any of those options seems feasible.
Strip Off, Jump In, Splash Out – How to Swim in Content Marketing Waters
Everybody’s doing content marketing well – except publishers, who too often confuse it with marketing content. Charlie Rapple shares thoughts on getting it right.
University of California Press Introduces New Open Access Publishing Programs
The University of California Press has announced two new open access publishing initiatives, one a monographs program and the other an OA mega journal. Here UCP director Alison Mudditt answers some questions posed by the Kitchen about these new initiatives.
Buried in the Matryoshka — Unpacking the "Value Add" of Peer Review
Publishers often slap labels on activities that are complex, expensive, and high-value. Worse, we often accept people calling these activities “value-add” when they are core functions of how scientific information shared.
UPDATED — 82 Things Publishers Do (2014 Edition)
The annual update to the list adds some important items overlooked on prior versions, including design, enforcement of editorial policies, and Board interactions.
The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore
An alien landing in the scholarly and scientific publishing world today, reading all the opinions about how to make things more efficient and effective, might be forgiven for thinking there are only authors, readers, librarians, and reviewers. After all, those […]
Your Question for the Day — What Is “Peer Review”?
A recent “Slate” article shows what can go wrong when we talk about “peer review” as if we all share a common definition about an unchanging phenomenon.
Open Access on the Sea of Confusion
How many different definitions of “open access” are there? A look at how conceptual confusions conflict with making effective policy.
On the Likelihood of Academia "Taking Back" Scholarly Publishing
The question addressed here is not whether we in the academy should “take back publishing” from the commercial scholarly publishers, but rather what the options for doing so might be, and whether any of those options seems feasible at the moment.