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.
Are we all talking about the same thing when we say “open access” — and do we all mean the same thing when we talk about an “open access future”? Short answers: “yes (kind of)” and “no way.”
Simple things are often more complex than we initially think, and the push for faster publication may be an expensive and risky trend to follow too much further.
There are many reasons to be cheerful in the world of scholarly publishing. Taking a cue from Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and his song, Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3., this post describes an example of good things afoot in the library community. It is up to you to provide parts 1. and 2.
The annual update to the list adds some important items overlooked on prior versions, including design, enforcement of editorial policies, and Board interactions.
This month the Scholarly Kitchen Chefs consider how publishers identify and serve their customers? Are they doing it well? What do YOU think?
Is there hope for scholarly societies? Where once perhaps membership benefits from publications were key, now the emphasis will move to the character of academic life and independence from commercial forces. This post aims to engage the reader in thinking through what it means to be a member of a scholarly society
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 […]
Attempts to use new measurements to more finely predict or represent journal quality are bound to falter because of some qualities inherent to journals themselves.
We ask our authors to gaze into their crystal balls regarding the future of print.
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.
A paper claiming to have identified “the 1%” in productive published researchers may suffer from problems with disambiguation, timing, and scope.
An overview of new tools available, to help us consider how publishing may better incorporate technology in the context of a connected society.
A ruse to self-review and self-recommend papers for publication leads to 60 retractions. Can we find a way to prevent this kind of identity fraud and its consequences?
The censorship scandal at Taylor & Francis has wrapped up, and the lessons are as obvious as you think.