Older PhDs, longer postdoc stints, the rich getting richer, and other factors are creating a “founder effect” and consolidating power at the upper end of scholarship. Is it a Ponzi scheme? Can grassroot efforts change things?
Jason Lanier’s manifesto about the open culture exposes its lack of ingenuity, its commercial depredations, its amoral world view, and its elitist predilections. It’s worth reading in full.
CrossRef moves into the reference works area for e-books, with a linking approach and pricing that might just work.
The iPad moves electronic reading to a multi-function device, marking the end of proprietary interfaces controlling commerce for e-reading.
Demand Media has created a journalism and custom content platform that disrupting neighboring publishing models. Can we learn something from their approach?
A guide to the values, cultures and scholarly communication behaviors of academics. A must read for publishers and technologists.
Google makes a definitive move in social, acquiring Aardvark for $50M.
Google Buzz has dragged Gmail into the social sphere. Will it be a match made in heaven? Or does it remind users of someplace farther south?
Information wants to be free? Then why are expenditures for information skyrocketing? Maybe the pendulum has swung back to “information wants to be expensive.”
2Collab and Connotea are choking on spam, and they may not have the right scale or architecture to avoid a future defined by it.
How the US appears through Facebook. Do you live in Stayathomia or Socalistan?
Why Google apparently gives government documents more protections than 19th century texts is just one of the puzzles in their usage guidelines.
We welcome Alix Vance, SSP Board Member and president of Paratext, as the newest chef in the Scholarly Kitchen.
Geezers blog. Why? Because they have something to say and are willing to say it.
Keynes and Hayek debate their approaches and theories around boom-and-bust economics, in a rap number that’s making the rounds.