The Publishing Community Should More Actively Oppose Book Bans
With a lawsuit filed last week Pen America, Penguin Random House, authors, and parents began fighting book bans. Other publishers should help.
Revisiting: Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?
Rick Anderson revisits a 2020 post: One way or another, the #scholcomm community is going to choose either a diversity of publishing models or a monoculture, because it can’t have both. How will this choice be made, and by whom?
Microaggression, Micro Problem? On the Need for Conference "Codes of Conduct"
Conferences in our sector are increasingly articulating Codes of Conduct. Are they just box ticking? Charlie Rapple tackles her own skepticism and finds that articulating acceptable behaviors may state the obvious, but can serve a useful purpose nonetheless.
The Limits of Crowdsourcing in the Scientific Disciplines
Social networking and crowdsourcing have attributes that may make them both incompatible with the goals and process of science. Can we accept that?
Licensing Controversy — Balancing Author Rights with Societal Good
The CC-BY license is assumed to be an open access standard, but the situation is complex — for funders, authors, universities, and publishers of all types. Perhaps a less dogmatic approach would serve all parties better.
Are University Block Grants the Right Way to Fund Open Access Mandates?
While block grants may be a preferred way to disperse money to fund public access mandates, their actual use may cause problems for researchers and universities.
Driving Innovation: Finding the Balance Between Fair Reward and Profiteering
Vitriol may have obscured important points in a post last week. The growing business strategy of our era is to drive the cost of everyone else’s product to zero in order to make more money from your own product. This imbalance stifles innovation and creation.
The Research Works Act: Is It Time For a Rally To Restore Sanity?
When it comes to discussions about access, the silent majority focused on doing science is presented with real choices, not all of which square with the scorched-earth rhetoric that too often dominates.
Separating The Threads: What Is the Link Between Access and Profitability?
The last few weeks of lively debate about OA in the Scholarly Kitchen have been informative, but have also involved a variety of mixed messages from all sides. There are assumptions being made that aren’t necessarily true, and arguments joined together that may in reality be at cross purposes.
One World Publishing, Brought to You by the Internet
The sale of e-books over the Internet will lead to a restructuring of the book business and the evolution of truly global publishers.
The RIN Report on Researchers and Web 2.0: If You Build It . . . Well, You Know the Rest
The Research Information Network’s new report on researchers and Web 2.0 offers a similar set of results to previous studies: uptake is relatively low, and the trustworthiness and quality of online resources are suspect. The report offers contrary evidence to common myths about “digital natives” and some useful advice for anyone looking to build social media.
The Pepsi Syndrome: Did ScienceBlogs Sell Out, or Was This Just Business As Usual?
The science blogosphere erupted in a furor this week, when Seed Media’s ScienceBlogs announced a new blog–Food Frontiers, a paid, sponsored blog about nutrition written by employees of PepsiCo. Multiple bloggers either suspended their blogs or quit ScienceBlogs altogether over their concerns that adding this blog undermined the credibility of the platform and their credibility as individual writers. Eventually, ScienceBlogs caved under the pressure and removed Pepsi’s blog. Did ScienceBlogs sell out to commercial interests, or was this just a continuation of what they’ve always done?
Creating an Incentive: Can Social Media Offer Enough Carrots to Entice Scientists?
Scientists seem uninterested in participating in social media offerings, as the rewards offered are generally of insufficient value to warrant the effort required. Instead of just hoping that scientists will suddenly see the value in your product, why not offer incentives for participation?
Science Blogging as a Public Outreach Tool — Unfulfilled Potential or Unrealistic Expectation?
A recent study points out that science blogs are failing to provide much in the way of community outreach and education to the non-scientist public. Is this really a failure, or is it an unrealistic expectation?
The Internet’s Extended Cultural Memory — Is It Sapping Our Creativity?
One of the great benefits of the Internet is how it has extended our cultural memory. But has this also stolen our freedom of thought, our ability to create original works of art?