As publishers increasingly lose control of the final stage of the publishing process, they are looking elsewhere to extract economic value. They are finding it upstream, in the various linked processes that lead to the (erstwhile) final document.
Who has the most power to take choice away from authors?
Is copyright infringement malum prohibitum (wrong only because it’s prohibited) or malum in se (morally wrong in and of itself)? Interestingly, scholcomm commentators and legal reference materials often characterize it as the former–while both statute and case law treat it like the latter, classifying it as “property theft” and regularly awarding its victims both statutory and punitive damages.
A website that provided fonts based on the handwriting of famous songwriters has been shut down. But is there actually a legal case to answer?
At a press conference on Friday last week, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unsealed indictments of nine Iranian citizens. This sentence is an odd way to start a Scholarly Kitchen post, admittedly. What makes this case interesting to […]
Robert Harington interviews James Milne, Chair of the newly formed Coalition for Responsible Sharing, on action being taken against ResearchGate.
As Sci-Hub has grown up at the expense of publishers, it’s worth considering what its next steps might be in order to understand what new challenges it will pose.
Authors are increasingly applying Creative Commons licenses to their content, when publishing it via Open Access. But after deciding to use a CC license, does it matter whether copyright is transferred to the publisher or if it is retained by the author. For some reasons, transfer to the publisher might be the right choice.
It may seem as if it would be difficult to defend or justify a blatant piracy operation like Sci-Hub. But it can be done, if you’re willing to overlook certain facts and advance certain tenuous moral arguments.
Robert Harington takes the reader on a tour of copyright law, suggesting that its value is in supporting our ability to teach and do research, and publish high quality works.
Quantitative analysis of researchers’ use of scholarly networks shows that they are more likely to be used for individual interests than for collaborative purposes.
What should publishers know about researchers and their work? Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf follow up a post earlier this year about “Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know about Scholarly Publishing.”
Is there a role for a curated, remixing approach to developing next generation textbooks. Robert Harington investigates the role of curated open textbooks in teaching today’s students, looking at some of the available tools, the way in which instructors utilize such tools, and issues around fair use of content.
Expectations of free content are entrenched, but artists, authors, and publishers are all hurting because of it. The basic problem? It’s leading to a lack of trust in the future.
After many and long conversations among colleagues within and beyond the Scholarly Kitchen
about what researchers need to know about scholarly publishing, Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf compiled a list of what we think to be the most urgent issues.