Can Twitter, Facebook, and Other Social Media Drive Downloads, Citations?
A brief review of studies linking social media and article-level performance.
Sometimes the Reveal is Better than the Magic Trick
You can still be manipulated, even when you know you’re being manipulated.
Is #DeleteFacebook Going to Change Academic Life and Scholarly Publishing?
What might the recent backlash to revelations about how Facebook was exploited mean for the scholarly ecosystem?
Fixing Instead of Breaking, Part One — Open Citations
With so much broken by the Internet, we may be moving into a mode of fixing things. Are open citations part of the solution, or more of the problem?
Book Review: “Technically Wrong,” by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
A new book explores how biases and broken systems get built into technology products and platforms.
Puppetmasters — Who Is Pulling the Strings in the New Information Economy?
Information manipulation is not new, yet everything is different. How do governments, preprints, algorithms, and our own responsibilities intersect? Where does peer review come in now?
Book Review — “World Without Mind,” by Franklin Foer
Franklin Foer’s new book is a bracing account of the current information economy, the monopolies and motivations at its heart, and the weakening of democratized knowledge.
About Face — Scholarly Publishing and Social Media Regulation
A possible consequence of moves to more tightly regulate social media companies may be they start looking for new investments. And they already have some in scholarly publishing.
Detours and Diversions — Do Open Access Publishers Face New Barriers?
Open access (OA) publishing seeks to eliminate paywalls for users. It has largely succeeded, but new diversions and distractions built into the commercial Internet may create new barriers that will be harder to deal with.
Updating Asimov — How Do We Regain Control In the Digital Age?
Algorithms behave in ways even their creators can’t understand, yet they dominate how we share and see information. Do we need a “Three Laws for Algorithms”?
The Information Landscape — How Do We Tackle the Problems Caused by Silicon Valley?
Science’s historical progress can’t be assumed. It has to be reclaimed, re-established. That’s more difficult in a fragmented information space geared for extremism.
What the Acquisition of Meta Means for Scholarly Publishers
Meta has been acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The arrangement will speed up the pace of scientific research and have an impact on scientific publishing.
Economics, Silicon Valley, and Information Warfare — Is Accuracy Becoming a Luxury Item? Or a Casualty?
Information warfare is both tactical and strategic, with much of its success stemming from the weakened economics of the current information economy. Scholarly publishers have experienced this in many ways, from Google Scholar to predatory publishers to pre-print archives — all answers to the calls for “free information” and all revealing tactical and strategic vulnerabilities as accuracy and facts become luxury items in the information war.
How’s That "Abundance" Thing Working Out For You?
The age of information abundance may have fundamental flaws — barriers to entry that create false equivalence; dissemination tools that conflate fake information with responsible sources; self-reinforcing loops of conspiracy and paranoia; and social fragmentation that makes societal disruption more likely. What can be done? Here are a few ideas.
What We Can Learn from Fake News
Fake News is making headlines as questions about how dubious stories may have influenced the US election. This post explores the damage done to reputable news organizations and what scholarly publishers could learn from the whole thing.