APCs and Competition: What Shulenberger Got Wrong
Would a systemwide “flip” to open access by means of universal article-processing charges work? David Shulenberger argues that it would not, and he may be right — but not for the reasons he gives.
When Bad Science Wins, or "I’ll See It When I Believe It"
Observational studies claiming an open access citation advantage just keep coming, despite problems in reproducibility and a lack of adequate controls. Are we in for a similar literature on the subject of the impact of social media on readership and citation?
Seven Things Every Scholarly Publisher Should Know about Researchers
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.”
The Costs of Flipping our Dollars to Gold
An interview with MacKenzie Smith and Ivy Anderson, discussing the recent Pay It Forward report on the economic impact of a shift to Gold open access for scholarly journals.
A Quick Tour Around the World of Scholarly Journal Publishing
A presentation to the 2016 ISMTE US Conference. Something of a “state of our industry” overview, or perhaps, everything I needed to know I learned from the other bloggers at The Scholarly Kitchen.
Curation Nation: Thoughts on the Future of Textbooks
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.
The Pay It Forward Project: Confirming What We Already Knew About Open Access
A new study from the University of California system confirms much of what we already knew about open access, particularly the increased financial burden it places on productive universities.
For Scholarly Communications, Double-dipping is Double the Fun
The much-maligned practice of “double-dipping,” in which a publisher received revenue from both subscriptions and APCs, is likely to remain with us for some time, as publishers learn to turn APCs into larger and more varied revenue streams, even as they create the impression that the APCs offset subscription costs.
The Discrete Charm of Geometry – A Review
Amidst the politics of open access, the financial pressure on research libraries, and the sense that ubiquity trumps quality, it is worth remembering that nothing can squash the fervor of academic endeavor. Video is increasingly deployed in the publishing of academic research. Robert Harington explores the importance of using different types of media to provide insight into cultural and historical aspects of a field through a review of a new movie by Ekaterina Eremenko – The Discrete Charm of Geometry.
Building a Repository in Partnership with Elsevier: The University of Florida’s Perspective
The University of Florida and Elsevier have entered into a partnership to build links between the institutional repository and ScienceDirect, which has received quite a bit of criticism in recent weeks.I have found it useful to try to understand the different sides of what seems to me to be a debate about how best to utilize the increasingly mature infrastructure and programmatic capacity for scholarly communications.
Ask The Librarians: What Did You Learn At This Year’s SSP Annual Meeting?
Hillary Corbett, the Director of Scholarly Communication & Digital Publishing at Northeastern University, and Charlotte Roh, the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of San Francisco, tell us what they learned at this year’s SSP Annual Meeting!
What If Academic and Scholarly Publishers Paid Research Authors?
It’s a question that has lurked around the edges of our campfire for a while — what if publishers paid authors of research papers? Quickly, it becomes clear why this is very unlikely to happen — for financial, ethical, and practical reasons.
Publishing, Politics and Reason
Robert Harington grapples with the lack of understanding by the publishing elites on all sides of shifting ideologies of an individual’s relationship to information on the web.
Scholarly-Communication Reform: Why Is it So Hard to Talk About, and Where are the Authors?
Why is it so frustrating and difficult to talk about scholarly-communication reform, and why do those conversations seem to involve virtually all members of the scholcomm ecosystem except for authors?
The Open Scholarship Initiative: Talking a Good Game, But Can We Deliver?
A look back at the recent Open Scholarship Initiative conference, from several Scholarly Kitchen “Chefs” who attended.