A new report from Simba surveys the current scientific and technical publishing markets. These segments are essentially flat. Incumbents are seeking growth elsewhere. Interestingly, open access has not had much of an impact on the revenue of traditional publications.
Green Open Access can lead to the cancellation of subscriptions to journals. The environment for OA, however, is full of nuance and resists easy characterization.
Although many people claim to know what scientists want, the author’s own ongoing survey has come up with results that are at odds with most conventional wisdom. This post summarizes those findings and identifies a near-universal view held by many scientists.
Let’s imagine that open access publishing becomes the norm. What will the implications be? One implication is that it will likely create significant pressure on professional societies, which will seek new business arrangements to augment their income and keep their society together.
Despite a growing anti-Impact Factor movement, a quick look at readership and search query data shows a continued growth of interest in knowing journals’ Impact Factors, even for the journal where it may be the least relevant.
eLife, BioMed Central (BMC), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) will be forming a new peer review consortium based around the concept of what eLife calls “portable peer review.”
PLoS has announced the departure of both its CEO and CFO, but has provided no explanation of what led to the management change. PLoS should explain the situation to all its shareholders.
How a publisher study of institutional repositories is used against those who created it.
A clever way to sell institutional site licenses and Gold OA together helps one publisher find the fulcrum amidst uncertainty.
An analysis of publishing costs continues the theme of accountability and transparency, but perhaps focuses too much on the containers of information rather than how and why the containers are filled in the first place.
Do higher impact journals do a better job with their statistics? A study with a sexy title proves to be poorly designed and poorly reported.
A new financial analysis of open access and two major publishers suggests that many of the trends we’re seeing aren’t about adversarial ideas and win:lose propositions, but about relatively small market adjustments and incremental changes.
A reprint of an essay from 2008, which attempts to describe the evolution of open access publishing, Written before the astounding success of PLoS ONE, it outlines the link between open access publishing and the still-persistent traditional model.
Narrowing the definition of peer review to only validation standards, we may be exposing peer review in its least flattering light, while ignoring the more reliable and powerful ways in which peer review serves science.
Data archiving is becoming a new normal for scientific publishing, but a recent study shows you need to do more than just ask for it.