The Early Career Professionals are All Right: Discussing the Findings of the 2016 SSP Early Career Professional Survey

Ever wondered what early-career publishing professionals are worried about, wishing for, and planning to do–and how you can encourage them to keep doing those things within your organization? The Society for Scholarly Publishing wondered, too, and deployed a subcommittee of professionals (early-career and otherwise) to find out. Here are some of their findings, presented by Early Career Subcommittee co-chairs Emma Brink and Matt Cooper (both of Wiley).

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.

Is the Proposed Merger of IDPF and W3C Good for Publishers?

The IDPF and the W3C recently announced they were making plans to merge. Will this merger be good for publishers by integrating them more closely into the community that manages the web infrastructure? Or will the merger result in diminishing publisher control over one of the important distribution standards for digital texts? The past five years of experience doesn’t give reason to be reassured of the outcome.

What is an Academic Journal?

We spend much time these days wondering when the academic journal as we know it will cease to exist. Robert Harington discusses the role of the journal in light of a fascinating new venture in the field of mathematics – the overlay journal Discrete Analysis.