How Much Does It Cost eLife to Publish an Article?
Adding to the discussion of APCs, eLife’s financials suggest that being competitive with some major journals means the journal is expensive to run.
A Day at the Beach — How the Messiness and Unpredictability of Journals Thwart Granularity
Attempts to use new measurements to more finely predict or represent journal quality are bound to falter because of some qualities inherent to journals themselves.
Your Question for the Day — What Is “Peer Review”?
A recent “Slate” article shows what can go wrong when we talk about “peer review” as if we all share a common definition about an unchanging phenomenon.
The 1% of Scientific Outputs — A Story of Strawmen, Sensationalism, and Scopus
A paper claiming to have identified “the 1%” in productive published researchers may suffer from problems with disambiguation, timing, and scope.
The Journal Redesign — More Complicated, More Costly, and More Strategic Than Ever
Journal redesigns seem to be occurring more frequently — and are certainly more complex — than in the past. What motivates a publisher and editor to undertake a redesign? And why is it so complex, costly, and strategic today?
Stick To Your Ribs: Ask the Chefs: “Are We a Service Industry Or a Product Industry?”
Revisiting a 2012 post to ask, do journal authors really give their articles away for free to publishers?
What Societies Really Think About Open Access
What do societies really think about Open Access? A recent survey, though small, provides some initial answers…
Hit the Road — How a Forgettable Paper and a Misguided Publisher Created an Unnecessary Controversy
The censorship scandal at Taylor & Francis has wrapped up, and the lessons are as obvious as you think.
This Just In from the 1990s — We’re Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Sayeth the Editor of VentureBeat
A Silicon Valley journalist has seen open access and deemed it disruptive. He’s 15+ years and scads of evidence behind the times, as we enter the post-disruption era.
How Do We Address the Continuing Problem of Inadequate and Deceptive Publishing Practices?
Technological trends have enabled experiments in publishing. But now that we’ve seen plenty of experiments, is it time to bring them under control?
What Is the "News" Associated with Journal Publication?
The news function of journals has many dimensions, a major one consisting of where and when an article is published.
Strategic Thinking Exercise — Who Is Positioned to Keep Gold Open Access Growing?
It’s unclear who in the academic world has any incentive to pay for Gold OA publishing, especially as embargoes satisfy nearly everyone and cost next to nothing.
Keeping It Real — Ethics and Privacy as the Frontiers "Recursive Fury" Case Continues to Churn
Frontiers issues another statement about why the “Recursive Fury” paper was retracted, raising once again questions about why it was retracted, but shifting the focus more and more to how it was retracted.
Learning to Read: Navigating the Ebook Reader Market
This post explores the confusing landscape of ebook readers, presenting a few of the options available along with their pros and cons.
Wellcome Money — In This Example of Open Access Funding, the Matthew Effect Dominates
A surprising set of recipients dominate a list of APC payments released by Wellcome Trust, suggesting that OA is not leading to a reshaping of the industry but perhaps merely driving further consolidation.