Evaluating Open Access Programs
It often seems that it is taken for granted that open access will accelerate scientific discovery, but how would we evaluate this? Do we even know that it is true?
Return of the Big Brands: How Legacy Publishers Will Coopt Open Access
Open access publishing has gone through a number of stages. Though different people will classify these stages in diverse ways, one way to view this is to say that since the initial period of advocacy for open access, commercial interests have entered this market and are now prepared to augment their positions by leveraging their elite brands, using them, as it were, to draw manuscripts for a family of cascading products.
The Global Gold Open Access "Flip": A Realistic Plan or Magical Thinking?
Is a flip to a Gold OA world as easy as a recent paper suggests?
What Is “Publishing” if Even a Library Can Do It?
Libraries increasingly provide a wide range of publishing activities, but are there some areas where libraries are not active? It appears that libraries are unlikely to play a large role in publishing that is based on end-user demand.
Stick To Your Ribs: A Library Card Under the Christmas Tree
Revisiting a holiday classic: ‘Twas the month before Christmas, and by listening hard, you can hear Joe Esposito yearn for a library card. The reasons are simple, yet give publishers pause. No wonder Joe’s only hope is with Santa Claus.
Stick To Your Ribs: What Does A Scientist Want?
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on the real world concerns of the research community. 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.
Marketing in the Stream
Social media presents a new set of marketing opportunities for publishers, the most important of which is a new paradigm for thinking about the world of digital media, which now is the world of the social stream instead of the world of cyberspace.
Parting Company with Jeffrey Beall
Although Jeffrey Beall has done us all a good service by coming up with his list of predatory publishers, his arguments against open access publishing have become shrill and reveal that he is expressing a political viewpoint that obscures the many gradations of opinion concerning scholarly publishing.
The Conversation on Green OA Continues
The debate on Green OA continues, as many people challenge the premise that the existence of Green OA articles will result in the cancellation of subscriptions to those articles.
When It Comes to Green OA, Nice Guys Finish Last
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.
What Does a Scientist Want?
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.
The Library With No Books In It
A surprising collection found at the Schroedinger Archive includes a number of works of short fiction that take scholarly communications as their subject. In it, we find a tale with many surprising reversals — “The Library With No Books In It.”
Rewriting the History of the Open Access Debate
A new review of the literature about open access’ effects on article citations attempts to rewrite the debate.
Does a Citation Advantage Exist for Mandated Open Access Articles?
A new article suggests that institutional self-archiving mandates may benefit authors . . . if you ignore some inconsistent and inconvenient results.
Open Science Debate: Democracy or Dominance?
Can one ideologue really hijack the OSTP forum on Open Access implementation?