Online Information, Ebooks, and Moral Panic
Why do ebooks—and e-information generally—cause such teeth-grinding rage and rhetorical hysteria in some people?
Scholarly Kitchen Podcast: Peter Binfield on PeerJ
Peter Binfield talks about progress at PeerJ since the innovative OA journal’s launch, and where the journal is headed.
Scholarly Kitchen Podcast: Carol Tenopir on Time, Value, and Trust in Scholarly Communication
A conversation with information scientist Carol Tenopir.
Scholarly Kitchen Podcast: Anita de Waard on the Semantic Web, Data, and Discovery
An expert on the semantic Web, structured markup, and the emerging area of research data services talks about the current state of play.
The Limits of Crowdsourcing in the Scientific Disciplines
Social networking and crowdsourcing have attributes that may make them both incompatible with the goals and process of science. Can we accept that?
iAnnotate — Whatever Happened to the Web as an Annotation System?
A meeting about annotation services and software shows how new tools may be on the horizon, and reminds us that our audiences are likely to be the heaviest users once these emerge.
Is It Time for Scholarly Journal Publishers to Begin Distributing Articles Using EPUB 3?
EPUB 3 reveals many smart advances, making EPUB a more viable direction than ever. And with the changing landscape of reading devices and customer preferences, even the vaunted PDF may feel the tremors.
Video Rewind: Printing's Alive, a Celebration
Is print dead, or just demoted? This video shows that it, and its advocates, won’t go down without a fight.
As Hybrid Open Access Grows, the Scholarly Community Needs Article-level OA Metadata
With OA gaining momentum and hybrid and full OA policies becoming more common, article-level metadata and other standard approaches are necessary to facilitate discoverability.
What It Means to Be a Start-up: Is It a Model Publishers Should Embrace?
Is running a business without a start-up mentality dangerous in our fast-paced technological world? It’s all a matter of risk and reward.
IT Arrogance vs. Academic Culture — Why the Outcome Is Virtually Certain
Claims that technological innovations can smash cultures and revolutionize the fundamentals of scientific communication mistake superficial changes for deep changes. Technology alone isn’t enough. In fact, it seems that publishing changes technology.
The Hidden Expense of Energy — Print Is Costly, Online Isn't Free
How many joules does it take to get a journal out? A small, quick study suggests that print consumes much more energy than online, but shows that online is far from free, with energy its main variable cost.
Can Amazon and Apple Peacefully Coexist? Probably, But As for Google…
The Google Era isn’t over by a long shot, but initiatives from Apple and Amazon reveal that the search giant is open to disintermediation by some clever and large-scale commercial tactics.
My Utopian Vision for Communication of Scientific Methods
The publishing industry seems to be focused on improving a system that already works well, the system of topical information flows. Perhaps it should be looking at the system of method information flows.
NASA's Vital But Forgotten Role: Stimulating the Pursuit of Frontiers
NASA makes us look up and inspires young children to pursue science, all for 1/2 a cent on the tax dollar. Why are we letting it slip into oblivion?