Slow Food, Slow Publishing: The Beauty of Not Being First
Robert Harington reflects on our addiction to speed and advocates for slow scholarly publishing and the inherent beauty of not always being first.
Open Science 2.0: Building Understanding in an AI-Mediated World
Open Science 2.0 must focus not only on access, but also on trust, interpretation, learning, and effective communication. The challenge facing the scholarly publishing ecosystem is ensuring that what is open is also trustworthy, understandable, and genuinely useful.
Guest Post — Why Research Libraries Oppose the OMB Revisions to the Uniform Guidance
Today’s post explains how the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is responding to the proposed rule changes for US federal grants.
Ask the Chefs: How Are You Responding to the OMB Proposed Rule Changes for US Research Funding?
Today, we ask the Chefs how they (or their organizations) are responding to the proposed changes to how US federal research grant funds can be used.
Academic Freedom for the Win; Open Access Mandate in Germany Declared Unconstitutional
A German court ruled against a mandatory article deposit requirement under Germany’s “secondary publication right” (SPR). Whatever the intentions, SPR is mainly going to contribute to the degradation of the record of science.
Guest Post — Proposed Uniform Guidance Revisions Would Eliminate Journal Subscriptions and APCs as Allowable Federal Grant Costs
New guidance from the US government on research funding makes publishing and journal subscription costs unallowable.
Guest Post — Scholarly AI Search Shortcomings and the Need for Better Metadata
AI scholarly search tools often miss important literature due to incomplete metadata. Better full-text-derived metadata could significantly improve discovery.
Seven Questions about CC Signals
With CC Signals, Creative Commons wants to help authors put rules on use of their licensed content for AI training. The problem is, one of the licenses already permits free and unlimited reuse of that content, for any and all purposes. And the licenses are irrevocable.
APC Caps and Bans — Why Funder Policies Aimed at Curbing the Publishing Industry Don’t Work
A new report suggests the NIH’s promised APC caps will reduce global OA spending. But so far, funder efforts to control publisher and author behavior have largely been ineffective. Here’s why.
Guest Post — Love, Death & Robots: Scholarly Edition
Today’s guest post proposes a method for identifying, measuring, and managing robotic usage of scholarly content.
Guest Post — Moving from Identifier to Identity for Researchers
Today’s post calls for collective action to address the researcher identity verification gap in scholarly communications and champions STM’s Researcher identity group.
Guest Post — From Open Access to Preprints: Are We Repeating the Same Mistakes in Scholarly Publishing?
Guest blogger Jonny Coates looks at Richard Poynder’s post-mortem on the Open Access movement, and uses it as a framework to ask questions about the future of preprints.
Ask the Librarians: Recapping a Scholarly Kitchen Roundtable at the 2025 Charleston Library Conference
Today’s post recaps a lively roundtable conversation with library and information science experts who have been guest bloggers for TSK and active SSP participants.
What AI Asks of Open Access
As AI systems increasingly reason from the scientific literature, the integrity signals that make research trustworthy — open data, structured metadata, robust retraction processes — matter more than ever. PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt on why open access publishers have a different set of obligations in an AI world.
Scholarly Society Sustainability in an Unstable Publishing World: Reasons to be Cheerful, Parts 1, 2, and 3.
In this post, Robert attempts to embrace a gloomy optimism as he muses on the state of publishing at scholarly societies.