It’s a question that has lurked around the edges of our campfire for a while — what if publishers paid authors of research papers? Quickly, it becomes clear why this is very unlikely to happen — for financial, ethical, and practical reasons. Continue reading
A special day was set aside at the recent International STM Association conference in Washington to discuss society publishing. One panel included the head of three society publishing operations, all of which are different and all of them successful. The panelists shared their strategies with the audience. The presentations are linked to from within the post. Continue reading
Robert Harington grapples with the lack of understanding by the publishing elites on all sides of shifting ideologies of an individual’s relationship to information on the web. Continue reading
Springtime finally arrives, so why not celebrate with some slow motion footage of water balloons on a trampoline? Continue reading
When entities like Sci-Hub invite you to share your network credentials in order to help create free access to licensed scholarly publications, they’re asking for more than access to research. What they’re asking for may also give them access to your email account, your course management program, your tax documents, and more. Here are some things to think about before you decide to share that network user ID and password. Continue reading
Robert Harington interviews Andrea Powell, Chief Information Officer at CABI, revealing an inspiring advocate and leader across publishing and technology sectors. Continue reading
Today, Elsevier is announcing that it has acquired SSRN, the preprint and publishing community that focuses on social sciences and law. Among other things, the SSRN acquisition is another step in Elsevier’s path towards data and analytics. In a number of ways, Mendeley is the linchpin for this acquisition. More generally, this acquisition plainly indicates Elsevier’s interest in the open access repository space. Finally, universities, their libraries, and other publishers, should have on their minds some of the policy and governance issues around the data that Elsevier is accumulating and the uses to which they may be put. Continue reading
Why is it so frustrating and difficult to talk about scholarly-communication reform, and why do those conversations seem to involve virtually all members of the scholcomm ecosystem except for authors? Continue reading
John Oliver offers a scathing look at the poor practices of media in scientific reporting. Continue reading
Journals as communication vehicles that bind communities of practice are still important and well-regarded, but there are external forces changing them and our industry, along with a rising level of neglect, which may mean a harder future for them than ever. What might we lose? And how does this explain why change is so slow in coming? Continue reading
A look back at the recent Open Scholarship Initiative conference, from several Scholarly Kitchen “Chefs” who attended. Continue reading
There are many programs now to create open access monographs, but the business models surrounding these efforts do not appear to be sufficiently robust to make the OA monograph sustainable. The problem is that the monograph is something that many people want, but few are willing to pay for. Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Fred Dylla is the Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics. With more than 30 years experience as a practicing scientist, Dylla has also taken a leading role as an advocate for the sciences. An important component of the working life of a researcher is — and has been for the … Continue reading
Jimmy Kimmel presents a video on climate change, and wonders why the public is so resistant to scientific consensus. Continue reading
The International Association of STM Publishers released its Future Trends for 2020 last week. The sea upon which publishers sit is choppy and full of cross currents, that could prove perilous or fortunate, depending on one’s perspective and reaction. Continue reading
How do users access content on mobile devices? While many surveys have been done on mobile usage, documenting the user’s experience via “journey mapping” provides a picture of the challenges that remain in using IP authentication in the institutional setting. Continue reading
Although Amazon is a central player in many areas of publishing and media, it is hard to predict where it will head next. This makes it hard to plan to compete with it. On the other hand, Amazon has some typical ways that it behaves when it enters a market and strategic planners can learn from them. Continue reading
After hundreds of manipulated images were detected across 40 scientific journals, the real work will be to correct the scientific record. Continue reading
A sample from Nova’s web series about the things scientists get up to when they’re not in the lab. Continue reading
Help us identify discussion topics and questions for the Society of Scholarly Publishing 2016 Annual Meeting. What did you only wish you knew when you were just starting out in scholarly publishing? Continue reading
An animated look at the history of zero. Continue reading
We’re in a thicket of stories proclaiming “science is broken” and that stealing articles isn’t stealing because, publishers. This cottage industry of journal bashing and science trashing has reached a crescendo. What drives it? And what more important stories are being missed in the maelstrom? Continue reading
Not only is Sci-Hub pirating STM articles; it also has built a large collection of unauthorized university press monographs. This undermines the argument that Sci-Hub is an activist site fighting against corporate greed, as the university press community typically operates at a deficit. But university presses have many other challenges, and the threat posed by Sci-Hub is not the largest among them. Continue reading
While many of the traditional publishing tasks remain intact, new tasks that are much more technical in nature have changed the skill sets required to be scholarly publishers. As new and developing standards and services such as Funder Identification, ORCID, CHORUS, and more come online, publishers and their vendors must integrate when they would rather innovate. The trick is in realizing where integration allows more innovation. Continue reading
Citation networks can provide much more than journal metrics and rankings. Publishers should look to them for competitive intelligence. Continue reading
A short video explaining the meaning behind and origins of common words and phrases. Continue reading
We’ve looked recently at things publishers want researchers to understand better. Are there things researchers in turn want publishers to understand better? Charlie Rapple opens a discussion. Continue reading
A study shows that adherence to best practices for data citation is improving, but still has a long way to go. Continue reading
If Thomson Reuters can calculate Impact Factors and Eigenfactors, why can’t they deliver a simple median score? Continue reading
Basic literacy in scholarly communications is essential for scholars across disciplines and fields. What I learned moving from full-time academic work to a role in scholarly publishing. Continue reading
How do we get new emojis? Stephen Colbert explains. Continue reading
On an academic campus, the consumer of licensed scholarly information products is usually not the buyer and does not make purchasing decisions. If your sales reps aren’t careful about respecting that distinction, they can get themselves into hot water fast. Continue reading
There continue to be calls to consolidate all publishing activity in a single organization or unit. The various participants in scholarly communications often are hostile to the very idea of competition. But the evidence is otherwise: a diversity of publishing venues, all operated independently, yield better and more innovative results. Continue reading
A tour of four major “megajournals” and some of their neighbors finds a few common approaches and a few distinguishing features, but the entire category may need to be rethought given the lack of “mega” generally among the set. Continue reading
Although journals, other serials, and reference have made a large scale transition away from print, we must not assume that the same path will inevitably be pursued for other components of collections. A combination of business models, reading practices, and other user needs will play the biggest role in determining the prospects for the printed monograph. Today, it seems that a dual-format environment may remain before us for some time, and there will be advantages for the libraries, publishers, and intermediaries that can develop models for monographs that work best in such an environment. Continue reading
Following the announcement of a new HighWire office in Belfast, Northern Ireland, top management is working on a cultural transition plan for the Silicon Valley based company. Continue reading
Exasperated over ineffectual attempts to shut down Sci-Hub, an illegal article sharing website, Elsevier has decided to purchase the service for an undisclosed sum. Continue reading
The impact of the Germanic and Romance language roots that led to modern English. Continue reading
A new survey looks at the ways readers discover scholarly publications. Due to methodological limitations, scholarly information professionals should practice caution in interpreting the findings and considering potential business responses. Ultimately, it is impressive that the researchers have taken on such a large-scale study, which adds some additional context to our understanding of discovery, especially in its diversity. Continue reading
The “crisis in scholarly communication” story is not entirely supported by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) data. Why do we cling to the victim-hero narrative when alternatives exist? Continue reading
A recent blog post by ARL that was ostensibly about “To Kill a Mockingbird” was actually a set piece on the term of copyright. This rhetorical strategy of using news simply as a jumping-off point for a political statement undermines the credibility of public discourse, which hurts us all. Continue reading
Thinking of traveling back in time? Watch this cautionary video first. Continue reading
University presses are enjoying something of a renaissance in the UK, as was evident at the recent University Press Redux conference in Liverpool. Why is this, and how are presses trying to reconcile mission, innovation and sustainability in the digital world? And what can they teach the rest of us? Continue reading
What is the biggest misconception people have about scholarly publishing? That’s what we asked the Chefs this month. Now we’re asking you. What did we miss? Continue reading
Scale can be achieved by broadly outsourcing the editorial process. Does this lead to a loss in quality control, and is this acceptable? Continue reading
After many and long conversations among colleagues within and beyond the Scholarly Kitchen
about what researchers need to know about scholarly publishing, Alice Meadows and Karin Wulf compiled a list of what we think to be the most urgent issues.
Continue reading
John Oliver looks at the complex issues surrounding the current battle over encryption. Continue reading
There seems to be a significant disagreement between academic libraries and their own host institutions with regard to an important rule change proposed by the Department of Education. That disagreement has implications that go way beyond the rule itself. Continue reading
Robert Harington comments on a New York Times article by Kate Murphy , published on Sunday 13th March, 2016, suggesting that when journalists write such an article they, do not fan the flames of fundamentalism, recognize the complexity at hand, and understand that there is a constructive debate to be had. Continue reading
With no clear benefits to researchers, a frustrating user experience, and no penalties for non-compliance, ClinicalTrials.gov is becoming increasingly irrelevant to clinical researchers and the world at large with each passing day. What does this mean for public access to research results? Is an obligation to patients putting themselves at risk in trials being breached? Why has it failed to live up to its potential? Continue reading
Although we in scholarly publishing typically focus on the problems we face, there is a small group of highly successful journal publishers. These publishers fall into three broad categories. To a great extent, these publishers are resistant to challenge. Continue reading