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
After a few weeks of blistering comment sections on Scholarly Kitchen posts, it’s probably time to review the most common logical fallacies employed in arguing on the internet. Continue reading
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2013 post discussing a study on library spending that suggests that the costs of journals have not increased as much as is commonly claimed, and that the increases seen are due to the increased volume being published. Continue reading
It was a little while back now that a controversial blogger attacked one or more of the authors of the Scholarly Kitchen for being former academics, questioning whether such people should be working in publishing. In today’s post, Phill Jones argues that such rhetoric contributes to a stigma that is damaging to the health of academia. Continue reading
On the three year anniversary of the OSTP Public Access memo, AIP’s Fred Dylla takes a look at the significant progress made. Continue reading
An official response from Wim Meester, Head of Content Strategy for Scopus. Continue reading
While offering real improvements over Thomson Reuters, Scopus may be suffering from serious data integrity issues and communication problems with its third-party publishers. Continue reading
Physicist Brian Greene explains a recent scientific breakthrough to Stephen Colbert. Continue reading
Last week, the news broke about a new service called DOAI that is designed to support open access. It is not a publishing model or a repository but rather a type of infrastructure. When a user inputs a DOI, DOAI connects the user to a freely available copy of the publication. This is the latest of … Continue reading
Sci-Hub sets a reprehensible example, but publishers cannot be content simply to stamp out such services. In order to evolve the industry into the future, publishers have to provide services that make Sci-Hub and its ilk seem old-fashioned and inconvenient to use. Continue reading
Robert Harington asks Tim Collins for his views on publishing industry trends seen through the prism of his leadership role at EBSCO, exploring Tim’s sense of a connected world of stakeholders in today’s publishing industry. Continue reading
Amazon is reportedly poised to get into the open educational resources game. This could be huge, and not just for the most obvious reasons. Continue reading
The story of physicist Richard Feynman, “The Great Explainer”. Continue reading
Sci-Hub is a pirate website that enables users to access content that is held behind publisher paywalls. This is how it works. Continue reading
As digital piracy goes large scale, publishers, libraries, and the open access movement have a lot at stake. Continue reading
At the recent PSP conference there was a panel on the cost of complying with the many new open access mandates from funding bodies. The panel explored the cost of compliance and how to reduce those costs. The current regulatory regime is complicated and administratively expensive, but the mandates will continue to be promulgated because the people calling for them are not the ones that have to implement them. Continue reading
SAGE recently announced that it has taken a minority stake in peer review start-up Publons. Charlie Rapple asks why publishers are investing in workflow tools, and why start-ups are accepting publishers’ money. Continue reading
Editor’s Note: More from Scholarly Kitchen alumnus Kent Anderson. This post stems from a conversation around finding the right balance between effective business management and focus on mission. Governance is coming up more frequently as a subject of conversation and concern among executives and managers in non-profit organizations. The topic’s rising prominence coincides with more … Continue reading
“Conversations In Genetics” offers a treasure trove of material to historians of science. Continue reading
Some publishing jobs require an advanced technical degree, others do not. On the flip side, some people say “those that can do and those that can’t…”. Is that true? Come see what the Chefs had to say! Continue reading
A new OA monograph series takes a discipline-specific approach to funding, licensing and editorial work. Continue reading
A spate of open access “big deals” marks a shift from global offsetting to local offsetting. But the secretive nature of these deals makes them difficult to interpret. Continue reading
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on distinguishing between features, products, and businesses. Not all features can become full-fledged businesses. Sometimes the best business case for a feature is to link it to an established business, where it adds value to assets that are already in place. Continue reading
A remarkable story (with a remarkable punchline) from the great geneticist, Mary Claire-King. Continue reading
During the AAP/PSP annual meeting last week, a panel discussion with representatives of a consortia, a publisher, and a technology provider explored the topic of text and data mining. Continue reading
Thomson Reuters’ approach of indexing by journal section and revising by demand leads to great inconsistencies across journals and inflates the Impact Factors of elite journals. The solution: remove the human element. Continue reading
Last week’s surprisingly successful social media campaign was a winning event for libraries, archives, and museums. Continue reading
An interview with librarian and open access skeptic Jeffrey Beall. He discusses his work, the criteria for declaring an organization a “predatory publisher,” and how he would fix the scholarly communications system. Continue reading
A visit with Bob Dorough, 92, the man who set education to song for a generation in the US. Continue reading
[Editor’s note: This is the edited text of a presentation that Joe Esposito gave as a keynote at the PSP conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 3, 2016. The slides for the presentation are embedded at the end of the text. Joe would like to thank John Tagler and Sara Pinto of PSP for their assistance … Continue reading
Whether or not you attended this years APE (Academic Publishing in Europe) conference yourself, find out what three of the Scholarly Kitchen chefs thought of the meeting – our overall impressions and key take-home messages. Continue reading
How a shrinking journals receives an artificial boost to its leading citation indicator. Continue reading
Kent Anderson returns to update his essential list of just what it is that publishers do. Continue reading
A quantum chess death match between Stephen Hawking and actor Paul Rudd. Did I mention the fate of humanity hangs in the balance? Continue reading
Do we need more metrics, or can some questions be answered more easily? Continue reading
Historians can and do play a vital role in the public humanities, but there are vital reasons not just why but how we write for one another, too. Continue reading
The Open Syllabus Project has created a database of over 1 million college syllabuses and extracted the names of the materials used in these courses. These materials are analyzed quantitatively and ranked. The creators of the service propose a new metric for the evaluation of academic publications. Continue reading
An interview with Charles Watkinson, Mike Row, and Mark Edington of the newly-announced Lever Press open access book initiative. Continue reading
If you tried to make a book from scratch, how would you do it? Continue reading
January seems like the perfect time to look forward and think about what we might expect to see this coming year. This month we asked the Chefs what they think is on the horizon for 2016. Continue reading
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2014 post on the importance of editors–how much of what we see as a failure of “peer review” is really a failure of editorial oversight? Continue reading
Latest Post
To Kill an Argument: Politicizing Comments on the Internet
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 →