The Scholarly Kitchen
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Quantum Chess, Hawking Versus Rudd, For the Fate of Humanity
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
Revisiting: The Problem(s) With Credit for Peer Review
Do we need more metrics, or can some questions be answered more easily? Continue reading
The Importance of Academic (History) Writing
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, Altmetrics, and a New Dataset
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 Lever Press
An interview with Charles Watkinson, Mike Row, and Mark Edington of the newly-announced Lever Press open access book initiative. Continue reading
Making a Book from Scratch
If you tried to make a book from scratch, how would you do it? Continue reading
Ask The Chefs: What Do You See On The Horizon For Scholarly Publishing In 2016?
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
The Network Model of Publishing
One of the unanticipated consequences of the introduction of digital media to scholarly publishing is that publishing properties increasingly are organized into networks, with one property pointing to another for the benefit of all. This essay describes the network publishing model and comments on some of a network’s characteristics and economic opportunities. Continue reading
NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What “Public Domain” Means
The New York Public Library has now opened up hundreds of thousands of their digitized public-domain documents to unrestricted access and reuse, encouraging members the general public to exercise all the rights in those documents that the law gives them. Why aren’t more academic libraries doing the same thing? Continue reading
Open Data and Trust in the Literature
A short film on the need for accurate statistical analysis and data availability. Continue reading
PNAS: Tighter Editorial Policy Improves NAS Papers
After years of tightening its submissions policy, papers contributed by NAS members start resembling direct submissions. Continue reading
What Price Progress: The Costs of an Effective Data Publishing Policy
The hidden costs of data availability policies. Continue reading
The Future of Writing: Tightening Up our Communications, From Just Not Sorry to SEO
Charlie Rapple wonders if controversial browser plug-in Just Not Sorry might have some useful tech behind its current gender-baiting application. Continue reading
Incremental Improvements Start With A/B Testing
Why do publishers and platform providers spend so little time seeking incremental improvements? Continue reading
The Internet’s Permanent Memory: Why Empathy is More Important Than Ever
Victoria Belmont talks about what happens when something you do online is taken out of context and becomes part of the internet’s permanent memory. Continue reading
Why Some Publishers are Requiring ORCID iDs for Authors: An Interview with Stuart Taylor, The Royal Society
A group of eight publishers today announced that, during 2016, they will begin requiring authors to use an ORCID identifier (iD) during the publication process. The first to do so is The Royal Society, which has introduced this requirement beginning January 1, 2016. In this interview, their Publishing Director, Stuart Taylor, explains why. Continue reading
PLOS ONE Shrinks by 11 Percent
Can PLOS exist without a mega-journal? Continue reading
The Terrible Burden of a Prestigious Brand
While all publishers like to have a strong brand, some brands are so prestigious that they actually serve to paralyze the managements responsible for them, making it impossible to introduce innovations and to develop the business. Vast bureaucracies arrive whose purpose is not to develop the business but to protect the vaunted brand. This is a management problem, not a marketing one, but it can stymie a publisher from pursuing a progressive agenda. Continue reading
Improving Privacy by Rethinking Architecture
Today, we grapple with privacy issues as consumers, as citizens, and as voters. As an industry, we should be thinking about how to draw not only on policy but also on technical architecture to balance privacy and innovation. When the stars align, an entirely different architecture for the control of user data is possible. What would such a shift mean for scholarly publishing and academic libraries? Continue reading
Authors
The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is "[t]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking." SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing.
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The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.