1. Why Is the Digital Preservation Network Disbanding?
The long term stewardship of digital objects and collections through digital preservation is an essential imperative for scholarship and society. Yet the Digital Preservation Network is disbanding. What lessons can be learned from its struggle? Roger C. Schonfeld, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog, examines the announced closure of the Digital Preservation Network.
The blog post says (quote): DPN originally approached the library community as something of a digital preservation movement. It had a strong technical vision, but a clear product offering took time to emerge and the value proposition was not uniformly understood. This made it more difficult to generate library and partner engagement after the period of initial enthusiasm. A fixed annual deposit allocation was included in membership and additional storage could be obtained for an additional fee. Some members would consequently cap their deposit activity when they reached the membership ceiling, in the hopes of flowing further content to DPN during the next membership year. This had the effect of limiting the value of membership and eliminating the extra fees that DPN had anticipated generating as revenue. Even during DPN's early years, when the membership was higher, existing members did not generate the revenue that DPN's model anticipated………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Shifting Focus of Publishers Signals Tough Times for Textbook Authors
Few academics make their fortunes writing textbooks, and if current trends in academic publishing continue, it is possible that even fewer will become star authors in the future. Some large academic publishers are working with fewer and fewer textbook authors as the companies shift their focus and investments from traditional textbooks to digital courseware, notes Lindsay McKenzie, in her post in the Inside Higher ED Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Best-selling digital courseware still has "all the elements of a traditional textbook." But the publishers are also developing costly additional features such as adaptive assessment, data analytics and user-friendly interfaces with videos and animations. Rather than signing new authors, Pearson is primarily "reincarnating in digital format" successful textbook franchises from established authors. Like Pearson, Cengage is investing in digital products designed to improve student learning outcomes. The publisher is still signing new authors but is more selective now than in the past. By investing more in its products, the company is improving the efficacy of its products and putting quality over quantity. Cengage published 120 first-edition textbooks in the past four years but is scheduled to publish just 11 in 2020. Both Wiley and McGraw-Hill Education declined to provide the numbers of new authors they have signed in recent years………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. How Do You Publish the Work of a Scientific Villain?
How do you handle the data of a scientist who violates all the norms of his field? Who breaches the trust of a community that spans the entire globe? Who shows a casual disregard for the fate of the whole human species? Addressing these questions will require decoupling the knowledge-building purpose of scientific publishing from the career-building one, discusses Megan Molteni, in her post in the Wired Blog.
The blog post says (quote): The scientific publishing system, imperfect as it may be, has remained relevant in an era where anyone can buy a URL, self-publish a paper, and push it out to social media platforms reaching millions of people all in the span of an afternoon. The reason is that data wants to be seen in context, in conversation with other data. Through the connective tissue of citations, scientific journals establish a common set of vetted facts to debate, challenge, and be inspired by. They ensure some modicum of permanence to those facts; so that people today, tomorrow, and 100 years into the future can all point to the same digital object identifier assigned at publication and know that they're all talking about the same thing. What then are the scientific costs to building a foundation for the field of human germline editing with one very consequential brick conspicuously missing? Disappearing the data down a memory hole presents logistical challenges as well as philosophical ones………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Three propositions to help to cultivate a culture of care and broad-mindedness in academic publishing
Academic publishing has been transformed by digitisation over recent decades, with the review process now able to be comprehensively tracked and transparent. But despite such progress, is our publication infrastructure actually more transparent, inclusive, and with less conflict? Or are practices of exclusion and gatekeeping merely now being hidden? Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Santi Furnari, Albane Grandazzi, Marie Hasbi, Maximilian Heimstädt, Thomas Roulet and François-Xavier de Vaujany, in their post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, put forward three propositions that, while not fundamentally new, may be helpful in strengthening and promoting a culture of care and broad-mindedness in academic publishing.
The blog post says (quote): Much of academic practice is viewed in binary terms; teaching versus research, building versus communicating knowledge, and so on. In particular, doing research and communicating research happen in different contexts, with the relevance of academic research to the fellow citizens continuing to be poorly explained, for the most part. This has resulted in numerous debates about the social, material, and temporal gaps between research and practice – for example, academic research is often said to be published 'too late' to align with managerial or political rhythms. Yet at the same time, an increasing number of conferences are experimenting with new forms of knowledge transfer and with alternative ways to communicate the results of research in a more timely and impactful manner. The number of social media platforms has exploded, providing researchers with new ways to disseminate and translate their research into actionable propositions for practice and policy. In the midst of these changes, the academic journal has remained oddly petrified, continuing to offer only its static article PDFs………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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