1. Why Don't Societies Simply Sell off Their Publishing Assets?
Why do societies insist on leaving so much money on the table? Society publishers resist the sale of their publications to bidders from the commercial world because they view the publications as a central component of the society itself, notes Joseph Esposito, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Most often, unless the small publisher is under duress, the sale takes place when the owner begins to think about estate planning. But a society publisher is a different matter. There are no grand-kids to put through college, no alma mater deserving of a bequest. A society's economic interests are those of the society itself, which endure beyond the lives and careers of any single member. What gets lost in discussions of society publishers is the implications of the word "society." A society publisher is not just a publisher but a social entity. For a society to sell off its publications, it often feels like it is lopping off a piece of itself. There are society members who publish in those journals, others who edit them and provide peer review. While some of this work is compensated (much more than is generally supposed), part of the willingness for society members to provide these services on a voluntary basis stems from a sense of social responsibility........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Digital Age of Publishing Advances Scholarship, Research Says Kiren Shoman
Digital transformation requires a publisher to redefine and re-imagine the experiences of customers, employees, and other stakeholders. In a preview of the panel discussion at Olympia Hall, Shoman says that her focus rarely strays from advancing scholarship and research, whatever the business conditions, notes Christopher Kenneally, in his post in the CCC Blog.
The blog post says (quote): We have very different levels of engagement and different types of end users. You see that a lot in the tech world, don’t you? There are the people who are 100 percent committed to the most new, most innovative solutions, with all the bells and the whistles, and then you have a lot of the market which is tentative, not necessarily persuaded, and in many, many cases just too busy doing what they're doing already to be changing a lot of their practices and going down these new routes that digital is offering them. In social sciences, new subject areas are coming up around computational social science. How do researchers need new tools to engage with big data to do better research and to be able to deliver on their own mission of making new knowledge claims?........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. It's not enough for research to be useful to policy actors, we must try to actually influence change
There is no doubt that good communications and framing research and evidence for your audience is important to influencing policy and having research impact. James Georgalakis, in his post in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog, argues that research and researchers need to challenge dominant paradigms and expose inconvenient truths. Relationships, networks, and bodies of knowledge play a far more significant role in change processes than short-term communications campaigns on specific research reports.
The blog post says (quote): There is a serious debate around what we really mean by evidence-informed policy and how we measure it. An emphasis on usefulness seems to suggest that measuring success comes down to how often your think tank or research organisation gets its report used, the level of positive engagement from the target audience online and in person, and the number of times journalists come to your experts for information. Perhaps some mentoring and evaluation wonk out there can construct a “usefulness results framework”. Academics’ anxiety over engaging in policy, which can sometimes seem very inconvenient, centres less on the issue of measurement and more on the fundamental relationship between evidence and policy........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Best Practices for Testing the Accessibility of Your Website
While the software for accessibility testing has come a long way, there is still no silver bullet that will enable to provide a completely accessible experience for users. Jill Power, in her post in the EBSCOpost Blog, provides accessibility testing tips for librarians looking to meet website compliance and better serve their end users.
The blog post says (quote): WAVE calls out not only the errors on the page (those that fail compliance) but it also uses warning flags to highlight potential areas for error. It visibly displays all the navigation headings on the page, as well as other structural elements. Another tool to consider, as users get more comfortable with the code behind accessibility, is the HTML CodeSniffer. This tool evaluates the page in a similar manner as WAVE, however it doesn’t provide as much as a visible indicator. Instead, it creates an interactive report which identifies the issue, failed guideline and links to W3C guidance. Another browser extension tool is aXe by Deque Corporation. This tool brings the accessibility assessment into the Web Developers Toolbar (F12), allowing testers to view the html code, analyse the page and identify compliance issues with the code.........(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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