1. Guest post — What should a conference cost?
Author: Mark Carden
In general, physical conferences in scholarly communications have been priced at anywhere from free to £900 per day, which represents a big range. For a non-subsidised well-curated event, a headline rate of around £400 per day (excluding various discounts on offer) seems to be typical. The cost of any grand dinner on offer, plus accommodation and travel, is usually in addition to this. For online conferences, most organisers have slashed their prices to more like £100-200. But this has typically been for a much reduced offering, such as an all-day timetable being reduced to an afternoon of webinars, or a fully-interactive conference being reduced to a content-only broadcast. This has contributed to a conception that an ‘online conference’ should be between half-price and free, compared to its past physical manifestation.
The full entry can be read: Here.
2. How the pandemic changed editorial peer review – and why we should wonder whether that’s desirable
Author: Serge Horbach
Since its onset, COVID-19 has significantly accelerated and expanded scientific publishing. Drawing on research into open peer-review in medical journals, Horbach discusses what impact COVID-19 has had on the practice of peer-review and what shifting assessment thresholds for academic research on COVID-19 might suggest about the future of peer-review itself. As new waves of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to strike, people worldwide are wondering how we will get back to what was once called ‘normal’ and what the lasting effects of a year of restrictions, lockdowns and uncertainty will be. This also holds for the science and scientific publishing community.
The full entry can be read: Here.
3. Emerging from the pandemic: The future of work is now
Author: Alison Mudditt
The pandemic has changed so much in our world, not least of which has been a seismic shift in work culture, as many have spent 2020 working from home. The pandemic has of course had a devastating impact on many workers, especially those in low-wage jobs that cannot be done remotely. Workspaces are not only a reflection of the work itself but also of the values and culture of an organisation. Although many of us have learned and appreciated new things about each other, lack of physical interaction has undoubtedly made important aspects of work more challenging. Ultimately, workplaces are complex ecosystems and it is not always going to be easy or obvious to figure out how to recreate what makes them work in virtual spaces.
The full entry can be read: Here.
4. The monopoly of journal subscriptions and the commodification of research
Author: Dunu Roy and Dinesh Mohan
The proposal for an ‘open science policy' that will ensure that the results of, and information generated by, all publicly-funded research become freely accessible by everyone and that all will have free access to bulk subscriptions of important scientific journals across the world has understandably been welcomed by people, especially scholars and academia. It is, therefore, a proposal that demands closer scrutiny of its merits and possible demerits. The problem is that through the global competitiveness, the products of scientific research have been turned into commercial commodities. Earlier, most academic journals were published by academic societies, trusts or associations, and so the publications were usually not very expensive or available free to the group’s members. Now, the publication of most journals has been turned over to commercial publishers. These journals require the authors to submit a soft copy of the manuscript to the publisher, which is then published with or without a review process and sold at a price.
The full entry can be read: Here.
5. Transformative models for Scholarly Publishing
Author: Christopher Kenneally
Flexibility and freedom to experiment are critical for any publishing team when building a strategy to automate and manage so-called, ‘transformative agreements.’ With COVID-19 accelerating the pressure to ‘publish open’ and to adopt sustainable Open Access (OA) business models, the complexity of these transformative agreements and the number of stakeholders involved across publishers and institutions presents significant strategic and management challenges.
The full entry can be read: Here.
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