1. The Publishing Industry is Mature, but Publishing Companies are Not
While it certainly is the case that scholarly publishing is a mature business, some of the companies operating in this industry have found new avenues for growth by expanding beyond the publication of content into data science. This is an opportunity that is only available to the larger companies with enlightened management, notes Joseph Esposito, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): Publishing - the investment in content - is fundamentally different from publishing services, where the investment is in tools and platforms; and it is different from writing books and articles and different as well from curating publications as a librarian would. What is mature, then, is not the writing of articles (every new idea for an article is an entrepreneurial breakthrough) or, say, the operation of a content-management system on behalf of publishers; what is mature is the investment in content itself and the hoped-for gains to be made on that investment. This does not mean that publishing has come to an end; it means that it is not youthful and spry: its future is largely behind it……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Is the Proposed Merger of IDPF and W3C Good for Publishers?
The IDPF and the W3C recently announced they were making plans to merge. Will this merger be good for publishers by integrating them more closely into the community that manages the web infrastructure? Or will the merger result in diminishing publisher control over one of the important distribution standards for digital texts? The past five years of experience doesn't give reason to be reassured of the outcome, discusses Todd A Carpenter, in his post in the Scholarly Kitchen Blog.
The blog post says (quote): An important element to consider when thinking about whether this merger is good for publishers or not is control. The IDPF is an organization of and for publishers. More than two-thirds of the IDPF Board of Directors are employees of publishers or non-profits - EDItEUR, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), or the Italian Publishers Association, for example - that are closely tied to the publishing industry. However, the W3C has a paltry number of publishers as members. Of its 421 current members, only five are publishers: Wiley, Hachette Livre, Pearson, Hindawi, and Thomson Reuters. Creatively thinking about who contributes to and participates in the publishing industry (companies and organisations such as Bloomberg, Walt Disney, OCLC, MarkLogic, and others, most of whom are not scholarly or even publishers) adds another ten members. So of the 421, only 15 (counting generously) represent the publishing world and traditional publishing interests……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. How Good Publishing Partnerships Can Support Development
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of far-reaching goals towards reduced poverty and a fairer and more sustainable world over the next 15 years, came into effect at the start of 2016. They have much to say for anybody working in international development but also for anybody working in the areas of research and research information. The goals are intended to tackle key issues for alleviating poverty and addressing inequality - and in issues such as climate change, agriculture, clean water and health, to name a few, there is a clear role for research and researchers, notes Siân Harris, in her guest post in the Perspectives Blog.
The blog post says (quote): The importance of good partnerships is exemplified in the development of our e-resource access programme. Since INASP was formed nearly 25 years ago, scholarly publishers have had a special role to play in enabling free or appropriately discounted low-cost access to research information for developing-country researchers, through INASP and its member consortia, as well as subsequently through the Research 4 Life and EIFL initiatives……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Peerage of Science: the inspiration, aims and future developments
Following the successful relationship between BioMed Central and Peerage of Science, both parties have extended their partnership by signing up an additional four journals; BMC Genetics, BMC Genomics, BMC Plant Biology and the soon to be launched BMC Zoology. In his post in The BioMed Central Blog, Dr Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, Founder and Managing Director, explains more about what Peerage of Science is and how it works.
The blog post says (quote): The most important aim is to measure, encourage, incentivize and reward high quality in peer reviewing work. And concomitantly, getting the community (scientists and journals) to admit the existence of the other side of that coin: sometimes peer reviews are really bad, and those failures need to be treated accordingly, not given the same weight as carefully written reviews. There should be consequences for excellence, and consequences for negligence. Peerage of Science is not about doing peer review quickly, or with less effort. On the contrary, I want people to put more effort and time into doing careful, time-consuming, excellent peer reviews – but the idea is that you can do fewer of them, and still contribute more to science than you did before, when your reviews are excellent, and not discarded. A large number of journals can utilize the same set of reviews……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. Building Community and Demonstrating Impact with Altmetrics
Altmetrics are like the line numbers of a verse play, where numerical values mark and locate dialogue. In a similar way, altmetrics index and enumerate scholarly dialogue that occurs across the web on blogs, social media posts, news reports, policy papers, and Wikipedia articles. And as with a play - where the full story is shaped through the entirety of dialogue - altmetrics can help shape a rich story of academic impact by pointing toward conversations that occur within professional communities. In his guest post in the Altmetric Blog, Scott W. H. Young shares how he uses altmetrics to locate professional conversation.
The blog post says (quote): In the first instance, altmetrics allow me to understand how my work has been received and interpreted. This alone is valuable to me as a researcher. The post-publication response from my scholarly community serves as a form of peer-review which I can use to help understand my own work in different ways, and possibly shape future research direction. In the second instance, altmetrics help surface feedback that I can integrate into my promotion and tenure documentation as evidence of impact. This approach is still new and under ongoing evaluation, with signs of its growing use and acceptance. Stacy Konkiel astutely address the issue by encouraging the practice of "digging deeper" into the metrics to find rich narratives of impact that can be included in promotion and tenure review……………(unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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