Could Government Policy Destroy South African Publishing?
The South African Department of Basic Education just released a policy document, open for public comment, explaining how the department plans to handle textbooks in the future. Arthur Atwell notes that while it is still a draft, a senior DBE leader recently told a group of publishers that the government’s… Read More
Google Vies With Microsoft to Undermind Apple’s Tablet Dominance
(bloomberg.com): Google Inc. (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s attempts to loosen Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s grip on the booming tablet- computer market will be put to the test this week as PC makers unveil new models at the Computex trade show in Taipei. Investors and analysts will be looking to see… Read More
Research Libraries, Publishers Stake Out Positions on International ILL
(libraryjournal.com): A battle is brewing between research libraries and an association of academic publishers over the right to engage in international interlibrary loans and document delivery, both well-established library practices that are increasingly important to scholarship as the amount of discoverable information expands. The International Association of Scientific, Technical &… Read More
E-readers rise, but less people reading
(theaustralian.com.au): AROUND 20 per cent of US adults have read an e-book since last year, according to an extensive new study. Those who read books, newspapers and other kinds of writing in digital form also are much more likely to increase, rather than decrease, how often they read. Meanwhile, a… Read More
Open Science on Quora: Why Are We Not There, Yet?
(intechweb.wordpress.com): In his Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Nielsen argues that networked digital tools, such as discussion boards and online marketplaces, can make it easier for scientists to pool their data, share methodologies, and find collaborators, and actually, that we are living at the dawn of the… Read More
Predictive Modeling with Big Data: Is Bigger Really Better?
Too much information can be overwhelming, but when it comes to certain types of data that are used to build predictive models to guide decision making there is no such thing as too much data. To determine whether more data is really better for predictive modeling, Enric Junqué de Fortuny… Read More
Kim: Advocating Open Access
With the advent of the Internet, several peer-review journals have adopted the call for open access. One of biggest open access journals is the Public Library of Science, an online, nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization founded to accelerate progress in science. While the project charges a slightly higher publication fee… Read More
The Exploitative Economics of Academic Publishing
Taxpayers in the US spend $139 billion a year on scientific research, yet much of this research is inaccessible not only to the public, but also to other scientists. This is the consequence of an exploitative scientific journal system that rewards academic publishers while punishing taxpayers, scientists, and universities. Fortunately,… Read More
Sustaining Open Access
A recently proposed model on open-access publishing has drawn praise for rethinking the roles institutions, libraries and professional organizations play in promoting scholarly communication, but can its collaborative structure be sustained? The proposal envisions stakeholders forming partnerships, each handling one or more of the duties of funding, distributing and preserving… Read More
Open-Access Journal Underdogs Take on Aging Academic Publications
For more than a century, access to the world of academic publishing has been limited to a select crowd willing to pay hundreds of dollars for journal subscriptions. But free, open-access journals have been gaining ground and now threaten to upset the status quo. Publishing academic papers, contributed for free… Read More
