Executive order to reduce regulatory burdens spurs AMA physician survey
(ama-assn.org): Over the years, Medicare has demanded that physicians take on a panoply of duties aimed at achieving social justice and protecting Medicare from potential fraud by other providers. While these requirements generally have laudable goals, costs frequently exceed benefits and are simply unrealistic in a program which fails to… Read More
Digging Deeper, Seeing Farther: Supercomputers Alter Science
(nytimes.com): The physical technology of scientific research is still here — the new electron microscopes, the telescopes, the particle colliders — but they are now inseparable from computing power, and it is the computers that let scientists find order and patterns in the raw information that the physical tools gather.… Read More
Reflections on Google Book Search: You Can’t Put the Google Back Into the Bottle
(scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org): In the aftermath of Judge Chin's rejection of the proposed Google Book settlement, it is time to consider legislative alternatives. This article explores a number of component parts of a legislative package that might accomplish many of the good things that the proposed settlement promised without the downsides that… Read More
Open Access Key to Quickly and Easily Achieving Data
(scientificcomputing.com): Research departments in various fields, especially those in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and chemical industries, are involved in the synthesis of compounds and their subsequent confirmation and purification. Often, the major concern for researchers handling great numbers of samples is how to achieve data as quickly and easily as possible. Read More
E-readers not suitable for US students, study finds
(independent.co.uk): The results of a long-term study in the United States has found that students throughout America are not yet ready to adopt e-readers into their academic lives, despite sales of digital books rising elsewhere in the world. The study into the integration of e-readers into students' academic projects was… Read More
Digital book sales soar as tablets and e-readers drive downloads
(v3.co.uk): The market for e-books rocketed during 2010 owing to the proliferation of tablets and e-book reader devices in consumer and business circles, according to new figures from The Publishers Association. The report shows that sales of digital books are now worth £180m, and that consumer sales quadrupled from £4m… Read More
53,000 Signatures for Online Petition Against HarperCollins Library eBook Policy
(mediabistro.com): Last month, New Jersey librarian Andy Woodworth launched an online petition entitled “Tell HarperCollins: Limited Checkouts on eBooks is Wrong for Libraries.” So far 53,000 people have signed the document, criticising HarperCollins’ controversial decision to limit library eBooks to 26 checkouts. Read More
The Green Open Access Citation Advantage: Within-Journal Versus Between-Journal Comparisons
(openaccess.eprints.org): The last few years have seen the emergence of several open access (OA) options in scholarly communication, which can be grouped broadly into two areas referred to as gold and green roads. Several recent studies have shown how large the extent of OA is, but there have been few… Read More
Ghostwriting Raises Global Alarm and Undermines the Supreme Court!?
(pogoblog.typepad.com): Ghostwriting happens every day in academic medicine, where prominent physicians sign their names to papers that were written by companies paid by Big Pharma. And very few blink an eye. The reason? Leaders in medicine have allowed this pathological behavior to become established in their profession. It is now… Read More
Does digital text create a cognitive gap?
(radar.oreilly.com): Ereaders are changing the face of reading across the board, and experiments in creating more economic-friendly textbooks for students are increasing. The results, however, are not all positive. As students attempt to incorporate electronic text into their studies, issues with e-textbooks are starting to emerge — and the problems… Read More
