Do Problems in the Publishing Industry Have a Technical Solution?
(gigaom.com): While paper books are still the norm, e-books now account for up to 20 percent of book sales in categories like romance and sci-fi. The shift in publishing isn’t just about going digital on the iPad or Kindle instead of killing trees; authors now have the options of self-publishing… Read More
Bloggers vs. JSTOR: Complaints Provoke Interface Tweaks
(libraryjournal.com): Capping a controversy that recently became the talk of the blogs, ITHAKA, the not-for-profit organization behind the journal archive JSTOR, has rolled back one feature of JSTOR's recent interface update. JSTOR's new default settings were set in such a way that searches automatically included results from every journal in… Read More
Google Gets Serious About Social Networking: Is Google Me Coming in 2010?
(pcworld.com): After purchasing handfuls of social networking-centric companies -- including socialDeck for online games and Jambool for virtual currency -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company's social networking project will debut later this year. Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Schmidt said Google will be adding… Read More
E-books: A new chapter begins
(cbc.ca): A decade ago, in the early days of digital music, a battle over who would control the market never really happened. The technology and business model were too new and unproven so many potential players stayed away, thereby paving the way for one company — Apple — to step… Read More
Open Source tool set to design and run applications across all screens
(alphagalileo.org): With the mobile internet growing exponentially, the call to develop a single universal platform for the development of mobile internet applications is becoming stronger than ever. That is why more than twenty partners from research and industry, representing the mobile web, consumer electronics and the automotive industry, have teamed-up… Read More
Publishers Try an End Run Around Apple’s iPad Policies
(marketingvox.com): Rumors are circulating that Apple is on is way to developing a digital newsstand that lets publishers sell subscriptions to magazines and newspapers. This would be separate from the individual issues marketed through the App Store, through which publishers have been selling since the iPad's launch. Read More
Librarians are self-archiving at twice the global baseline rate
(openaccess.eprints.org): Holly Mercer reports that the self-archiving rate in library and information science is nearly 50% among librarians (and double the 20% global baseline even among nonlibrarians). Nevertheless, not even all articles for which immediate OA self-archiving has been endorsed by their publishers (c. 58-68%) are yet being self-archived even… Read More
Are Peer-Reviewers Overloaded? Or Are Their Incentives Misaligned?
(scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org): When multiple scientists come up with similar solutions simultaneously, it may be time to take notice. In this week’s issue of Science, a letter to the editor, titled “Battling the Paper Glut,” proposed a solution to finding competent reviewers. Read More
The future of content curation
(mediatel.co.uk): With an explosion in the amount of content vying for our attention, quality content curation of all kinds has a high value. It's a function long owned by magazine and newspaper publishers through the role of the Editor, but now for some one performed by the networks that we're… Read More
Surgeons lack professionalism, says Lancet medical journal
(telegraph.co.uk): In a special edition of the medical journal, surgeons' willingness to confront problems in their own profession were questioned. The editorial said the specialty was “not so much a world-class discipline, but a profession adrift". Read More
