Having devoted part of my career to electronic publishing systems for scientific and technical publishing I’ve tried to follow the “Open Access” movement, but I have never quite understood what “Open Access” means.
All in Journals
Peer Review in Scientific Journals Isn't Perfect - So What Else Is New?
In “Stop deifying ‘peer review’ of journal publications” Jonathan Eisen skillfully walks the reader through three realities of how peer review works with scientific journals:
Can Online Public Dialogs Succeed With Anonymous Participants?
I used to think that if you want to be taken seriously online, and if you want to actually participate in an ongoing dialog with a sponsor or other participants, you need to post using your own name and identity so that others know who you are.
Social Networking and Elsevier's "Grand Challenge" for Knowledge Enhancement in the Life Sciences
Netherlands-based mega-publisher (and former employer) Elsevier BV has issued a grand challenge:
This deal between Elsevier and Google may be further evidence of how disruptive the web has become to traditional publishing, research institutions, and professional membership associations. Web access and the proliferation of systems offering collaboration opportunities via social media and social networking are forcing management to make tough decisions about how much to give away for free and how much to restrict to paying customers.
Scholarly Communications and the Social Media Genie
Marketing, customer communications, and inside-the-firewall collaboration are not the only processes subject to "disruption" by social media and social networking. The worlds of research, scholarly communication, librarianship, and publishing are also being impacted, and not just by Google.
How Involved Should the U.S. Government Be in the Scholarly Journal Publishing Business?
Wired News on March 14, 2007 posted a story about U.S. Senators John Cornyn’s and Joseph Liebermann’s announced decision to re-introduce last year’s Federal Research Public Access Act (S.2695, also called “FRPAA”).
More Comparisons of Journal Peer Review and Blogging
My earlier blog post A Comparison of Blogging and Journal Peer Review compared and contrasted blogging with peer reviewed journals. Here I extend this comparison and suggest some additional examples of possible crossover between the two.
A Comparison of Blogging and Journal Peer Review
It's interesting to compare and contrast the rough-and-tumble publishing experience that is the blogosphere with the formalized system of peer review that has existed with scholarly journals for many years.