On one side we have user-generated content (UGC), exemplified by Wikipedia; on the other we have traditional publishing, which is characterized by an editor or series of editors (acquiring editor, developmental editor, copy editor, production editor), who review submitted material and make judgments as to its shape, argument, and suitability for publication. UGC is on [...]

The Inside Higher Education link that Peter Brantley recently sent to a list, regarding the open-access Museum Anthropology Review, reminded me of some distinctions I like to make, when given the opportunity, about the culture of journals vs. the cultures of books. It pertains to the drivers of the different products, and the people [...]

Michael Cader was kind enough to alert me to a Forbes story about Nike http://www.forbes.com/sportsbusiness/forbes/2008/0211/082.html
This demonstrates another aspect of a theme I think is the dominant reality of how media is changing, from the 20th century’s “horizontal and format specific” to the 21st century’s “vertical and format agnostic.”
The post explains that Nike used to [...]

The University of Pittsburgh Press has just made an extraordinary announcement. The Press plans to make its entire backlist available for free online two years after formal, print publication. Here is what the AAUP newsletter has to say about this:
Recently, the University of Pittsburgh Press has announced that it is working to [...]

Creative Commons has announced a long-awaited (at least by me) addendum to its licenses. From the CC Web site:
CC+ is a protocol providing a simple way for users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a CC license. For example, a work’s Creative Commons license might offer noncommercial rights. With CC+, the license [...]

Joe Wikert of Publishing 2020 talks about the potential for having subscription-based ebook vending models, with page-view based economics.
“Could you imagine a model where you pay $X/month for access to an unlimited number of books? It’s never going to happen in the print world but I think this could be the killer app for [...]

Cory Doctorow has some interesting things to say about the Amazon Kindle in The Guardian. Doctorow doesn’t like it much, as it doesn’t conform to his view of the Internet, which includes the ability to move files around without restriction.
What Doctorow doesn’t say, however, is that if the Kindle [...]