On June 20 of 2009, I gave what I consider my most significant speech to date, at the Association of American University Presses’ annual meeting, entitled “Scholarly Publishing in the New Era of Scarcity.”  It was the last presentation in the last Plenary session of the meeting, and allowed me to talk about the two [...]

A recent announcement by Knowledge Exchange appeared on Yale’s liblicense mailgroup. It describes an innovative collaborative project by which universities and governmental sponsors work together in purchasing formally published material in order to reduce costs and improve access to scholars of the member communities. Way back in 2005 I posted a proposal, also to liblicense, [...]

Paul Krugman has an interesting column on the future of publishing, in which he notes (citing Esther Dyson) that in a digital world where copying is easy and perhaps unstoppable, electronic books will be given away for free in order to promote the sales of other goods and services. I am a great admirer of [...]

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 who [...]

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 make its [...]

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 or its ilk (meaning useful [...]