How relevant is the peer review process in the digital age? In our fast-paced world of instant Twitter, innumerable and often-illuminating blogs, comprehensive wikis, and insightful electronic magazines, does peer review still have a place? Does it help imbue scholarly e-books and e-journals with resonance, heighten quality, and encourage objectivity? Robert Townsend’s article about the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

… over the last couple of decades. Technical revolutions, societal revolutions, cultural revolutions. I gave a long talk at UIUC recently where I told the story of one of them, as context and contrast with current revolutions. The story itself is worth telling in this forum. It’s long, so sit back. I want to first [...]