December 10, 2025
I want to share a short commentary I just published, on “The Modal Mode of Thinking about Scholarly Publishing,” as part of the Journal of Electronic Publishing’s 30th anniversary special issue (edited by Alyssa Arbuckle and Janneke Adema). Here’s the abstract from...
December 4, 2025
Speaking of ‘publish or perish’: Kelly-Ann Allen, writing in Nature earlier this year (paywalled, alas): In my view, we could make academic life more rewarding by systematically scoring the underappreciated behaviours and conduct that researchers value. The product...
November 19, 2025
Vladimir Moskovkin, writing for LeidenMadtrics, posted a delightful essay on the origins of the “publish or perish” phrase. His sleuthing traced the expression back to at least the late nineteenth century, in an attribution (undated) to Swiss historian Jacob...
November 15, 2025
I’m posting a short commentary here, a preprint under review at Yearbook on Data Autonomy (YoDA), a new OA journal from the University of Groningen Press. Download PDF In the last year, the giant AI companies have released tools with indistinguishable names: Deep...
May 29, 2025
Delta Think’s Dan Pollock and Heather Staines, with data on APC prices and inflation: Overall, OA prices are increasing below inflation. The data suggest that authors continue to get (modestly) increasing value for money for their OA fees. APCS, of course, have never...
May 28, 2025
I missed this excellent 2024 UKSG Insights piece, by Tasha Mellins-Cohen. In a studiously neutral, mapping-the-landscape fashion, Mellins-Cohen classifies the torrent of OA models into five core types. From the abstract (with the types in bold): The proliferation of...
