Group items tagged

This is an interesting article in the Guardian reporting on Harvard's move against rising prices of journal publications. It calls for Faculty to make their research freely available.

Well worth reading. It also mentioned a model of how publication of the article could be paid for: "Open access comes in various guises, but one model requires authors to pay to have their articles published and made freely available to anyone." In the academic world, research /grant monies would allow authors to build the cost of publishing into their research/grant applications.

Very interesting article. Especially because it relates to Harvard who (alongside with Stanford) is an opinion leader among universities. Other universities watch Harvard (and Stanford) and it is highly likely that these two universities are able to influence the trend.

Dheer Software Solutions is the best Bulk SMS Service Provider in Udaipur. Bulk SMS service in Udaipur, Bulk SMS in Udaipur. We are providing bulk SMS is very affordable price

Awareness will make a difference since privacy is the price we pay for freedom.

The principle of the Panopticon still works in today's "big data" society. As we get more and more assesses to information on the Internet, our personal information is also being exposed to others. However, as an user commented, "there is a place for surveillance -- but not when its scope and power has the ability to undermine our networks and connections that are essential for fostering healthy human development and communities -- which is the best protection against harm". The invisibility of the power, to some extent, builds up the self-suiveillance.

Clay Shirky's look at the current Amazon/Publisher wars: "The legacy system is mainly characterized by a refusal to deal in small-batch authorship, a model that made sense when the unit price of a book was any number above zero, but makes no sense today. If ten million people think something is dreck, and fifty people like it, those fifty should get what they want."

Amazon-Hachette war & Orwell: http://www.idealog.com/blog/amazon-channels-orwell-latest-blast/

Does Amazon kill a revenue channel for open access monographs? https://www.martineve.com/2014/09/03/does-amazon-kill-a-revenue-channel-for-open-access-monographs/

"11 academic publishers, including major players like Taylor & Francis and Oxford University Press, would be raising the cost of short-term e-book loans effective June 1. In some cases the increase would be as much as 300 percent."

Going for gold is the solid approach, argues Michael Mabe...but David Price counters that only green is sustainable

Publishers of scholarly journals currently obtain most of their revenue from subscription fees charged to libraries and individual users. We call this the 'Reader Pays' pricing model. An alternative pricing method has recently emerged, in which publishers collect their revenue by charging significant publication fees to authors, and then supply their content over the Internet, at no cost to readers.

The year I graduated high school, the media was overrun with speculation about a new technology set to shake the foundation of the world. What was it? We weren't told, exactly. All we knew was that code name "IT" was so revolutionary that we would have to rebuild our cities from scratch.

It is interesting that whenever a new innovation is introduced, the current one is declared dead before its final time arrives. Books in whatever format are appealing to different audiences for various reasons. To think that the introduction of e-books was going to lead to a declaration of war on printed books is laughable. Books will be with us for as long as we are still in this world. Does format matter? only time will tell.

Long back Lancaster wrote about paperless society but still we are heavily depending on paper only. Technology has fast evolved. First we talked about e-libraries then virtual libraries and now contemplating cloud based libraries. Many technologies have come and gone but paper is still ubiquitous.

"What solutions might we find within our community to solve the problem of rising textbook prices? In our latest issue brief, Nancy Maron, Ithaka S+R's Program Director for Sustainability and Scholarly Communications, looks at recent trends in textbook publishing and suggests that collaborations between university presses and academic libraries might yield a new breed of textbook more aligned to the needs of faculty and students."

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

Relevant article on the cost of textbooks and the rise of open education Before entering the classroom of an intro-level economics course, students get a real-life experience with the subject - the required textbook costs $290 on Amazon. And that's just one book for one class. Textbook costs have surged 1,500 percent since 1970, according to the Economist magazine.

Dheer Software Solutions is the best local Software and Web development company located in Jodhpur. We provide all IT Services like Software Development, E-commerce web Design & development, App development and digital marketing in very affordable price.

Espresso Book Machines are a really interesting idea, and despite the "hefty price tag" might be a great solution to users who still prefer print copies to electronic copies of books. It's also interesting to think about how Espresso Machines will influence library collections. This article argues that it supports a patron acquisition model, if all users end up printing books on demand (which will limit questioning during the collection development process) will that mean that for those who can't afford to print books, will not have access to them? Will the Espresso Machine bring the concept of the library and the concept of the bookstore too close together? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great idea, and the possibilities for self-publishing are great! As these machines gain more popularity, it will be interesting to see the direction of collection development in Libraries.

Text from 2011, still extremely timely, about privacy. The author, professor of Law, deconstructs the "nothing to hide" argument that says that we should not be scared to disclose private activities or information when we do nothing wrong.

"With regard to individual rights,.... there exists a private domain in man which should not be regulated or violated. This realm constitutes what is deepest, highest, and most valuable in the individual human being." http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Younkins/Social_Cooperation,_Flourishing,_and_Happiness.shtml

Privacy off course matters.It is right that if I have not done anything wrong then why should I hide it. On other hand we can not share our family relationship information with anyone.