Monthly Archives: July 2011

I have already blogged about the Aaron Swartz case and civil disobedience /pmr/2011/07/20/the-ethics-of-%E2%80%9Cstealing%E2%80%9D-scientific-articles-and-civil-disobedience/ . I expect to blog more as the case unfolds (assuming it is carried through) but this post id to clarify what I think are the prerequisites … Continue reading →

In a reply to my exposition of Green, Gold, Gratis and Libre, Steve Hitchcock comments:   Steve Hitchcock says: July 20, 2011 at 5:03 pm   Peter, In this blog post you say “Modern e-science requires documents over which the reader/user … Continue reading →

I have been alerted to the following article in the Boston Globe about a Cambridge[Mass] Man who has been accused of “stealing” 4 million scientific articles. http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/07/cambridge-man-accused-hacking-mit-computers-steal-scientific-papers/6SVnqu3Yfo7OIrLQOYSz5M/index.html?comments=all#readerComm A Cambridge man [Swartz] who was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. … Continue reading →

I have just been reading Peter Suber’s latest SOAN http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/oanewsletter-oa-and-copyright.shtml (a monthly Open Access news ) and also his interview with Richard Poynder (short version http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/07/peter-suber-leader-of-leaderless.html contains pointers to full version). PeterS is, for many of us, the person who … Continue reading →

Here’s a comment from a blog some days ago which is so compelling I reproduce it in full. It needs little comment from me. Nuwan says: July 18, 2011 at 5:40 pm  I think scientific publications are a victim of … Continue reading →

We are all now judged by citations? But what *IS* a citation? It’s not easy to answer… and it may not be quite what you think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation gives: Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source … Continue reading →

Quite by chance I have just received an update of a review I did for [a gold open access scientific journal]. I omit all confidential info: Dear Dr. Murray-Rust, Thank you for your review of this manuscript.  The Editor has … Continue reading →

I posted yesterday about an article in PLoS ONE where I criticized the author/editor/publisher for destroying semantic data. /pmr/2011/07/16/how-to-share-data-and-how-not-to/ It has generated 11 replies and you should read them before this post so as to get all points of view. … Continue reading →

I have been pointed to a paper in PLoSONE on Data sharing http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021101 I haven’t read the text but I am afraid I have to comment adversely on the way the data are presented. Because it illustrates a fundamental reason … Continue reading →

NOTE: You may find my allegory of “Monsters of the Id” as irrelevant to scholarly publishing. If so, skip this. But do not doubt that scholarly publishing needs changing – drastically and soon and that I, at least, am committed … Continue reading →