Monthly Archives: December 2014

I got the above unwanted Twitter from Wiley (I have checked as far as possible that it’s genuine). It seems to be Wiley advertising a free to read article. I have pasted the message so you can try this at … Continue reading →

TL;DR Elsevier typsetting turns double bonds into garbage. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I contend that publishers corrupt manuscripts and thereby destroy science. Those of you who follow this blog will know that Elsevier publicly … Continue reading →

I’ve just been trying to mine publicly visible scientific publications from scholarly publishers. (That’s right – “publicly visible” – Hargreaves comes later). AND THE TECHNICAL QUALITY IS AWFUL. PUBLISHERS DESTROY SCIENCE THROUGH THEIR TECHNICAL INCOMPETENCE AND INDIFFERENCE. They destroy the … Continue reading →

I am looking for Open Access articles to mine and since I have recently become an astrophysicist I started with http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107614000426 Can I mine it? “Open Access” means virtually nothing. Let’s try RightsLink, the tax-collector for the toll-access scholarly publishers. … Continue reading →

I’m in den Haag (The Hague) for a meeting run by LIBER – the association of European Research Libraries – about Content Mining. Content Mining is often called TDM – Text and Data Mining – but it also applies to … Continue reading →

[term: tcPublisher – = traditional Closed Publisher such as Elsevier or Nature Publishing Group. oaPublisher, exemplified by PLoS, eLIfe, etc.] In his final address to the nation, in 1961, President Dwight D Eisenhower coined a new phrase: we must guard … Continue reading →

TL;DR Scholarly publishing is an Inhuman Machine, Out of Control. It is pillaging the digital commons. I’ve spent the last 2 days lying awake trying to get my thoughts in order about Macmillan’s use of ReadCube to distribute “free” copies … Continue reading →

[AMI and Brenda] We had a very well attended (full Unitarian Church) of Cambridge people wishing to hear about TTIP (“Tee-tip”) the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnershipl. I have been very very worried about this for some time, informed at … Continue reading →

We’ve had a long and thoughtful reply from Timo Hannay about the SciShare/ReadCube “free access”. I shall reply to it. It gives the impression that Nature is a progressive publisher committed to Open Access. That may be true in parts. … Continue reading →

Prof. Henry Rzepa recounts his recent experience with installing and running Macmillan’s Readcube; a device to allow DRM’ed access to read-only scholarly literature. [I have not used it myself (and will not) but trust Henry absolutely to give an accurate … Continue reading →