tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post4845310892276989235..comments2024-03-16T18:42:21.178-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: JCDL 2010 KeynoteDavid.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-11320182747047721902018-01-12T10:30:37.417-08:002018-01-12T10:30:37.417-08:00Elsevier has let the domain registration for elsev...Elsevier has let the domain registration for elseviergrandchallenge.com lapse. You can find the Grand Challenge website in the Wayback Machine, for example <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080914104905/http://www.elseviergrandchallenge.com/" rel="nofollow">here</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-91445906779252515922011-03-09T11:49:06.801-08:002011-03-09T11:49:06.801-08:00The coming downsizing of the publishing industry i...The coming downsizing of the publishing industry isn't limited to academic publishing and newspapers. Via <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/09/0618234/Crime-Writer-Makes-a-Killing-With-99-Cent-E-Books" rel="nofollow">Slashdot</a>, here is the <a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-post-by-john-locke.html" rel="nofollow">sound of approaching doom for book publishers</a>. John Locke self-publishes 99-cent crime novels for the Kindle. He currently holds top spot in the Amazon top 100 and has 6 books in the top 40. He gets 35c per download and is selling at the rate of over $1800/day. Who needs a publisher? <a href="http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/03/99_cent_books.php" rel="nofollow">Kevin Kelly agrees</a> that 99-cent book downloads are the future.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-66334600818979971092010-10-15T16:44:25.519-07:002010-10-15T16:44:25.519-07:00More evidence that disruption is coming to the aca...More evidence that disruption is coming to the academic publishing business - rumors (or more precisely, rumours) of a <a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23887532-punters-go-wild-over-kesa-and-talk-of-stateside-suitor.do" rel="nofollow">takeover of Elsevier</a> are circulating in London.<br /><br />And <i>The Economist</i> confirms that the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17199460" rel="nofollow">music business' transition to concerts</a> and other ways of making money than selling the music is working out well.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-69114354932314893182010-09-09T18:15:21.094-07:002010-09-09T18:15:21.094-07:00Now even Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has agreed with Mar...Now even Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has agreed with Marc Andreessen that the <i>New York Times</i> has to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-blodget/sulzberger-concedes-we-wi_b_710778.html" rel="nofollow">turn off the presses</a>. He just doesn't want to do it now. In fact he doesn't want to do it until it is too late.<br /><br />In that post Henry Blodgett estimates that the NYT web site currently brings in about $150M/yr and that the newsroom costs about $200M/yr. If a paywall contributed another $100M/yr, they could afford to spend $100M/yr on the newsroom. So a big restructuring is in prospect.<br /><br />It would be good if this looming downsizing of the newsroom kept the actual journalists and got rid of the stenographers who simply enable their anonymous sources to avoid accountability for their propaganda (see Miller, Judith).David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-73187617115589311502010-09-09T10:10:20.350-07:002010-09-09T10:10:20.350-07:00Yet more evidence that the scope for publishers to...Yet more evidence that the scope for publishers to create "organic growth" in the University market is limited comes from <a href="http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-your-university-complying-with-new.html" rel="nofollow">Ian Ayres</a>, pointing out that the push-back against extortionate textbook prices has some new legal teeth.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-45433199959969338072010-09-01T15:04:13.139-07:002010-09-01T15:04:13.139-07:00In the talk I reported C-MU research showing that ...In the talk I reported C-MU research showing that FAWN systems could match conventional systems' performance on key/value queries. <a href="http://dbmsmusings.blogspot.com/2010/08/problems-with-acid-and-how-to-fix-them.html" rel="nofollow">Yale researchers</a> are now describing techniques by which these systems could match the performance of conventional database systems. This makes this architecture even more attractive.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-30512081146278901762010-08-31T12:26:42.574-07:002010-08-31T12:26:42.574-07:00And speaking of switching to services, Elsevier co...And speaking of switching to services, Elsevier <a href="http://reading20.posterous.com/elsevier-creates-sciverse-platform-from-scidi" rel="nofollow">continues to move slowly</a> in that direction. But does anyone think these small steps will deliver "organic growth" to a corporation the size of Reed Elsevier in the time-frame Wall St. needs?David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-69726066052711095582010-08-31T12:20:11.041-07:002010-08-31T12:20:11.041-07:00I'm not the only one pointing out that scholar...I'm not the only one pointing out that scholarly publishers are in deep trouble. <a href="http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/IfIWereaScholarlyPublisher/209335" rel="nofollow">Rick Anderson</a> makes the same case, and comes up with four strategies for them to pursue. Two of them (accept no growth, somehow generate more growth) won't work. Nor, as I pointed out in the talk, will the idea of switching to services. The idea of marketing around the libraries, also suggested by <a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/10/20/what-is-library-bypass/" rel="nofollow">Joseph Esposito</a>, deserves consideration. But it has the same probably fatal flaw as Pay-Per-View with a visible pay gate, in that it makes the reason for authors to post their own work to their own websites hard to ignore. Expecting the people who are supplying you with content to pay you to read it seems risky.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-71650783762197174942010-08-19T16:46:44.810-07:002010-08-19T16:46:44.810-07:00In preparing for this talk I somehow missed Michae...In preparing for this talk I somehow missed <a href="http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/is-scientific-publishing-about-to-be-disrupted/" rel="nofollow">Michael Nielsen</a> making the same points even better than I did, and a year earlier. And I had even made a note to blog about it last September, so it wasn't like I hadn't paid attention.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-52730744971941795472010-08-03T15:27:58.017-07:002010-08-03T15:27:58.017-07:00Andrew Orlowski at The Register examines Dell'...Andrew Orlowski at <i>The Register</i> examines <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/26/after_the_dell_settlement/" rel="nofollow">Dell's recent settlement of the SEC's charges of fraudulent accounting</a> between 2001 and 2006. This forms a fascinating postscript to the contrast I drew in this talk between Dell's and Sun's business models in the early 90s. Note that in the later 90s as Dell grew it suffered exactly the problem described by the Warren Buffet quote; it tried alternate channels such as Dell shops and found them all less efficient than its original vision. But, as the settlement shows, Dell eventually found an even better business model - extorting money from Intel.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-6183400890021203402010-07-12T13:13:00.909-07:002010-07-12T13:13:00.909-07:00Kevin Smith has a thoughtful commentary on this po...Kevin Smith has a thoughtful commentary on this post at <a href="http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2010/07/12/managing-discontinuities/" rel="nofollow">his blog</a>. His thoughts on the effect of dynamic content on peer review, which I omitted to discuss in the talk, are similar to those I discussed in <a href="http://blog.dshr.org/2007/04/mass-market-scholarly-communication.html" rel="nofollow">this blog's first post</a>.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.com