Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Guy Geltner, a medievalist, has written an important piece on why he is leaving Academia.edu, a site that encourages academics to upload their work (skirting copyright laws by calling them “drafts” in some cases), and deploying various algorithms to connect people, encourage discussion, and so forth. I joined and put two papers online. One – …
The Chronicle for Higher Education covered the “Save Ashgate” petition and movement, now with over 7000 signatures (which is a huge number for an academic publishing issue). The company has not yet responded to the petitioners, according to Kathleen E. Kennedy, an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University-Brandywine. That silence speaks volumes, she …
Elsevier, the giant journal-publishing monster, has always sounded to me like something out of Tolkein, a fallen Elvish city now inhabited only by ghouls and barrow wights, maybe. Yes, I’m a nerd (though not an exceptionally good Tolkein nerd; I never finished The Silmarillion). Here’s a new article that argues academic journal “impact factors” are basically …