One of the things I find frustrating about discussions of economics in scholarly publishing is the way that discussions that are built around critique of capital models or neoliberalism are dismissed as impractical. Most recently Stuart Lawson’s interesting provocation, Against Capital, got a range of dismissive comments as being irrelevant because it required the overthrow of the capitalist system.
I find this, alongside another kind of response, most commonly from people in the business of scholarly publishing that such criticisms represent a failure to understand the financial realities of publishing, frustrating …

The following will come across as a rant. Which it is. But it’s a well intentioned rant. Please bear in mind that I care about good practice in data sharing, documentation, and preservation. I know there are many people working to support it, generally under-funded, often having to justify their existence to higher-ups who care more about the next Glam Mag article than whether there’s any evidence to support the findings. But, and its an important but, those political fights won’t become easier until researchers know those people exist, value …

This is my submitted paper to ElPub, a conference running in Cyprus over the next few days. I’m posting it here as a kind-of-preprint. Comments and thoughts are welcome. The version in the proceedings is available online as part of Chan and Loizides (eds) Expanding Perspectives on Open Science: Communities, Cultures and Diversity in Concepts and Practices.

Abstract
The debate over the meaning, and value, of open movements has intensified. The fear of co-option of various efforts from Open Access to Open Data is driving a reassessment and re-definition of what is …

Over the past week this tweet was doing the rounds. I’m not sure where it comes from or precisely what its original context was, but it appeared in my feed from folks in various student analytics and big data crowds. The message I took was “measurement looks complicated until you pin it down”.
But what I took from this was something a bit different. Once upon a time the idea of temperature was a complex thing. It was subjective, people could reasonably disagree on whether today was hotter or colder than …

My normal practice is that nothing posted here has been seen or vetted by others. This post is a departure from that because I think it is important enough to justify whatever extra reach I can give it. This text, which has just been sent out to FORCE11 Members by email, was seen by the FORCE11 Board of Directors and the linked statement was approved by a board vote.
Dear Colleagues
Re: FORCE11 Board of Directors Statement on Restrictions to Immigration
FORCE11 works towards the goal of being a global platform that brings communities together …

 
This is the first draft of the second chapter of a book that I’m starting to work on. The initial draft of the first chapter is also posted here. My recent post on evolution was a first pass at exploring some of the ideas needed for later chapters. It’s 5,476 words incidentally so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I don’t think I would like to meet myself as a twenty year old. I was arrogant, sure of myself, concerned with where I was going. Of course all of this was …