Challenging Google, Microsoft Unveils a Search Tool for Online Scholarly Articles, from the Chronicle Microsoft is introducing a new search tool today that will help people find scholarly articles online. … The new free search tool, which should work on most browsers, is called Windows Live Academic Search. For now, it includes eight million articles from only a few disciplines — computer science, electrical engineering, and physics. … Among the.. Read More
Google gets a War Room
Google Wages Fresh Campaign Against Critics of Project to Digitize Library Books, from the Chronicle …an announcement this month by Google that it was starting a campaign to dispel misperceptions about the project. …Google officials said they were creating a “fact-checking brigade” about the company’s digitization effort. I know it’s verging on politically incorrect to say this these days, but I’m entirely on Google’s side on this issue. Why? Because.. Read More
A reference source for your inner obsessive-compulsive
A Book for People Who Love Numbers, from the NY Times The new edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. …it weighs 29 pounds. It has five volumes. And it’s densely packed with more than a million numbers that measure America in mind-boggling detail, from the average annual precipitation in Sweet Springs, Mo., to the wholesale price of rice in Charleston S.C., in 1707. “You’d have to be a.. Read More
New journals on the scene
I saw 2 announcements today for interesting new online journals. Two in one day! A veritable bonanza of online publishing. These look to be worth following. Plagiary Devoted specifically to the scholarly, cross-disciplinary study of plagiary and related behaviors across the disciplines, articles in Plagiary address the issue of fraudulent contributions to disciplinary discourse communities and the potential (and actual) corruption of the professional literature and other genres of discourse.. Read More
Open Peer Review
Thanks to Monica for passing this along: A New Model for Peer Review? Peer Reviewers Comments are Open for All to See in New Biology Journal, from the Issues in Scholarly Communication blog BioMed Central has launched Biology Direct, a new online open access journal with a novel system of peer review. The journal will operate completely open peer review, with named peer reviewers’ reports published alongside each article. The.. Read More
Controversial? Depends on who you ask.
An interesting side-by-side comparison of coverage of the same event in two different venues: U. of Michigan President Defends Library’s Role in Controversial Google Scanning Project, from the Chronicle …a speech to scholarly-book publishers …participation in the controversial Google Library Project is “a legal, ethical, and a noble endeavor.” “The Google book project is a remarkable opportunity — and a natural evolution — for a university whose mission is to.. Read More
Festival of the Book
Paul beat me to the punch on blogging this, but here is the text of the email I got recently announcing the 2006 NC Festival of the Book: Subject: News: ’06 North Carolina Fest. o/t Book Greetings from the ’06 NC Festival of the Book: We’re proud to announce the launch of a totally-revamped and newly-updated festival site: www.ncbook.org There you’ll find a schedule of confirmed festival programs, as well.. Read More
Journal of Mixed Message Research
I received an email recently from SAGE, an announcement that they’re launching a new journal: the Journal of Mixed Methods Research. The editors seek empirical research studies across the social, behavioral, health, and human sciences that employ mixed methods research, and methodological manuscripts advancing knowledge about mixed methods research. Mixed methods research is defined as research in which the investigator collects and analyzes data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences.. Read More
Goodnight Cigarettes
‘Goodnight Moon,’ Smokeless Version, from the NY Times In the great green room, there is a telephone, and a red balloon, but no ashtray. “Goodnight Moon,” the children’s classic by Margaret Wise Brown, has gone smoke free. In a newly revised edition of the book, which has lulled children to sleep for nearly 60 years, the publisher, HarperCollins, has digitally altered the photograph of Clement Hurd, the illustrator, to remove.. Read More
Charging for editorial work
An Open Letter to All University Presidents and Provosts Concerning Increasingly Expensive Journals, reported on in the November 8 Library Journal Academic Newswire: We recommend the following policies. (i) Universities should assess overhead charges for the support services of editors working for journals that have basic library subscription rates of more than a threshold level of cost per measured unit of product. (ii) University libraries should refrain from buying bundled.. Read More