Free booklet from Stephen Pinker & Chronicle on Academic Writing

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a very popular article in their Review of Sept. 26, 2014 from Stephen Pinker, "Why Academics Stink at Writing." Following on this, they put together a free pamphlet on improving academic writing, Why Academics Stink at Writing -- and How to Fix it," that can be downloaded here. I do not think you need a subscription to the Chronicle to get the pamphlet. As far as I can tell, all anybody needs to do to get a copy is enter name, title, institution, and they get a PDF download.

Thank you! The image decorating this post is a mock-up of the cover of the pamphlet from the Chronicle.

Enhanced E-books May Finally be Hitting Their Stride

After several years of floundering with technology that publishers seemed not to really know what to do with, there may be some authors with strong visions of what enhanced e-books (EEBs) could really bring beyond the world of print and the bland digital facsimiles we have seen so far. I was thrilled to read the article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education's Digital Campus magazine, "What Enhanced E-books Can Do for Scholarly Authors." Biblical scholar Jacob Wright explains in the article how he used the format for his new book, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory. The book is being issued in traditional print, conventional e-book and enhanced e-book formats.

According to Wright, print and conventional e-books are limited to "...two layers: the main body and a thin stratum of footnotes and endnotes." He uses the eeb format to add multiple narratives that readers can select among, allowing him to address varying audiences with the same publication. Wright compares the design, actually, to that of Daniel Bomberg's 1523 design for Talmud editions, with a running source text at the center, with an array of commentaries surrounding it.

Wright comments that the opportunity thus opens up for academics to appeal in a single publication to scholars in their own discipline, explaining in full detail how they researched and came to their conclusions. But at the same time, they can appeal to non-specialists who may be interested in the topic on a less technical level. For instance, he mentions the ability to include links to maps, video clips, images as well as icons leading specialists to lengthy quotes from sources that would be unpalatable to lay readers. While scholars like footnotes for ease of consultation, publishers prefer endnotes to avoid breaking up the flow of text and intimidating potential readers. Icons or links to references avoid the debate, and please both parties. An author can include as many references, in as much detail as needed for the scholars, without distracting or driving away the non-professional crowd. References appear in a window which can be scrolled. If you go to the online version of the Chronicle article, in particular, you can see some very beautiful illustrations and interesting in-sets from this book, which give you an appreciation for what Wright has added, visually, at least to the text. I have to say, though, that some parts of the illustrations for this article reminded me a bit of Encarta...

The end of the article includes a brief survey and review by Wright of his own efforts to find a program to build an enhanced e-book. He settled on the free app from Apple, iBooks Author. It is a very interesting and exciting article, not least because Wright really opens up the idea of what an enhanced e-book might be.

If you use iBooks Author, be careful of the license - I pulled up an Information Week article from 2012 complaining about the iBook Author license, and warning that Apple claims the sole right to sell any publications created with their free software unless they give a written authorization otherwise. This may have changed since it is apparent that Wright's book is being published by Cambridge University Press. Or the press and author may have negotiated a written agreement with Apple at the beginning of their work. In February, 2012, Apple clarified this to explain that only materials published with the .ibooks suffix are covered by this claim. If you publish as a .text or .pdf file, that EULA clause does not affect you.

Here is an article about enhanced e-books with a handy review of several platforms for creating enhanced e-books. It seems quite apparent that the Apple is by far the best and most robust. The article also is helpful in thinking about the various enhancements that are available and what is and is not a real enhancement. When you look at a Publisher's Weekly article from a year ago about Harper Collins' EEB collection, you can begin to understand why the tradebook EEBs have not been big successes. They added video interviews of an author, and audio excerpts. To me that does not seem like it is reaching the potential of the format at all! It is possible that trade books just are not the right area for enhanced e-books, and that until you get to a scholarly publication with the possibility of becoming a cross-over book of interest to a wider public, there is not a real application. Does anybody remember a year or two ago when they brought out this e-book, Chopsticks? That actually seems to have been fairly successful, though I don't know that it's been duplicated with another successful EEB tradebook. Anybody know?

The image decorating this post is from Wright's book on King David, reproduced from the Chronicle. article.

Nobel prize winner declares boycott of major science journals

The British newspaper, The Guardian, reported Dec. 9, 2013 that U.S. physiology/medicine Nobelist Randy Schekman, a biology professor of University of California, Berkeley, has announced that he will boycott publishing in Nature, Cell and Science. Dr. Schekman writes directly to the public about the problem as he sees it, in the pages of The Guardian.

1. The high profile journals are often more interested in improving their "brand" than in forwarding knowledge.

2. Publication in high-profile journals is often used as a proxy for quality when decisions are made about grants, promotion and tenure.

3. In order to pump the brand by increasing the perception of exclusivity, these journals artificially restrict the number of papers they accept.

4. "Impact Factor" has been used as a marketing tool, and in fact, is deeply flawed as a measure of the actual impact of either the journal or the articles it carries. Pursuing the increase in Impact Factor has become a distorting end in itself, affecting acceptance decisions, and other decisions.

5. The factors that go into calculating the Impact Factor, such as number of citations, are not necessarily real measures of the quality of the article. It may simply be eye-catching, provocative or wrong.

6. Editors of these high profile or luxury journals recognize this and often accept article that are poor science simply because they will be highly cited, pumping up the journal's average Impact Factor.

7. Many scientists also recognize the increase in publishability of such articles and are writing more such articles, creating bubbles in fashionable fields, making bold statements that are attractive to such editors. The prevalence of these articles are driving out the doing of more important science and publishing such as replication studies.

8. In extreme cases, Schekman believes that the high-profile journals contribute to researchers cutting corners, with the result that articles are published which must ultimately be retracted. He points to a recent events where the journal

Science alone has recently retracted high-profile papers reporting cloned human embryos, links between littering and violence, and the genetic profiles of centenarians. Perhaps worse, it has not retracted claims that a microbe is able to use arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorus, despite overwhelming scientific criticism.

Schekman is editing one of the new open access e-journals, which he hopes will help address these problems. He edits eLife, which he says has no artificial caps on the number of articles it will accept. He has a number of scientist editing articles along with him, so that the editorial choices are being made on the quality of the science in the paper, rather than any other criteria. He notes that the journal is currently supported by Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Max Planck Society.

Schekman calls on the decision-making and funding organizations to move away from reliance on the high-profile "luxury" journals as proxies for quality. He admits that the papers that won the Nobel prize were published in such journals. Which gets back to the basic problem in this battle. Unless and until tenure committees truly commit in a reliable way to accepting publication in a journal such as e-Life as the equivalent to publication in Science or Nature or Cell for tenure and promotion decisions, junior faculty will be loathe to follow Schekman in his boycott until they, too, have made their names. The boycott will necessarily be a struggle of senior scientists who have made their names. In a way, that will be good, because these high-profile journals will be damaged by losing such high-profile authors. Yet, the up-coming Nobelists will still be publishing the papers in Cell, Nature and Science that will sooner or later win the their Nobel prizes.

The decoration of the cart before the horse is from a blog post at http://kathieontherun.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/the-high-cost-of-being-well/, a witty post about funding her training for marathons by issuing indulgences for sloth. She does not give any information about where she found the image, which looks old enough to be out of copyright. Also, charming. It reflects my humble opinion that until the academic establishment begins to really support this idea, these boycotts are putting the cart before the horse. But I suppose the establishment won't move its collective fanny without such gestures. We'll see.

Identity Theft and Scholarly Journals

Wow! Who knew that scholarly journals could be the victims of identity theft?  I was directed by colleague Barbara Bintliff to the March, 2013 issue of the journal Nature, which is discussing the new developments in scientific publishing, "The Future of Publishing."  Most of the issue is discussing the move to digital publishing, open access, and how authors in the new model will have to pay to publish so that readers can read for free.  Oh, brave new world! 

But this article, "Sham Journals Scam Authors," by Declan Butler, discusses how the scammers counterfeited two scholarly European journals so closely that they fooled not only scholars, but also Thomson Reuters, publisher of a journal impact rating service.  Hundreds of scholars paid steep author fees to submit journal articles, thinking they were dealing with the editors of the real journals.  The counterfeit sites include such details as publishing frequency, editorial boards, ISSNs, and titles for authentic journals, and fake impact factors numbers for the journals.  Much of the information was false, including editorial boards naming unaffiliated scholars.

The editors of the real journals are fighting a losing and mind-wrenching battle against these shadowy cyber-criminals who seem to be based in Armenia.  They keep being contacted by the poor authors who sent manuscripts and author fees to the counterfeit sites, and are wondering when they will see their article in print. The editors feel that the sham sites have damaged their journals' excellent reputations. Cybercrime police units are not having much success, apparently, tracking the criminals.

The authentic journals were easy prey since they had no web presence of their own.  Rather too late, these two journals are putting up websites or archiving back issues on home pages of the sponsoring organizations. 

The decoration for identity theft is from The Digerati Life by Millie Kay G., a post dated 9/27/2010, "Identity Theft Solutions Using ID Scores." She gives no credit for the image. 

Writing for Impact

I have a student this semester, who wants to write an article, not because he's on a journal staff, or because he is getting credit for a directed study with me. He wrote a research guide last semester on a topic that was near to his heart, and he wants to follow it up. He's doing it on his own time. I don't know if a law student has any hope of getting a journal article published in this situation.... It seems like a pretty long shot to put something like that in any law review, even our own school law journals, but especially going outside. Student-edited journals have big gates that do look at who you are, and where you are from. This has long been a frustration to law professors at 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier law schools who run into these same barriers trying to publish their scholarship. The students don't have a lot of experience judging scholarship, so they often use who and where as proxies for quality when they choose articles to publish.

Well. That's one big reason I have long shied away from publishing in law reviews. I have always chosen to send my stuff to professionally edited or peer-reviewed journals. I think I get a much better review, and I also have a much better chance of getting published, no matter where I have chosen to work.

So, I am trying to persuade this student that perhaps there is publishing beyond law reviews. That perhaps he will have a better chance of getting a well-written article published in a journal beyond the law journal universe. Law students (and I was this way, I think, when I was in law school), believe that there is no intelligent life outside of law school. This makes it extra ironic that other university faculty and PhD students often look down their noses at the law school publication system that sets up our ground-level students as the gatekeepers of our scholarship!

In service of my argument, I am trying to introduce this fellow to the concept of "journal impact factor" which is a measure based on average citation rates of the articles in the journal. So, for instance, a frequently cited journal like Nature would have a higher journal impact factor than a less frequently cited journal. It does not mean that individual articles in each issue have been cited particularly, but that, on average, articles in this journal, are cited more often. Journals advertise their impact factors to potential authors, interestingly. "Publish with us! Our impact factor is higher." As if it were going to guarantee more citations for the article you publish with them. And perhaps it does deliver more eyeballs, and potentially more citations... but nobody knows. Journal impact factor is a sort of blunt instrument measure, especially to those of us in law, who have luxuriated in the fine detail of Shepards and KeyCite citators, which not only tell us how many citations something has, but how they are being treated, and often what is being discussed. Still, journal impact factor is more information on the publication level than is available about law reviews at the publication level.

Now, there is an interesting new addition to impact measurements. Altmetrics is not designed to take the place of e of journal impact factor. It is designed to complement it, to add nuance to it and reach beyond it to publication in social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter. I think it will be a very interesting new feature. The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about Altmetrics. There is a varied group of academics working on the idea, but among them is the group at altmetrics.org which has published a manifesto. This includes academics in library science, computer science, somebody from the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, and somebody from Wikimedia Foundation, which is related to Wikipedia.

This is obviously going to have more immediate impact in the sciences, where open source publishing already has a toehold (PLOS, for instance is really moving forward with Altmetrics already, apparently). But we in law librarianship are working on open source publishing in our own backyards. And now I have my own personal project. I hope I can persuade this student to try publishing somewhere other than his round peg law review default. Because his square peg article is not going to be a very good fit, I fear!

The Sorry State of Academic Publishing

The article, "Libraries, Publishers, and a Plea for Shotgun Weddings," by Bryn Geffert, the librarian at Amherst College, really struck a chord with me. Geffert decries the sorry state of academic publishing which is exemplified by a book he was recently asked to review.

At first glance, the work appeared promising. The publisher's Web site pledges research based on "recently opened archives," "surprising" revelations, and a "comprehensive overview" of important and neglected topics.

The list of contributors includes important figures in the field. The editor, a reputable scholar, teaches at a good university.

The publisher is a well-known commercial press.

And the book is an absolute mess.

Sentences do not parse. Punctuation comes and goes as it pleases. Basic grammatical standards retreat in the face of indifference. Narrative coherence gives way to meandering, self-absorbed stream of consciousness. The essays largely eschew arguments and theses. New information and archival research: not so much. Inanities abound. And those essays that do evidence some internal coherence bear little relation to their neighbors.

Perhaps most troubling is the almost utter lack of correlation between the book's content and the content promised by promotional blurbs. "Key themes" noted in the introduction appear nowhere else. We can only assume that topics presaged in advertising copy took a wrong turn in Albuquerque.

Geffert concludes that a number of publishers are "charging outrageous prices for embarrassingly bad books, knowing that enough individuals and institutions will snap them up." I am responsible for most of the acquisitions decisions for my library and personally look at every book (except for standing orders) we receive before it is processed. Given the volume of what comes in and the scope of my other responsibilities, I can't spend more than a few minutes on each book. Obviously, this isn't enough time for me to make a thorough evaluation of every book, but it is enough time for me to form an overall impression of which publishers produce books of quality and which produce schlock. As a result, I have a list of publishers from which I no longer purchase because of the "inverse correlation between the price and quality of [their] books," as Geffert puts it. He concedes that there are "good university presses [that are] bucking" the trend to publish books "with meager or no editorial support." How do they survive?

[B]y canceling series, releasing fewer titles, slashing runs, and declining to consider manuscripts that lack broad appeal. The result: Scholars increasingly throw their lot in with the disreputables; libraries purchase garbage; promising manuscripts go unpublished; and good manuscripts go to press half-baked. University presses committed to publishing worthy books—the presses we admire and on which we rely—can no longer give us what we need. And those that try find that libraries—each year spending ever-greater portions of their budgets on commercially produced serials—can't afford to buy what we beg the presses to produce.

Geffert believes that the current situation will not be remedied until libraries "step into the breach." He points to the University of Michigan which merged its press and its library two years ago; it pledged to "publish all future books online, free of charge." He says there are similar experiments at Utah State, Penn State, and Stanford. Geffert concedes that library resources are so stretched that

We cannot provide those we serve with what they need. Perhaps it is time to produce ourselves what we can no longer afford to purchase; to use personnel and financial resources from our libraries ... to save and revive academic publishing of high quality.

The Oberlin Group, an informal confederation of 80 selective liberal-arts college libraries, is considering creating a "liberal-arts press" which would be a "serious, scholarly press committed to rigorous peer review, superb editing, and the free dissemination of publications." This would require libraries to "reconfigure" library positions to support such an effort. Time will tell if libraries will actually be willing to free up human and financial resources. For a good overview of the issues facing academic presses, see Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses, a recent report from the Association of American University Presses. Geffert's article is available online to those who subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education.