Thanks to Wendy Robertson at the University of Iowa Libraries for posting some very useful information about their library’s expenditures on journals. This post is an informal research collaboration designed to build on Robertson’s work, explore the cost of a full flip to open access for this particular university and some of other not yet [...]

PLoS ONE has often been the source of attention on IJPE and elsewhere, becoming in 2010 the world’s largest journal then doubling in size in 2011, publishing close to 14,000 articles that year.  No wonder PLoS ONE is leading the new tendency to competition in open access, attracting a number of clones. No doubt many [...]

Mary Anne Liebert has just announced their entry into the open access megajournal competition with Bioresearch Open Access on a loss leader (no article processing fees – yet) basis. Highlights My comments, in brief: this development is most welcome, as yet another example that open access has moved into a competitive phase for the commercial [...]

At a recent meeting of the American Economic Association, the AEA began tackling some important ethical issues, according to this article in The Economist. Excerpts: Economics has internalised the views of rich patrons, according to Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago. His scathing analysis of journal publications revealed that papers providing justification for high [...]

Data mining is a growing trend, and we can soon expect to see demand for data mining more personal information than we have seen before, such as our personal health information. My question is, should we all collectively copyleft all of our personal information, including our bodies (DNA), so that anyone who finds a way [...]