How Printing Was Revolutionized By Cake. Sort Of.
Discover the flong: a papier-mâché mold that revolutionized 19th-century printing, blending ingenious tech with a dash of pastry-inspired charm.
Guest Post — Rethinking Disciplinary Data Regimes
Between a political policy environment focused on defunding and deleting data collections – an environment in which little can be trusted – and an onslaught of new AI tools that feed indiscriminately on data, bits of information at the intersection of rows and columns are appearing in headlines more than ever before. To avoid cultural memory loss, we must build systems that save what humanity needs across disciplinary silos rather than saving some archives and losing others through an accident of history.
Guest Post — Manifesto Time: Do You Need a Publishing Manifesto?
Does your publishing organization need a manifesto? Writing a manifesto for your organization can be a great exercise for team building and planning, and a way to ignite action.
Scholarship is Like Music: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Just as scholarly knowledge development is based on previous research findings, popular musicians stand on the shoulders of Pachelbel’s Canon.
What’s the Magic Word?
What’s the magic word? Is it “please”? “Abracadabra”? Wingardium leviosa”? Why are humans drawn to incantations and affirmations?
2025 Update: Quantifying Consolidation in the Scholarly Journals Market
Catching up with the ongoing consolidation of the journals market — what has happened in the two years since this was last examined? And how does the market look if you add in a large number of relatively newly launched journals?
Trust and Integrity: A Research Imperative
Libraries and publishers represent the interests of thousands of authors, readers, scientists, researchers, students, and lifelong learners. Today, we stand united to face the mounting risks to public trust and the social benefit that research delivers.
Happy 4th of July — Surf’s Up!
Celebrating American Independence Day with a truly great American art form.
Did My Father’s World Die with Him? Grieving the Incalculable Costs of “STEM.”
Grieving my father’s death feels inextricably tangled with grieving the catastrophe overtaking the whole of our research infrastructure.
The Devil is in the Details, Specifically, Titivillus, the “Medieval Demon of Typos”
Have you been visited by Titivillus, the demon of typographical errors?
Is Grammar an Inherent Product of the Human Brain?
A long-running academic controversy — do humans share a universal grammar that stems from the structure and evolution of the human brain?
Guest Post — Public Access to the Endless Frontier
Vannevar Bush’s “The Endless Frontier” served as both blueprint and symbol of the American research enterprise. His writings are worth re-examination, as the country grapples (again) with the relationship between science and the American public.
Language Evolves, or rather, Constantly Cooks New Ways to Pass the Vibe Check
A millennial linguist dares to speak to a gen-alpha audience in their native tongue.
Trump v. Research: How We Could Turn the Threats into Opportunities
Alice Meadows and guest chef Suze Kundu look at how, by acting collectively across all stakeholder groups, we could turn the Trump administration’s threats against research into opportunities
Cephalopod Update: First Video Footage of A Colossal Squid Recorded
Finally some good news, at least for afficionados of very large invertebrates.