Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Taylor and Francis Survey discovers an Open Access Dichotomy among Authors.
This was a survey carried out by the publishers Taylor & Francis among researchers to ascertain opinions about open access publishing.
Authors agree that publication should not be down to the  ability to pay  (85% of authors surveyed) and all research outputs should be free to read online (66% of authors surveyed). 77% of respondents agreed publishers were an essential part of the research communication process and contribute to the dissemination of research but it was noted that "without researchers their value is substantially reduced"
Full details and the questionnaire can be found here

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Elsevier buys Mendeley!


It was confirmed today that Elsevier has bought Mendeley for a sum of money somewhere between $69 and $100 million. Mendeley is a platform for academics and organisations to share research and collaborate with each other via a social network.  It has been in operation since 2008.
Given that all the Mendeley staff are moving over to Elsevier this may signal their intention to become more involved in the world of open and social educational data!