In a first for US institutions, the University of California, the USA’s largest public university system, has decided to cancel its expensive subscription licence with Elsevier. The two organisations had evidently been negotiating for months, but talks finally failed over … Continue reading
The journal Nature recently reported on a website called Unpaywall, developed by computer scientists to help academics demonstrate how much of their work is freely available to download. Launched in 2017, the site has become a really useful place to … Continue reading
Google’s alleged development of a censored search engine for China has been in the news lately and not least because many Google employees are very unhappy about the prospect of having been kept in the dark about this project, while … Continue reading
If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you will know that I’ve contributed articles and reviews to Jinfo (formerly Freepint) quite a number of times over the years. Well, it’s a pleasure to be doing so once again. This time … Continue reading
The Financial Times reported yesterday (12th Dec.) that the first articles jointly written by robots and humans are being published in the UK. In fact, the robot’s contribution seems to be largely that of fact-finder, providing statistical data for journalists’ articles. The … Continue reading
It’s also hard to find or recognize something if you don’t know what search terms to use, what it’s called or anything about it. Searching requires curiosity and interest. It’s about an intelligent and planned, strategic and enthusiastic way of … Continue reading
You’re never too old to learn. I may have been embedded in the world of professional searching for around 20 years, but that doesn’t mean I know it all. Keeping existing skills refreshed as well as learning new ones is … Continue reading
Just a quick post to flag up an interesting article in 3rd June’s issue of the The Economist on how to make peer review less onerous: Preview and prosper. Whoever thought there’d be a statue dedicated to peer review?
New Scientist has announced in its 20 May 2017 issue that it has returned to independent ownership having been owned by Reed Business Information since the early 1970s. It has been bought by Kingston Acquisitions which the FT describes as … Continue reading
Happy new year! Here’s an interesting bit of news to start off 2017. An article in Science magazine 6 Jan 2017 describes how hundreds of universities, technical schools and research institutes and public libraries in Germany will be starting the … Continue reading
