Scholarly Communication

Quantitative Science Studies (QSS) is a newly launched open access journal that was born out of a collaboration between the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) and the MIT Press. In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Ludo Waltman discusses the origins of QSS, its growing inaugural issue, and its future as a publishing outlet run for and by the scientometric community. Learn...

“Archivists feel that what their mission is, is to document society. And the question is: how can you document society if you only look at or value or preserve­—maybe value is the right word—a particular segment of the expressions of society?” In Archiving Cultures: Heritage, Community and the Making of Records and Memory (Routledge, 2023), Jeannette Bastian defines and models the concept of cultu...

What is an advance contract? Do you need an agent? How do you know which editor to approach with your manuscript? Successfully following the path to academic publishing can be daunting for first-time authors. But it doesn’t have to be. Acquisitions editor Laura Devulis joins us to explain the hidden curriculum, including: How soon you can approach an academic press with your proposal. What it mean...

In this episode, Gita Manaktala, Editorial Director at the MIT Press, and Ellen Finnie, Co-Interim Associate Director for Collections at MIT Libraries, discuss the Ideas series: a hybrid print and open access book series for general readers, that provides fresh, strongly argued, and provocative views of the effects of digital technology on culture, business, government, education, and our lives. L...

The authors of Data Feminism (2020), Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, along with Catherine Ahearn, Content Lead at PubPub, discuss the value and process of open peer review, share experiences and best practices, and explore issues surrounding peer review transparency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cinegogía is an open-access website devoted to the teaching and study of Latin American cinemas. Bridget Franco, an associate professor of Spanish at College of the Holy Cross, founded and coordinates the website. Cinegogía contains a database of Latin American film as well as resources for teaching and researching film. Teaching resources include syllabi, teaching activities and assignments, and...

Jess Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, and Sam Klein of the MIT Press/MIT Media Lab’s Knowledge Futures Group (KFG) and Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society survey and explain open science initiatives and tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first of four episodes in the MITP Open Access series, Travis Rich, PubPub co-founder and project lead, speaks with Edward Finn, founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. They discuss Frankenbook—an open access digital version of the print edition of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein published by the MIT Press in 2017. Learn more abou...

Vivian Berghahn joins to discuss what is broken with the peer review system in general, how it impacts book publishing, and some creative solutions for how it can be rectified. Also, hear the surprising reason why small, independent publishers tend to have more robust quality review processes than big corporate publishers. Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts. Learn mo...

Dr. Joyce Kinkead, Distinguished Professor of English at Utah State University discusses her recent book, A Writing Studies Primer (Broadview Press. 2022). A Carnegie Foundation/CASE US Professor of the Year, Professor Kinkead’s primary scholarly areas are in Writing Studies and Undergraduate Research. She has brought a tremendous amount of her expertise in undergraduate research, writing, and com...

Alessandra Anzani, Editorial Director, Academic Studies Press, talks about the steps that authors need to take to bring their manuscripts to publication. The conversation includes a deep dive into the different kinds of editing a book goes through, including what authors need to do themselves or with external support vs. the editing (some) publishers will do for authors. We also discuss some of th...

Listen to this interview of Cormac Herley, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. We talk about the science of security and as well, about the communication of security science. Cormac Herley : "For very many projects, all through, I sort of have this kind of imaginary dialogue going on with my imagined audience or with representatives of my imagined audience, where what I'm doing on my side...

Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field guide to the memorials, museums, and practices that commemorate white supremacy in the United States—and how to reimagine a more deeply shared cultural infrastructure for the future. Cultural infrastructure has been designed to maintain structures of in...

What do the technical practices, procedures, and systems that have shaped institutions of higher learning in the United States, from the Ivy League and women’s colleges to historically black colleges and land-grant universities, teach us about the production and distribution of knowledge? Addressing media theory, architectural history, and the history of academia, Knowledge Worlds: Media, Material...

Is writing a nonfiction book harder than you thought it would be? This episode explores: What your reader needs from you, and why. Which writing struggles are the most common, and how to fix them. How to make sure your purpose in writing your book isn’t getting lost. Ways to more effectively focus on what you need to say. What to polish up [and how to do that] before you send it off. Why you can s...

Sally Wilson, VP of Publishing at Emerald opens up about the challenges publishers are facing in contending with the onset of the mass adoption of AI tools including ChatGPT, and its ramifications for scholarly publishing. She also talks about the potential positive use cases for ChatGPT for reducing inequality in publishing. In addition, Sally discusses the nature of mission-based publishing and...

To the Collector Belong the Spoils: Modernism and the Art of Appropriation (Cornell UP, 2023) rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice, which flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives. Through a constellation of three author-collectors—Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Carl Einstein—Annie Pfeifer examines the relationship between literar...

Why is giving a presentation so stressful? Is your heart supposed to race? And how do you gain more confidence? This episode explores: How to feel more connected to your audience. Why feeling some “stage-fright” might be a good thing. What your audience needs from you. How to use tools to “break the ice” like asking your listeners a great question. A discussion of the article “How to Cope with Pre...

For over twenty years, James W. Cortada has pioneered research into how information shapes society. In Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), he tells the story of how information evolved since the mid-nineteenth century. Cortada argues that information increased in quantity, became more speciali...

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could have predicted the World Wide Web as we know it today: commercial, isolating, and full of, even fueled by, bias. This was not inevitable.  The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom (U California Press, 2023) argues that mu...

"It is not only for science to give to publishing, but the time has come for publishing to start giving back to science." Tiffany Gasbarrini clarifies the difference between commercial and mission-driven publishers and how publishers who aren't bound by commercial interests alone can make brave ideological publishing decisions. She also makes a passionate case for why telling stories in science ca...

Today’s book is: Engage in Public Scholarship: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication, by Dr. Alex D. Ketchum. Public scholarship—sharing research with audiences outside of academic settings—has become increasingly necessary to counter the rise of misinformation, fill gaps from cuts to traditional media, and increase the reach of important scholarship. Engaging in these efforts often...

Listen to this interview of Elissa Redmiles, Faculty Member and Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems; Founder and Managing Researcher of Human Computing Associates; and Visiting Scholar at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. We talk about reaching people with your research. Elissa Redmiles : "And so, when I think about communicat...

Today I talked to Michelle Chihara, Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Annie Berke, the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. We talked about book reviewing in the age of the Internet and LA literary culture. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Irene Van Rossum and Avi do a deep dive into how Open Access works (or doesn't work) in the context for book manuscripts in the Humanities. Listeners will get a better understanding of transformative agreements and why different countries have entirely different perspectives on the importance and primacy of Open Access. Irene also discusses important and creative OA initiatives such as 'Path to Op...