The Scholar’s Space

There is another contender in the “we can beat Google” line up. Cuil is the name, and it’s pronounced ‘cool’ or maybe ‘coo-il’ (2 syllables).  Claiming to be bigger than Google,  and saying that they have some nifty new methods for digging deeper into recovered pages to provide more information, Cuil people have certainly staked out some big territory. The founders are ex-Google employees who left the Mother Church for various  reasons, so they  have a more than ordinary acquaintance with what goes on inside.  I’m all for competition, and I think the newcomers should have their shot. But, judging from some of the comments on library discussion lists, the advantages of Cuil are not obvious and the company has some tweaking to do.  Cuil also displays its results in a different fashion, and that novelty may be worth something to somebody.  The desert floor is littered with the bones of Google wannabees, so it’s better not to excite oneself needlessly, and just await the outcome.

Newspapers are facing tough times. It’s  not just a phenomenon here in North America, it’s something found in, oh say, France as well. In Monday’s New York Times there was an article about an experiment underway in which a small number of readers were given an device which allows them to download a digital version of, I think, four newspapers.  The readers can use a stylus to tap for their paper of choice, and then tap their way through the various stories, columns, features or whatever items they please. France Telecom is the nation’s telecommunications agency, and it is supporting the product to see whether users take to it and what features about it they like and don’t like. The effort goes under the English name of “Read and Go”.  The reader is about laptop size, and of course you can’t use it for all the marvelous secondary purposes we have assigned to old newspapers: swatting flies,  wrapping nasty, smelly stuff,  using them to wash windows and so on. But, theorists have been saying that a “re-usable” newspaper, based on a re-chargeable (literally) digital paper-like substrate was the way forward. Now, somebody will put this to the test.  In the end, it’s what people…customers…want and do that counts.  In the same issue of the Times, the CEO of Esquire states his view that print is about to go into a period of glorious innovation. The magazine will soon appear with a specially designed mini-battery inserted into the front cover, to make  possible various dynamic effects. It’s an interesting concept, and of particular relevance to publishers of scientific and technical materials, in that it opens the possibility of supplementing journal articles with supplementary graphics of different kinds.  Think of the cover art of Science or  Cell or Nature being used to support and extend one of the major articles in that issue with slick visualizations.

If newspapers are going under because people are lazy and stupid and don’t want to read, no amount of digital fiddling will save them.  If people are abandoning them for other media, then there’s a chance to lure the readers back.  We shall see.

I blogged on this atLibraryLink, but I think it’s worth a note here also. The July 4 issue of Science published an editorial on peer review and how it’s faring.  I found it largely predictable. The usual expressions of  PR’s  importance are there, right up front. There is also some discussion of “inefficiencies” in the process. I’ll say, when the same manuscript can go through as many as eight different reviews.  And it’s said that too many scientists want to publish in the top tier, high impact journals, which seems to surprise the authors for some reason.  There are recommendations, but they are of so anodyne a character that you wonder why anyone bothered to write them down. Researchers are being goaded by their evaluators to publish in high impact journals, or else. It’s not a matter of mis-identifying which journals are suitable, as the editorial’s authors seem to suggest, and it’s not a question of the hubris of younger scientists wanting to publish in Science and not in Transylvanian Journal of Hematology.   The same issue features a letter from some investigators who see themselves compelled to perform numerous “referee experiments”, that is , tests suggested during the review process, even though this delays publication, distracts the team, and wastes time. But, the advantages of publishing in a top tier journal force everybody to hold their  noses and do what the referees suggested.

There is a new, or newish, blog on scholarly publication. It’s called The Scholarly Kitchen; what’s hot and cooking in scholarly publishing. It originates in the Society for Scholarly Publishing, and  has been going for some months now.  I just learned about it, and after a quick look, decided to add it to my regulars.  Going back and examining some of the earlier posts seems to be a good idea too, because I noted some grabbers as I was flying through prior messages.  Another blog on scholarly publication seems to produce the same reaction as the announcement of another Mexican restaurant:  what are they going to serve that isn’t on offer someplace else, better and cheaper? But, in both cases, the only answer is to try it. So, I will. Here is the link:
Kitchen