Tadween Roundup: News and Analysis from the Publishing/Academic World

Education

How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang
By Alexandre Afonso

In a slightly nuanced view on how new PhD students seek entry into academia, blogger Alexandre Afonso compares the struggle to make it in academia to a drug gang.

The Great Stratification
By Jeffery J. Williams (Chronicle of Higher Education)

As professorial jobs dwindle, will the idea of the professor be for the history books or will higher education see a new, multi-layered model of the professor emerge?

Employed But…
By Scott Jaschik (Inside Higher Ed)

A study by the American Historical Association finds that PhD students in history often find their way to tenure-track jobs, however, it tends to happen only after years of service as adjunct faculty.

Academia’s Two Tracks
By Keith Hoeller (The New York Times) 

A recent study by Northwestern University finds that adjunct faculty may be better teachers than their senior tenure-track faculty.

Why Adjunct Professors Don’t Just Find Other Jobs
By L.V. Anderson (Slate) 

With an employment future so bleak, should adjunct professors just switch career paths to avoid a low-income and uncertain academic future?

Why do Academics Blog? It’s Not for Public Outreach, Research Shows
By Pat Thomson and Inger Mewburn (The Guardian)

Pat Thomson and Inger Mewburn analyze the value of blogging for academics.

Academics Back Students in Protests Against Economics Teaching
By Phillip Inman (The Guardian)

A group of professors in the United Kingdom lend their support to students protesting against the teaching of neo-classical economics.

Publishing

The Open Access Button: Discovering When and Where Researchers Hit Paywalls
By Bonnie Swoger (Scientific American)

The Open Access Button aims to be a new tool for researchers that tracks when publisher pay walls are encountered and provides information on how to find full text articles.

Academic Publishing Tainted by Scams
By Andrew Masterson (University World News)

New open-access academic journals promising a verified peer-review process to eager young researchers hoping to have their articles published are giving rise to scams and false promises in academic publishing.

College Textbooks Could Be Free Under Legislation Introduced in Congress
By Tyler Kingkade (Huffington Post)

A new bill in the US congress looks to create a grant program for colleges and universities that would expand the use of textbooks made freely available online.

Companies Book Profits from Self-Publishing
By Jeremy Greenfield (USA Today)

Big name publishing companies are beginning to take notice of self-publishing success stories.

Open-Access Group Sanctions Three Publishers After Science ‘Sting’
By David Malakoff (Science)

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) expels two of its members and puts a third on probation after a scam that resulted in the publication of fake and flawed studies.

Amazon’s Airforce
By Craig Morgan Teicher (Publishers Weekly)

Delivery by drone? Amazon unleashes Amazon Prime Air, which claims it can deliver packages in thirty minutes with its own drone delivery service.