Morning LinksAre We in a Rut? Explaining the Increasing Homogenization of Scholarly & Scientific Publishing (Scholarly Kitchen)
When the Internet stormed onto the scene, all bets were off — this revolutionary technology with limitless potential would generate all sorts of creativity, from new article presentations, new forms of peer review, new capabilities, and an end to the status quo. Fast-forward a decade and a half, and it seems little has changed when it comes to our intellectual outputs as well as the general business environment.

Digital Signings Help Authors Grow Careers (Digital Book World)
Book signings are an age-old tradition, but is it really necessary to extend this custom to ebooks? Today’s ebook signing services and apps not only make digital signatures are possible, they show that digital autographs can be valuable relationship-building tools for authors.

Booklikes: Do We Need Another Book Discovery Site? (Good e-Reader)
There is no shortage of websites that aim to connect books with readers, and most of them offer some pretty familiar features. Find books, rate books, review books, talk about… books. Occasionally, though, a site comes along whose goal is to bring something new to the book discovery realm.

Udacity & Georgia Tech Offer ‘Massive Online’ Degree (GigaOM)
Udacity and Georgia Tech are teaming up with AT&T to offer an entirely online computer science masters degree that will cost students less than $7,000.

Kindle Daily Deals: Shaun Morey’s Atticus Fish series (and 3 others)

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  1. Re the Scholarly Kitchen piece, here’s what I posted on that site:

    This is not a technology problem. Rather, it is a people problem or, perhaps more precisely a problem of academic culture. That culture is no longer in sync with what modern technologies have wrought.

    I would side with the proposition that adaptive cultural change is unlikely if it were not for the fact that institutions of higher education are at risk of extinction. That risk is due to the high cost and debt of its primary product (credentials) and the emergence of alternatives (MOOCs and their inevitable descendants) that may well evolve into viable alternatives.

    Quite frankly, higher education can no longer afford the luxury of outsourcing scholarly communication to for-profit publishers who return only data to be used in promotion and tenure decisions coupled with exorbitant charges to academic libraries for bundles and binders of subscriptions to the output of the very scholars already in the employ of those institutions.

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