Libraries Face a Future of Open Access
Joseph Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2018/05/23
This post crosses the line and the publishers should consider retracting it. Joseph Esposito accuses librarians of alliance with sites as Sci-Hub and ResearchGate in order to enforce demands such as those made by Swedish libraries: "open access to all articles in Elsevier journals published by researchers affiliated to member organisations; reading access for member organisations to all of Elsevier’s journal content; and a 'sustainable price model that enables a transition to open access'." More...

No one’s ready for GDPR
Sarah Jeong, The Verge, 2018/05/23
After four years of deliberation and two years of preparation, as the deadline for GDPR implementation approaches in a matter of days, the inevitable caterwauls of "nobody is ready for GDPR" have commenced. Oh, there are complaints: the law is too complex, business systems are too complex, the penalties are too harsh. And on and on. More...

Self-Proclaimed Alternative to College Closes After a Year
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/05/23
This is the story of MissionU, an alternative college that closed after one year and one 25-person cohort in data analytics and business intelligence. It focused on one year of practical experience rather than a four year program, and it didn't charge tuition; students would pay 15% of their income once they made more than $50 per year. More...

How To Engage In The Comments: A Journalist’s Guide
Alexandra Bowen, The Coral Project, 2018/05/23
Although addressed to journalists, this article is nonetheless a good guide for educators as well. It describes why you should engage with comments, how to respond, and how to deal with negative or abusive comments. More...

Will Blockchains Revolutionize Education?
David McArthur, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/05/23
The idea of blockchain has caught the imagination of decision-makers recently not only in finance but also in government and education. This article is a pretty good overview of how blockchain technologies might be applied in education (specifically, to support competencies and credentials, beginning maybe with badges), along with an outline of some of the costs and limitations of the technology. More...

Journals Lose Citations to Preprint Servers
Phil Davis, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2018/05/21
"It’s hard to understand why an author would still cite the preprint years after it has been formally published in a journal," writes Phil Davis. More...

Defining (and Driving) Collaboration
Jordan Lippman, Janine Perri, Getting Smart, 2018/05/21
This is a preview of a Collaboration Nation survey that will be published this summer. The preview finding being released is that educators tend to blame problems in collaboration on the student rather than on factors related to the class or the school system. More...

Lynda.com to benefit every student, instructor and staff
eCampusOntario, Government of Ontario, 2018/05/21
This is a master stroke on the part of both Microsoft (which owns LinkedIn and Lynda) and eCampus Ontario. The news is that eCampus Ontario will "provide all students, instructors and staff at member institutions with access to the full suite of Lynda.com content at no cost for three years to September 21, 2020." This is a huge data-collection opportunity for Microsoft, not to mention the benefit from a million subscriptions, which if purchased individually would cost more than $250 million a year. More...

D-Cent
European Union, 2018/05/21
D-CENT (Decentralised Citizens ENgagement Technologies) is "a Europe-wide project developing the next generation of open source, distributed, and privacy-aware tools for direct democracy and economic empowerment." "The EU-funded project started in October 2013 and ended in May 2016." Here's the white paper (15 page PDF). More...

Blockchain for Peer Review
David Rosenthal, DSHR's Blog, 2018/05/21
This article describes an initiative in the UK called Blockchain for Peer Review, " a protocol where information about peer review activities (submitted by publishers) are stored on a blockchain." Although this may appear to make sense, argues  David Rosenthal, "implementing it with a blockchain is effectively impossible" because of GDPR. More...