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

Tadween Publishing brings you the latest news and analysis from the publishing and academic worlds that relate to pedagogy and knowledge production.

Education

The Great Charter Tryout
(Newsweek)

Post-Katrina New Orleans saw a major revamp of its education system, based out of both necessity and need. Charter schools swept into the city to replace the damaged infrastructures of the city’s school system, which was dwindling in quality long before Hurricane Katrina. But are charter schools a good replacement for failing state-run education systems or are they riddled with just as many problems?

From Tweet to Blog Post to Peer-Reviewed Article: How to be a Scholar Now
By Jessie Daniels (Impact of Social Sciences/LSE)

Digital media is changing how scholars interact with each other and their mediums. Jessie Daniels writes for the London School of Economics and Political Science blog Impact of Social Sciences about how scholars can navigate their way through the digital age.

A Surge in Growth for a New Kind of Online Course
By Alan Finder (New York Times)

The New York Times’ Alan Finder examines how MOOCs (massive open online courses) are redefining access to education, as MOOC websites compete in a new market for online education.

All Hail MOOCs! Just Don’t Ask if They Actually Work
By Jon Marcus (TIME)

The popularity of MOOCs (massive open online courses) has skyrocketed, with more universities investing in the idea as a means to close the gap between technology and higher education. Despite their popularity, however, no one has been able to prove whether or not they are fully effective as models of education.

Students at Community Colleges Are Getting Younger and Younger
By James Orbesen (The Atlantic)

According to James Orbesen, Community Colleges are no longer a haven for “non-traditional” students. More and more high school graduates are choosing community colleges over four-year institutions as universities lose their certainty in creating job prospects.

Teacher Status Around the World: How the US Stacks Up
Bt Stacy Teicher Khadaroo (Christian Science Monitor)

The first-ever Global Teacher Status index offers surprising results for how educators are viewed across the world.

Publishing

Books Don’t Want to Be Free: How Publishing Escaped the Cruel Fate of Other Culture Industries
By Evan Hughes (The New Republic)

While the digital revolution continues to revamp many industries and media types (i.e. journalism), the book industry looks like it will stand the test of time, albeit with some adjustments.

You Can Now Pay for Access to JSTOR’s Trove of Scholarly Articles
By Robinson Meyer (The Atlantic)

As open access to academic publications becomes more popular, the online academic catalogue JSTOR announces a new subscription service, JPASS, that will allow users to access journal articles if they are outside of academia.

Spoof Paper Accepted to 157 Open Access Journals
By Ross Pomeroy (Big Think)

While many benefits to open access publishing exist, there are some negatives too. Ross Pomeroy writes about biologist and journalist John Bohannon’s experiment with open access publishing, which had him send out an erroneous science paper to 304 open access journals. Despite the paper being phony, more than half of the journals he submitted to accepted the paper for publication.

Puzzling Peer Reviews 
By Carl Straumsheim (Inside Higher Ed) 

As open access journals become more popular and act as a viable option for scholars seeking to have their work published, their attempts to revamp the peer review process remain unclear.