E-books and e-publishing | Page 7

and SatireWire).
It allows people to donate money or effect micro-payments, apparently
through its patented one-click system. As far as the web sites are
concerned, there are two major drawbacks: all donations and payments
are refundable within 30 days and Amazon charges them 15 cents per
transaction plus 15(!) percent. By far the worst deal in town. So, why
the fuss? Because of Amazon's customer list. This development
emphasizes the growing realization that one's list of customers -
properly data mined - is the greatest asset, greater even than original
content and more important than distribution channels and digital right
management or asset management applications. Merchants are willing
to pay for access to this ever expanding virtual neighbourhood (even if
they are not made privy to the customer information collected by
Amazon).

The Honour System looks suspiciously similar to the payment system
designed by Amazon for Stephen King's serialized e- novel, "The
Plant". Interesting to note how the needs of authors and publishers are
now in the driver's seat, helping to spur along innovations in business
methods.

Revolt of the Scholars By: Sam Vaknin http://www.realsci.com/
Scindex's Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The price
of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocketed in the last few
years, often way out of the limited means of libraries, universities,
individual scientists and scholars. A "scholarly divide" has opened
between the haves (academic institutions with rich endowments and
well-heeled corporations) and the haves not (all the others).
Paradoxically, access to authoritative and authenticated knowledge has
declined as the number of professional journals has proliferated. This is
not to mention the long (and often crucial) delays in publishing

research results and the shoddy work of many under-paid and
over-worked peer reviewers. The Internet was suppose to change all
that. Originally, a computer network for the exchange of (restricted and
open) research results among scientists and academics in participating
institutions - it was supposed to provide instant publishing, instant
access and instant gratification. It has delivered only partially. Preprints
of academic papers are often placed online by their eager authors and
subjected to peer scrutiny. But this haphazard publishing cottage
industry did nothing to dethrone the print incumbents and their
avaricious pricing. The major missing element is, of course,
respectability. But there are others. No agreed upon content or
knowledge classification method has emerged. Some web sites (such as
Suite101) use the Dewey decimal system. Others invented and
implemented systems of their making. Additionally, one click
publishing technology (such as Webseed's or Blogger's) came to be
identified strictly to non-scholarly material: personal reminiscences,
correspondence, articles and news. Enter Scindex and its Academic
Resource Channel. Established by academics and software experts from
Bulgaria, it epitomizes the tearing down of geographical barriers
heralded by the Internet. But it does much more than that. Scindex is a
whole, self-contained, stand-alone, instant self-publishing and self-
assembly system. Self-publishing systems do exist (for instance,
Purdue University's) - but they incorporate only certain components.
Scindex covers the whole range. Having (freely) registered as a
member, a scientist or a scholar can publish their papers, essays,
research results, articles and comments online. They have to submit an
abstract and use Sciendex's classification ("call") numbers and science
descriptors, arranged in a massive directory available in the "RealSci
Locator". The Locator can be also downloaded and used off-line and its
is surprisingly user-friendly. The submission process itself is totally
automated and very short. The system includes a long series of
thematic journals. These journals self-assemble, in accordance with the
call numbers selected by the submitters. An article submitted with
certain call numbers will automatically be included in the relevant
journals. The fly in the ointment is the absence of peer review. As the
system moves from beta to commercialization, Scindex intends to
address this issue by introducing a system of incentives and

inducements. Reviewers will be granted "credit points" to be applied
against the (paid) publication of their own papers, for instance. Scindex
is the model of things to come. Publishing becomes more and more
automated and knowledge-orientated. Peer reviewed papers become
more outlandishly expensive and irrelevant. Scientists and scholars are
getting impatient and rebellious. The confluence of these three trends
spells - at the least - the creation of a web based universe of parallel and
alternative scholarly publishing.

The Kidnapping of Content By: Sam Vaknin
http://www.plagiarism.org and http://www.Turnitin.com Latin
kidnapped the word "plagion" from ancient Greek and it ended up in
English as "plagiarism". It literally means "to kidnap" - most
commonly, to misappropriate content and wrongly attribute it to
oneself. It is a close kin of piracy. But while the software or content
pirate does not bother to hide or alter the identity of the content's
creator or the software's author - the plagiarist does. Plagiarism is,
therefore, more pernicious than piracy.