ATG Hot Topics of the Week

by Jonathan H. Harwell, Rollins College

JSTOR has officially launched its Register & Read program, which allows the public to access a limited number of articles free of charge, in exchange for their personal information.  JSTOR has also published a statement about activist Aaron Swartz, whose death has sparked a flurry of articles and actions among supporters of open data.  Political fallout from Swartz’ criminal investigation continues.

Nicholas Carr published a Wall Street Journal piece about a perceived decline of e-book popularity, and David Ulin at the LA Times has some comments on it.  (Editor’s note: This article was our ATG Article of the Week: Has the e-book bubble burst?)

New guidelines from the National Science Foundation are spurring more discussion of altmetrics for valuing research products.

Those music CD’s you bought from Amazon?  They’ve got the MP3’s ready for you in the cloud.  What could this mean for books?

And finally, who’s the worst publisher?