Author Archives: Martin Haspelmath

Beyond the zombies: How we might get out of the science publication disaster

By now, everyone knows that scholarly publication is serious trouble. The actual costs of disseminating content have plummeted drastically, and yet academic institutions are paying more and more to the commercial publishers. This feels deeply wrong – as if Facebook … Continue reading

Posted in Open Access | Leave a comment

What should I do with my draft paper? Hide it, upload to Academia, or upload to Zenodo?

In the 20th century, when I had a draft paper, I might make a few copies and share them with close colleagues, but the main action would be send it anonymously to a journal – in paper. In the modern … Continue reading

Posted in Open Access | 2 Comments

We don’t need open access, but scholar-owned publication brands

Suppose that each time you have your bike repaired, the bike shop raises its prices for the other customers, and for you, too – and the other bike shops are not differemt. In such an absurd situation, wouldn’t you rather … Continue reading

Posted in Open Access | 5 Comments

Style rules explained (I): Title case (special capitalization) and related issues

The Generic Style Rules for Linguistics, whose widespread adoption will make linguistics publication more efficient, normally adopt the most widely used practices, but sometimes it is not so easy to say which practice is the most widespread, and in this … Continue reading

Posted in Reviewing Process | 1 Comment

Is our scholarship based on illegal foundations?

Publishing used to be largely about dissemination – printing books and journals and shipping the copies to readers. This changed radically in the 21st century, where dissemination is virtually cost-free: Publishing is now primarily selection of content, plus the erecting … Continue reading

Posted in Open Access | 1 Comment