Writing takes work. Whether starting a PhD or working on another published book or manuscript, academic authoring is work and should be treated as a professional endeavor. Margaret Laurence once said, “When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.” Our writing must receive focus and time for us to be successful.
In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we have advice on early career authoring, building an impact and brand, and current trends in publishing. As you embark on the week ahead, give your writing the focus it deserves. After all, everything else is just odd jobs. Happy writing! [Read more…]
In these times of uncertainty, it is common to experience confusion, seek knowledge, and wish for better days ahead, but as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”
Ben Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” As we start the month of April, the first full month of spring, the season of new beginnings, it’s important that we do something. Despite the worldwide call for social isolation and limited activity, we must continue to find ways to progress in our academic efforts.
Did you know that over 1 billion works — including scholarly articles and a growing number of academic textbooks — have been licensed with a Creative Commons (CC) license? Though widely adopted, these continually-updated, legally-enforceable tools remain a mystery to academic writers. Many authors are unaware of the permissions afforded to them through the CC licenses, and many are unaware of permissions afforded to users when a specific CC license is applied to their work by an open-access publisher.
As we come to the close of 
Are you wondering what the recently announced merger between textbook giants McGraw-Hill and Cengage could mean for authors? Join publishing attorney Steve Gillen and textbook author and Monroe College professor Karen Morris for their session at 
This year marks the first in two decades that a significant body of copyrighted work has lost its U.S. copyright protection and fallen into the public domain. Why is that…and what does it mean for scholars and educators?
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is an effort to provide broader access to works held in libraries by creating a digital copy and then lending it out on terms that are ostensibly analogous to the ways that physical copies of books are lent from the library. The practice was initiated last year by the Internet Archive (IA) through its Open Libraries project. CDL.org now appears to be incorporated as a separate entity from the Internet Archive, though IA continues to promote it. 
In a recent TAA webinar, Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of the book, 
