"The Geyser" Continues to Inpsire

I just entered my 5th year of writing “The Geyser,” the subscription-based e-newsletter and successor to “The Scholarly Kitchen” (for me at least).

Due to this anniversary, a big influx of renewals came, along with a lot of nice notes from subscribers, who took the time to mention how much they enjoy “The Geyser,” find its perspective refreshing as one of the few that doesn’t simply toe the party line and actually tries to find out facts and the truth in an unbiased way, and treats its subjects fairly if firmly (no mercy, no malice, as Scott Galloway says).

Each year, this reminds me why it’s so important that scholarly publishing have independent thinkers and voices. Over the past 20-25 years, the homogeneity of OA and open thinking and business model constraints have driven out the diversity of thought and experimentation that once made digital publishing in the sciences so exciting and interesting. Reduced to processing papers and negotiating with funders, scholarly publishing is a shadow of its former self, with large commercial interests overshadowing the communities of scholars and their publishing and editorial leaders.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and there are clear downsides to these approaches. For what it’s worth, I’ll continue to point out these flaws, and suggest better alternatives. After all, that’s what Caldera’s all about — making things better, bringing new and better ideas forward, and not accepting the status quo when a better alternative exists.

Caldera Is Active Again

With the announcement of RedLink’s acquisition by Wiley/Atypon, I’m pleased to also announce that Caldera Publishing Solutions is active again, after 3+ years of dormancy.

Of course, the release of our newsletter — “The Geyser” — in October 2018 was the first rumbling that something was coming.

Caldera Publishing Solutions was launched in 2016 with the mission of providing scholarly and scientific publishers — as well as other information purveyors — with future-focused consulting services. We emphasize editorial development, product development, market assessment, customer insights, and strategic synthesis. We have some unique approaches that help develop strategies that recognize complexity and size-up viability from the start.

The band is back together, too, with Kent Anderson and Nicola Poser at Caldera after bringing RedLink to the exit mentioned above. After more than three years of being committed to one organization, we’re both looking forward to serving a multitude of clients once again. We’re also building a network of affiliated researchers and consultants to ensure we have the bandwidth to do a variety of projects in parallel.

If you have any needs for consulting services, please keep us in mind.

In the meantime, if you or your organization wish to get some of our insights “on the cheap,” you can subscribe to “The Geyser.” We have discounts for organizational or group subscriptions, as well.

Please inquire at contact@caldera-publishing.com.

Thanks.