MIT Press is making its academic titles free to view as part of a new open access model called Direct to Open, reports Jack Grove for Times Higher Ed. “From 2022, all new scholarly monographs and edited collections published by MIT Press will be openly available on its e-book platform rather than sold directly to libraries or readers as single titles,” writes Grove.
MIT Press and the University of California at Berkeley are launching a journal that will offer peer reviews of Covid-19 research, reports Paul Baskin for Times Higher Education. “We want to align with what the research community is doing and what it wants,” says Amy Brand, director of MIT Press. “But we also want to build in more quality control and more accountability.”
National Geographic reporter Catherine Zuckerman spotlights the work of research scientist Felice Frankel, a photographer who captures images that are intended to captivate and inform viewers about complex scientific advances. Frankel explains that the goal of her new book is to help scientists “understand that beautiful images can engage the public.”
Writing for Inside Higher Ed, research scientist Felice Frankel explains the importance of scientists learning how to communicate their work. “I am convinced that learning how to make technically accurate, interesting and honest images and graphics of science should be part of every scientist’s education,” writes Frankel.
In an article for the Financial Times about the best economics books of 2017, Martin Wolf highlights new works by Prof. Andrew Lo and Prof. Peter Temin. Wolf writes that in Temin’s “important and provocative book, [he] argues that the US is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with ever fewer households in the middle.”
Times Higher Education reporter Nicola Ingram examines Prof. Peter Temin’s latest book, which examines the state of the U.S. economic system. Temin, “provides an engaging commentary on the complexities of policy developments and their impact on workers’ conditions, as well as the problematic voting behaviour that seals their fate.”
In an article for The Atlantic, Gillian B. White writes about Prof. Peter Temin’s new book, “The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy.” White writes that in his book Temin argues that “following decades of growing inequality, America is now left with what is more or less a two-class system.”
In an article for Wired, Liz Stinson writes about the new academic publication launched by the Media Lab and MIT Press, the Journal of Design and Science. According to Stinson, Media Lab Director Joi Ito explained that the goal of the journal was to encourage “ideas presented in the journal to morph and evolve and become interconnected over time.”
John Tirman, executive director of the MIT Center for International Studies, writes for WBUR about opposition within the Republican party to immigration reform. “Opposition to immigration reform is one of the more perplexing symptoms of Washington paralysis nowadays,” says Tirman.
In an article for The Huffington Post, John Tirman argues that the wave of migration from African and Latin American countries is a crisis caused partially by economic and political policies that American and European leaders have played a role in shaping. “Until the first world policies change, the third world will keep coming, at all costs,” Tirman writes.