The Scholarly Kitchen

2 days ago | scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org | David Crotty

Gotta love a good academic controversy! The video below looks into perhaps the most intense and raging arguments in the field of linguistics, beginning with Noam Chomsky’s theories from the 1950s and 1960s suggesting that humans share a Universal Grammar (UG) that stems from the structure and functions that have evolved in the human brain. This theory is still hotly debated, and takes on even more interesting parameters in the age of artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs).

1 week ago | scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org | David Crotty

I write this post about halfway through the 2025 Society for Scholarly Publishing meeting, held this year in Baltimore. Some impressions below:First, the good news: some of the views from the meeting hotel are spectacular, particularly for a baseball fan:Home run celebrations aside, the vibe of this year’s meeting is different from any I’ve seen in the 15 or so years I’ve attended.

1 week ago | scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org | Todd Carpenter

Since the launch of the Journal Impact Factor half a century ago in 1975, the bibliometric assessment of research outputs has proven a lasting and important — if flawed — method of quantifying impact. When considering new or non-traditional output forms, trying to ascertain their use through mentions in the literature has been a challenging endeavor. While today there are tools to facilitate this process at scale, applying these remains a significant challenge.

2 weeks ago | scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org | David Crotty

We are off on Monday for the US Memorial Day holiday. Traditionally, this holiday marks the beginning of the summer season, and so I, along with The Hold Steady below, will wish you a Constructive Summer. See you on Tuesday (and hopefully thereafter in Baltimore for the beginning of the SSP Annual Meeting).

3 weeks ago | scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org | David Crotty

One of my favorite Friday posts we’ve done at The Scholarly Kitchen featured a video of kids looking at the original iPod, in which every single one of them referred to it as a “phone” despite it not having any functionality toward making calls. Language evolves, and now “phone” essentially means any sort of small computer one carries around on one’s person. But that was (gulp) ten years ago.