Zachary Kendal
@zkendal.bsky.social
Librarian in Naarm / Melbourne, focused on scholarly communications and open access. PhD in literary and cultural studies, examining ethics and science fiction. Knitter and cat enthusiast.
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se
November 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Upon receiving the news that Amsterdam University Press has been bought by Taylor & Francis, I have decided to step down as editor of the book series Transmedia effective immediately.
June 7, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Upon receiving the news that Amsterdam University Press has been bought by Taylor & Francis, I have decided to step down as editor of the book series Transmedia effective immediately.
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Wage theft is baked into our economy across the board -- from delivery drivers to doctors in pubic hospitals www.theage.com.au/national/vic...
Exhausted junior doctors who didn’t claim overtime win $175m in backpay
About 15,000 doctors who worked at 36 Victorian health services since January 2015 will be sent unpaid wages after a landmark legal win.
www.theage.com.au
March 19, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Wage theft is baked into our economy across the board -- from delivery drivers to doctors in pubic hospitals www.theage.com.au/national/vic...
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Good to see this getting some coverage -
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
‘Sign our own death warrant’: Australian writers angry after Melbourne publisher asks them to sign AI agreements
Authors asked to allow Black Inc to use their work for ‘training, testing, validation and the deployment of a machine learning’ system
www.theguardian.com
March 5, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Good to see this getting some coverage -
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Sorry for not consulting the community but we thought they wouldn't be on board with our new business model so we didn't.
www.researchinformation.info/news/clariva...
www.researchinformation.info/news/clariva...
Clarivate issues "letter to the library community" - Research Information
Company apologises for absence of consultation before previous announcement and is "committed to learning from this moment"
www.researchinformation.info
March 4, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Sorry for not consulting the community but we thought they wouldn't be on board with our new business model so we didn't.
www.researchinformation.info/news/clariva...
www.researchinformation.info/news/clariva...
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Difficult to overstate just how concerning the new Australian university definition of antisemitism is — making criticism of Israel quite likely to constitute misconduct under Australian university policies www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/jewish...
Jewish Council of Australia slams universities' adoption of dangerous, politicised and unworkable antisemitism definition
www.jewishcouncil.com.au
February 26, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Difficult to overstate just how concerning the new Australian university definition of antisemitism is — making criticism of Israel quite likely to constitute misconduct under Australian university policies www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/jewish...
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
The big news that flooded my LinkedIn over the weekend. I had to go searching for a nice succinct summary and of course I found it @lseimpactblog.bsky.social
💥New: As Proquest exits the print book market, will we see a new era of big deals for ebooks?
🧑💻Kevin O'Donovan (@lselibrary.bsky.social)
#AcademicSky #ScholComm #Libraries
🧑💻Kevin O'Donovan (@lselibrary.bsky.social)
#AcademicSky #ScholComm #Libraries
As Proquest exits the print book market, will we see a new era of big deals for ebooks?
Proquest recently announced that it will be changing its business model to move away from print textbooks and monographs, solely to ebooks via a subscription-based model similar to a “Big Deal”. Ke…
blogs.lse.ac.uk
February 23, 2025 at 9:36 PM
The big news that flooded my LinkedIn over the weekend. I had to go searching for a nice succinct summary and of course I found it @lseimpactblog.bsky.social
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
“Like how can you be a remotely competent historian without insisting upon a Great Man interpretation that actual historians rejected ages ago?”
Coming around to the view that a certain kind of narcissist simply needs Musk to be a genius rather than a fraud, because they want to believe there’s a hereditary Brahmin class of accomplished, beautiful minds—and that they’re a part of that class.
February 22, 2025 at 8:41 PM
“Like how can you be a remotely competent historian without insisting upon a Great Man interpretation that actual historians rejected ages ago?”
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
from “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia Butler
February 16, 2025 at 2:28 PM
from “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia Butler
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Very worrying. There is of course a serious problem with anti-semitism in Australian society. But changing the definition of anti-semitism to outlaw protests by university students against the conflict in Gaza will do nothing to stop hatred in our community www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Inquiry urges Australian universities to ‘closely align’ with controversial definition of antisemitism
Report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns finds there is an ‘urgent need for reform’ to ensure safety of Jewish students
www.theguardian.com
February 12, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Very worrying. There is of course a serious problem with anti-semitism in Australian society. But changing the definition of anti-semitism to outlaw protests by university students against the conflict in Gaza will do nothing to stop hatred in our community www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
Australia’s Vice-Chancellors – the ‘CEOs’ of today’s corporatised university sector – are among the highest paid in the world.
Adjusting for inflation, Vice-Chancellors were paid about $300,000 per year in 1985; today’s figure is over $1 million.
@jack-thrower.bsky.social writes:
#auspol
Adjusting for inflation, Vice-Chancellors were paid about $300,000 per year in 1985; today’s figure is over $1 million.
@jack-thrower.bsky.social writes:
#auspol
Uni Vice-Chancellors keep getting richer while those who teach and research are left behind.
The pay of university Vice-Chancellors has soared well beyond that of the teaching staff for no improvement in management.
australiainstitute.org.au
February 3, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Australia’s Vice-Chancellors – the ‘CEOs’ of today’s corporatised university sector – are among the highest paid in the world.
Adjusting for inflation, Vice-Chancellors were paid about $300,000 per year in 1985; today’s figure is over $1 million.
@jack-thrower.bsky.social writes:
#auspol
Adjusting for inflation, Vice-Chancellors were paid about $300,000 per year in 1985; today’s figure is over $1 million.
@jack-thrower.bsky.social writes:
#auspol
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
This is an extreme version of what the Coalition did for years (and still indulges in). Limiting knowledge and human advancement because of feels
Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.
It’s official: all funding requests made on Tuesday by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.
January 30, 2025 at 9:53 PM
This is an extreme version of what the Coalition did for years (and still indulges in). Limiting knowledge and human advancement because of feels
Reposted by Zachary Kendal
OpenAI has to be the most insufferable company in the world. They can steal from the whole world & guzzle all resources. But no one can give them a taste of their own medicine even a little bit.
How long till they use this to say give us even more resources & this is why we can't release anything.
How long till they use this to say give us even more resources & this is why we can't release anything.
OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
https://www.ft.com/content/a0dfedd1-5255-4fa9-8ccc-1fe01de87ea6
https://www.ft.com/content/a0dfedd1-5255-4fa9-8ccc-1fe01de87ea6
OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft
www.ft.com
January 29, 2025 at 5:07 AM
OpenAI has to be the most insufferable company in the world. They can steal from the whole world & guzzle all resources. But no one can give them a taste of their own medicine even a little bit.
How long till they use this to say give us even more resources & this is why we can't release anything.
How long till they use this to say give us even more resources & this is why we can't release anything.
Another example of how millions of dollars of taxpayer money goes to fund content that's locked behind paywalls. This is of course rampant in academia and scholarly publishing, but I'd not given much thought to how it also plays out in the film & TV space. Excellent article.
Australia’s drama dilemma: how taxpayers foot the bill for content that ends up locked behind paywalls. 42% of the A$803 million spent on producing Australian TV drama in 2023–24 was funded by taxpayers.
theconversation.com/australias-d...
theconversation.com/australias-d...
Australia’s drama dilemma: how taxpayers foot the bill for content that ends up locked behind paywalls
Commercial TV broadcasters once commissioned around 300 hours of Australian drama each year. Last year, they commissioned just nine hours of new, non-soap drama.
theconversation.com
January 29, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Another example of how millions of dollars of taxpayer money goes to fund content that's locked behind paywalls. This is of course rampant in academia and scholarly publishing, but I'd not given much thought to how it also plays out in the film & TV space. Excellent article.