While most researchers will doubtless obtain the necessary funds to pay to publish from their institution or funder, they nevertheless become paying customers of publishers not, as heretofore, supplicants seeking a free publishing slot. For some this cultural shift proved difficult, with angry researchers reporting that they were being bombarded with spam messages that — they complained — were unwelcome, badly targetted and probably illegal. Richard Poynder has an interesting interview with the CEO of Open Access publisher Sciyo, Aleksandar Lazinica, where the latter states that “author pay formats” should be abandoned.

Obama launched last year a $787bn fiscal stimulus, which includes tax cuts, expansion of unemployment benefits and increased spending in education, health care, infrastructure and the energy sector; European Greece is condemned to fiscal starvation. Weisbrot is co-director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which put out a study in October 2009 of 41 IMF debtor countries. Below is a first excerpt from a very important, crucial editorial by Costas Douzinas in the Guardian, which calls for resistance against EU/IMF imposed policies which have already a record of destroying many economies.

YouTube announced that it would live stream Barack Obama’s State of the Union address - and offered citizens the opportunity to question the Prez through a Google Moderator series. On a roll, they also launched a crowdsourcing campaign , which flips Obama’s presidential slogan ‘Change you can believe in’ into ‘The Change We See’- a call for supportive citizens to upload their snaps of new hospitals and schools built since Labour came to power in 1997. Welcome to eModeration's round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).