I'm delighted to share the news that my paper on reading analytics and
privacy has been published in First Monday this month. It's titled "The
Rise of Reading Analytics and the Emerging Calculus of Reader Privacy
in the Digital World."

The the article is at

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7414

It's a long piece; some of you may know this has been several years in
preparation, and I hope that the CNI community finds it interesting.
I've pasted the abstract below:

This paper studies emerging technologies for tracking reading
behaviors (“reading analytics”) and their implications for reader
privacy, attempting to place them in a historical context. It discusses
what data is being collected, to whom it is available, and how it
might be used by various interested parties (including authors). I
explore means of tracking what’s being read, who is doing the
reading, and how readers discover what they read. The paper includes
two case studies: mass-market e-books (both directly acquired by
readers and mediated by libraries) and scholarly journals (usually
mediated by academic libraries); in the latter case I also provide
examples of the implications of various authentication, authorization
and access management practices on reader privacy. While legal issues
are touched upon, the focus is generally pragmatic, emphasizing
technology and marketplace practices. The article illustrates the way
reader privacy concerns are shifting from government to commercial
surveillance, and the interactions between government and the private
sector in this area. The paper emphasizes U.S.-based developments.



As an aside, it's a great pleasure to publish in First Monday again. I
cannot recommend this highly enough as a great venue for disseminating
scholarly work, and I'd urge readers to give it  serious consideration
as a place to publish. They've been instrumental in both improving and
making available what I think is some of my best work, and are alway a
joy to work with.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI