'Mammon' is defined in Google as "wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion." The word originates as the Hebrew expression for 'money'. In this paper the authors argue that "scholarly organizations, in particular learned societies, are now facing a golden opportunity ... of creating a truly public square for scholarly discourse, impervious to private takeover." Could a federated approach to scholarly publishing succeed, or do we need an entity like CORE to aggregate publications centrally? Back in the eduSource days I argued strenuously for aggregators; today I'm less certain. I will say that in today's debates a lot of old issues surface - for example, how do you support discovery across a decentralized network without overwhelming small instances? How can third party apps add value to these searches? But by contrast: how can you have a centralized network without the commercial interests and advertisers turning the gold into dross? It doesn't seem possible.
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