Digital University/Library Presses, Part 8: Monash University ePress

Established in 2003, the Monash University ePress publishes both digital scholarly books and journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Some works are also available in print format via print-on-demand technology.

The aims of the press are to:

  • advance scholarly communication by reducing the costs of and barriers to scholarly publications
  • provide a more direct link between readers and writers of scholarly material
  • promote the best of Monash University’s research activities and intellectual capital
  • provide a sustainable electronic publishing model that facilitates the identification and pursuit of commercial opportunities
  • use innovative information technology to capture, publish, retrieve, read and present scholarly material
  • lead by example and provide a body of expertise within the university

The press, which charges for its publications, has a two-year embargo period after which materials are freely accessible; however, access may be through a different interface than paid content. The press issues digital documents in either or both HTML and PDF formats, depending on the publication. There is a time-limited pay per article/chapter option. Use of content by individuals is governed by a license agreement as is use by institutions.

Monash University ePress manager Michele Sabto outlines the economic model of the press as follows:

The ePress has also now moved towards a fee-for-service model that guarantees a minimum income from each title, underwritten by the author/journal editor. Basically it is a publication fee offset by sales income.

She further describes the involvement of the press in journal editorial functions as follows:

The ePress does not undertake the traditional publishing functions of copyediting or managing the submission and refereeing process: there are no inhouse journal editors or copyeditors. The academics editing the journals are responsible for managing these functions themselves, with support from the ePress that includes high-level editorial advice, an online submission and refereeing system, and assistance with scheduling and manuscript preparation to ePress specifications. The ePress produces proofs and takes in proof corrections, publishes online and in print and markets and sells the journals. The ePress doesn’t deal directly with authors of individual articles—the sole ePress contact for journals is the journal’s editor.

There two full-time staff members and a twelve-member advisory board that "advises on operational and strategic questions, but also makes the final call on the decision to publish particular titles."

The press currently publishes four journals:

  • Applied GIS, which is "an online peer-reviewed ejournal that publishes articles covering specific applications of GIS, demonstrating the deployment of spatial sciences in a wide range of environmental and social science contexts."
  • Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, which is "the journal of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia."
  • History Australia, which is "the official journal of the Australian Historical Association (AHA), a professional association of historians in Australia which links practitioners in universities and schools with those in museums, galleries and the heritage industry."
  • Monash Business Review, which "publishes the latest thinking and research from leading Australian and international academics and business executives, and identifies major trends influencing and shaping business."

It also publishes four books:

For further information, see "A University ePress" by Michele Sabto or the "About Monash University ePress" Web page.

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Digital University/Library Presses, Part 7: HighWire Press

Established in 1995, Stanford University Libraries’ HighWire Press publishes over 967 journals in digital form, with more planned for future release. Working with scientific societies and other partners, the press focuses on producing high-impact STM (science, technology, and medicine) digital journals. It makes a significant portion of the articles it publishes freely available:

As of 8/30/06, we are assisting in the online publication of 1,403,007 free full-text articles and 3,648,630 total articles. There are 22 sites with free trial periods, and 34 completely free sites. 223 sites have free back issues, and 851 sites have pay per view!

The press provides sophisticated digital publishing services:

Under the guidance of its publishing partners, HighWire’s approach to online publishing of scholarly journals is not simply to mount electronic images of printed pages; rather, by adding links among authors, articles and citations, advanced searching capabilities, high-resolution images and multimedia, and interactivity, the electronic versions provide added dimensions to the information provided in the printed journals.

More information about these digital publishing services is available, such as the Web page about journal hosting services and the Bench>Press Web page.

The My HighWire Press page offers registered users a wide variety of customized journal access features, such as a favorite journals page and e-mail or RSS table of contents alerts.

Headed by Michael A. Keller, the press has a large staff, which appears to include a significant number of dog owners.

Given its long history and its success, a number of articles have been written about the HighWire Press.

Prior postings on this topic:

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (8/25/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "The Acquisition of Open Access Research Articles"; "The Economics of Open Access Publishing"; Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit 292; "Let’s Get it Started!"; Lifecycle Information for E-Literature: A Summary from the LIFE Project Report Produced for the LIFE Conference 20 April 2006, Report of the Task Force on Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics; "Unlocking Scholarly Access: ETDs, Institutional Repositories and Creators: Highlights of ETD 2006, the 9th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations"; and "What Deep Log Analysis Tells Us about the Impact of Big Deals: Case Study OhioLINK."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans Flashback posting.

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 6: UTSePress

Established in January 2004, the University of Technology, Sydney’s UTSePress publishes e-journals and conference proceedings. The university’s DSpace institutional repository is also under the UTSePress.

There is a Steering Group whose role is to:

  1. Establish the scope of UTSePress, making recommendations on organisational structure including the terms of reference and composition of the UTSePress Board.
  2. Take steps to protect the name UTSePress, relevant Internet domains and any associated intellectual property.
  3. Develop the initial guidelines for the operation of UTSePress including the criteria for approval of imprints and publications.
  4. Identify the initial imprints and publications of UTSePress.
  5. Guide the first phase of the development of the infrastructure for UTSePress including the establishment of the Technical Committee.
  6. Make any other necessary recommendations for the future operation and development of UTSePress.

The UTSePress uses Open Journal Systems to publish five e-journals:

  • African Journal of Information & Communication Technology, which is "an international journal providing a publication vehicle for coverage of topics of interest to those involved in computing, communication networks, electronic communications, information technology systems and Bioinformatics." It is peer reviewed.
  • Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, which is "a fully peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the publishing of scholarly articles from practitioners of international, regional, area, migration and ethnic studies, and it is also dedicated to providing a space for the work of cultural producers interested in the internationalization of cultures."
  • Public History Review, which "is concerned with nature and forms of public history: with ideas as to what constitutes the ‘public’ in history making, with the means by which history is communicated to a range of audiences and with the ways in which the past operates in the present." It is peer reviewed.
  • Transforming Cultures eJournal, which is "a journal for the study of cultural and social transformations." It is peer reviewed.
  • Unscrunched, which "publishes writing from students in the Writing and Cultural Studies Area of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney."

The copyright statements for these e-journals vary. The most common one says:

Authors submitting a paper to UTSePress publications agree to assign a limited license to UTSePress if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. This license allows UTSePress to publish a manuscript in a given issue.

Articles published by UTSePress are protected by copyright which is retained by the authors who assert their moral rights. Authors control translation and reproduction rights to their works published by UTSePress.

UTSePress publications are copyright and all rights are reserved worldwide. Downloads of specific portions of them are permitted for personal use only, not for commercial use or resale. Permissions to reprint or use any materials should be directed to UTSePress.

The UTSePress has published one conference proceeding: International Conference on Wireless Broadband and Ultra Wideband Communications. It appears that Open Conference Systems is being used to support this function.

These documents provide further information about the UTSePress: (1) "UTSePress Breaks Boundaries in Online Publishing" (press release) and (2) "UTSePress: UTS Advancing Scholarly Publication."

Prior postings on this topic:

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 5: Internet-First University Press

Established in January 2004, Cornell University’s Internet-First University Press is described as follows:

These materials are being published as part of a new approach to scholarly publishing. The manuscripts and videos are freely available from this Internet-First University Press repository within DSpace at Cornell University.

These online materials are available on an open access basis, without fees or restrictions on personal use. All mass reproduction, even for educational or not-for-profit use, requires permission and license.

There are Internet-First University Press DSpace collections for books and articles, multimedia and videos, and undergraduate scholarly publications. There is a print-on-demand option for books and articles.

There are DSpace sub-communities for journals and symposia, workshops, and conferences. One e-journal is published by Internet-First University Press, the CIGR E-Journal (most current volume dated 2005). A print journal, Engineering Quarterly, has been digitized and made available.

There appears to be no further information about the Internet-First University Press at its DSpace site; however, the "Internet-First Publishing Project at Cornell Offers New and Old Books Free Online or to Be Printed on Demand" press release provides further background information.

Prior postings on this topic:

ARL Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit

The Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit is now available from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). This document presents the results of a thirty-eight-question survey of 123 ARL members in early 2006 about their institutional repositories practices and plans. The survey response rate was 71% (87 out of 123 ARL members responded). The front matter and nine-page Executive Summary are freely available. The document also presents detailed question-by-question results, a list of respondent institutions, representative documents from institutions, and a bibliography. It is 176 pages long.

Here is the bibliographic information: University of Houston Libraries Institutional Repository Task Force. Institutional Repositories. SPEC Kit 292. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2006. ISBN: 1-59407-708-8.

The members of the University of Houston Libraries Institutional Repository Task Force who authored the document were Charles W. Bailey, Jr. (Chair); Karen Coombs; Jill Emery (now at UT Austin); Anne Mitchell; Chris Morris; Spencer Simons; and Robert Wright.

The creation of a SPEC Kit is a highly collaborative process. SPEC Kit Editor Lee Anne George and other ARL staff worked with the authors to refine the survey questions, mounted the Web survey, analyzed the data in SPSS, created a preliminary summary of survey question responses, and edited and formatted the final document. Given the amount of data that the survey generated, this was no small task. The authors would like to thank the ARL team for their hard work on the SPEC Kit.

Although the Executive Summary is much longer than the typical one (over 5,100 words vs. about 1,500 words), it should not be mistaken for a highly analytic research article. Its goal was to try to describe the survey’s main findings, which was quite challenging given the amount of survey data available. The full data is available in the "Survey Questions and Responses" section of the SPEC Kit.

Here are some quick survey results:

  • Thirty-seven ARL institutions (43% of respondents) had an operational IR (we called these respondents implementers), 31 (35%) were planning one by 2007, and 19 (22%) had no IR plans.
  • Looked at from the perspective of all 123 ARL members, 30% had an operational IR and, by 2007, that figure may reach 55%.
  • The mean cost of IR implementation was $182,550.
  • The mean annual IR operation cost was $113,543.
  • Most implementers did not have a dedicated budget for either start-up costs (56%) or ongoing operations (52%).
  • The vast majority of implementers identified first-level IR support units that had a library reporting line vs. one that had a campus IT or other campus unit reporting line.
  • DSpace was by far the most commonly used system: 20 implementers used it exclusively and 3 used it in combination with other systems.
  • Proquest DigitalCommons (or the Bepress software it is based on) was the second choice of implementers: 7 implementers used this system.
  • While 28% of implementers have made no IR software modifications to enhance its functionality, 22% have made frequent changes to do so and 17% have made major modifications to the software.
  • Only 41% of implementers had no review of deposited documents. While review by designated departmental or unit officials was the most common method (35%), IR staff reviewed documents 21% of the time.
  • In a check all that apply question, 60% of implementers said that IR staff entered simple metadata for authorized users and 57% said that they enhanced such data. Thirty-one percent said that they cataloged IR materials completely using local standards.
  • In another check all that apply question, implementers clearly indicated that IR and library staff use a variety of strategies to recruit content: 83% made presentations to faculty and others, 78% identified and encouraged likely depositors, 78% had library subject specialists act as advocates, 64% offered to deposit materials for authors, and 50% offered to digitize materials and deposit them.
  • The most common digital preservation arrangement for implementers (47%) was to accept any file type, but only preserve specified file types using data migration and other techniques. The next most common arrangement (26%) was to accept and preserve any file type.
  • The mean number of digital objects in implementers’ IRs was 3,844.

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 4: Singapore E-Press

Launched in September 2004, the Singapore E-Press is part of National University of Singapore Publishing. It "aims to provide a platform for online, open-access publications from Singapore-based research teams."

Using Open Journal Systems for many of its publications, the Singapore E-Press publishes electronic journals, supplemental material to books, and reference material.

The current publications of the press are:

Prior postings on this topic:

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 3: Newfound Press

The editorial policy of the Newfound Press states that:

Newfound Press is a digital imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries. The purpose of Newfound Press is to advance the frontiers of learning by providing peer-reviewed, open access to theoretical, intellectual, practical, and scholarly works in all disciplines, encompassing scientific research, humanistic scholarship, and artistic creation. Newfound Press invests in authors the responsibility for appearance and format of the content. The audience for Newfound Press publications includes researchers, practitioners, students, and other scholars in virtually any subject.

The Newfound Press publishes books, journals, and multimedia. It provides authors with submission guidelines for various types of works as well as an FAQ. It has an Advisory Board.

The Newfound Press Web site doesn’t indicate when it was established, but appears from an Open Access News posting that it was launched in March 2006. So far, it has published a digital book.

Copyright statements for works are mandatory, and they "should include a statement of ownership, an invitation to reproduce content under certain conditions, and a warning about possible infringements." The Newfound Press provides potential authors with sample license language and a link to the Creative Commons Web site.

Prior postings on this topic:

Overcoming Obstacles to Launching and Sustaining Non-Traditional-Publisher Open Access Journals

As I noted in "What Is Open Access?," there is a fairly long history of non-traditional publishers producing free electronic journals:

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Internet had developed to the point that scholars began to publish free digital journals utilizing existing institutional infrastructure and volunteer labor (e.g., EJournal, PostModern Culture, and The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. These journals were not intended to generate income; they were "no-profit" journals. Although many of these journals allowed authors to retain their copyrights and they had liberal copyright statements regarding noncommercial use, they preceded by a decade or more the Creative Commons, and, consequently, did not embody that kind of copyright stance. While some of these journals ceased publication and others were transformed into non-profit ventures, they provided a model that others followed, especially after the popularization of the Internet began in the mid-1990s, which followed the earlier introduction of Web browsers. In recent years, the availability of free open source journal management and publishing systems, such as the Open Journal Systems, further simplified and streamlined digital journal publishing, fueling additional growth in this area. Now, a wide variety of academic departments or schools, institutes and research centers, libraries, professional associations, scholars, and others publish digital journals, a subset of which comply with the strictest definition of an open access journal and a larger subset which comply with the looser definition of an open access journal as a free journal. Since these diverse "publishers" would have been unlikely to be engaged in this activity without facilitating digital technologies and tools, I refer to them as "non-traditional publishers." Many of them are also "no-profit" publishers as well.

Given open source digital journal publishing systems, the idea of starting an OA journal has become more attractive than it was in the days when digital journals required a fair amount of specialized, labor-intensive technical support. However, the obstacles that non-traditional-publisher OA journals (hereafter called NTP OA journals) face are not primarily technical.

Here are some issues that NTP OA journals can face:

  • NTP OA journals are new journals. New journals have much more difficulty attracting authors, especially high-visibility authors, than established journals. Therefore, they also have more difficulty attracting readers, especially scholars who will cite their articles. This is a vicious circle. There are three key strategies for overcoming this problem: (1) focus your journal on a specialized, emerging topic of great interest that is not covered or not well covered by existing journals; (2) establish a high visibility editorial team and editorial board; and (3) actively recruit articles from authors.
  • NTP OA journals are digital-only journals. Certainly there is less prejudice against digital-only journals today than in the late 1980s; however, there may still be residual feelings by some scholars that digital journals are not "real" journals, and many scholars may have legitimate concerns about whether these journals will be available 10, 20, 30 or more years into the future. Regarding the latter point, it is highly desirable to have a convincing digital preservation strategy in mind, such as LOCKSS (a growing number of academic libraries are using this system to preserve digital journals). Authors who must face the prejudices of tenure committees against digital journals may be reluctant to publish in them or wish that they hadn’t when facing a promotion review. Provosts, department chairs, and others need to tackle the difficult issue of separating the digital wheat from the chaff so that junior faculty can be comfortable publishing in sanctioned NTP OA journals in their disciplines.
  • NTP OA journals often lack strong "branding." Conventional journal publishers typically have well-established reputations and they invest significant resources in promoting their journals, especially new journals.
  • NTP OA journals typically publish fewer articles than their conventional counterparts. In my view, this is not an intrinsic problem, but it can lead to negative perceptions of these journals.
  • NTP OA journals may not be indexed in traditional disciplinary indexing and abstracting services, they may lack standard identifiers (ISSN numbers), and they may not be cataloged by libraries in systems such as the OCLC Online Union Catalog (now publicly available as WorldCat). Fortunately, the latter two issues can be fairly easily addressed by NTP OA journal editors working with the National Serials Data Program at the Library of Congress and their local libraries; getting in I&A systems may require both time (to demonstrate that the journal warrants indexing) and persistent effort. The existence of directories of freely available digital journals, such the Directory of Open Access Journals, ameliorates the I&A problem somewhat, and NTP OA journal editors should make every effort to get their journals in such directories.
  • For the reasons noted above, NTP OA journals may lack citation impact; however, if they do have impact this may not be known because they are not included in prominent ISI publications that are widely used to measure such impact. However, with the advent of Google Scholar and similar systems that provide alternative ways of measuring citation impact, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, but these new methods of determining impact need to be widely recognized as being legitimate for them to be effective. One favorable impact factor is that, since NTP OA journals’ contents can be freely indexed by commonly used search engines (e.g., MSN Search), scholars are more likely to find their articles and cite them.
  • NTP OA journals require copy editing. This seems like an obvious point; however, novice editors can easily underestimate how much copy editing is required to produce a high-quality journal and how demanding this can be.
  • NTP OA journals survival may depend on the continued interest of their founders. Founders can lose interest in their journals, they can move to new jobs (leading to issues of their continued affiliation with the journal or the transfer of the journal to a new organization), they can retire, and they can die (see Walt Crawford’s "Free Electronic Refereed Journals: Getting Past the Arc of Enthusiasm").

For the reasons outlined above, NTP OA journals have a higher probability of success and survival if they are produced by a formal digital publishing program that has the firm backing of a nonprofit organization (or a unit of such an organization) than they do if they are published by a loose confederation of individuals. This digital publishing program does not need to invest anywhere near the level of resources that conventional publishers do, but it needs to have a parent organization that is committed to the continued operation and preservation of its journals, a distinct brand identity, a small core of subsidized part- or full-time editorial staff supported by a much larger number of editorial volunteers, a minimal level of supported technical infrastructure that relies on open source software, an active vs. passive content recruitment orientation, and a vigorous targeted promotion effort that integrates its journals into conventional finding tools and uses disciplinary and dedicated mailing lists, RSS feeds, Weblogs, and other free or low-cost communication tools to publicize them.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (8/14/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Augmenting Interoperability Across Scholarly Repositories," "The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age," "Digital Preservation in the Context of Institutional Repositories," The Economic Impact of Enhanced Access to Research Findings, "The Movement for Open Access Law," "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on Enhancing Public Access: Tracking Institutional Contribution Rates," "Open Access: Implications for Scholarly Publishing and Medical Libraries," "Repositories for Research: Southampton’s Evolving Role in the Knowledge Cycle," and "Using OAI-PMH and METS for Exporting Metadata and Digital Objects between Repositories."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans "Flashback" posting.

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 2: Linköping University Electronic Press

The Linköping University Electronic Press publishes freely available digital conference proceedings, databases, journals, series, reports, and theses. It was established in 1996. As of April 2004, the E-Press became "an independent department within Linköping University Library." The E-Press has five staff members. There is an E-Press Governing Board.

Conference proceedings, journals, series, and reports have editors. The journals are peer reviewed. Two out of four journals appear to have ceased publication. A "news journal" that was related to one of the peer-reviewed journals also appears to be inactive. The other digital publishing programs (e.g., conference proceedings and series) are active. The E-Press ensures the Internet availability of works for at least 25 years after publication. Instructions for how to publish works in the E-Press are available, including how to start new conference proceedings, journals, and series. Site-wide use statistics are available.

Authors sign publishing agreements and retain their copyrights. In accordance with its copyright polices, the E-Press permits specified uses of its works:

  • To read and/or download LiU E-Press papers on-line, without restrictions.
  • To make single printouts of LiU E-Press papers for your own use in research, teaching, or otherwise.
  • To hand over a single printout of an LiU E-Press paper to a colleague in the course of work.
  • To quote short passages in an LiU E-Press paper, as well as the abstract, in order to describe, summarise, or argue against what is said there.
  • To download images, diagrams or cartoons on-line for personal use (i.e. not to spread it to other persons or on homepages).

It’s worth noting that Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, which appears to have ceased publication, used an innovative peer-review procedure:

  • Open reviewing during three months, where the article is advertised to the community of researchers in its specialized area, and a public, on-line discussion is organized about its contents.
  • Confidential refereeing after the open reviewing period has concluded. Here, leading researchers in the specialized area of the article weigh the article as well as the review discussion and decide whether or not to accept the article.

For more information on the Linköping University Electronic Press, see the FAQ.

Prior postings on this topic:

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 1: ANU E Press

Established in May 2004, the ANU E Press at the Australian National University fosters new scholarly publishing models, such as:

  • the production of electronic editions of academic monographs of interest to both scholarly and general-interest readers
  • web-based dissemination of digitally reformatted publications
  • support for presentation and dissemination of interactive publications and teaching materials
  • the development of technologies that enhance peer review while accelerating dissemination of scholarly publication

The ANU E Press has the following features:

  • open e-publication
  • institution-based repositories with appropriate listings and metadata/discovery mechanisms
  • a centralised repository
  • a low-cost, common-good funding model
  • moderation/peer review
  • copyright preserved by creators
  • facilities for access to and transfer of electronic information, for example, a print-on-demand facility

A representative ANU E Press title is Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society, which is freely available in HTML, PDF, and mobile device formats and can be ordered as a print-on-demand book.

A complete list of titles is available.

For more information, see the Frequently Asked Questions Web page.

Version 63, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 63 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,730 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

The PDF version of SEPB is now produced annually. The 2005 PDF file is available (Version 60, published 12/9/2005).

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, by the same author, provides much more in-depth coverage of the open access movement and related topics (e.g., disciplinary archives, e-prints, institutional repositories, open access journals, and the Open Archives Initiative) than SEPB does.

The "Open Access Webliography" (with Ho) complements the OAB, providing access to a number of Websites related to open access topics.

Changes in This Version

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

Table of Contents

1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
5.3 Other Legal Issues
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
Digital Libraries
Electronic Books and Texts
Electronic Serials
General Electronic Publishing
Images
Legal
Preservation
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
SGML and Related Standards

Further Information about SEPB

The HTML version of SEPB is designed for interactive use. Each major section is a separate file. There are links to sources that are freely available on the Internet. It can be can be searched using Boolean operators.

The HTML document includes three sections not found in the Acrobat file:

  1. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (biweekly list of new resources; also available by mailing list and RSS feed)
  2. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (directory of over 270 related Web sites)
  3. Archive (prior versions of the bibliography)

The 2005 annual PDF file is designed for printing. The printed bibliography is over 210 pages long. The PDF file is over 560 KB.

Related Article

An article about the bibliography has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (7/31/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Accessing Digital Libraries: A Study of ARL Members’ Digital Projects," "Building a Distributed, Standards-based Repository Federation: The China Digital Museum Project," "Lessons for the Future Internet: Learning from the Past" "On the Tips of Their Tongues: Authors and Their Views on Scholarly Publishing," "Open Archives and Their Impact on Journal Cancellations," and "A Service Framework for Libraries."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans "Flashback" posting.

More on ALA and Open Access

Peter Suber has provided clarification of ALA’s stance on open access in the below Open Access News posting excerpt:

Comment. This is the most detailed discussion I’ve seen of this question. You should read the whole thing, as I’ve had to omit most of the detail on which Charles’ conclusion rests. I’d only add that (1) the ALA Washington office has a page on OA, (2) the ALA Council adopted a resolution in support of FRPAA at its June 2006 annual meeting, and (3) the ALA has signed on to several public statements in support of OA, most recently a July 12 letter in support of FRPAA and a May 31 letter in support of the EC report on OA.

To further clarify this matter, FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006) and the European Commission’s Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe both deal with open access to publicly-funded research. This is certainly a major open access issue; however, ALA journals are unlikely to publish a high percentage of papers that result from such publicly-funded research. Consequently, the direct impact of FRPAA or, especially, the EC report on ALA’s journal publishing operations is likely to be minimal.

In contrast to this support for FRPAA and the EU report, ALA has not signed the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (as other library organizations such as the Association of Academic Health Services Libraries, ALA’s Association of College and Research Libraries Division, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries have), the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities," or the "Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science" (as many association publishers have).

The path from the ALA home page to the Washington Office page is: Home–> Washington Office –> Issues–> Copyright Issues–> Open Access to Research. The ALA Web site is quite large and deep, and one would not expect an OA page to be on the top level. The question is: Can this page be found by someone who doesn’t know that open access is a Washington Office concern? It appears that issues of primary concern to ALA are under the home page heading "Issues & Advocacy" (Home –> Issues & Advocacy).

Whether ALA provides more active support for the open access movement and its reform strategies is, of course, up to its officers and members. These two postings on the matter have been descriptive, not prescriptive. Further clarifications to ALA’s stance on open access or discussion of it are welcome, and can be submitted as comments to either posting.

The American Library Association and Open Access

Does the American Library Association (ALA) support open access and, if so, are its journal publishing practices congruent with open access journal publishing and self-archiving?

What is the American Library Association?

For non-librarians, a brief overview of the American Library Association (ALA) from its Web site may be helpful before considering its open access policies and practices

The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 64,000 members. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information.

ALA’s Mission and Strategic Plans

Several key documents outline ALA’s mission and strategic goals:

Although the ALA’s mission and goals have become less library-centric over time, there is no explicit statement of support for open access in any of these documents.

ALA Memberships in Organizations That Support Open Access Initiatives

ALA is a member of at least two organizations that support open access initiatives: (1) the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), and (2) the SPARC Open Access Working Group. (ALA is not a member of SPARC, but its Association of College and Research Libraries division, known as ACRL, is.)

Information about these ARL memberships certainly exists in the ALA Web site, but it is deeply buried and difficult to find by navigating the site’s menu structure (see the Google site searches for ATA and the SPARC Open Access Working Group).

ALA’s Journal Copyright Agreements

ALA has two copyright agreements: (1) Copyright Assignment Agreement and (2) Copyright License Agreement.

In the Copyright Assignment Agreement, the author: "hereby grants to Publisher all right, title and interest in and to the Work, including copyright in all means of expression by any method now known or hereafter developed, including electronic format." ALA then grants back to the author one broad self-archiving right: "The right to use and distribute the Work on the Author’s Web site." It also grants a narrow right: "The right to use and distribute the Work internally at the Author’s place of employment, and for promotional and any other non-commercial purposes." Authors who use this agreement cannot self-archive in public sections of institutional repositories or in disciplinary archives.

In the Copyright License Agreement, the author retains copyright and then grants to ALA the rights needed to publish the article, with the only restriction on the author being that: "Author agrees not to publish the Work in print form prior to the publication of the Work by the Publisher." Authors who can choose this option can self-archive where ever they want.

ALA’s Journals

ALA publishes a number of serials. This section only considers its major journals. Since it is impossible to determine from their Web sites if some ALA journals are peer-reviewed, there has been no effort to distinguish peer-reviewed journals from those with other editorial policies.

  1. Children and Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children: The Web site provides no table of contents information or online access at all, although there is a link that says: "Click here to subscribe to Children and Libraries online now!" The Policies and Procedures page says: "All material in CAL is subject to copyright by ALA and may be reprinted or photocopied and distributed for the noncommercial purpose of educational or scientific advancement." There are no links to the ALA copyright forms. Verdict: Not an open access journal and, since it is unclear whether the Copyright License Agreement is accepted, it may only support limited self-archiving.
  2. College & Research Libraries: There is a six-month embargo period, after which issues are freely available at the Web site. Volume 57 (1996) through volume 66 (2005) are freely available. The journal page solely links to the Copyright License Agreement. Verdict: Not an open access journal, but fully supports self-archiving.
  3. Information Technology and Libraries: Recently, the journal’s access policy changed. There will be a six-month embargo period, after which issues will be freely available at the Web site. Selected articles from volume 20 (2001) through volume 23 (2004) are freely available. The home page links to both ALA copyright agreements. Verdict: Not an open access journal, but fully supports self-archiving. (Disclosure: Since ALA Annual, I have been on the Editorial Board.)
  4. Library Administration and Management: Web site only provides access to table of contents information. No discussion of copyright agreements in Author Instructions. Verdict: Not an open access journal and, since it is unclear whether the Copyright License Agreement is accepted, it may only support limited self-archiving.
  5. Library Resources & Technical Services: Web site provides access to table of contents information and the full-text of volumes 44 (2000) through 46 (2002). Instructions to Authors page links to both ALA copyright agreements. Not an open access journal, but fully supports self-archiving.
  6. Public Libraries: Web site provides free access to volume 42 (2002) through volume 44 (2005). There is no discussion of copyright in the Public Libraries Editorial Guidelines page, and there are no links to the ALA copyright forms. Verdict: Not an open access journal and, since it is unclear whether the Copyright License Agreement is accepted, it may only support limited self-archiving.
  7. RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage: Volume 13 (1998) (of the prior journal) through volume 6 (2005) are freely available. No links to ALA copyright agreements. Guidelines for Submission of Articles to RBM page states: "Articles published in RBM are copyrighted by the American Library Association, and subsequent inquiries for reprinting articles are referred to the ALA Office of Rights and Permissions." Verdict: Not an open access journal. Since it is unclear whether the Copyright License Agreement is accepted, it may only support limited self-archiving.
  8. Reference & User Services Quarterly: Web site only provides access to table of contents information and article abstracts. Information for Authors, Advertisers, and Subscriptions page links to both ALA copyright agreements. Not an open access journal, but fully supports self-archiving.
  9. School Library Media Research: Web site provides free access to all issues. Manuscript Policy page links to both ALA copyright agreements. An open access journal under the most liberal definition of that term (i.e., free, immediate access without using a Creative Commons Attribution License or similar license) that fully supports self-archiving.
  10. Young Adult Library Services: Web site only provides access to table of contents information. Author Guidelines page states: "A manuscript published in the journal is subject to copyright by ALA for Young Adult Library Services." There are no links to the ALA copyright forms. Verdict: Not an open access journal and, since it is unclear whether the Copyright License Agreement is accepted, it may only support limited self-archiving.

It should be noted that the Science and Technology Section of ACRL publishes Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, a freely available e-journal whose Instructions for Authors page does not discuss copyright at all; however, ALA does not list this journal on its American Library Association Periodicals page, which "is a list of the various newsletters, magazines, and journals published within the American Library Association, including those which are only available over the Internet."

Summary

This brief investigation has not attempted to determine whether the divisions of ALA more vigorously support and enact open access principles than the parent organization. The Association of College and Research Libraries is certainly known for its general support (e.g., see ACRL Taking Action, Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, and Scholarly Communication Toolkit).

A user starting at the ALA home page would be hard pressed to find any information that suggests that ALA is an advocate of open access without using the search function. Yet, there are a number of pages on the site that deal with it, although many are ACRL Web site pages or serial articles.

ALA’s mission statements and plans reveal no explicit support for open access; however, ALA belongs to at least two organizations that support it: (1) the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), and (2) the SPARC Open Access Working Group.

Out of ten major journals that it publishes, ALA only publishes one open access journal: School Library Media Research. Two journals (College & Research Libraries and Information Technology and Libraries) have a clear six-month embargo policy. Two more (Public Libraries and RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage) may also be operating under an embargo policy. One provides free access to a subset of older back volumes (Library Resources & Technical Services). The rest only provide table of contents information, some with abstracts, or, in one case, no information at all.

Five journals (College & Research Libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, Library Resources & Technical Services, Reference & User Services Quarterly, School Library Media Research) clearly offer authors the option of the Copyright License Agreement, which fully supports all types of self-archiving. For the rest, it is unclear from the journal’s Web sites if this option is permitted, and only the Copyright Assignment Agreement may be available, which only permits self-archiving on the author’s Web site or on internal systems at the author’s place of employment (presumably including an access-restricted part of an institutional repository). It may be the case that all ALA journals permit the use of the Copyright License Agreement; however, this is impossible to determine from some their Web sites, a subset of which have language that appears to indicate otherwise.

As a whole, the American Library Association appears to support the open access movement to a limited extent. If this is incorrect and its support is strong, ALA appears to be having difficulty making its commitment visible and "walking the talk."

ARL Institutional Repositories, Version 2

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) currently has 123 member libraries in the US and Canada. Below is an update of an earlier list of operational institutional repositories at ARL libraries.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (7/17/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "The CARL Institutional Repositories Project: A Collaborative Approach to Addressing the Challenges of IRs in Canada"; "Distributed Preservation in a National Context NDIIPP at Mid-Point"; Factors Affecting Science Communication: A Survey of Scientists and Engineers; "Google Scholar and 100 Percent Availability of Information"; "Institutional Repositories: Review and an Information Systems Perspective"; "Institutional Strategies and Policies for Electronic Theses and Dissertations"; Mass Digitization: Implications for Information Policy; "Nuts and Bolts of Network Neutrality"; "Open Access in the United States"; Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects; "An Overview of Portico: An Electronic Archiving Service"; "Three Options for Citation Tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science"; and "University of Waterloo Electronic Theses: Issues and Partnerships."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans "Flashback" posting.

Open Access to Books: The Case of the Open Access Bibliography

In March 2005, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published my book the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 License. At the same time, a PDF version of the book was made freely available at the University of Houston Libraries Web site, and a PDF of the frontmatter, "Preface," and "Key Open Access Concepts" sections of the book was made freely available at the ARL Web site. The complete OAB PDF was moved to my new escholarlypub.com Web site in June, and an HTML version of "Key Open Access Concepts" was made available as well. In February 2006, author and title indexes for the OAB were made available in HTML form, and, in March 2006, the entire OAB was made available in HTML form.

The OAB deals with a topic that is of keen interest to a relatively small segment of the reading public. Moreover, it’s primarily a very detailed bibliography. The question is: Was it worth putting up all of these free digital versions of the book and creating these auxiliary digital materials?

From March through May 2005, there were 29,255 requests for the OAB PDF. From June 2005 through June 2006, there were another 15,272 requests for the OAB PDF; 17,952 requests for chapters or sections of the HTML version of the OAB; 11,610 requests for the HTML version of "Key Open Access Concepts"; 3,183 requests for the author index; and 2,918 requests for the title index. I don’t have use statistics for the ARL PDF of the first few sections of the book. (The June 2005 through June 2006 statistics are from Urchin; when I analyze the log files in analog, they may vary slightly.)

Print runs for scholarly books are notoriously short, often in the hundreds. I suspect most scholarly publishers would be delighted to sell 500 copies of a specialized bibliography, many of which would end up on library shelves. However, by making the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals freely available in digital form, over 44,500 copies of the complete book, over 29,500 chapters (or other book sections), and over 6,100 author or title indexes have been distributed to users worldwide. Thanks to ARL, the OAB has had greater visibility and impact than it would have had under the conventional publishing model.

More on How Can Scholars Retain Copyright Rights?

Peter Suber has made the following comment on Open Access News about "How Can Scholars Retain Copyright Rights?":

This is a good introduction to the options. I’d only make two additions.

  1. Authors needn’t retain full copyright in order to provide OA to their own work. They only need to retain the right of OA archiving—which, BTW, about 70% of journals already give to authors in the copyright transfer agreement.
  2. Charles mentions the author addenda from SPARC and Science Commons, but there’s also one from MIT.

Peter is right on both points; however, my document has a broader rights retention focus than providing OA to scholars’ work, although that is an important aspect of it.

For example, there is a difference between simply making an article available on the Internet and making it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. The former allows the user to freely read, download, and print the article for personal use. The latter allows user to make any noncommercial use of the article without permission as long as proper attribution is made, including creating derivative works. So professor X could print professor Y’s article and distribute in class without permission and without worrying about fair use considerations. (Peter, of course, understands these distinctions, and he is just trying to make sure that authors understand that they don’t have to do anything but sign agreements that grant them appropriate self-archiving rights in order to provide OA access to their articles.)

I considered the MIT addenda, but thought it might be too institution-specific. On closer reading, it could be used without alteration.

How Can Scholars Retain Copyright Rights?

Scholars are often exhorted to retain the copyright rights to their journal articles to ensure that they can freely use their own work and to permit others to freely read and use it as well. The question for scholars who are convinced to do so is: "How do I do that?"

The first thing to understand is that copyright is not one right. Rather, it is a bundle of rights that can be individually granted or withheld. The second thing to understand is that rights can either be granted exclusively to one party or nonexclusively to multiple parties.

What are these rights? Here’s what the U.S. Copyright Office says:

  • To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;

  • To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

  • To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

  • To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;

  • To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual
    images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and

  • In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

A legal document, typically called a copyright transfer agreement, governs the copyright arrangements between you and the publisher and determines what rights you retain and what rights you transfer or grant to the publisher. The publisher may offer a single standard agreement or may have more than one agreement.

Whereas the publisher has had its agreement(s) written by copyright lawyers, you are not likely to be a copyright lawyer. This puts you at a disadvantage in terms or understanding, modifying, or replacing the publisher’s agreement. Therefore, it is very helpful to have documents written by copyright lawyers that you can use to modify or replace the publisher’s agreement with, even if the organization providing such documents does so under a disclaimer that it is not providing "legal advice."

Ordered by increasing level of difficulty in getting publisher acceptance, here are the basic strategies for dealing with copyright transfer agreements:

  • If the publisher has multiple agreements, choose the one that has the author assigning and/or granting specific rights to the publisher (e.g., ALA Copyright License Agreement). Don’t choose the agreement where the author assigns, conveys, grants, or transfers all rights, copyright interest, copyright ownership, and/or title exclusively to the publisher (e.g., ALA Copyright Assignment Agreement).
  • If the publisher has a single agreement that assigns, conveys, grants, or transfers all rights, copyright interest, copyright ownership, and/or title exclusively to the publisher:

Of course, other strategies are possible. For example, you could use another type of open content license instead of the Science Commons Publication Agreement and Copyright License. However, you might want to keep it simple to start.

For more information on copyright transfer agreements, see Copyright Resources for Authors and Scholars Have Lost Control of the Process.

For a directory of publisher copyright and self-archiving policies, see Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving.

By the way, DigitalKoans doesn’t provide legal advice and the author is not a lawyer.

Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects Available on 7/17/06

Neil Jacobs has announced on several mailing lists that Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, which he edited, will be available on July 17th. As you can see from book’s contents below, the book’s contributors include many key figures in the open access movement. I’ve seen an early draft, and I believe this will be a very important book.

The book itself is not OA, but contributors retained their copyrights and they can individually make their papers available on the Internet. My contribution ("What Is Open Access?") is available in both HTML and PDF formats, and it is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

So far, the US Amazon doesn’t list the book, but it is available from Amazon.co.uk in both paperback and hardback form.

The papers in the book are listed below.

  • "Overview of Scholarly Communication" by Alma Swan
  • "What Is Open Access?" by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
  • "Open Access: A Symptom and a Promise" by Jean-Claude Guédon
  • "Economic Costs of Toll access" by Andrew Odlyzko
  • "The Impact Loss to Authors and Research" by Michael Kurtz and Tim Brody
  • "The Technology of Open Access" by Chris Awre
  • "The Culture of Open Access: Researchers’ Views and Responses" by Alma Swan
  • "Opening Access By Overcoming Zeno’s Paralysis" by Steven Harnad
  • "Researchers and Institutional Repositories" by Arthur Sale
  • "Open Access to the Research Literature: A Funder’s Perspective" by Robert Terry and Robert Kiley
  • "Business Models in Open Access Publishing" by Matthew Cockerill
  • "Learned Society Business Models and Open Access" by Mary Waltham
  • "Open All Hours? Institutional Models for Open Access" by Colin Steele
  • "DARE Also Means Dare: Institutional Repository Status in the Netherlands as of Early 2006" by Leo Waaijers
  • "Open Access in the USA" by Peter Suber
  • "Towards Open Access to UK Research" by Frederick J. Friend
  • "Open Access in Australia" by John Shipp
  • "Open Access in India" by D. K. Sahu and Ramesh C. Parmar
  • "Open Competition: Beyond Human Reader-Centric Views of Scholarly Literatures" by Clifford Lynch
  • "The Open Research Web" by Nigel Shadbolt, Tim Brody, Les Carr, and Steven Harnad

Postscript:

The book is now available from the US Amazon in paperback and hardcover form.

Top Five Technology Trends

As usual, the LITA top 10 technology trends session at ALA produced some thought-provoking results. And, as usual, I have a somewhat different take on this question.

I’ll whittle my list down to five.

  • Digital Copyright Wars: Big media and publishers are far from finished changing copyright laws to broaden, strengthen, and lengthen the rights of copyright holders. And they are not yet done protecting their digital turf with punitive lawsuits either. One big copyright impact on libraries is digitization: you can only safely digitize what’s in the public domain or what you have permission for (and the permission process can be difficult or impossible). There’s always fair use of course, if you have the deep pockets and institutional backing needed to defend yourself (like Google does) or if your efforts are tolerated (like e-reserves has been so far, except for a few sub rosa publisher objections). In opposition to this trend is a movement by the Creative Commons and others to persuade authors, musicians, and other copyright holders to license their works in ways that permit liberal use and reuse of them.
  • DRM: The Sony BMG rootkit fiasco was a blow, but think again if you believe that this will stop DRM from controlling your digital content in the future. The trick is to get DRM embedded in your operating system, and to have every piece of computer hardware and every consumer digital device that can access and/or manipulate content to support it (or to refuse access to material protected by unsupported DRM schemes). That’s a tall order, but incremental progress is likely to continue to be made towards this goal. Big media will continue to try to pass laws that mandate certain types of DRM and, like the DMCA, protect its use.
  • Internet Privacy: If you believe this still exists on the Internet, you are either using anonymous surfing services or you haven’t been paying attention. Net monitoring will become far more effective if ISPs can be persuaded or required to retain user-specific Internet activity logs. Would you be upset if every licensed e-document that your library users read could be traced back to them? Unless you still offer unauthenticated Internet access in your library, that may depend upon your retention of login records and whether you are legally compelled to reveal them.
  • Net Neutrality: If ISPs can create Internet speed lanes, you don’t want your library or digital content provider to be in the slow one. Hope you (or they) can pay for the fast one. But Net neutrality issues don’t end there: there are issues of content/service blockage and differential service based on fees as well.
  • Open Access: If there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for the scholarly communication crisis, it’s open access. Efforts to produce alternative low-cost journals are important and deserve full support, but the open access movement’s impact is far greater, and it offers global access to scholars whose institutions may not be able to pay even modest subscription fees and to unaffiliated individuals.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (6/19/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Certification in a Digital Era," "Digital Rights Management": Report of an Inquiry by the All Party Internet Group, "Fair Use in Theory and Practice: Reflections on Its History and the Google Case," "Investigating the ‘Public’ in the Public Library of Science: Gifting Economics in the Internet Community," Linking UK Pepositories: Technical and Organisational Models to Support User-Oriented Services across Institutional and Other Digital Repositories, "Managing Risk and Opportunity in Creative Commons Enterprises," "Reviving a Culture of Scientific Debate," and "Strategies for Developing Sustainable Open Access Scholarly Journals."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans "Flashback" posting.

dLIST Information Sciences Digital Archive Announces New Editors

From the press release:

We are pleased to announce the dynamic new team of editors for dLIST, the Digital Library of Information Science & Technology. These Information/Library & Information Science faculty and librarians will be
responsible for specific subjects.

dLIST is a cross-institutional, subject-based, open access digital archive for the Information Sciences, including Archives and Records Management, Library and Information Science, Information Systems, Museum Informatics, and other critical information infrastructures. The dLIST vision is to serve as a trusted archive and source for scholarly communication in the Information Sciences, broadly understood. dLIST seeks to positively impact and shape scholarly communication in our closely related fields. Editors represent diverse sub-disciplinary communities and work closely with scholars in different fields such as Digital Humanities and Digital Libraries (Marija Dalbello), Government Information and Social Informatics (Kristin Eschenfelder), Information Behaviors (Soo Young Rieh), Museum Informatics (Paul Marty), Scholarly Communication (Charles Bailey), Science Technology Studies (Fernando Elichirigoity), and Classics (Michael May). More information about each of the dLIST editors is available at http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/editors.html.

The new team invites you to self-register, self-archive and explore the many unique features of dLIST.

Some dLIST features are:

  • DL-Harvest, an open access aggregator, which brings together materials from 14 global and open access archives in the Information Sciences for meta-searching and access to the full-text.
  • Detailed Usage Statistics, provide usage statistics of each item in dLIST .
  • RSS feeds and subscription alerts for items deposited in dLIST are available both by individual subjects (example: Academic Libraries) as well as the entire archive and anybody can be alerted automatically and quickly about new dLIST works.
  • A streamlined new web-based submission interface that lets authors upload and deposit their works easily.
  • Software patches and modifications (useful to Eprints archive maintainers) by Joseph Roback.
  • dLIST Classics is a new project that will be making fundamental and leading Library and Information Science texts openly accessible in dLIST.

For more information about dLIST and to self-register please visit http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/ or email dlist at u dot arizona dot edu.

dLIST, Digital Library of Information Science & Technology
Email: dlist at u dot arizona dot edu
Contact: Garry Forger, Learning Technologies at the University of Arizona

Anita Coleman