DigitalKoans

Hindawi’s EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing and International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences journals are now open access, finishing the conversion of Hindawi’s 64 journals to the open access model.

Excerpt from the press release:

"We didn’t have a firm time frame for completing our OA transition when we started this process in late 2004," said Ahmed Hindawi, co-founder and CEO of Hindawi. "However, we are pleased to have completed the process in a bit over two years. Now that we have the legacy publishing model behind us, it is time to fully concentrate on aggressively growing our OA publishing program."

Hard on the heels of the "Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing" by STM publishers, the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science Coalition has issued a statement condemning the Federal Research Public Access Act and similar measures.

An excerpt from the press release follows:

"The long tradition of methodical scientific inquiry and information sharing through publication in scholarly journals has helped advance medicine to where it is today," said Martin Frank of the American Physiological Society and coordinator of the coalition. "We as independent publishers must determine when it is appropriate to make content freely available, and we believe strongly it should not be determined by government mandate."

The Coalition also reaffirmed its ongoing practice of making millions of scientific journal articles available free of charge, without an additional financial burden on the scientific community or on funding agencies. More than 1.6 million free articles are already available to the public free of charge on HighWire Press.

"The scholarly publishing system is a delicate balance between the need to sustain journals financially and the goal of disseminating scientific knowledge as widely as possible. Publishers have voluntarily made more journal articles available free worldwide than at any time in history — without government intervention," noted Kathleen Case of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The Coalition expressed concern that a mandatory timetable for free access to all federally funded research could harm journals, scientists, and ultimately the public. Subscriptions to journals with a high percentage of federally funded research would decline rapidly. Subscription revenues support the quality control system known as peer review and also support the educational work of scientific societies that publish journals.

Undermining subscriptions would shift the cost of publication from the publisher who receives subscription revenue to the researcher who receives grants. Such a shift could:

Divert scarce dollars from research. Publishers now pay the cost of publication out of subscription revenue; if the authors have to pay, the funds will come from their research grants. Nonprofit journals without subscription revenue would have to rely on the authors’ grant funds to cover publication costs, which would divert funding from research.

Result in only well-funded scientists being able to publish their work. The ability to publish in scientific journals should be available equally to all.

Reduce the ability of journals to fund peer review. Most journals spend 40% or more of their revenue on quality control through the peer review system; without subscription income and with limitations on author fees, peer review would suffer.

Harm those scientific societies that rely on income from journals to fund the professional development of scientists. Revenues from scholarly publications fund research, fellowships to junior scientists, continuing education, and mentoring programs to increase the number of women and under-represented groups in science, among many other activities.

Prominent open access advocates Stevan Harnad and Peter Suber have both critiqued the statement in detail.

The EAD Schema Working Group (SAA/EADWG) has released the EAD 2002 Schema.

Two syntaxes are available: Relax NG Schema (RNG) and (W3C Schema XSD; requires the EAD XLink Schema).

Version 1.0 to Version 2002 conversion tools are available at EAD v1 to EAD v2002 Conversion.

For further information about the Encoded Archival Description (EAD), see the EAD Help Pages.

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, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Analysis of the Use of Open Archives in the Fields of Mathematics and Computer Science," "Copyrights and the Paradox of Scholarly Publishing," Developing the UK’s e-Infrastructure for Science and Innovation, "The Double Bind of E-Journal Collections," "Exploring the Willingness of Scholars to Accept Open Access: A Grounded Theory Approach," "In Google’s Broad Wake: Taking Responsibility for Shaping the Global Digital Library," and "Making Research Cyberinfrastructure a Strategic Choice."

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.

Update: For the most current information about Digital Scholarship publications, see: Digital Scholarship Publications Overview.

There have been a number of rapid changes in my digital publications since my resignation from the University of Houston Libraries due to growing differences of opinion between me and certain administrators about the critical importance of supporting digital library development, open access, and scholarly communication change efforts as a high priority (see "In Surprise Move, Bailey Resigns from U. of Houston" in the November 9, 2006 issue of Library Journal Academic Newswire). Some confusion has resulted from these publication changes, so here's a clarification of them.

My active digital publications are now branded under the name "Digital Scholarship." There are three domains:

• http://www.digital-scholarship.org/: This is the primary, full-featured domain.
• http://www.digital-scholarship.com/: This an almost complete mirror of the ".org" domain that lacks some functionality (e.g., no DigitalKoans comments) and content (e.g., no RSS version of SEPW).
• http://www.escholarlypub.com/: Same as the ".com" domain, but I no longer publicize this domain name.

Confused? I won’t go into why there are still three domains, but here is a simple access strategy: use the ".org" domain for all publication access unless there is a hosting service failure. If there is a ".org" failure, use the ".com" domain, which is on a different hosting service.

No publications are being actively maintained on the University of Houston Libraries site, the sepw@listserv.uh.edu is no longer used, and no current publication announcements are being made on the PACS-L or PACS-P mailing lists:

• UH: Only archival versions of SEPB (up to 10/17/2006), SEPR (up to 10/17/2006), and SEPW (up to 12/18/06).

Below are the current ".org" URLs and RSS feeds for my major publications. These are the preferred links for cataloging records and Web page referrals. My intention is to try to maintain the ".org" domain; the other domains may be less permanent. It is recommended that you use the FeedBurner feeds below rather than the WordPress feeds to insulate yourself from future RSS feed changes.

DigitalKoans:

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/
• FeedBurner feed:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalKoans
• FeedBurner E-Mail Feed:
  http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=64023
• WordPress feed:
  http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/feed/rss2/

Open Access Bibliography (OAB):

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/oab/oab.htm
• Google Search Engine

"Open Access Webliography" (with Ho) (OAW):

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/cwb/oaw.htm

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB):

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepb.html
• Archive: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/archive/sepa.htm
• Google Search Engine

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (SEPR)

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepr/sepr.htm

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW):

• Site: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepw/sepw.htm
• WordPress version (partial site used to create the RSS feed):
  • Site: http://digital-scholarship.org/sepw2/
  • FeedBurner feed:
    http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScholarlyElectronicPublishingWeblogrss
  • FeedBurner E-Mail Feed:
    http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=51756
  • WordPress feed:
    http://digital-scholarship.org/sepw2/feed/rss2/
• Google Search Engine

Note that SEPW and SEPR are now in their own subdirectories, not in the SEPB directory.

The Blogger SEPW version has been discontinued.

When you use the Google Search Engines, keep in mind that you will retrieve bibliography section file or Weblog archive file titles with a single representative search result shown from each file. To see all hits, click on the cached page, which shows the retrieved search term(s) in the file highlighted in yellow. Also keep in mind that the search results are only as current as Google’s indexing of the site in question.

For other publications, see the ".org" Digital Scholarship home page.

The recent "Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing" by major scholarly publishers, such as Elsevier and Wiley, can be boiled down to: the scholarly publishing system ain’t broke, so don’t try to fix it. It provides an interesting contrast to the 2004 "Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science" by not-for-profit publishers, which outlined a variety of strategies for making content freely available.

Sadly, it suggests that the "Brussels Declaration" publishers fail to fully understand that the decades-old serials crisis has deeply alienated several generations of librarians, who are their primary customers. Publishers count on libraries being captive customers because scholarly publishing is monopolistic in nature (e.g., one journal article does not substitute for another article) and, consequently, demand is relatively inelastic, regardless of price. However, it is a rare business that thrives by alienating its customers. As the SPARC initiative and similar efforts illustrate, many librarians want to dramatically change the existing scholarly publishing system.

Driven by endless library serials cuts for journals in their disciplines, a growing belief that scholarly literature needs to be freely available for global scholarship to flourish, and excitement over the new potentials of digital publishing, scholars increasingly want to change the system as well. As has often been noted, the open access movement is not anti-publisher, but it is publisher-neutral, meaning that, as long as certain critical functions (such as peer review) are adequately performed, it does not matter how freely available scholarly works are published.

In my view, publishers add significant value to scholarly journals and other works. Some of these value-added functions are currently difficult to replicate; however, given technological advances in open-source digital publishing software, the number of these functions has been dwindling. A key question is: How long will it be before the most difficult production-oriented functions can be easily replicated, leaving non-technical functions, such as branding and prestige, to be dealt with? Another is: How long will it be before viable new modes of scholarly publishing, supported by open source software, are developed that compete with existing publishing models?

The clock is ticking. The more intransigent publishers are, the stronger the incentive for those who want change to improve open source publishing tools, to fund low-cost or open access publishing alternatives, to seek remedies from governments and other organizations that fund research, and to develop new modes of scholarly publishing.

Dialog, openness to new funding strategies and publishing practices, compromise, and imagination may serve publishers better in the long run than denial, rigidity, and attack. A more flexible outlook may reveal opportunities, not just dangers, in a scholarly publishing system in flux.

A petition that asks the European Commission to endorse the recommendations of the 2006 Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe was delivered to Janez Potocnik, EU Commissioner for Science and Research.

The petition has over 20,000 signatures, including those of senior officials from 750 education, research, and cultural organizations and several Nobel laureates.

See the JISC press release for further details.

The Nestor (Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources) Project will continue operations until 2009.

Here is a brief description of the project from its home page:

The project’s objective is to create a network of expertise in long-term storage of digital resources for Germany. As the perspective of current and future archive users is central to the project, the emphasis is put on long-term accessibility. Within the project the following offers will be created: a web-based information forum, a platform for information and communication, criteria for trusted digital repositories, recommendations for certification procedures of digital repositories, recommendations for collecting guidelines and selection criteria of digital resources to be archived, guidelines and policies, the concept for a permanent organisation form of the network of expertise in digital preservation. The long-term goal is a permanent distributed infrastructure for long-term preservation and long-term accessability of digital resources in Germany comparable e.g. to the Digital Preservation Coalition in the UK.

Two new working groups have been established for phase two of the project: Standards for Metadata, Transfer of Objects to Digital Repositories and Object Access Working Group and Interlinking of eScience and Long-Term Preservation Working Group.

An English version of Nestor’s Criteria Catalogue for Trusted Repositories is now available.

The Association of Research Libraries and Peggy Hoon, Scholarly Communication Librarian at the North Carolina State University Libraries, have established the Know Your Copy Rights initiative "for librarians who are developing positive educational programs for academic users of copyrighted materials in US not-for-profit institutions."

A variety of useful documents are available (and more are being developed): "Assessing Campus Copyright Education Needs & Opportunities," "Know Your Copy Rights—What You Can Do" (faculty brochure), and "Using Copyrighted Works in Your Teaching—FAQ: Questions Faculty and Teaching Assistants Need to Ask Themselves Frequently."