In this podcast ("Content Recruitment and Development: A Proactive Approach to Building an Institutional Repository"), Marjorie Hassen describes the University of Pennsylvania Libraries’ strategy for developing and supporting the ScholarlyCommons@Penn, an institutional repository based on the Digital Commons platform.
In the latest issue of RLG DigiNews, Jim Michalko and Lorcan Dempsey announce significant changes to this journal. RLG DigiNews has been a five-star journal that has been essential reading for digital library and preservation specialists. I’d encourage my readers to voice support for its continued excellence as indicated in the below excerpt from the article:
The issue in front of you is the last of RLG DigiNews in its current form. As RLG continues to shape its combination with OCLC and create the new Programs and Research division, we are rethinking the publication program that will support our new agenda while providing readers and authors with the kind of vehicle that supports the re-invention of cultural institutions in the research, teaching, and learning process. RLG DigiNews will be an important part of this program. Expect to see it back with a renewed editorial direction. There’s much to do and coordinate but we’ve committed both the talent and the resources to make this happen. Watch for your next RLG DigiNews no later than January, 2008.
Thank you for your support. Let those responsible know that you’re looking forward to the future.
Presentations from Friday’s sessions of the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva are now available.
Here are a few highlights from this major conference:
(You may want to download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007).
Presentations from Thursday’s sessions of the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva are now available.
Here are a few highlights from this major conference:
(You may want to download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007).
The OpenDOAR project has announced the availability of an API for accessing digital repository data in their database.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
OpenDOAR, as a SHERPA project, is pleased to announce the release of an API that lets developers use OpenDOAR data in their applications. It is a machine-to-machine interface that can run a wide variety of queries against the OpenDOAR Database and get back XML data. Developers can choose to receive just repository titles & URLs, all the available OpenDOAR data, or intermediate levels of detail. They can then incorporate the output into their own applications and ‘mash-ups’, or use it to control processes such as OAI-PMH harvesting. . . .
OpenDOAR is a continuing project hosted at the University of Nottingham under the SHERPA Partnership. OpenDOAR maintains and builds on a quality-assured list of the world’s Open Access Repositories. OpenDOAR acts as a bridge between repository administrators and the service providers who make use of information held in repositories to offer search and other services to researchers and scholars worldwide.
A key feature of OpenDOAR is that all of the repositories we list have been visited by project staff, tested and assessed by hand. We currently decline about a quarter of candidate sites as being broken, empty, out of scope, etc. This gives a far higher quality assurance to the listings we hold than results gathered by just automatic harvesting. OpenDOAR has now surveyed over 1,100 repositories, producing a classified Directory of over 800 freely available archives of academic information.
Presentations from Wednesday’s sessions of the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva are now available.
Here are a few highlights from this major conference:
(You may want to download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007).
Library Journal has published its annual review of serials prices. This year, its title is "Serial Wars."
There is considerable discussion of open access issues in the article, and Peter Suber has commented: "This is an excellent picture of where OA stands today. If you have colleagues who want to know what’s been happening and only have time for one article, give them this URL."
As usual, the big bucks in serials are for STM journals (see the table below from the article), and, no surprise, the country with the highest average price per title is the Netherlands.
TABLE 1 AVERAGE 2007 PRICE FOR SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES
Discipline Average Price Per Title Chemistry $3,429 Physics 2,865 Engineering 2,071 Biology 1,676 Technology 1,502 Astronomy 1,426 Geology 1,424 Food Science 1,345 Math & Computer Science $1,313 Zoology 1,308 Health Sciences 1,199 Botany 1,179 General Science 1,139 Geography 1,050 Agriculture 898
What about next year?: "Expect overall price increases to be in the seven percent to nine percent range for 2008 subscriptions."
In a recent SSP-L message, Mark Johnson, Journal Manager of HighWire Press, identified three journals that offer podcasts or digital audio files:
Here are a few others:
LISU, which is based in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University, has released Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006, a report commissioned by Oxford Journals.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
The research updates the previous findings on pricing for biomedical journals, and has also been extended to analyze pricing for social science titles. Findings within the report show little variation to the original data published in 2004: there are continued trends in price variance across publishers, including median price increases ranging from 42% to 104% for biomedical titles, and 47% to 120% for social science titles. Median journal prices also continue to vary widely between publishers for both these disciplines, ranging from £198 to £859 in biomedical titles, and £119 to £513 in the Social Sciences. . . .
Further information on the report:
• Over 8,000 journals were included in the analysis.
• Publishers included in the analysis were:
o Blackwell Publishing
o Cambridge University Press
o Elsevier
o Lippincott Williams and Wilkins
o Nature (specialist journals)
o Oxford Journals
o Springer
o Sage
o Taylor and Francis
o University of Chicago Press
o WileyKey Findings
• Median journal prices ranged from £198 to £859 for biomedical titles, and £119 to £513 for social science titles in 2006
• Increases in the median journal price between 2000 and 2006 varied from 42% to 104% in biomedical titles and 47% to 120% for social science titles.
• Median price per page ranged from 31p to £1.06 for biomedical titles, and 13p to 93p for social science titles in 2006
• Median price per point of impact factor ranged from £110 to £775 for biomedical titles in 2006, and from £186 to £552 for social science titles.