A Look Back at 22 Years as an Open Access Publisher
In June 1989, I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries, such as online catalogs) rather than a narrow focus on a specific library automation system. Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my initial scholarly digital publishing efforts were based.
In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. This journal, if it was published today, would be called a "libre" open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use. It was the first open access journal in the field of library and information science.
Aside from Public-Access Computer Systems News (also "libre" open access), my subsequent digital publications, such as the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, were "gratis" open access until 2004, when all new versions of existing publications and new publications became "libre" open access under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.
To date, my major open access publications have been:
- The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, founder and Editor-in-Chief, 37 issues, 1989-1996.
- Public-Access Computer Systems News, co-founder and co-editor, 39 issues, 1990-1992.
- Library-Oriented Lists and Electronic Serials, 25 versions, 1990-1994.
- "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography," 26 versions, 1995-1996.
- Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, 79 versions, 1996-present.
- Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, over 500 posts, 2001-present.
- DigitalKoans, over 3,900 posts, 2005-present.
- Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, 5 versions, 2005-present.
- Google Books Bibliography, 6 versions, 2005-present.
- Institutional Repository Bibliography, 3 versions, 2009-present.
- Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (paperback, open access PDF file, and XHTML website), published by the Association for Research Libraries, 2005.
- Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (paperback and open access PDF file), 2009.
- Tout de Suite Series, (Author's Rights, Tout de Suite and Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite) 2008-present.
- Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, 2 versions, 2010.
- Digital Scholarship 2009 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2010.
- Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (paperback, open access PDF file, and XHTML website), 2010.
- Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2011.
- Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2011.
Recent digital works have been published at my Digital Scholarship site, which covers digital copyright, digital curation, digital repository, open access, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. There were over 34.9 million Digital Scholarship Web file requests from April 20, 2005 though December 31, 2010 by over 7 million visitors from 227 countries.
A compete history of my open access publishing efforts is available.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |
