Science Europe has released "Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications." Science Europe is an "association of 51 European national research organisations."

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore the Science Europe Member Organisations:

• will continue to support any valid approaches to achieve Open Access, including those commonly referred to as the "green" and "gold" routes; . . . .
• stress that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository, and made available in Open Access in all cases no later than six months following first publication. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the delay may need to be longer than six months but must be no more than 12 months; . . .
• require that funding of Open Access publication fees is part of a transparent cost structure, incorporating a clear picture of publishers' service costs;. . . .
• stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent "double dipping" and increase cost transparency;

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Stacy Konkiel and Dave Scherer have published "New Opportunities for Repositories in the Age of Altmetrics" in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Here's an excerpt:

By reporting altmetrics (alternative metrics based on online activity) for their content, institutional repositories can add value to existing metrics—and prove their relevance and importance in an age of growing cutbacks to library services. This article will discuss the metrics that repositories currently deliver and how altmetrics can supplement existing usage statistics to provide a broader interpretation of research-output impact for the benefit of authors, library-based publishers and repository managers, and university administrators alike.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

SPARC has released Sustainability of Open Access Services—Report Phase 3: The Collective Provision of Open Access Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is the third in a series which examines issues relating to the economic sustainability of critical infrastructure services that support the operation and growth of open-access dissemination of scholarly and scientific research. This report is intended to guide funders and project planners in constructing and coordinating collective funding models capable of supporting open-access infrastructure resources. The report:

• reviews the fundamentals of robust sustainability modeling (Section 2);
• outlines the economic and institutional issues that confront those seeking to sustain free infrastructure services and discusses the implications of free models for an initiative's ability to provide an optimal level of service (Section 3); and
• identifies strategies for overcoming institutional free ridership in the design of funding models and describes practical mechanisms for coordinating the collective provision of infrastructure services (Section 4).

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

APARSEN has released the Report on Cost Parameters for Digital Repositories.

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this report is to present our analysis of published cost models. A review of cost parameters for the selected models focused on how cost parameters mapped to the International Standard for Trusted Repositories (ISO 16363) which enabled us to assess the areas of; Organisational Infrastructure, Digital Object Management and Infrastructure and Security Risk Management. The purpose was to assess whether cost models were measuring, through their parameters, the relevant activities for a trusted digital repository.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

EDINA has released What EDINA Does: A Community Report.

Here's an excerpt:

Universities and colleges across the UK making use of our services enjoy high quality online support documentation and helpful case studies. Flagship services include JISC MediaHub, Digimap Collections, and SUNCAT (with respective focus on multimedia, geo-spatial data and mapping for teaching and research, and the scholarly statement made in journals). . . .

What follows in this booklet also acts as a showcase for our current project activities; the key investments for present and future services. These include innovation to support use on the 'mobile Internet', both mobility and multi-platform delivery and interaction, as part of the national and international development of the 'spatial data infrastructure', including leadership in the citizen observatory (COBWEB) project funded by the EU. There is also significant contribution to the wider definition of digital infrastructure, geared to ensure ease and continuity of access, both for discovery and for stewardship (preservation) of the digital resources that research and education require, such as The Keepers Registry (for e-journals) and now the UK RepositoryNet+ initiative and its service components to assist universities and research institutes with the Open Access agenda and research reporting. More about the product of our research and development project activity is found in the project archive pages of our website.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

Elías Tzoc has published "A Mobile Interface for DSpace" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries were among the first adopters of mobile websites in universities, but much of the early development was focused exclusively on traditional library content such as the library's homepage, catalog, contact information, etc. As libraries continue to work on new technology developments, a mobile interface for their institutional repositories can be a good new way to reach out to faculty and other interested parties. Miami University's Scholarly Commons runs on DSpace as part of a shared infrastructure administered by OhioLINK. DSpace is used at academic institutions, research and resource centers, museums, national libraries, and government and commercial organizations. With over a thousand installations in more than 90 countries, DSpace is the most widely used open source repository platform by any measure. The steady popularity of DSpace suggests that a lot of institutions will benefit from an out-of-the-box mobile interface. This article describes the development and implementation of the first mobile interface developed for DSpace using the jQuery Mobile Framework.

Note: Includes links to software.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

Ian Ramsay has self-archived "SSRN and Law Journals—Rivals or Allies?" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The author identifies and evaluates the respective merits of publication in law journals and publication on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)—the largest open access repository for legal scholarship. This evaluation leads to the conclusion that at this stage of the evolution of law journals and SSRN, there are advantages in authors publishing both in journals and on SSRN. However, publication on SSRN can have particular advantages for authors in smaller countries.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

The Texas Digital Library has released the TDL Survey 2012: A Survey of Member Librarians and Users.

Here's an excerpt:

Beginning in April 2011, the TDL reorganized its leadership and focus on service rather than software development. In November 2011, the TDL Governing Board outlined a series of Strategic Initiatives intended to guide TDL activities and provide direction for member libraries, the leadership at those libraries and TDL full-time staff.

The development and deployment of a comprehensive survey was an initial goal of the Strategic Plan, in order to:

1. review the state of TDL services among members
2. investigate outreach and communication regarding TDL both between TDL and its members and between member libraries and their constituents
3. examine the organizational structure of TDL and determine if the past and current structure can be improved upon

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 (paperback and PDF file; over 600 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

Thomas L. Reinsfelder has self-archived his "Academic Administrator Influence on Institutional Commitment to Open Access of Scholarly Research" dissertation in Indiana University of Pennsylvania DSpace

Here's an excerpt:

This quantitative study investigated the interrelationships among faculty researchers, publishers, librarians, and academic administrators when dealing with the open access of scholarly research. This study sought to identify the nature of any relationship between the perceived attitudes and actions of academic administrators and an institution's commitment to open access as reported by library directors. A survey research design was used to collect data based on perceptions of library directors at four year colleges and universities in the United States. Results of this study show that as academic administrator attention to open access increases so do the open access activities of faculty and librarians. Information presented may benefit members in each stakeholder group by allowing them to better position their organizations for future success in a complex environment. This study may also benefit advocates of open access who wish to expand services and other initiatives that encourage the greater accessibility of scholarly work.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 (paperback and PDF file; over 600 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

Sean Burns, Amy Lana, and John M. Budd have published "Institutional Repositories: Exploration of Costs and Value" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Little is known about the costs academic libraries incur to implement and manage institutional repositories and the value these institutional repositories offer to their communities. To address this, the authors report the findings of their 29 question survey of academic libraries with institutional repositories. . . . The highlights of our findings, based on median values, suggest that institutions that mediate submissions incur less expense than institutions that allow self-archiving, institutions that offer additional services incur greater annual operating costs than those who do not, and institutions that use open source applications have lower implementation costs but comparable annual operating costs with institutions that use proprietary solutions. Furthermore, changes in budgeting, from special initiative to absorption into the regular budget, suggest a trend in sustainable support for institutional repositories.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Marius Nel, Kyle Williams and Hussein Suleman have self-archived "Evaluating Large Image Support for DSpace" in the UCT CS Research Document Archive.

Here's an excerpt:

Access to large images in digital libraries is desirable from a preservation perspective and may even be a requirement in some domains, such as cartography. However, providing access to large images often poses a problem as a result of the size of the images as well as the limited screen real-estate for displaying the images. Even when these issues are addressed, there is a lack of evidence about how well large image related tasks can be performed in a digital library. In investigating this, a survey was conducted in order to identify well-performing large image support tools and the best of these tools was integrated into DSpace. A user study was conducted in order to evaluate how well large images could be supported in a digital library and it was found that users were able to successfully and easily perform tasks related to large images.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories has released The Current State of Open Access Repository Interoperability.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report provides an overview of the current interoperability landscape in terms of the types of services that are now possible because of recent research and development efforts from throughout the Open Access community. The report covers seven areas of focus for current interoperability initiatives, and it provides overviews of nineteen key interoperability initiatives.

The intended audience includes institutions and repository managers operating at different points in terms of infrastructure, resources, and institutional support. For institutions new to Open Access and repositories, the report aims to provide guidance for getting started and indicates which interoperability initiatives are necessary to implement in order to achieve specific services. For institutions and repository managers already involved in OA and repositories, the report may provide ideas for additional functionality to add to your repository or further services that are possible to provide to your community.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |