Sarah Cooney-Mcquat, Stefan Busch and Deborah Kahn have published "Open Access Publishing: A Viable Solution for Society Publishers" in the latest issue of Learned Publishing. The paper is open access.

Here's an excerpt:

The open access (OA) business model has established itself as a viable alternative to traditional subscription-based publishing and is an option that societies should now realistically consider for their journals. This paper outlines how the OA model can work for societies, and presents a number of case studies that demonstrate how it is already working in practice.

portal: Libraries and the Academy will make copy-edited e-prints of articles in forthcoming issues available.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Johns Hopkins University Press and portal: Libraries and the Academy have announced an agreement that will provide increased access to research about the role of academic libraries and librarianship.

Beginning with the April 2010 issue, copy-edited versions of all accepted articles will be available in an open-access web environment. Six articles for the upcoming issue have already been posted online. The final, published version of the journal will still appear in Project MUSE®, a subscription-based online database of scholarly journals based at the JHU Press.

"As we move into our next decade, we want to advance past the traditional ways of presenting information and take advantage of new forms of scholarly communication," says Sarah Pritchard, the Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian at Northwestern University and editor of portal, currently in its 10th year of publication. "We appreciate the support of the Johns Hopkins University Press, which has been a good partner and good publishing venue for the journal."

The agreement, which will be re-evaluated after 18 months, allows for manuscripts to appear online after the copy-editing process is complete, but prior to the publication of the print version of the journal. The files will have a watermark to identifying its status in the publishing process.

The Internet Archive has announced that two million free digital texts are now available from the repository.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Internet Archive is pleased to announce an important manuscript, Homiliary on Gospels from Easter to first Sunday of Advent, as the 2,000,000th free digital text. Internet Archive has been scanning books and making them available for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public for free on archive.org since 2005.

"This 1,000 year old book which has only been seen by a select few people, can, with the technology of today, be shared with millions tomorrow," said Robert Miller, Director of Books of the Internet Archive. "Selecting this title for the 2 millionth text is a fitting tribute to the team of scanners who have been carefully working for the past 5 years."

The Homiliary manuscript was copied on parchment by at least three different scribes at the important medieval Abbey of St. Martin in Tours less than 100 years after having been composed by Heiric of Auxerre and is the oldest known copy of Heiric’s original text. . . .

Internet Archive partners with the University of Toronto and over 150 libraries and universities around the world to create a freely accessible archive of texts representing a wide range texts which include non-fiction and fiction books, research and academic texts, popular books, children's books and historical texts.

Prometheus Critical Studies in Innovation has published "The Economic Implications of Alternative Publishing Models" by John W. Houghton and Charles Oppenheim along with five responses to the paper in its latest issue. Access to these papers is free.

Here's an excerpt:

Building on previous work, this paper looks at the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scientific and scholarly publishing, describing the approach and methods used and summarising the findings of a study undertaken for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom. It concludes that different publishing models can make a material difference to the costs faced and benefits realised from research communication, and it seems likely that more open access to findings from publicly funded research would have substantial net benefits.

Open Access Publishing in European Networks has released Overview of Open Access Models for eBooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

A new survey of Open Access book publishing confirms a wide variety of approaches, as well as a continuing search for the optimal publishing and business models. While Open Access is still in an experimental phase of trying out new models, and tracking the readers’ online and offline preferences to gauge the best way forward, some trends and patterns have started to emerge.

This recently conducted survey of a wide international range of publishing initiatives compares the publishing- and business models they employ, while examining their reasons for engaging in Open Access. The report cites findings from case studies including major academic presses (such as Yale University Press, the MIT Press, the University of California Press), commercial publishers (Bloomsbury Academic), library-press partnerships (the University of Michigan Press), academic led-presses (Open Humanities Press), commercial-academic press ventures, as well as other partnerships, which all offer Open Access to anything from a single title to the entire retro-digitized backlist.

While it is too early to confirm with any certainty which models are the most viable in the long term, it is clear that sustainable long-term business models require a measure of external funding, while cutting costs and creating efficiencies through the use of shared resources, digitized production process and a new range of revenue sources.

The University of North Texas is preparing an open access policy for consideration by faculty. To facilitate this initiative, UNT "will become the first public university in the state to begin a focused discussion on an open access policy" when it hosts an Open Access Symposium in May. The Symposium "is intended to move UNT and other academic institutions in Texas forward in consideration of institutional open access policies."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Sponsored by UNT's Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the College of Information and UNT Libraries, the symposium may be the catalyst to position UNT as a state leader in open access, said Dr. Martin Halbert, dean of the UNT Libraries.

Before becoming the dean last fall, Halbert was director of digital innovations for the libraries at Emory University in Atlanta, where the Faculty Council approved a motion last year to allow the Library Policy Committee and Center for Faculty Development and Excellence to embark on a series of open access conversations with faculty groups before developing an open access/rights retention policy for the university. . . .

Organizers of the Open Access Symposium said they hope that the draft of an open access policy for UNT, which will be written by a committee created by the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, will be ready for campuswide discussions soon. The policy will draw from policies already adopted by other universities, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Kansas.

Selected papers from the Open Repositories 2009 conference have been published in a special issue of the Journal of Digital Information.

• "Towards an Open Repository Environment"
• "Policy-based Distributed Data Management Systems"
• "Restoring Trust Relationships within the Framework of Collaborative Digital Preservation Federations"
• "Self-Assessment of a Long-Term Archive for Interdisciplinary Scientific Data as a Trustworthy Digital Repository"
• "AgEcon Search: A Case Study on the Differences Between Operating a Subject Repository and an Institutional Repository"
• "Adding OAI-ORE Support to Repository Platforms"
• "Author Identifiers in Scholarly Repositories"
• "Authoring, Editing and Visualizing Compound Objects for Literary Scholarship"
• "ICE-Theorem—End to End Semantically Aware Eresearch Infrastructure for Theses"

SPARC has released video presentations from the Ebook Transition: Collaborations and Innovations behind Open-Access Monographs SPARC-ACRL forum.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The market-based business model for scholarly monographs, long under pressure due to decreased library purchasing, must now accommodate a transition to ebooks. Many non-profit publishers, including university presses, are actively exploring new publishing models to support scholarly monographs, including open-access distribution and collaborative initiatives with university libraries. This SPARC-ACRL forum featured three pioneering initiatives to deliver free online access to scholarly monographs, and highlighted opportunities for libraries to support innovations in this important area.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued an update on its Public Access Policy Forum.

Here's an excerpt from "Public Access Policy Update":

Today we are posting two valuable resources that are direct products of the Public Access Policy Forum. While we continue the process of analyzing the literature and comments, below you will find all of the blog posts and their respective comments, as well as never-before-seen submissions that were sent directly to our publicaccess@ostp.gov inbox.

The past month-and-a-half has given OSTP staff the chance to sift through the mounds of fantastic input we received. We were very gratified by the amount of participation the forum generated and are diligently scouring through the data to find common themes, dissenting opinions, concerns, and suggestions that will ultimately help us craft policy recommendations. . . .

Original blog posts with attached comments:

• Dec. 9, 2009: OSTP to Launch Public Forum to Discuss Options for Improving Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research (pdf)
• Dec. 10, 2009: Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Implementation (pdf)
• Dec. 19, 2009: Public Access Policy Phase One Wrap-Up: Implementation (pdf)
• Dec. 21, 2009: Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Features and Technology (pdf)
• Dec. 31, 2009: Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Phase Two Wrap-Up (pdf)
• Jan. 1, 2010: Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Management (pdf)
• Jan. 7, 2010: Phase III Wrap-Up (pdf)
• Jan. 11, 2010: Public Access Policy Forum Enters “Bonus” Round (pdf)
• Jan. 22, 2010: Public Access Forum Closes (pdf)

PublicAccess@ostp.gov submissions:

• Part One (pdf)
• Part Two (pdf)
• Part Three (pdf)
• Part Four (pdf)
• Part Five (attached documents) (pdf)

Duke University has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from "New Policy to Ease Access to Faculty Works ":

At the Academic Council meeting Thursday, faculty members passed the Duke Open Access policy proposed by the task force’s co-chairs, Cathy Davidson, Ruth F. Devarney Professor of English, and Paolo Mangiafico, director of digital information strategy. The proposal passed unanimously.

The Open Access policy provides Duke scholars with the choice of giving the University the legal basis to publish articles on a database called DukeSpace, which will be available to anyone who seeks them.

Read more about it at "Draft Discussion Document for Duke Open Access Policy" and "Open Access at Duke."

SPARC has released Campus-Based Open-Access Publishing Funds.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has released a new guide and supporting Web resource exploring campus-based open-access publishing funds. Authored by SPARC Consultant Greg Tananbaum, these timely new resources survey the current North American landscape of open-access funds and explore key emerging questions on how such funds are considered and developed on college and university campuses.

Open-access funds are resources created to address article-processing fees (APCs) that may be associated with publishing in an open-access journal. These fees are a source of revenue for many open-access publishers (including the Public Library of Science, Hindawi, and the Optical Society of America), as well as for subscription-based publishers experimenting with "open choice" or "hybrid" options, where individual articles are made freely available with the upon payment of an APC.

The new guide, "Open-access publishing funds: A practical guide to design and implementation," and Web resource contain a wealth of background information to inform libraries, authors, administrators and interested others on the practical considerations surrounding open-access funds. The site features up-to-date information on:

• Active open-access funds (at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Calgary, and several other institutions);
• FAQ for authors, administrators, and publishers;
• Considerations in evaluating the launch of a fund;
• Key policy decisions;
• Implementation tools;
• Resource allocation;
• Fund promotion and reporting and more.

To ensure that this resource stays current, readers are invited to contribute their experiences through the online commenting and discussion features that are available.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society has made Peter Suber on the Future of Open Access available on YouTube.