The Faculty of 1000 has announced that it will launch its F1000 Research open access publishing program later this year.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement :

F1000 Research will diverge from traditional journal publishing as follows:

1. Immediate publication (beyond an initial sanity check) upon submitting to the repository. . . .
2. Open, post-publication peer review. . . .
3. Revisioning of work. . . .
4. Raw data repository. . . .
5. "Article" format is not predefined. . . .
6. "Article" content is not predefined. . . .

Many questions remain as F1000 Research is fine-tuned to break new ground in scholarly publishing.

• How much formal refereeing is required?
• What is an article amendment versus an update?
• What incentives are required to encourage post-publication refereeing, author response and revisions, and sharing of raw but template data?
• What author fees are appropriate for the different types of content?

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

A petition for the Obama administration to oppose the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) is up at the White House's We the People website.

Here's an excerpt:

HR 3699, the Research Works Act will be detrimental to the free flow of scientific information that was created using Federal funds. It is an attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind pay-walls, and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity. This is an affront to open government and open access to information created using public funds.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Ten library, publishing, and advocacy organizations have opposed the Research Works Act in a letter sent to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here's an excerpt:

We fully respect copyright law and the protection it affords content creators, owners, and users. The NIH Public Access Policy operates fully within current U.S. Copyright law as articles reporting on NIH funded research are copyrightable, and the copyright belongs to the author. The NIH Policy requires only the grant of a non-exclusive license to NIH, fully consistent with federal policies such as Circular A-110 and Circular A-102. The author is free to transfer some or all of the exclusive rights under copyright to a journal publisher or to assign these anywhere they so choose—a freedom crucial to the authors of scientific articles, who rightly want to determine where and how their work is distributed.

Under H.R. 3699, authors of articles reporting on federally funded research would face a new restriction. The proposed bill requires authors to seek the permission of a publisher before their work can be distributed through an online, networked government channel such as NIH’s PubMed Central, even if they themselves—as the author of the work and the relevant rights holder—have already consented to do so, potentially limiting the authors ability to distribute their work as widely as they may wish.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

The European Commission has released Survey on Open Access in FP7

Here's an excerpt:

In May 2011, the Commission identified the 811 projects designated at the time with Special Clause 39 in their grant agreement and sent a questionnaire to all project coordinators in order to collect feedback on experiences of both the implementation of the pilot and the reimbursement of open access publishing costs. The objective was to provide input for the future of the open access policy and practices in Horizon 2020, which is the future EU framework programme for research and innovation, and for the preparation of a communication from the Commission and a recommendation to Member States on scientific publications in the digital age.

The online questionnaire was open between 29 June and 26 August 2011 and enabled the collection of a total of 194 responses (success rate: 24 %). Many respondents used the possibility to answer ‘no opinion’ to some questions, but this constitutes valuable information. The final report was prepared in October/November 2011. Annexes include tables of statistical results in each FP7 research area.

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Heather Morrison has released a draft of her doctoral thesis Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age.

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this thesis is to further the work of transitioning to an open access scholarly communication system designed to support and prioritize scholarship and the public good rather than profit. The method will involve analysis of key underlying historical trends in society and how they impact scholarly communication, as well as original empirical work on the growth of open access, economic analysis to inform economic aspects of transition, and a case study of scholarly communication in the discipline of communication.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) has released the final version of the PEER Economics Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This study considers the effect of large-scale deposit on scholarly research publication and dissemination (sharing of research outputs), beginning with the analysis of publishers and institutions managing repositories and their sustainability. The study associates costs with specific activities, performed by key actors involved in research registration, certification, dissemination and digital management: authors, the scholarly community, editors, publishers, libraries, readers and funding agencies. Contrary to most of the existing literature, the study analyses cost structures of individual organizations. The focus of this study is therefore to provide context for the costs to specific organizations and to their choices in terms of scale and scope. . . .

This study analyses 22 organizations involved with journal article publication and dissemination. Data were gathered via literature and public document analysis, as well as through individual in-depth interviews in order to assess the cost structure of publishers, OA journal publishers and institutions managing repositories and the conditions for their sustainability.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

Michael Nielsen has been named as a SPARC Innovator.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

While Nielsen is not alone in promoting the open sharing of data and research to advance science, he has been in the spotlight this fall as an advocate for the cause. The Open Society Foundations supported sending him on an awareness-raising tour on Open Science. In three months, Nielsen did 33 talks in 17 cities—from small gatherings of high school students in Lithuania to a 1,000-plus audience in Canada. (The recording on ted.com of his presentation at TEDxWaterloo has received more than 150,000 hits.). . .

For being a thought leader of how doing science in the open can promote change and bringing the discussion to a new level, SPARC honors Nielsen as the January 2012 SPARC Innovator. "Michael is an incredibly bright scientist and researcher in his own right," says Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC. "But he also has a view beyond 30,000 feet of the entire scientific enterprise, and the value that open brings to the table." Nielsen has found a way to engage the general public in this issue to understand why it matters. In his push to open up the scientific process, he has helped advance the entire open-access movement. "He is a voice into the mainstream that has been sorely lacking," says Joseph.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

The Association of Research Libraries, the Johns Hopkins University Libraries, and SPARC have replied to the White House's Request for Information: Public Access to Digital Data Resulting from Federally Funded Scientific Research.

Here's an excerpt:

Question 1

What specific Federal policies would encourage public access to and the preservation of broadly valuable digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research, to grow the U.S. economy and improve the productivity of the American scientific enterprise?

Comment 1

The most effective Federal policies in this regard would mandate digital data deposit into publicly accessible repositories. In the absence of such policies, there are already cases of digital data which have been lost or remain inaccessible or accessible only with high barriers. While laudable efforts such as the NSF and NIH data management plans move the community in the direction of supporting U.S. economic growth and productivity, the reality is that many researchers continue to strictly interpret the requirement as sharing data based on specific requests or personal provisions. The Federal policy framework should move public access to digital data away from the current idiosyncratic environment to a systematic approach that lowers barriers to data access, discovery, sharing and re-use.

Instead of relying upon individual investigators to interpret and support public access through a point to point network (e.g., researcher provides digital data upon request), Federal policies should ensure that public access can occur through well managed, sustained, preservation archives that enable a legally and policy compliant peer to peer model for sharing. A useful metric for full-fledged public access to digital data is whether someone (or some machine) other than the original data producer can discover, access, interpret and use the digital data without contacting the original data producer.

See also Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' reply and the Creative Commons' reply.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

College & Research Libraries has released a preprint of "From Stacks to the Web: The Transformation of Academic Library Collecting" by David W. Lewis.

Here's an excerpt:

The existence of a ubiquitous and cheap worldwide communication’s network that increasingly makes documents easily and freely available will require a transformation of academic library collecting practice. It will be driven by a number of specific developments including: the digitization of content; the development of print repositories; the development of e-readers and print-on-demand publishing; the growth of open access; challenges to establish academic publishing organizations; and the growth of new forms of scholarship based on openness and social productivity. If academic libraries are to be successful, they will need to: deconstruct legacy print collections; move from item-by-item book selection to purchase-on-demand and subscriptions; manage the transition to open access journals; focus on curating unique items; and develop new mechanisms for funding national infrastructure.

| E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) have introduced the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), which is aimed at eliminating federal open access policies such as the NIH Public Access Policy. The key passage of the bill states:

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that—

1. causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
2. requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a call to action and a draft letter that can be modified and sent to legislators. Here's an excerpt from the call:

Supporters of public access need to speak out against this proposed legislation. We strongly urge you to contact these offices to express your opposition TODAY, or as soon as possible. To support you, draft letter text is available.

• Representative Issa
  @DarrellIssa
  http://issa.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=597&Itemid=73
  Fax: (202) 225-3303
• Representative Maloney
  @RepMaloney
  https://maloney.house.gov/contact-me/email-me%20(Using%20zip%20code%2010128-3679) [Navigate from home page to contact page instead.]
  Fax: (202) 225-4709
• Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – especially if you’re a constituent.
  http://1.usa.gov/zDqnne
• Your representative – through the ATA Action Center: http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc

Also, don’t miss a key opportunity to express support for the expansion of the NIH public-access policy to other federal science and technology agencies. There are six days left to respond to the White House requests for information (RFI) on public access to scholarly publications and data (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-1117.shtml).

Read more about it at "Publishers Applaud 'Research Works Act,' Bipartisan Legislation to End Government Mandates on Private-Sector Scholarly Publishing," "Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail Trying to Wag the Public Research Dog, Yet Again," and "Trying to Roll Back the Clock on Open Access: Research Works Act Introduced."

[Regular DigitalKoans posts resume on 1/17/12.]

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Caroline Sutton has published "Is Free Inevitable in Scholarly Communication? The Economics of Open Access" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

In this article I would like to make the case that a change in the delivery of scientific content and in the business models for delivering scholarly communication was inevitable from the moment journals moved online, even if much of this change is yet to come. By applying a thesis put forth by Chris Anderson in his 2009 book Free, I will argue that given that scholarly journals are now digital products, they are subject to very different economic principles and social forces than their print ancestors.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

Jennifer C. Molloy has published "The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science" in PLoS Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Data provides the evidence for the published body of scientific knowledge, which is the foundation for all scientific progress. The more data is made openly available in a useful manner, the greater the level of transparency and reproducibility and hence the more efficient the scientific process becomes, to the benefit of society. This viewpoint is becoming mainstream among many funders, publishers, scientists, and other stakeholders in research, but barriers to achieving widespread publication of open data remain. The Open Data in Science working group at the Open Knowledge Foundation is a community that works to develop tools, applications, datasets, and guidelines to promote the open sharing of scientific data. This article focuses on the Open Knowledge Definition and the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. We also discuss some of the tools the group has developed to facilitate the generation and use of open data and the potential uses that we hope will encourage further movement towards an open scientific knowledge commons.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |