Category: Publishing

Academic Journal Publisher Brill Launches Brill Open

Brill, an international academic publisher located in Leiden and Boston, has launched Brill Open.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This new author service offers the option of making articles freely available upon publication. Brill Open enables authors to comply with research funding bodies and institutions which require open access.

The Brill Open option will be available for all 135 journals published under the imprints Brill, Martinus Nijhoff and VSP. Articles will be put in online open access in exchange for an article publishing fee to be arranged by the author.

Sam Bruinsma, Brill's Business Development Director, explains:"We are launching this new service in answer to a growing number of research funding bodies and universities announcing their compliance with the open access model. With Brill Open our journals are ready to meet the expected increase in contributions under this model."

In order to ensure that authors' funder requirements have no influence on the editorial peer review and decision-making, Brill Open will be made available to authors only upon acceptance of their paper for publication. Those authors who do not wish to use this service will be under no pressure to do so, and their accepted article will be published in the usual manner.

Brill's strategic intent is to adjust the future subscription price of a journal to reflect an increase in Brill Open fees. Sam Bruinsma comments: "Our view on open access developments is positive. We accept that over time an increasing part of our revenues will come through this new model. This will have an impact on the revenues from our library subscription service. The combination of these two business models will continue to support a healthy and sustainable journal program attractive to the best authors in the field."

Utah State University Press Merges with Library, Goes Open Access

The Utah State University Press will merge with the Merrill-Cazier Library, and it will "adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component."

Here's an excerpt from the press release

Joining a growing national trend, Utah State University Press will merge with the administrative structure of Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. The transition has begun, with the arrangement officially taking effect at the start of fiscal year 2010-11. . . .

"Many university presses are moving toward open access, often under the administration of the library,” Clement [Richard Clement, Dean of USU Libraries] said. “The most conspicuous example in the recent past is the University of Michigan Press which moved into the library and is now focusing on OA and other forms of digital publication. We propose to move the USU Press along the same path." . . .

While the decision to move USU Press to Merrill-Cazier Library was not completely budget-driven, it will result in significant savings, Clement said. With a larger staff in place, the library will assume a number of support activities for the press, including accounting, IT support, graphic design and public relations. . . .

USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. The library’s position will be enhanced as well, as academic libraries nationally take on a stronger role in the evolution of scholarly publishing.

Read more about it at "Survival—Through Open Access" and "USU Press merging with Merrill-Cazier Library."

Final Report on the Provision of Usage Data and Manuscript Deposit Procedures for Publishers and Repository Managers

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released: Final Report on the Provision of Usage Data and Manuscript Deposit Procedures for Publishers and Repository Managers.

Here's an excerpt:

This report concludes the development of an overall framework for depositing stage-two outputs in and for harvesting log files from repositories. An innovative workflow has been devised to describe and standardise the deposit from publishers to repositories that demonstrates, in a core group of interoperable European repositories, the capability of accepting material deposited from third party publishers and authors beyond the project duration.

The development of an appropriate workflow for author deposits has proved challenging, as the author response is unpredictable, and cannot readily be standardised. The guiding principle adopted is that authors are encouraged to follow their established practice of deposit in an institutional or subject-specific repository. Failing such practice, a central deposit in the PEER Depot for distribution to designated PEER repositories is recommended.

"Internet Archive Dishes up BookServer as Digital Books Market Heats Up"

In "Internet Archive Dishes up BookServer as Digital Books Market Heats Up," Nancy Herther discusses the recent BookServer announcement and its implications.

Here's an excerpt:

Using an open architecture and open ebook formats, Kahle and his team intend to see that ebooks are available—for free or a fee—that will work on any device—whether a laptop, PC, smartphone, game console, or dedicated ebook reader. While it is still in development and probably years from completion, the BookServer project is intended to allow users to search book indexes across the web—whether it be on publishers' sites, libraries, bookstores, universities, or other sources—to identify content, compare vendor offerings, and easily download titles.

DeepDyve Launches Rental Service for Scholarly Articles

DeepDyve has launched a rental service for scholarly articles.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

DeepDyve today unveiled the world 's largest online rental service for scientific, technical and medical research. From a growing database spanning thousands of journals, DeepDyve now gives consumers and professionals access to more than 30 million articles for as little as $0.99 per article.

"The web is transforming the publishing industry and creating opportunities for new users to access our content," said Martin Frank, Ph. D., executive director of the American Physiological Society. "The rental model that DeepDyve has pioneered enables us to serve these new users without compromising the products we offer to our traditional subscription customers." . . .

DeepDyve . . . offers an array of features and benefits to enrich the searching and reading experience, including:

  • Free search & preview: Researchers can be certain of an article's relevance before renting.
  • Personalized suggestions: DeepDyve will automatically display suggested articles based on a user 's profile.
  • Bookmarks: Favorite articles are saved and displayed on a user 's MyDeepDyve home page for easy access.
  • Email and RSS alerts: Users can receive regular updates of new articles and search results delivered directly to their email inbox or RSS reader.
  • More Like This: DeepDyve offers links to related content with every search result and article page. . . .

DeepDyve is currently offering a risk-free, 14-day trial that allows users unlimited access to thousands of authoritative journals at no cost. Users enjoy continuous access to any article until their Free Trial expires, after which they may join one of three plans:

  • Basic Rental Plan: For just $0.99 per article, users of this “pay-as-you-go” plan can rent and read a premium article from one of the many prestigious journals available through DeepDyve. Articles can be read multiple times for up to 24 hours.
  • Silver Monthly Plan: For $9.99 per month, users can rent and read up to 20 premium articles per month. Each article can be read multiple times for up to seven days.
  • Gold Monthly Plan: For $19.99 per month, users can rent and read an unlimited number of articles for an unlimited amount of time. There is no expiration date.

University of Michigan to Distribute Over 500,000 Digitized Books Using HP BookPrep POD Service

The University of Michigan Library will distribute over 500,000 rare and hard-to-find digitized books using HP BookPrep POD service.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

HP BookPrep — a cloud computing service that enables on-demand printing of books — brings new life to the traditional publishing model, making it possible to bring any book ever published back into print through an economical and sustainable service model.

As part of a growing movement to preserve and digitize historic content, major libraries are partnering with technology leaders to scan previously hard-to-find works using high-resolution photography. HP's process transforms these scans prior to printing by cleaning up some of the wear and tear that often is present in the originals.

HP BookPrep significantly drives down the cost of republishing books by eliminating the manual cleanup work that would otherwise be required. Based on imaging and printing technology from HP Labs, the company's central research arm, HP BookPrep automates the creation of high-quality, print-ready books from these raw book scans by sharpening text and images, improving alignment and coloration, and generating and adding covers.

People can now purchase high-quality print versions of public-domain, out-of-print books from the University of Michigan Library through HP BookPrep channels, including traditional and online retailers such as Amazon.com.

"People around the world still value reading books in print," said Andrew Bolwell, director, New Business Initiatives, HP. "HP BookPrep technology allows publishers to extend the life cycle of their books, removes the cost and waste burdens of maintaining inventory, and uses a full spectrum of technologies to deliver convenient access to consumers."

For publishers and content owners, HP BookPrep offers an opportunity to offer their full catalog of titles online, irrespective of demand. Because HP BookPrep is a web service that processes books as they are ordered, there is little upfront investment or risk as books are printed only after they are purchased, no matter the volume, eliminating the need for high carrying costs.

Consistently ranked as one of the top 10 academic research libraries in North America, the University of Michigan Library is a true repository for the human record. The print collection contains more than 7 million volumes, covering thousands of years of civilization. HP is collaborating with the university to eliminate barriers and increase access to content as part of an ongoing effort to make the concept of "out of print" a thing of the past.

"Our partnership with HP is a testament to the University of Michigan Library's commitment to increase public access to our library's collections and our continued innovative use of digitization," said Paul N. Courant, librarian and dean of libraries, University of Michigan. "We are excited that HP BookPrep can offer print distribution of the public domain works in our collection and help to provide broad access to works that have previously been hard to find outside the walls of our library."

The collaboration also builds upon HP's existing relationship with Applewood Books, a publisher of historical, Americana books. The company, which has been using HP BookPrep for the last year to republish hundreds of titles, also will distribute HP BookPrep's best-selling titles from the University of Michigan Library.

Publisher Self-Archiving Policies: Major SHERPA RoMEO Upgrade

SHERPA has released a major upgrade of its RoMEO service, which lists publishers' self-archiving policies.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A major upgrade to RoMEO has been released today, giving:

  • Extra Category for the self-archiving of the Publisher's Version/ PDF
  • Expanded Journal Coverage
  • Extra Search Options for Journal Abbreviations and Electronic ISSNs
  • New Tabular Browse View for Publishers
  • Selective Display of Publishers' Compliance with Funding Agencys' Mandates . . . .

Previous versions of RoMEO have concentrated on highlighting information on the use of the pre-print and post-print. There has been great support from the community for also providing clearly labelled information on the use of the publisher's version/PDF as a separate item. This feature has now been included and sits alongside information on self-archiving rights for Pre-prints and Authors' Post-prints. The information is available in both individual publisher entries and in the new Tabular Browse View.

RoMEO now provides expanded journal coverage, enabling users to draw from both the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Entrez journal list for the Life Sciences, along with the existing resource of the British Library's Zetoc service.

In addition to searching for journals by Print ISSN, users are now able to search by Electronic ISSN. They can also search for journals using title abbreviations.

The new Tabular Browse View enables users to display comparative charts of publishers, to quickly determine and compare what different Publishers allow them to deposit, and if the Publisher has a Paid OA Option.

If you or your authors receive funding from any of the 50 plus agencies listed in JULIET, you will now be able to restrict your search results to display Publishers' compliance with any of the funding agencies' policies listed in JULIET.

Internet Archive Launches BookServer

The Internet Archive has launched BookServer.

Here's an excerpt from the home page:

The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices. BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books.

Read more about it at "Internet Archive's BookServer Could 'Dominate' Amazon," "Internet Archive Uncloaks Open Ebook Dream Machine: Will Google Play?," and "The Day It All Changed."

Barnes & Noble Announces nook, Its Wireless E-Book Reader

Barnes & Noble has announced nook, its wireless e-book reader, which will go on sale at end of November for $259.00

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

nook features many industry firsts as it is the first Android™-based eBook reader and the first to offer a color touch screen for navigation along with a best-in-class E Ink display for an immersive, enjoyable e-reading experience. For fast connectivity, nook is the first eBook reader to provide, at no additional costs to customers, both 3G wireless access on AT&T's mobile broadband network and access to Wi-Fi for Barnes & Noble in-store browsing and enjoyment. And to help friends share their joy of reading, nook is the first eBook reader to offer digital lending for a wide selection of eBooks. . . .

The centerpiece of Barnes & Noble's strategy to deliver any book, any time, anywhere, nook was created expressly with the reader in mind, with features and functionality to create an immersive, seamless and fun experience:

  • A Gripping Read, by Design: nook's sleek, minimalist design puts the focus on the content, not the technology, and the combination of color and touch make navigation intuitive and simple. nook feels great in hand and features a contoured, easy-to-hold back. About the size and weight of a paperback book, nook is thin, small and portable. Its best-in-class E Ink Vizplex™ display is easy on the eyes with text as clear and crisp as a printed book. And with no glare or backlight and adjustable text size, you can read comfortably for hours without straining your eyes.
  • Color Touch for Easy Navigation: The beautiful lower color touch screen offers an immersive experience, inviting you to virtually browse through brilliant cover art, flip through an expansive library, or search using a virtual keyboard. nook presents the controls, navigation and keyboard you need, only when you need them.
  • Download eBooks Wirelessly: With fast 3G wireless and Wi-Fi access, nook is the most-connected eBook reader. Browse and instantly download eBooks, magazines and newspapers simply and seamlessly on AT&T's 3G wireless network, the nation's fastest, with no set-up required or additional wireless costs. Connect to the complimentary Wi-Fi, provided by the AT&T Wi-Fi network, in Barnes & Noble stores and download at broadband fast speeds.
  • Lend eBooks to Friends: With nook's breakthrough LendMe™ technology, lend a wide selection of eBooks to friends free of charge, for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend's nook or iPhone, iPod touch, select BlackBerry® and Motorola smartphones, PC or Mac® with Barnes & Noble eReader software.
  • A Continuous Reading Experience: With "Reading Now" your virtual bookmark, nook brings you back to the last book you've read, right where you left off. And it works across a range of devices. If you forgot your nook at home, Barnes & Noble's free eReader software on your iPhone, select BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones or laptop lets you pick up where you left off, including annotations. And when you're reunited with your nook again, the Reading Now page will be updated and ready to go.
  • A Wealth of Content, in the Palm of Your Hand: nook can hold up to 1,500 eBooks and other printed content, and the sky's the limit for your digital library when you use nook's expandable memory slot. A 16GB MicroSD card holds up to 17,500 eBooks.
  • Portability and Personalization: You can also easily transfer PDF-format documents from your computer to access and read business documents, legal contracts and travel information on your nook. And transfer your photos to create custom screensavers. . . .

Over One Million eBooks, Newspapers and Magazine

As part of nook's introduction, Barnes & Noble has further expanded its wide selection of content to satisfy every reader.

  • Expanded eBookstore: From fiction to horror and romance to thrillers, with the launch of nook, Barnes & Noble's eBookstore now offers the most eBook titles—over one million—with most bestsellers and new releases for just $9.99.
  • Your Daily Newspapers on nook: Read your "morning paper" any time, anywhere you go. Barnes & Noble now offers subscriptions to more than 20 newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Barnes & Noble expects to offer, in digital form, subscriptions to every major U.S. daily.
  • Read Your Favorite Magazines: As the nation's second largest retailer of magazines, Barnes & Noble is now pleased to offer its customers digital subscriptions. Enjoy reading publications including Forbes, Newsweek and The Nation on your nook, at home or on the go.

eScholarship Relaunched with New Services and Enhanced Functionality

The California Digital Library has relaunched eScholarship with new services and enhanced functionality.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Previously known as UC's eScholarship Repository, the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly publishing platform that enables departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

"Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the enormous value we see in recasting the institutional repository as an open access publisher," says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. "There is significant need across the University of California campuses for a sustainable infrastructure to support the publication and dissemination of research. In our efforts to respond to this need, we have watched our institutional repository evolve into a dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work." . . .

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new opportunities for digital publishing to the University of California and offers substantially improved services for previously supported publication types. Books published in eScholarship are now eligible for a combined digital/print publication service, courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a joint program of UC Press and the California Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship now offers conference lifecycle support, including mechanisms for proposal submission, program display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.

Much of the site redesign has been focused on improving the quality of access to eScholarship publications. The site is optimized for Google searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety without download; and research can be shared easily through third party social networking sites and RSS feeds. Likewise, the ability to locate relevant scholarship within the new site is greatly improved as a result of the implementation of:

  1. a highly developed similar items finder
  2. visual snippets of keywords within documents (KWIC Pics) accessible from the search results page
  3. facets for narrowing search results by UC campus, discipline, and peer review– status
  4. keyword search capability within documents

Google to Launch Google Editions

At the Tools of Change conference, Google's Amanda Edmonds announced the launch of Google Editions by June 2010. In the service, e-books will be able to be accessed using a Web browser. Using Google Editions, customers will be able to purchase e-books from either Google, selected retailers, or publishers.

Read more about it at "Google Editions Ebook Platform to Challenge Amazon Kindle," "Google Plans 'Buy Anywhere, Read Anywhere' Offer," and "Google Takes on Amazon with Online E-Book Store."

UK's National Institute for Health Research Funds 15% Discount in BioMed Central Publication Fees for Its Researchers

The UK's National Institute for Health Research has inked a Supporter Membership arrangement with BioMed Central that will allow researchers supported by the NIHR and its partners to get a 15% discount on BioMed Central publication fees.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Under the terms of the NIHR's Supporter Membership arrangement, all NHS researchers supported by the NIHR and its partners will benefit from a 15% discount on publication fees when publishing in any of BioMed Central's 200 peer-reviewed open access journals. Researchers are expected to acknowledge NIHR support.

The NIHR is part of the Department of Health, which is a strong advocate of access to the results of research and a partner in the UK PubMed Central open access digital archive project. In 2007 it made a statement confirming official policy in support of open access. http://www.nihr.ac.uk/files/pdfs/OpenAccessPolicyStatement.pdf

With support through the NIHR, researchers already publish hundreds of open access articles each year in BioMed Central’s journals, and Supporter Membership will further encourage open access publication, increasing public access to the results of taxpayer funded research whilst saving money.

The STM Report: An Overview of Scientific and Scholarly Journal Publishing

The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers has released The STM Report: An Overview of Scientific and Scholarly Journal Publishing.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Annual revenues generated from English-language STM journal publishing are estimated at $8 billion in 2008, up by 6-7% compared to 2007, within a broader STM publishing market worth some $16 billion. About 55% of global STM revenues (including non-journal STM products) come from the USA, 30% from Europe, 10% from Asia/Pacific and 5% from the rest of the world.

Continued growth in output, particularly from China and East Asia, will put further pressure on the system, especially when combined with funders’ desire for greater return on research investments and the pressures on researchers to accelerate the research cycle.

There are approximately 2000 journal publishers globally, and the main English-language trade and professional associations for journal publishers include 657 publishers producing around 11,550 journals—about 50% of the total journal output by title. Of these, 477 publishers (73%) and 2334 journals (20%) are not-for-profit.

There were about 25,400 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals in early 2009, collectively publishing about 1.5 million articles a year. The number of articles published each year and the number of journals have both grown steadily for over two centuries, by about 3% and 3.5% per year respectively. The reason is the equally persistent growth in the number of researchers, which has also grown at about 3% per year and now stands at between 5.5 and 10 million, depending on definition, although only about 20% of these are repeat authors.

University of Michigan Press Partners with HathiTrust to Provide Free Access to Over 1,000 Books

The University of Michigan Press is working with HathiTrust Digital Library to provide free access to over 1,000 books by the end of 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Launched in 2008, HathiTrust is a digital preservation repository and research management tool for the world's great research libraries, focused on providing scholars in the digital age with the largest collection of electronic research material this side of Google Book Search and large-scale, full-text searching and archiving tools to manage it.

"Presses have had online previews and PDFs of sample chapters, tables of contents, and sometimes entire books on their Web sites for years," said Phil Pochoda, director of the U-M Press. "The HathiTrust partnership is something entirely new that takes into account the actual pursuit of broad dissemination of scholarly information.

"Security restrictions are in place to protect the integrity of the product, but with HathiTrust, a full view of the material is there. It's searchable and it's available to anyone with access. If you want to either search for or happen to come across Michigan Press books, you can look through them onscreen anywhere, anytime."

In keeping with the U-M's leadership role in the use of digitization and print-on-demand technology, U-M Press seeks to push the boundaries of the rapidly changing publishing world to position its resources where many different kinds of audiences can find them, Pochoda said.

Utilizing the latest technology, readers and researchers will find multiple ways to find what they are looking for. HathiTrust links to the U-M Press site allow for fast online purchasing.

In addition to a partnership with HathiTrust, content on Amazon and hundreds of U-M Press books in Google Book Search (in which the U-M Library was one of the original participants), U-M Press has had a "Look Inside" feature on its own book Web pages for several years.

With text search ability powered by Google, the "Look Inside" feature on the U-M Press Web site is another tool for viewing each title without damaging the integrity of the product. It currently contains thousands of table-of-contents and sample chapter views, with more than 100 complete titles available for full viewing and hundreds more complete titles planned for full view by the end of 2009.

Income Models for Open Access: An Overview of Current Practice

SPARC has released Income Models for Open Access: An Overview of Current Practice.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Who pays for Open Access?" is a key question faced by publishers, authors, and libraries as awareness and interest in free, immediate, online access to scholarly research increases. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) examines the issue of sustainability for current and prospective open-access publishers in a timely new guide, "Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice," by Raym Crow.

"Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice" examines the use of supply-side revenue streams (such as article processing fees, advertising) and demand-side models (including versioning, use-triggered fees). The guide provides an overview of income models currently in use to support open-access journals, including a description of each model along with examples of journals currently employing it. . . .

Developing a sound business model is a critical concern for all publishers and the process can be especially challenging for those considering open-access distribution. The guide recognizes that the needs of individual journals differ, and that publishers will apply a variety of income models to support open-access distribution. The right model must take into account not only the publisher's need to cover expenses, but also the organization's mission objectives, size, business management resources, and other factors. . . .

"Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice" is available for free to read or download online. The guide is supplemented by an extensive Web resource, which invites community discussion on models described as well as contributions related to new and other models. The resource is online at http://www.arl.org/sparc/publisher/incomemodels/.

Open Journal Systems 2.3 Released

The Public Knowledge Project has released Open Journal Systems 2.3.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

OJS 2.3.0 introduces a major rewrite of core aspects of PKP applications that reconciles common code (e.g. shared between OJS, OCS, and the Harvester) into a separate library called the PKP Web Application Library (WAL). Many parts of the system have been changed in a way that is transparent to users but that will vastly improve maintainability and the ease with which PKP can deploy fixes and new features across multiple applications. Wherever possible, this has been done in a way that minimizes code breakage e.g. for modified installs of OJS and custom plugins.

Read more about it at "OJS 2.3: What's New."

Google Books Settlement Status Conference Reports

Kenneth Crews and James Grimmelmann have posted blog reports about the Google Books Settlement status conference on October 7th. An amended agreement is anticipated to be filed by November 9th.

Here's an excerpt from the Grimmelmann's post:

Judge Chin is trying to move this case, and his overall attitude seemed to be that he wants as clean a record as possible, and soon, so that he can act on it. That would incline me to think that he is hoping to be able to approve the settlement, or at the least to kick some of the legal issues upstairs to the Second Circuit for its guidance.

Read more about it at "Amended Google Deal Targeted for November 9."

No Contract Awarded for GPO Mass Digitization of All Federal Publications

The U.S. Government Printing Office has been unable to award a contract for the digitization of all Federal publications.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 2004, GPO proposed digitizing all retrospective Federal publications back to the earliest days of the Federal Government. Following the conduct of a pilot project in 2006 and its evaluation in 2007, we issued an RFP in 2008 for a cooperative relationship with a public or private sector participant or participants where the uncompressed, unaltered files created as a result of the conversion process would be delivered to GPO at no cost to the Government, for ingest into GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). Unfortunately, we were unable to make an award for this RFP in the allocated timeframe.

We are very disappointed in this setback, but are currently developing new digitization alternatives. In addition to our longstanding goal of serving as one of the repositories for electronic files through the submission of material to FDsys, our focus for digitization will be on coordinating projects among institutions, assisting in the establishment and implementation of preservation guidelines, maintaining a registry of digitization projects, and ensuring that there is appropriate bibliographic metadata for the titles in the collection.

Gawronski v. Amazon.com: Amazon's New Kindle Deletion Rules

As a result of the settlement of the Gawronski et al. v. Amazon.com Inc et al. case (about the deletion of George Orwell e-books), Amazon.com will comply with new rules regarding deletion of digital works on Kindles.

Here's an excerpt:

For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal, non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to a Device). This paragraph does not apply to (a) applications (whether developed or offered by Amazon or by third parties), software or other code; (b) transient content such as blogs; or (c) content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action by the Device user to save older issues.

Read more about it at "Amazon Settles Kindle '1984' Lawsuit" and "Amazon.com to Pay $150,000 to Settle Suit Challenging Take-Back of 1984."

Peter Suber on "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals"

Peter Suber has published "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

I start with three disparities:  the gap between journal performance and what prevailing metrics say about journal performance (#1); the gap between the vision of OA embodied in the Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin statements and the access policies at 85% of OA journals (#2); and the gap between a journal's quality and its prestige, even when the quality is high (#3).  Then I move on to seven kinds of doubt:  doubts about quality (#4), preservation (#5), honesty (#6), publication fees (#7), sustainability (#8), redirection (#9), and strategy (#10).

Publishing and the Ecology of European Research Project Releases PEER Annual Report—Year 1

The Publishing and the Ecology of European Research project has released PEER Annual Report—Year 1.

Here's an excerpt:

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the EC eContentplus programme, is investigating the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors' final peer reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research.

Peer-reviewed journals play a key role in scholarly communication and are essential for scientific progress and European competitiveness. The publishing and research communities share the view that increased access to the results of EU-funded research is necessary to maximise their use and impact. However, they hold different views on whether mandated deposit in open access repositories will achieve greater use and impact. There are also differences of opinion as to the most appropriate embargo periods. No consensus has been reached on a way forward so far.

The lack of consensus on these key issues stems from a lack of clear evidence of what impact the broad and systematic archiving of research outputs in open access repositories might be, but PEER aims to change this through building a substantial body of evidence, via the development of an "observatory" to monitor the effects of systematic archiving over time.

New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Make Half-Million Public Domain Books Available

The New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies are making a half-million public domain books available for sale as digitized or printed copies.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Readers and researchers looking for hard-to-find books now have the opportunity to dip into the collections of one of the world's most comprehensive libraries to purchase digitized copies of public domain titles. Through their Digitize-on-Demand program, Kirtas Technologies has partnered with The New York Public Library to make 500,000 public domain works from the Library's collections available (to anyone in the world).

"New technology has allowed the Library to greatly expand access to its collections," said Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. "Now, for the first time, library users are able to order copies of specific items from our vast public domain collections that are useful to them. Additionally the program creates a digital legacy for future users of the same item and a revenue stream to support our operations. We are very pleased to participate in a program that is so beneficial to everyone involved."

Using existing information from NYPL's catalog records, Kirtas will make the library's public domain books available for sale through its retail site before they are ever digitized. Customers can search for a desired title on www.kirtasbooks.com and place an order for that book. When the order is placed, only then is it pulled from the shelf, digitized and made available as a high-quality reprint or digital file.

What makes this approach to digitization unique is that NYPL incurs no up-front printing, production or storage costs. It also provides the library with a self-funding, commercial model helping it to sustain its digitization programs in the future. Unlike other free or low-cost digitization programs, the library retains the rights and ownership to their own digitized content.

Frankfurt Book Fair Publisher Survey

The Frankfurt Book Fair has released a summary of the results of a recent survey of 840 international publishing company representatives.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

As a general rule, digital products still only comprise a small fraction of sales: Around 60 per cent of those polled estimate that considerably less than ten per cent of their revenue will come from digital sources in 2009. However, this will change in the next two years in the opinion of those polled: 41 per cent of those polled calculate sales of up to ten per cent for 2011 and 58 per cent anticipate that digital products will comprise a considerably higher share of total sales. The percentage of those who assume that 26 to 100 per cent of their revenue will come from digital products in two years increased from 24 per cent (2009) to 38 per cent (2011).

The idea that digital content will generate more sales than the traditional book business is also gradually becoming more of a reality. Around 50 per cent of industry experts now see the year 2018 as the turning point: In a comparable survey taken one year ago, 40 per cent saw this date as a "changing of the guard." In 2008, 27 per cent were of the opinion that digital would never overtake print—today that number is only 22 per cent.

Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

MediaCommons Press has launched and released its first publication, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. MediaCommons gets support from the Institute for the Future of the Book and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This book-in-progress focuses on the social and institutional changes that will be required within colleges and universities in the U.S. in order for digital scholarly publishing to become a viable reality.

The manuscript is here published in full, in an commentable format designed to promote a new open mode of peer review.