Category: Publishing

"What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright’s Underuse Hypothesis Across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada"

Rebecca Giblin has self-archived "What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright's Underuse Hypothesis Across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

We find that books are actually less available where they are under copyright than where they are in the public domain, and that commercial publishers seem undeterred from investing in works even where others are competing to supply the same titles. We also find that exclusive rights do not appear to trigger investment in works that have low commercial demand, with books from 59% of the 'culturally valuable' authors we sampled unavailable in any jurisdiction, regardless of copyright status.

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Louisiana State University Drops the Big Deal: "Elsevier Changes: Message from the Provost"

Louisiana State University has released "Elsevier Changes: Message from the Provost."

Here's an excerpt:

During the Faculty Senate's final meeting of the spring semester, senators approved a resolution recommending the cancellation of the subscription package of Elsevier journals. Going forward, the Libraries will subscribe to Elsevier journals on a title-by-title basis, retaining the most highly used journals by the LSU community. The resolution further called for the creation of expedited document delivery to provide fast, unmediated access to articles in journals not on subscription.

The LSU administration supports this course of action. Once the current contract with Elsevier expires at the end of 2019, LSU will break away from the package agreement, and expects to spend $1 million on Elsevier titles, subscribing to fewer journals and providing access to all previously available material through alternate sources.

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"Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing"

Springer Nature has released "Springer Nature Journals Unify Their Policy to Encourage Preprint Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

Recognizing these benefits, we are now pleased to announce an updated policy encouraging preprint sharing for Springer Nature journals. This intends to remove ambiguity on two important points. First, we now make it clear that authors may choose any licence for preprints, including Creative Commons licences. . . .

Second, the updated policy provides more information about our position on author engagement with the media in response to enquiries about preprints. . . .Finally, we stand by our policy supporting citation of preprints in reference lists of submitted and published manuscripts.

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Oxford Open Access Project: "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report"

Juliet Ralph has published "Learned Societies and the Transition to Open Access: Event Report" in Open Access Oxford.

Here's an excerpt:

As part of last month’s Open Access Oxford week, a distinguished panel of Oxford academics led discussions around learned societies and their transition to Open Access. The event was held in collaboration with Oxford University Press (OUP) and aimed to address issues raised by Plan S. . . .

Prof Freeman closed the event by drawing together the main themes discussed:

  1. Agreement that the move to OA is broadly a good thing, but challenges persist in how we go about it.
  2. The economics of OA remain a major issue, especially around very small societies and publishers. There are opportunities for action within the community of forming consortia to reduce costs and benefit from economies of scale. The matter of ‘not for profits’ making surpluses and where those surpluses are used is a topic for societies to consider. Open Access is not the same as ‘free.’
  3. The sociology, history and structure of disciplines differ, for example in the scale of their funding/grants

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"Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing"

Lonni Besançon et al. have self-archived "Open Up: A Survey on Open and Non-anonymized Peer Reviewing."

Here's an excerpt:

We present a discussion and analysis regarding the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review based on literature results and responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open-review track within the CHI conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). This track currently is the only implementation of an open-peer-review process in the field of HCI while, with the recent increase in interest in open science practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields. We collected 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers and found that, while the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well liked by alt.chi participants, they are reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/, and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews.

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"Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing"

Jonathan P. Tennant et al. have published "Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The changing world of scholarly communication and the emerging new wave of 'Open Science' or 'Open Research' has brought to light a number of controversial and hotly debated topics. Evidence-based rational debate is regularly drowned out by misinformed or exaggerated rhetoric, which does not benefit the evolving system of scholarly communication. This article aims to provide a baseline evidence framework for ten of the most contested topics, in order to help frame and move forward discussions, practices, and policies. We address issues around preprints and scooping, the practice of copyright transfer, the function of peer review, predatory publishers, and the legitimacy of 'global' databases. These arguments and data will be a powerful tool against misinformation across wider academic research, policy and practice, and will inform changes within the rapidly evolving scholarly publishing system.

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Forum Planning Committee’s Report to UC Council of University Librarians on Choosing Pathways to Open Access

The UC Office of the President has released Forum Planning Committee's Report to UC Council of University Librarians on Choosing Pathways to Open Access.

Here's an excerpt:

On October 16-17, 2018, University of California (UC) libraries hosted a working forum in Berkeley, California entitled "Choosing Pathways to Open Access" ("CP2OA") (see https://cp2oa18.com/). Sponsored by the University of California’s Council of University Librarians ("CoUL"), the forum was designed to enable North American library or consortium leaders and key academic stakeholders to engage in action-focused deliberations about redirecting subscription and other funds toward sustainable open access ("OA") publishing.

This report was prepared by members of the forum's Planning Committee as a way to update CoUL on forum outcomes, and to synthesize these outcomes into recommendations for further collective (UC multi-institutional) action to advance OA. The recommendations reflect the opinions of the report drafters; they are not an official statement by CoUL, nor should publication of this report signify CoUL's endorsement of our recommendations. We (the Planning Committee) instead hope that CoUL will consider the recommendations in due course, particularly as some of them reflect efforts already underway within various UC libraries.

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EUA Big Deals Survey Report April 2018: The First Mapping of Major Scientific Publishing Contracts in Europe

The European University Association has released EUA Big Deals Survey Report April 2018: The First Mapping of Major Scientific Publishing Contracts in Europe.

Here's an excerpt:

The EUA Big Deals Survey Report: The first mapping of major scientific publishing contracts in Europe presents data from 28 negotiating consortia. The data, which was gathered between July 2016 and June 2017, was anonymous and aggregated, thus respecting the confidential nature of the information provided by respondents. The survey focused on the functions and working process of consortia, as well as on the conditions of contracts for big deals concerning scientific periodicals, databases and e-books. The results of the survey show that consortia broadly represent the interests of relevant stakeholders from the university and library sectors and are largely driven by researchers’ needs.

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