Pamela Samuelson and David R. Hansen have self-archived "Brief of Amici Curiae Academic Authors in Support of Defendant-Appellant and Reversal" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Summary of argument: Class certification was improperly granted below because the District Court failed to conduct a rigorous analysis of the adequacy of representation factor, as Rule 23(a)(4) requires. The three individual plaintiffs who claim to be class representatives are not academics and do not share the commitment to broad access to knowledge that predominates among academics. . . .

Academic authors desire broad public access to their works such as that which the Google Books project provides. Although the District Court held that the plaintiffs had inadequately represented the interests of academic authors in relation to the proposed settlement, it failed to recognize that pursuit of this litigation would be even more adverse to the interests of academic authors than the proposed settlement was. . . .

In short, a "win" in this case for the class representatives would be a "loss" for academic authors. It is precisely this kind of conflict that courts have long recognized should prevent class certification due to inadequate representation. The District Court failed to adequately address this fundamental conflict in its certification order, though it was well aware of the conflict through submissions and objections received from the settlement fairness hearing through to the hearings on the most recent class certification motions. Because of that failure, the order certifying the class should be reversed

| Google Books Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

The Directory of Open Access Books has released the DOAB User Needs Analysis—Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This final evaluation and recommendation report is based on the user experiences, needs, and expectations as they emerged from the qualitative components (survey, workshop and online discussion platform) that were used to conduct the DOAB User Needs Analysis. This final public report, intended for the wider academic and publishing community, aims to advise in the establishment of procedures, criteria and standards concerning the set-up and functioning of the DOAB platform and service and to devise guidelines and recommendations for admissions to DOAB and for its further development, sustainability and implementation.

| Digital Scholarship |

JSTOR has launched Books at JSTOR.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

JSTOR is pleased to announce the launch of its new books program, Books at JSTOR, which brings scholarly monographs from leading university presses and other academic publishers to the JSTOR platform. Books are deeply integrated with the 1,600 current and archival journals on JSTOR. All content is cross-searchable, and books are linked with millions of book reviews and from hundreds of thousands of book citations within the journal literature.

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

Kara Malenfant has posted an update on SCOAP3 in ACRL Insider.

Here's an excerpt from a quote in the post by Ann Okerson:

After an intense period of behind-the-scenes effort, CERN's open access, library, purchasing, and legal staff, along with the SCOAP3 global Steering Committee and Technical Working Group, secured with leading publishers the participation in principle of 12 HEP (full or partial) journals; developed a project governance structure; crafted a framework for performing calculations for subscription reduction and re-direction; and are putting into place a series of National Contact Persons (NCPs), who are responsible for securing participation from libraries, library consortia, research institutions, and funding agencies in their countries.

SCOAP3 is happening NOW. Participating libraries and institutions are being contacted to begin the process of commitment and planning for funds re-direction. The goal is that arrangements will be in place for SCOAP3 go-live with articles published beginning January 2014. For the United States, the LYRASIS consortium is the chosen National Contact Organization, with Ann Okerson as the NCP.

| Digital Scholarship |

Martin Hall has published "Green or Gold? Open Access after Finch" in the latest issue of Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

he Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings reported to the UK's Minister of Universities and Science in mid-2012. This was followed by a new policy for open access (OA) publishing by Research Councils UK (RCUK) as well as a commitment from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to require that research submitted to future research evaluation exercises—after the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF)—be open access. These initiatives build on a broad consensus, that includes for-profit publishers, that open access is the way of the future. Here, I give a perspective on these issues, both as the head of an institution with particular interests in the future of scholarly publication and also as a member of the Working Group on Expanding Access. The continuing development of informed debate will be critical for the future of the scholarly publishing system.

| Digital Scholarship |

Walt Crawford has published "The Rapid Rout of RWA" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

Seven weeks—from January 5, 2012 to February 27, 2012. That's all it took to get from AAP/PSP endorsing HR 3699, the Research Works Act, to Elsevier withdrawing its support and the bill disappearing. By today's legislative standards, it was all over before it started and scarcely worthy of a story here (except maybe a paragraph in The Back).

But it's not that simple, and I'd like to believe it's not really over—that this rapid rout is one in a series of events that will eventually change the landscape of scholarly publishing for the better. That makes the story worth telling. Well, that and my personal sense that it leads into a story that's not directly related but has similar resonances.

| Digital Scholarship |

In a brief, Google has asked the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the class certification decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in The Authors Guild et al. v. Google Inc. case.

Here's the brief.

Read more about it at "Google Asks Court to Ax Book-Scanning Suit from Authors Guild."

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

The Authors Guild is appealing the Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. HathiTrust et al. ruling.

Here's an excerpt from the "LCA Issues Statement on Authors Guild's Appeal of HathiTrust Decision":

We are deeply disappointed by the Authors Guild's decision to appeal Judge Baer's landmark opinion acknowledging the legality, and the extraordinary social value, of the HathiTrust Digital Library. Libraries have a moral and a legal obligation to provide the broadest possible access to knowledge for all of our users, and the HathiTrust and its partners have assembled an invaluable digital resource that will ensure for the first time that library print collections can be made available on equitable terms to our print-disabled users. The database also facilitates preservation and cutting-edge scholarship, all with no harm to authors or publishers. As we predicted, Judge Baer did not look kindly on the Guild's shortsighted and ill-conceived lawsuit, saying, "I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that . . . would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of the arts that at the same time effectuates the ideals espoused by the ADA." If there is an upside to this misguided appeal, it is that the Second Circuit will now have the opportunity to affirm that powerful insight.

Read more about it at "Google Scanning Is Fair Use Says Judge" and "Unintended Consequences in the HathiTrust Case"

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

The Research Councils UK has announced its open access funding plan.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Research Councils UK has today, 8th November, announced the details of the block grant funding mechanism that it is introducing to aid implementation of its policy on Open Access that was announced in July and is due to come into effect in April 2013. . . .

In the first year (2013/14), RCUK will provide funding to enable around 45% of Research Council funded research papers to be published using Gold Open Access growing to over 50% in the second year. By the fifth year (2017/18) funding is expected to be provided to enable approximately 75% of Research Council funded research papers to be published using Gold Open Access. The remaining 25% of Research Council funded papers, it is expected will be delivered via the Green Open Access model. The same compliance expectation applies to Research Council institutes, and separate funding arrangements are being put in place to facilitate this.

Universities will receive APC publication funding in proportion to the amount of direct labour costs awarded on grants that they have received over the three years from April 2009 to March 2012. Direct labour costs have been used as a proxy of research effort leading to the generation of publications.

| Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Royal Society Publishing is converting all its journals, hosted on HighWire Press, to a continuous publication model. This initiative emphasizes the fact that the online version is the authoritative, most complete and up-to-date record, and ensures peer-reviewed papers can be cited immediately.

The introduction of a continuous publication model is a logical step forward from the current 'publish ahead of print' feature (known as FirstCite) and will provide many benefits for the scientific community: researchers will have full citation details available upon publication; an author's published article will accumulate citations without delay; and journal impact factors won't be skewed by articles whose FirstCite and issue publications span two different years. Continuous publication also means that page numbers will no longer appear within a citation; instead, each article will have its own CrossRef-compliant, unique identifier, found near the top right-hand margin on every page of an article.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

The OECD has released E-books: Developments and Policy Considerations.

Here's an excerpt:

The essential distinction between permanent and effective ownership of a physical book, and conditional rights of access to the e-book, has, so far, been somewhat obscured by marketing strategies and use of visual images, which tend to present e-books as a superior, but also substitutable, version of the print book product. Given the virtual reality of "traditional books" presented by e-Book platforms, buyers of e-books are likely to confuse their rights (i.e. after purchase) with the property rights model for print books. Users may be surprised to find that they are prevented from doing certain things7 with their e-book, within their private/ personal sphere.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

UK PubMed Central has been renamed as Europe PubMed Central.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As announced in July, the European Research Council (ERC) becomes the third European funder to join UKPMC, following Telethon Italy and the Austrian Research Fund. As a result of this participation, the 18 existing UK and European funders agreed that the UKPMC service should be rebranded as Europe PMC by 1 November 2012. . . .

UKPMC was originally launched in January 2007, initially as a mirror of the US National Institute of Health's PubMed Central (PMC), providing international preservation of open- and free-access biomedical literature. The UKPMC funders require that research papers funded by them must be made freely available via UKPMC no later than 6 months after publication.

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