Harold Varmus has announced an experimental open access publication, PLoS Currents: Influenza.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable. . . .

To enable contributions to PLoS Currents: Influenza to be shared as rapidly as possible, they will not be subject to in-depth peer review; however, unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators led by Eddie Holmes (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, USA) and Peter Palese (Department of Microbiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA).

The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world's scientific and medical communities. Google Knol's features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to develop around these findings. Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

Peter Sefton has posted an e-print of his forthcoming Serials Review article "Towards Scholarly HTML" (dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2009.05.001) on ptsefton.

In an attempt to comply with Elsevier's author agreement, he states:

At the moment that link seems to resolve to an open version of the article, whether or not you have a subscription to the journal but I guess that will change; when it is "published" you will only see the article if you are clicking from inside a network that's on their list of subscribers. If not, you will need money to see it. But I can post the article here with the copyright statement you see below and remind you that you need to use the DOI to cite the paper should you wish to. No naughty linking back here (unless it is to reference these comments I'm adding). And no linking to the version I'm about to put in ePrints. OK? Even though you know that if you do link to the DOI some people may not be able to see the article in the future, don't do it, use the DOI link. There, I think I told you.

Note: the Elsevier version is no longer freely available.

In "The Open Scholar," Gideon Burton says that open access is "great for archival purposes, but this is not the next real destination for scholarly discourse." Instead we need a new model: the "open scholar."

Here's an excerpt:

The Open Scholar, as I'm defining this person, is not simply someone who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it—at any stage of its development.

The Association of Research Libraries has released its archived "Reaching Out to Leaders of Scholarly Societies at Research Institutions" webcast. Access is free, but registration is required.

Here's an excerpt from the press release :

On August 6, 2009, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) hosted a Web conference on “Reaching Out to Leaders of Scholarly Societies at Research Institutions,” August 6, 2009, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (EDT) as part of an ongoing initiative to enhance library outreach.

Complementing the recently released guide on outreach to scholarly society leaders, the 60-minute webcast will introduce the goals and key talking points for campus outreach to leaders, editors, and members of academic scholarly societies. It will support development of faculty outreach programs at ARL member libraries by offering strategy and tactics for increasing engagement with association leaders at the institution.

Successful campus outreach should encourage and support society leaders to engage in positive change that advances the scholarly communication system, promotes new research modes, and offers a path forward in a time of paradigm shift.

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "The Antaeus Column: Does the 'Open Access' Advantage Exist? A Librarian's Perspective"; "Copyright Issues in the Selection of Archival Material for Internet Access"; Creating Digital Collections: A Practical Guide; "Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing"; "If You Build It, They Will Scan: Oxford University's Exploration of Community Collections"; "Measuring Mass Text Digitization Quality and Usefulness: Lessons Learned from Assessing the OCR Accuracy of the British Library's 19th Century Online Newspaper Archive"; "Overlay Journals and Data Publishing in the Meteorological Sciences"; "PLoS ONE: New Approaches and Initiatives in the Evolution of the Academic Journal"; "Research Data Preservation and Access: The Views of Researchers"; "The Return of FRPAA"; and "Scholarly Communication: ARL as a Catalyst for Change."

The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition is now available from Amazon.com as a 372-page, 6" by 9" paperback book on white paper (ISBN: 1448624908, EAN: 139781448624904).

The bibliography presents over 3,350 English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet (see the table of contents for details). Most sources have been published between 1990 and 2008; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

The bibliography is also available from CreateSpace (identical to the Amazon.com edition) and Lulu (same page length and size, but it is printed on cream paper and it does not have an ISBN or EAN.)

SPARC has released presentations from the "Rough Waters: Navigating Hard Times in the Scholarly Communication Marketplace" SPARC-ACRL forum at ALA Annual 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The economy and its impact on library and higher education budgets are the most urgent concern for the library community today. While libraries have long been grappling with constrained collection budgets, we face a new urgency in continuing the transformation promised by Open Access and new technologies. This forum took a bird's eye view of the scholarly communication marketplace and suggested tactics for navigating through tough times.

Steven Shavell, Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics at the Harvard Law School, has self-archived "Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished?"

Here's an excerpt:

The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would not be able to profit from reader charges. If these publication fees would be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase)—suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should be achieved by a change in law, for the 'open access' movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.

Economists Omar Al-Ubaydli (George Mason University) and Rufus Pollock (Cambridge University) have self-archived "The Dissemination of Scholarly Information: Old Approaches and New Possibilities."

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper we began by setting out the basic goals of the scholarly communication system. We compared the current, journal dominated system, against those goals and found it wanting, and explored in detail alternative options in which distribution and filtering are separated and centralized filtering is replaced by a distributed, decentralized approach.

Using a simple model we explored the factors underlying the development of the current journal paradigm. There were two main factors: a) the high costs of information transmission in the pre-digital era (and, associatedly, fixed costs and economies of scale in transmission which make journals an effective club good) b) the natural complementarity of filtering to distribution which leads journals to act as filtering as well as distributional mechanisms.

With the collapse of transmission costs in the era of the Internet these original rationales for journals have disappeared. It is now possible for distribution and filtering to be separate and for the development of richer, and more complex filtering models based on decentralized, distributed mechanisms—with this latter process dependent on the first (if distribution and filtering are tied—as in the traditional journal model—distributed mechanisms make little sense).

We explored the various benefits of such alternative distributed mechanisms—and also provide a detailed description of how such a mechanism would function in appendix A. One of the main implications of our work discussion is that a crucial benefit of the open-access approach, in addition to the obvious one of reducing the deadweight loss to access, is that it permits the development of radically new matching mechanisms based on a richer set of information which offer major efficiency (and other) advantages. This second benefit, though often overlooked, is a major one, and is, in the long run we believe, likely to be the most significant.

Unfortunately, it is hard for new approaches to take hold because of the lock-in to the traditional 'closed' journal model engendered by the mutual expectations of authors and readers. Given the potential benefits afforded by innovation in this area, it is crucial that the potential of new approaches be thoroughly considered so that the scholarly community can adequately assess the options and, if necessary, take collective action to achieve mutually beneficial change.

JISC has released a brochure and two digital videos related to its Libraries of the Future campaign:

• Libraries of the Future brochure
• Library of the Future debate (video)
• Libraries of the Future documentary (video)

A new open access journal, Scholarly and Research Communication, has been established.

Here's an excerpt from the journal's home page:

Scholarly and Research Communication is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, Open Access, online journal that publishes original contributions to the understanding of production, dissemination, and usage of knowledge. It emphasizes the dynamics of representation and changing organizational elements, including technologically mediated workflows, ownership, and legal structures. Contributions are welcomed in all media and span formal research and analysis; technical reports and demonstration; commentary, and review.

Also see Rowland Lorimer's presentation "Scholarly and Research Communication: A Journal and Some Founding Ideas."

The Association of Research Libraries has released "Campus Outreach to Scholarly Society Leaders, Editors, and Members: Promoting Positive Change and a Continuing Role for Scholarly Societies."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide seeks to increase library staff’s conscious connections with leaders of scholarly societies residing on their campus in order to:

• Build positive relationships between librarians and faculty members
• Create opportunities for education and dialog with key opinion leaders and decision-makers within disciplinary communities
• Identify opportunities for libraries to partner/collaborate with scholarly societies
• Enhance library leadership’s decision-making capability by building a better understanding of their faculty members’ and researchers’ ongoing needs for services from scholarly societies

Successful campus outreach should encourage and support society leaders to engage in positive change that advances the scholarly communication system, promotes new research modes, and offers a path forward in a time of paradigm shift.