The Research Information Network has released Access to Scholarly Content: Gaps and Barriers.

Here's an excerpt:

The overall aim of this study is to investigate and quantify the extent to which members of different communities in the UK can gain ready access to formally-published scholarly literature, in particular journal articles and conference proceedings. . . .

Much of the information presented here is based on an online survey of researchers and knowledge workers from UK universities and colleges, medical schools and health providers, industry and commerce, and research institutes. . . .

Other information in this report comes from a detailed analysis of the literature and secondary data analysis of the Labour Force Survey in an attempt to quantify the size of the UK professional knowledge worker sector.

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

David Shotton has published "The Five Stars of Online Journal Articles— A Framework for Article Evaluation" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

I propose five factors—peer review, open access, enriched content, available datasets and machine-readable metadata—as the Five Stars of Online Journal Articles, a constellation of five independent criteria within a multi-dimensional publishing universe against which online journal articles can be evaluated, to see how well they match up with current visions for enhanced research communications. Achievement along each of these publishing axes can vary, analogous to the different stars within the constellation shining with varying luminosities. I suggest a five-point scale for each, by which a journal article can be evaluated, and provide diagrammatic representations for such evaluations. While the criteria adopted for these scales are somewhat arbitrary, and while the rating of a particular article on each axis may involve elements of subjective judgment, these Five Stars of Online Journal Articles provide a conceptual framework by which to judge the degree to which any article achieves or falls short of the ideal, which should be useful to authors, editors and publishers. I exemplify such evaluations using my own recent publications of relevance to semantic publishing.

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

Peter Suber has published "Open Access Journals from Society Publishers" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

How many scholarly societies publish OA journals, and how many OA journals do they publish? Four years ago (November 2007), Caroline Sutton and I released the first edition of our inventory answering those questions, and today we release the second edition.

Cutting to the chase: Our 2007 list turned up 425 societies publishing 450 full or non-hybrid OA journals. Our 2011 list shows 530 societies publishing 616 full OA journals. . . .

In 2007, only 15 (3%) society OA journals used CC licenses. In 2011, 92 (15%) do so, a small fraction but a distinct improvement. An additional 45 journals (7%) let authors retain copyright but do not publish under open licenses. Despite the improvement from four years ago, these are deeply disappointing numbers. As of last week (November 25, 2011) 1,727 or 24% of all the OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals used CC licenses. Hence, society OA journals use CC licenses at an even lower rate than OA journals in general.

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

The Royal Society has made journal articles published more than 70 years ago open access.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Royal Society has today announced that its world-famous historical journal archive—which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal—has been made permanently free to access online.

Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific publisher, with the first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appearing in 1665. . . .

The move is being made as part of the Royal Society's ongoing commitment to open access in scientific publishing. Opening of the archive is being timed to coincide with Open Access Week, and also comes soon after the Royal Society announced its first ever fully open access journal, Open Biology.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Scholarship |

The Publishing Research Consortium has released Journal Article Mining: A Research Study into Practices, Policies, Plans. . . and Promises.

Here's an excerpt:

This study, carried out between February and May 2011, aims to provide an overview of current practices, players, policies, plans and expectations for text mining and data mining of content in academic journals. The research consisted of a series of 29 interviews with experts and people working on content mining and was concluded by a survey among scholarly publishers.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

In June 1989, I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries, such as online catalogs) rather than a narrow focus on a specific library automation system. Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my initial scholarly digital publishing efforts were based.

In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. This journal, if it was published today, would be called a "libre" open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use. It was the first open access journal in the field of library and information science.

Aside from Public-Access Computer Systems News (also "libre" open access), my subsequent digital publications, such as the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, were "gratis" open access until 2004, when all new versions of existing publications and new publications became "libre" open access under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

To date, my major open access publications have been:

• The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, founder and Editor-in-Chief, 37 issues, 1989-1996.
• Public-Access Computer Systems News, co-founder and co-editor, 39 issues, 1990-1992.
• Library-Oriented Lists and Electronic Serials, 25 versions, 1990-1994.
• "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography," 26 versions, 1995-1996.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, 79 versions, 1996-present.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, over 500 posts, 2001-present.
• DigitalKoans, over 3,900 posts, 2005-present.
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, 5 versions, 2005-present.
• Google Books Bibliography, 6 versions, 2005-present.
• Institutional Repository Bibliography, 3 versions, 2009-present.
• Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (paperback, open access PDF file, and XHTML website), published by the Association for Research Libraries, 2005.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (paperback and open access PDF file), 2009.
• Tout de Suite Series, (Author's Rights, Tout de Suite and Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite) 2008-present.
• Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, 2 versions, 2010.
• Digital Scholarship 2009 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2010.
• Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (paperback, open access PDF file, and XHTML website), 2010.
• Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2011.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 (paperback and open access PDF file), 2011.

Recent digital works have been published at my Digital Scholarship site, which covers digital copyright, digital curation, digital repository, open access, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. There were over 34.9 million Digital Scholarship Web file requests from April 20, 2005 though December 31, 2010 by over 7 million visitors from 227 countries.

A compete history of my open access publishing efforts is available.

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

Hindawi has sold 12 open access journals to Springer Science+Business Media.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In a move that will expand its open access offering, Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) has acquired twelve journals from Hindawi Publishing Corporation in an asset deal. The journals include seven titles published in cooperation with the European Association for Signal Processing, four mathematics journals and one in medicine. . . .

The takeover of the twelve journals is scheduled for the end of March 2011. Hindawi will continue to publish approximately 200 other open access journals.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The Social Sciences Project has released Maximizing the Impacts of Your Research: A Handbook for Social Scientists.

Here's an excerpt:

This Handbook remedies this key gap and, we hope, will help researchers achieving a more professional and focused approach to their research from the outset. It provides a large menu of sound and evidence-based advice and guidance on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences. As with any menu, readers need to pick and choose the elements that are relevant for them. We provide detailed information on what constitutes good practice in expanding the impact of social science research. We also survey a wide range of new developments, new tools and new techniques that can help make sense of a rapidly changing field.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada has extended the deadline for Aid to Scholarly Journals grants to 6/30/11. Grants are up to $30,000 per year for three years.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

SSHRC recognizes that peer-reviewed scholarly journals are a primary tool for fostering intellectual debate and inquiry. Today, new information and communication technologies are changing the way research results are published and disseminated, allowing information to circulate more rapidly and widely than ever before. In response, and in accordance with SSHRC's position on open access, SSHRC has designed this funding opportunity to allow journals to seek support regardless of business model or distribution format.

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

The Association for Learning Technology has released Journal Tendering for Societies: A Brief Guide.

Here's an excerpt:

Hundreds of societies publish journals in collaboration with publishers. Some may be considering how and whether to renegotiate or go out to tender. Some may be considering whether they can/should/wish to change the business model of the journal (e.g. by a move to Open Access). Other societies may be considering using an external publisher for the first time. This guide, based on our experience, is written for all of these. . . .

In mid October 2010 we issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a new publisher. We had interest from six publishers who asked questions about our intentions. We then received four proposals: one which offered an Open Access model only, one which offered both Open Access and conventional publishing as discrete alternatives, and two which offered approaches that included an Open Access component. Three of the proposals were from big publishers. After evaluating the proposals, ALT's Trustees decided in December 2010 to make the journal, which has been renamed Research in Learning Technology, a fully Open Access journal with effect from 1st January 2012.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The Research Information Network has released Heading for the Open Road: Costs And Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications (annexes).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This new report investigates the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different routes for achieving that end over the next five years, and compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK.

The report suggests that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to open access publishing (Gold open access) while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed c.£2000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.

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

John W. Houghton has published "The Costs and Potential Benefits of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models" in the latest issue of Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The costs and benefits associated with alternative scholarly publishing models demonstrate that research and research communication are major activities and the costs involved are substantial. Our preliminary analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that returns to research are also substantial and that different scholarly publishing models might make a material difference to the returns realised as well as the costs faced. It seems likely from this preliminary analysis that more open access could have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they would be likely to be positive for both open access journal publishing and self-archiving alternatives.

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