Month: December 2005

Preliminary www.escholarlypub.com 2005 Use Statistics

The www.escholarlypub.com site was made public on 4/20/2005 when DigitalKoans was launched; I moved my personal publication files to www.escholarlypub.com on 6/27/2005. SEPB/SEPW files are still on University of Houston Libraries servers, and are not included here. My e-prints are also on DLIST and E-LIB, and those figures are not included here; nor are statistics for my old UH Libraries e-print site. The below statistics are generated by Urchin, which my host service provides. (I’ll crunch the numbers with analog later; experience shows there can be some variation between different log analysis packages.)

From 4/20/05 until around noon today, there have been about 134,400 sessions on www.escholarlypub.com, with 500 sessions daily (all figures are rounded to the nearest hundred). There have been 250,000 page views, with 900 page views daily. There have been 297,300 hits, with 1,100 daily hits.

For the site, there were sessions from 119 Internet domains. Leaving aside unknown domains, the top 10 are:

  1. com (Commercial): 54,300
  2. net (Network): 14,400
  3. edu (Educational): 11,500
  4. ca (Canada): 3,000
  5. org (Non-Profit Organizations): 2,800
  6. de (Germany): 2,300
  7. au (Australia): 2,100
  8. uk (United Kingdom): 2,100
  9. it (Italy): 1,400
  10. fr (France): 1,300

The top 10 site pages (leaving aside the Atom/RSS feeds, top-level pages, and Weblog category pages) were:

  1. Open Access Webliography (e-print): 10,500
  2. Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (OAB description page): 9,100
  3. The Google Print Controversy: A Bibliography (DigitalKoans posting): 8,000
  4. Key Open Access Concepts (e-print; part of the OAB): 6,500
  5. Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Bibliography (DigitalKoans posting): 4,300
  6. Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (e-print): 4,100 (there also were 29,000 requests at the UH Libraries site)
  7. Selected Publications of Charles W. Bailey, Jr.: 4,100
  8. The Role of Reference Librarians in Institutional Repositories (e-print): 2,600
  9. The Spectrum of E-Journal Access Policies: Open to Restricted Access (DigitalKoans posting): 2,200
  10. BMC’s Impact Factors: Elsevier’s Take and Reactions to It (DigitalKoans posting): 1,600

(Note: DigitalKoan page view counts are partial because new postings stay on the home pages until they roll off.)

For DigitalKoans alone, there have been 182,100 page views.

The Sony BMG Rootkit Fiasco Redux

There’s a new development in the Sony BMG Rootkit story (for background see my prior posting and update comment): Sony BMG has reached a settlement (awaiting court approval) regarding the class action lawsuit about its use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) software after virtual "round-the-clock settlement negotiations" (on December 1st numerous individual lawsuits were given class action status). The short story is that XCP-protected CDs will be replaced with DRM-free CDs and customers will be given download/cash incentives to exchange the disks; no recall for MediaMax-protected CDs, but buyers will get song MP3s and an album download. You can get details at "Sony Settles ‘Rootkit’ Class Action Lawsuit."

Since my December 4th update comment, there have been a few articles/blog postings of note about this controversy. "Summary of Claims against Sony-BMG" provides an analysis by Fred von Lohmann of EFF of "the various legal theories that have been brought against Sony-BMG over the CD copy-protection debacle." In "Sony CDs and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Ed Felten considers whether Sony BMG, First4Internet, and SunnComm/MediaMax "violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which is the primary Federal law banning computer intrusions and malware" (he notes that he is not a lawyer), and, in "Inside the MediaMax Prospectus," he highlights some interesting aspects of this document. "New Spyware Claim against Sony BMG" describes a new claim added to the Texas lawsuit by Attorney General Greg Abbott: "MediaMax software . . . violated state laws because it was downloaded even if users rejected a license agreement." Finally, "Just Let Us Play the Movie" examines the fallout for the film industry and DRM use in general.

In other recent IP news, two items of interest: "France May Sanction Unfettered P2P Downloads" (mon dieu!) and "Pro-Hollywood Bill Aims to Restrict Digital Tuners."

Lessig Explains Why the Creative Commons Urgently Needs Donations

In a posting on Lessig Blog yesterday, Lawrence Lessing explains in more detail why donations are still needed by the Creative Commons by December 31st. As I write this, the CC is within $10,000 of its goal. Quote:

(1) Where’d you get the goal of $225,000?

To understand this, you need to know something about the "public support test" that is part of the IRS review all tax-exempt non-profits suffer after 4 years of life. That test essentially asks, how diverse is your funding support. If most of your support comes from a few foundations, then there’s a risk you’ll lose your tax exempt status. I let this issue remain unresolved for too long. But this is the year the numbers will be calculated, and hence the push right now.

When we saw how much we needed to raise to pass the test, we divided up areas of support. The $225,000 is the amount we absolutely must raise from a general public appeal. If we meet that, and the other goals we’ve also set, then we’re fine.

(2) What happens if we fail this test?

The risk is that we’ll lose our public charity status. That’s critical to us because some foundations are not able to support organizations without a public charity status. And however fantastic the support from the public has been so far, we still absolutely must continue to get foundation support.

Lessing also explains in some detail how the raised funds will be used.

You can give at:

http://creativecommons.org/support/


Machinima

Here’s an interesting trend: using video games to create animated digital films. It’s called "Machinima." In one technique, the 3-D animation tools built into games to allow users to extend the games (e.g., create new characters) are used to generate new 3-D films. Of course, it can be more complicated than this: the Machinima FAQ outlines other strategies in layperson’s terms.

BusinessWeek has a short, interesting article on Machinima ("France: Thousands of Young Spielbergs") that describes one social commentary Machinima film (The French Democracy), noting that it got over one million hits in November. It also quotes Paul Marino, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences as saying: "This is to the films what blogs are to the written media."

If you want to check out more Machinima films, try the 2005 Machinima Film Festival or Machinima.com (try "download" if "watch" doesn’t work).

Machinima is yet another example of how users want to create derivative works from digital media and how powerful a capability that can be—if intellectual property rights owners don’t prohibit it. Since the first Machinima movie was created in 1996, it appears that the video game industry has not moved to squash this movement, and, needless to say, it has thrived. However, this state of affairs may simply reflect Machinima’s low profile: A recent Wired News article, which notes that Machinima has been employed in commercials and music videos, indicates that Doug Lombardi, Director of Marketing at Valve (a video game software company), feels that: "As the films become commercially viable, machinima filmmakers are going to butt up against copyright law."

The Creative Commons Needs Urgent Help

According to Michael W. Carroll, Associate Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law, the Creative Commons is in danger of losing its charitable status with the IRS unless it receives more donations by the end of the year. Any donation, no matter how small, will help and it will be matched. For donations at $50 or above, the CC offers buttons, stickers, and shirts (at least $75 for this item).

Give at:

http://creativecommons.org/support/

More information at Carroll’s SOAF message.

Also see Lawrence Lessig’s blog posting.


Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (12/19/05)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Comparison of IR Content Policies in Australia," "If You Harvest arXiv.org, Will They Come?," "Interdisciplinary Differences in Attitudes towards Deposit in Institutional Repositories," "Open Access Federation for Library and Information Science: dLIST and DL-Harvest," and "Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact."

Open Access Bibliography and The Access Principle Discount at Amazon

Amazon is offering the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals and John Willinsky’s insightful The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship together for a discounted price of $68.07 (vs. the normal $79.95). See the OAB Amazon record for the link. (Note: By my request, I do not profit from sales of the print version of the OAB; all proceeds go to ARL to subsidize the print version.)

Version 60, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 60 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,560 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, by the same author, provides much more in-depth coverage of the open access movement and related topics (e.g., disciplinary archives, e-prints, institutional repositories, open access journals, and the Open Archives Initiative) than SEPB does.

The "Open Access Webliography" (with Ho) complements the OAB, providing access to a number of Websites related to open access topics.

Changes in This Version

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are marked with an asterisk):

Table of Contents

1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History*
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues*
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History*
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals*
3.4 General Works*
3.5 Library Issues*
3.6 Research*
4 General Works*
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights*
5.2 License Agreements*
5.3 Other Legal Issues
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata*
6.2 Digital Libraries*
6.3 General Works*
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation*
7 New Publishing Models*
8 Publisher Issues*
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata*
Digital Libraries*
Electronic Books and Texts*
Electronic Serials*
General Electronic Publishing*
Images
Legal*
Preservation*
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
SGML and Related Standards

Further Information about SEPB

The HTML version of SEPB is designed for interactive use. Each major section is a separate file. There are links to sources that are freely available on the Internet. It can be can be searched using Boolean operators.

The HTML document includes three sections not found in the Acrobat file:

  1. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (biweekly list of new resources; also available by mailing list and RSS feed)
  2. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (directory of over 270 related Web sites)
  3. Archive (prior versions of the bibliography)

The Acrobat file is designed for printing. The printed bibliography is over 210 pages long. The Acrobat file is over 560 KB.

Related Article

An article about the bibliography has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Selected by Librarians' Index to the Internet

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (12/5/05)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Are Authors and Publishers Getting Scroogled?"; "OCA and GLP 1: Ebooks, Etext, Libraries and the Commons"; "OCA and GLP 2: Steps on the Digitization Road"; "Reassessing Prospects for the Open Access Movement"; "Sony BMG: DRM Gone Bad"; "Strengthening the NIH Policy"; and "What I Wish I Had Known."