The Ohio State University Press Open Access Initiative

The Ohio State University Press is providing free access to over 30 out-of-print books that it has published as part of its open access initiative. Chapters and other book sections are provided as PDF files. The books remain under traditional copyright statements.

Examples include:

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (9/25/06)

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: "Books without Boundaries: A Brief Tour of the System-Wide Print Book Collection"; The Complete Copyright Liability Handbook for Librarians and Educators; Digital Preservation; "Effect of E-Printing on Citation Rates in Astronomy and Physics"; Evaluating DRM: Building a Marketplace for the Convergent World; "Integration and Collaboration within Recently Established Australian Scholarly Publishing Initiatives"; "Nine Questions for Hybrid Journal Programs"; "Open Access Perspective Part I: Pioneer Journals: The Arc of Enthusiasm, Five Years Later"; "Open Access Perspective, Part II: Pioneer OA Journals: Preliminary Additions from DOAJ"; "Publishing Cooperatives: An Alternative for Non-Profit Publishers"; "Repository Librarian and the Next Crusade: The Search for a Common Standard for Digital Repository Metadata"; and Technical Evaluation of Selected Open Source Repository Solutions

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans Flashback posting.

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 11: Other Digital Presses

Here are brief descriptions of eleven more digital university/library presses, bringing the total number of presses covered by this series of postings to 21.

  1. Clemson University Digital Press: "The Clemson University Digital Press was established in 2000 to exist within the college of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities at Clemson. . . . The press generally publishes two books per annum, in addition to maintaining its flagship journals, the semiannual South Carolina Review, and the annual Shakespeare journal, The Upstart Crow." (See the publication list.)
  2. EPIC: "The Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) is a groundbreaking new initiative in digital publishing at Columbia University that involves Columbia University Press, the Libraries, and Academic Information Systems. Its mission is to create new kinds of scholarly and educational publications through the use of new media technologies in an integrated research and production environment. Working with the producers of intellectual property at Columbia University and other leading academic institutions, it aims to make these digital publications self-sustaining through subscription sales to institutions and individual users."
  3. eScholarship Repository: The eScholarship Repository publishes both journals and peer-reviewed series (see the publication list). eScholarship works in partnership with the University of California Press, which has an active digital publishing program. Notable efforts include eScholarship Editions, the University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, and University of California Publications.
  4. Digital Library and Archives, Virginia Tech University Libraries: "The Scholarly Communications Project (SCP) expanded its resources and services and merged with Special Collections to become the university’s Digital Library and Archives in July 2000. SCP began working with members of the university community in 1989 to help them create online resources such as electronic journals, and to use library services such as electronic reserve with its centralized access to online course materials." (See the journal list.)
  5. Praxis (e)Press: "Praxis (e)Press is an open access e-book publishing house located simultaneously at Okanagan University College, Vernon, and the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada." (See the book list.)
  6. Project Euclid: "Project Euclid’s mission is to advance scholarly communication in the field of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. Project Euclid is designed to address the unique needs of low-cost independent and society journals. Through a collaborative partnership arrangement, these publishers join forces and participate in an online presence with advanced functionality, without sacrificing their intellectual or economic independence or commitment to low subscription prices. Full-text searching, reference linking, interoperability through the Open Archives Initiative, and long-term retention of data are all important components of the project." (See the journal list.)
  7. Project MUSE: "MUSE began in 1993 as a pioneering joint project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at JHU. Grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed MUSE to go live with JHU Press journals in 1995. Journals from other publishers were first incorporated in 2000 . . . .Today, MUSE is still a not-for-profit collaboration between the participating publishers and MSEL, with the goal of disseminating quality scholarship via a sustainable model that meets the needs of both libraries and publishers." (See the journal list.)
  8. Rice University Press: "Using the open-source e-publishing platform Connexions, Rice University Press is returning from a decade-long hiatus to explore models of peer-reviewed scholarship for the 21st century. The technology offers authors a way to use multimedia—audio files, live hyperlinks or moving images—to craft dynamic scholarly arguments, and to publish on-demand original works in fields of study that are increasingly constrained by print publishing."
  9. Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library: "The office supports the traditional constructs of journal and monographic publication in an online environment, as well as publishing scholarly work expressly designed for electronic delivery. . . . It is currently developing a set of services in journal, monograph and multimedia publishing in two related, but distinct, ways. It provides cost-effective services to all members of the campus community, as resources and capacity allow. It also actively recruits scholarly journals, monographs and projects of exceptionally high quality. . . . Among these are projects that draw on the significant digital collections already available at the University Library." (See the publications and projects list.)
  10. Sydney University Press: "Sydney University Press was restarted in 2003 as a digital and print ‘on demand’ publisher. . . .SUP draws on the digital library collection of the University of Sydney Library’s Scholarly Text and Image Service (SETIS). . . .SUP provides the ability to purchase a print copy of selected texts to anyone, anywhere. SUP has partnered with the Copyright Agency Ltd (CAL) to bring out-of-print Australian novels back into circulation. . . . SUP publishes new work based on teaching and research from the University of Sydney and other Australian academic institutions." (See the book list.)
  11. The University of Texas Houston Electronic Press: "The U.T. Houston Electronic Press exists to advance knowledge in the health sciences by electronically disseminating the results of scholarly activities for the furtherance of education, research and service. It is an open access digital resource."

Prior postings on this topic:

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 10: Parallel Press

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries’ Parallel Press publishes "print-on-demand books that parallel online publications, as well as chapbooks featuring the work of regional poets and UW historians." Many of the books are reprints of out-of-print works. It appears that the Parallel Press was established in 1998.

The relationship between the press and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries’ digital collections is described as follows:

While managed independently of the Parallel Press, the UW-Madison Libraries’ digital collections are inexorably linked with the press’ print-on-demand publishing operations as the original source of all reprinted material. If enough interest is shown, nearly any of these online resources could be the basis of a future Parallel Press print publication.

While the chapbooks are only available in low-cost print editions, the books have a freely available digital version. Examples of books include (links are to the digital versions):

Prior postings on this topic:

MIRACLE Project’s Institutional Repository Survey

The MIRACLE (Making Institutional Repositories A Collaborative Learning Environment) project at the University of Michigan’s School of Information presented a paper at JCDL 2006 titled "Nationwide Census of Institutional Repositories: Preliminary Findings."

MIRACLE’s sample population was 2,147 library directors at four-year US colleges and universities. The paper presents preliminary findings from 273 respondents.

Respondents characterized their IR activities as: "(1) implementation of an IR (IMP), (2) planning & pilot testing an IR software package (PPT), (3) planning only (PO), or (4) no planning to date (NP)."

Of the 273 respondents, "28 (10%) have characterized their IR involvement as IMP, 42 (15%) as PPT, 65 (24%) as PO, and 138 (51%) as NP."

The top-ranked benefits of having an IR were: "capturing the intellectual capital of your institution," "better service to contributors," and "longtime preservation of your institution’s digital output." The bottom-ranked benefits were "reducing user dependence on your library’s print collection," "providing maximal access to the results of publicly funded research," and "an increase in citation counts to your institution’s intellectual output."

On the question of IR staffing, the survey found:

Generally, PPT and PO decision-makers envision the library sharing operational responsibility for an IR. Decision-makers from institutions with full-fledged operational IRs choose responses that show library staff bearing the burden of responsibility for the IR.

Of those with operational IRs who identified their IR software, the survey found that they were using: "(1) 9 for Dspace, (2) 5 for bePress, (3) 4 for ProQuest’s Digital Commons, (4) 2 for local solutions, and (5) 1 each for Ex Libris’ DigiTools and Virginia Tech’s ETD." Of those who were pilot testing software: "(1) 17 for DSpace, (2) 9 for OCLC’s ContentDM, (3) 5 for Fedora, (4) 3 each for bePress, DigiTool, ePrints, and Greenstone, (5) 2 each for Innovative Interfaces, Luna, and ETD, and (6) 1 each for Digital Commons, Encompass, a local solution, and Opus."

In terms of number of documents in the IRs, by far the largest percentages were for less than 501 documents (IMP, 41%; and PPT, 67%).

The preliminary results also cover other topics, such as content recruitment, investigative decision-making activities, IR costs, and IR system features.

It is interesting to see how these preliminary results compare to those of the ARL Institutional Repositories SPEC Kit. For example, when asked "What are the top three benefits you feel your IR provides?," the ARL survey respondents said:

  1. Enhance visibility and increase dissemination of institution’s scholarship: 68%
  2. Free, open, timely access to scholarship: 46%
  3. Preservation of and long-term access to institution’s scholarship: 36%
  4. Preservation and stewardship of digital content: 36%
  5. Collecting, organizing assets in a central location: 24%
  6. Educate faculty about copyright, open access, scholarly communication: 8%

Open Access Update Web Page: New Aggregate Feed

The Blogdigger feed was not updating properly, and it has been deleted.

I’ve created a MySyndicaat Feedbot feed to replace it. The aggregate feed provides recent postings for the current week for selected Weblogs and other sources (currently 14 sources). The Open Access Update page’s feed has been switched to the MySyndicaat feed and the number of possible postings increased to 50. The MySyndicaat Feedbot Web page is now available as well.

Although the MySyndicaat Feedbot is set to the shortest update cycle, keep in mind that there are bound to be some feed update delays.

Digital University/Library Presses, Part 9: University of Cincinnati Digital Press

Established in 1995, the University of Cincinnati Digital Press is a service of the Digital Projects Department of the University of Cincinnati Libraries.

The mission of the University of Cincinnati Digital Press is described as follows:

The University of Cincinnati Digital Press is devoted to the electronic publication of original documentation of the Transmississippi West for use in research and instruction. The Press developed out of an effort to preserve special materials in the University Libraries and to increase their accessibility using new technologies. Collection strength and staff interest in Western Americana provided a subject focus for these efforts. The Libraries’ mission as well as staff experience and expertise in the requirements and technology of information access provided the concentration on collections of primary documentation. The Press came into being when it became clear that electronic publications resulting from these efforts would be of interest and use beyond the University of Cincinnati.

The press has two staff members, plus student assistants.

The press publishes both research publications and online publications.

Research publications are described as follows:

Research publications of the University of Cincinnati Digital Press are collections of primary documentation incorporating high resolution images, databases, texts, and supporting documentation with a software interface offering maximum opportunities for searching, examination, and analysis of the contents. The cataloging, organization, and electronic presentation of materials offers the means for comprehensive searching and detailed examination of a vast array of documentation from rare and often unique sources in widely separated collections.

The press distributes its research publications on CD-ROM for a fee, and it utilizes the locally developed Windows-based CUrator software, which has the following capabilities:

Individual items are displayed in multiple resolution images.

These images are incorporated into a database offering 85 fields for physical and bibliographic description as well as notes for all formats of materials.

Links can be made to associated documents in various formats including maps, charts and texts.

Database records are presented in several displays: list, brief record, full record, image contact sheet.

There are multiple searching capabilities: keyword, boolean, and geographic as well as filtering by format.

Searches can be conducted across multiple databases.

The software is easy to use and context sensitive online help is provided.

With the exception of monographs (partial contents accessible), online publications are freely available. They are categorized as bibliographies, exhibits, monographs, and Web sites.

For further information:

Kohl, David F. "Starting a Library-Based University Press." Reference Services Review 27, no. 1 (1999): 4-12. (Abstract)

Guernsey, Lisa. "Digital Presses Transform Librarians into Entrepreneurs." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 May 1998, A27-A28.

Also see the Articles & Reviews page.

Prior postings on this topic:

Open Access Update Web Page

Building on an earlier effort by Lesley Perkins, I’ve created a new Blogdigger aggregate feed for open access Weblogs that includes a wider selection of Weblogs. I’ve also created an Open Access Update Web page that presents the latest 30 headlines from the aggregate feed and provides links to OA-related mailing list archives, Peter Suber’s OA overview, OA-related journals, and OA-related Wikis.

Postscript: There were technical problems with updating the Blogdigger feed, and it has been deleted. See: "Open Access Update Web Page: New Aggregate Feed."