SAGE Report: Meeting the Challenges: Societies and Scholarly Communication

SAGE has released Meeting the Challenges: Societies and Scholarly Communication (Thanks to Adrian K. Ho's Digital & Scholarly: News about Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age.)

Here's an excerpt:

The survey was supported by the Association for Learned Professional and Scholarly Publishers; the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers; the International Association for Science, Technical and Medical Publishers, and the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, and made available to the 600+ members of these organizations.

The online survey of 30 questions was available for response from 2 September, 2008 – 23 September, 2008.

118 responses were completed during this time—reflecting approximately 19% of the organizations contacted.

Societies cited the major challenges facing them as international presence for their organization; membership retention and growth; provision of online services; resources (funding and income); and Open Access. International presence was the most highly-ranked attribute for societies (49%), with particular importance placed on sales representation on a global scale.

Springer Digital Publications to be Archived in CLOCKSS

Springer Science+Business Media has announced that its digital publications will be archived in the dark CLOCKSS archive.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The CLOCKSS archive allows research libraries and scholarly publishers, who launched CLOCKSS as a pilot program, to preserve and store its electronic content. Once ingested, the econtent is kept safe and secure in a dark archive until it is triggered and the CLOCKSS Board determines that the content should be copied from the archive and made freely available to all, regardless of prior subscription. Due to the success of the pilot program, the founding members unanimously agreed to incorporate and invite others to participate in CLOCKSS.

Participating CLOCKSS libraries and publishers govern the archive themselves via three tiers of governance—an executive board, a board of directors, and an advisory council. Research libraries working alongside publishers like Springer are able to help shape policy and practice in their communities.

"In a great show of confidence, Springer has joined the CLOCKSS initiatives, putting its complete trust in an archive they helped build," says Gordon Tibbitts, Co-Chair of CLOCKSS. "Springer is helping to shoulder the responsibility, alongside its publishing peers and research library customers, of keeping their scholarly assets safe and protected for future generations of scholars." . . .

In addition to storing Springer’s journal content with CLOCKSS, the publisher has submitted a proposal to the CLOCKSS Board outlining a pilot project to test the feasibility and legal issues surrounding preservation of eBook content. Because eBook contracts differ from journal contracts, Springer can only deposit eBook files when its authors' rights are protected.

CLOCKSS is a joint venture between the world’s leading scholarly publishers and research libraries. Its mission is to build a sustainable, geographically distributed dark archive with which to ensure the long-term survival of Web-based scholarly publications for the benefit of the greater global research community. Governing Libraries include the Australian National University, EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, Indiana University, New York Public Library, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Rice University, Stanford University, the University of Alberta, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Virginia. Governing Publishers include the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, bepress, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell.

New from Boyle: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

Noted intellectual property expert James Boyle has published a new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind.

It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License, and the PDF can be freely downloaded. It is available in print form from the Yale University Press.

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

Our music, our culture, our science, and our economic welfare all depend on a delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain. In The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press) James Boyle introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today’s policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its inception. . . .

With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, from Internet file sharing and genetic engineering to patented peanut butter sandwiches, this articulate and charming book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates, including what Boyle calls the "range wars of the information age": today’s heated battles over intellectual property. Intellectual property rights have been viewed as geeky, technical and inaccessible. Boyle shows that, as a culture, we can no longer afford the luxury of this kind of willed ignorance.

"Comments on the Commission's Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy"

Søren Sandfeld Jakobsen et al. have deposited "Comments on the Commission's Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy" in SSRN.

Here's the abstract:

This paper is a reaction to the [European] Commission's Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. It discusses issues concerning the three step test model licenses, digitization and orphan works, disability discrimination and access to digital content, dissemination for teaching and research, dissemination through libraries and user created content.

Repository Deposit Software: SWORD PHP Library Released

Stuart Lewis has released a PHP library for the SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) software.

Here's an excerpt from his post:

There are many web applications that could deposit into repositories using SWORD, and many of these are written in PHP. Examples might include open source Content Management Systems, Blogs or Wikis. By using this library you can easily retrieve service documents and make deposits by using the API provided. There are two simple method calls (one to retrieve a service document and one to deposit a file). In addition there is a packager included that can package a file and metadata together into a package format supported by both DSpace and EPrints. This is the same code which is used to power the Facebook SWORD deposit tool (http://fb.swordapp.org/).

Stanford's HighWire Press Hits 5 Million Article Mark

With the addition of a backfile 1884 article, "Dermatitis Herpetiformis," in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, hit the five million article mark. Over two million of those articles are freely available.

Read more about it at "5 Million Articles Online at HighWire: The Evolution of an e-Publishing Platform."

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (12/3/08)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which 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 aDORe Federation Architecture: Digital Repositories at Scale"; "Copyright Angst, Lust for Prestige and Cost Control: What Institutions Can Do to Ease Open Access"; Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication; "Digital Preservation and Copyright: An International Study"; "Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patterns,"; "From Advocacy to Implementation: The NIH Public Access Policy and Its Impact"; "FRPAA and NIH Mandate: A Blessing in Disguise for Scientific Society Publishers?"; "The Future of Repositories? Patterns for (Cross-)Repository Architectures"; A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries & the Google Library Project Settlement; The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look; "Predictions for 2009"; and "A Study of Institutional Repository Holdings by Academic Discipline."

NetLibrary UK Library Survey Shows Strong Interest in Increasing E-Book Holdings

A survey of 300 UK libraries by NetLibrary indicates that three-fourths of academic libraries and half of public libraries plan to increase e-book holdings next year.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A massive 85% of public Libraries responding to the survey indicated that they were most interested in developing fiction eBook collections despite recent research that suggests eBooks are most often used for reference purposes. Possibly this trend is being fuelled by the growth in take up and availability of eBook reading devices among public library users such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. . . .

Of the academic libraries who responded to the survey, half indicated that their use of eBooks was to support their core reading lists in various subject areas—the main ones being Business/Management (13%), Medicine/Health (9%) Education (6%) and Engineering (5%).

Digital Video: Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?

The Columbia University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Program has released "Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?," a digital video of the meeting of the same name. (Thanks to Adrian K. Ho of Digital & Scholarly: News about Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age.)

Here's the abstract:

Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session.

Report from the Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics IMLS Grant Project

The University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries' IMLS-funded Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics grant project has released "The Next Generation of Academics: A Report on a Study Conducted at the University of Rochester."

Here's the abstract:

This document reports on the user research portion of "Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics" (IMLS Grant No. LG-06-06-0051). We conducted user research from December 2006 through March 2008 to support development of a suite of authoring tools to be integrated into an institutional repository. Our understanding of the work practices of graduate students enabled us to design the authoring tools to meet their needs for individual and collaborative writing and to make it easy for them to move completed documents from the authoring system into the repository.

Sandy Thatcher, Director of the Penn State University Press, to Retire

Sandy Thatcher, prolific author and vocal advocate for university presses, will retire from his position as Director of the Penn State University Press. The Press has posted an ad for his position, and Tony Sanfilippo has written a tribute posting on the Are You Loving Publishing Today? blog. Sanfilippo's posting says: "Sandy won't be leaving until sometime next year, and he’s likely to continue to freelance as an acquisitions editor after that."

JISC-PoWR Releases Preservation of Web Resources Handbook

JISC-PoWR has released the Preservation of Web Resources Handbook.

Here's an excerpt:

The Handbook is structured in two parts. The first part deals with web resources and makes practical suggestions for their management, capture, selection, appraisal and preservation. It includes observations on web content management systems, and a list of available tools for performing web capture. It concludes with a discussion of Web 2.0 issues, and a range of related case studies. The second part is more focussed on web resources within an Institution. It offers advice about institutional drivers and policies for web archiving, along with suggestions for effecting a change within an organisation; one such approach is the adoption of Information Lifecycle Management. There are separate Appendices covering Legal guidance (written by Jordan Hatcher) and records management.

The Handbook also contains a bibliography and a glossary of terms. The Handbook is aimed at an audience of information managers, asset managers, webmasters, IT specialists, system administrators, records managers, and archivists.

Draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper Available

Naomi Korn and Professor Charles Oppenheim have written a draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper for inclusion in the upcoming Strategic Content Alliance IPR Toolkit, a collection of documents about intellectual property rights (JISC funds the SCA). The document explains Creative Commons Licenses, and it examines their pros and cons.

The document, as well as other IPR Toolkit drafts, are now available.

End of an Era: PC Magazine Drops Print

Ziff Davis will cease publishing PC Magazine in print form and focus instead on the PC Mag Digital Network and PCMAG.com. Print subscribers will receive PC Magazine Digital Edition.

PC Magazine is a pioneering mass market computer magazine, which began publication in 1982. See the retrospective "25 Years of PC Magazine," starting with "25 Years of PC Magazine: Year One 1982."

Read more about it at "PC Magazine Goes 100% Digital," "TechSpin: Goodbye to PC Mag," and "Ziff Davis To Close Print PCMag, Focus On Online; Still Looking For Options For Gaming Division."

Tennessee's Higher Education Filtering Law to Cost State Institutions Over $9.5 Million to Start

The Tennessee Fiscal Review Committee estimates that SB 3974, a recently passed state law aimed at stopping copyright infringement in higher education institutions, will initially cost state institutions over $9.5 million, with ongoing annual costs topping $1.6 million in FY 08-09 and $1.9 million in succeeding years.

Read more about it at "RIAA Gets Tennessee Law to Force Universities to Filter Networks for Copyrighted Content"; "RIAA Wins, Campuses Lose as Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Network Filtering Law"; and "Tennessee Anti-P2P Law to Cost Colleges over $13 Million."

Copyright Clearance Center Launches Ozmo, a Commercial License Service, as Beta

The Copyright Clearance Center has launched Ozmo, a web-based commercial license service that supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol, in beta mode.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Ozmo puts artists and writers in control. They select their license terms and set the price for the use of their content. Then, CCC puts its three decades of licensing expertise to work. CCC handles the entire licensing process and all payments go through Amazon’s Flexible Payment Service when a license is purchased. With Ozmo, buyers know instantly that they have the right to use the content and sellers know how their content is being used.

There are no set-up fees with Ozmo and content creators can license as much content as they want. Payment is collected from the buyer when the rights are purchased. Ozmo even helps sellers track and manage sales and buying trends. Ozmo supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol for bridging the gap between commercial and non-commercial licensing. Content creators can apply the Creative Commons link for non-commercial use, and the Ozmo link for commercial use. . . .

How Ozmo works

To get started, users need only create a free Ozmo profile. Then, the content creator selects his or her license terms and pricing, and registers the work with Ozmo. Sellers can add an image, banner or bio that will be displayed with their work. Profile information can even be pulled over directly from Facebook. Using Ozmo is easy because it works with content where ever it resides online. Content creators never have to re-enter their work; Ozmo simply links back to the original host location.

Buyers, such as design firms, publishers, bloggers and other journalists, who want to tap in to the fresh content available through Ozmo, can do so by searching the Ozmo website or clicking on the Ozmo link wherever they find it online. CCC handles the billing, the buyer receives the license by email and the content creator gets paid. It’s that simple.

Read more about it at "Ozmo Launches with CC+ Protocol Support."

First Digital Curation Centre SCARP Case Study Released on Brain Image Preservation

The first Digital Curation Centre SCARP (Sharing Curation and Re-use Preservation) case study has been released: Curating Brain Images in a Psychiatric Research Group: Infrastructure and Preservation Issues.

Here's the description:

Curating neuroimaging research data for sharing and re-use involves practical challenges for those concerned in its use and preservation. These are exemplified in a case study of the Neuroimaging Group in the University of Edinburgh’s Division of Psychiatry. The study is one of the SCARP series encompassing two aims; firstly to discover more about disciplinary approaches and attitudes to digital curation through 'immersion' in selected cases, in this case drawing on ethnographic field study. Secondly SCARP aims to apply known good practice, and where possible to identify new lessons from practice in the selected discipline areas; in this case using action research to assess risks to the long term reusability of datasets, and identify challenges and opportunities for change.

CHNM and Emory University Libraries Establish Zotero Software Development Partnership

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Emory University Libraries have announced the formation of a Zotero software development partnership.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A team of librarians, information technologists and faculty members led by Connie Moon Sehat, Emory Libraries' new director of digital scholarship initiatives, will extend research capabilities of the software in collaboration with Zotero's main development team. Sehat is a former co-director of Zotero and CHNM.

For Dan Cohen, who is associate professor of history at George Mason University and director of CHNM, a relationship with Emory exemplifies the powerful opportunities for institutional cooperation offered by digital media. "The Center for History and New Media and the Zotero Project are lucky to now have the resources and experience of Emory on their side," says Cohen, "and the continued insight and direction of Connie Sehat. We look forward to what will undoubtedly be a tremendously productive collaboration." Cohen oversees Zotero with Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason and CHNM's acting director of research projects.

This relationship marks a significant step forward for the future of the Zotero project. "Partnering on the development of open source software with CHNM, an established center of excellence in the digital humanities, allows the Emory Libraries to create value for the research community while sharing the risks in developing innovative software," says Rick Luce, Emory University vice provost and director of libraries.

Already a powerful research tool, Zotero allows users to gather, organize and analyze sources such as citations, full texts, web pages, images and other objects. It meshes the functionality of older reference manager applications with modern software and web applications, such as del.icio.us and YouTube, to amass large amounts of data in easy ways.

Over the next two years, Zotero will allow researchers—and their data—to interact with one another in Web 2.0 communities, help scholars archive information with the Internet Archive and offer text-mining capabilities. Zotero also will expand educational offerings to provide more support for its growing national and international communities of users, many located in university settings. Working in conjunction with the Zotero team at CHNM, Emory's Zotero team will take advantage of local research environments and library expertise to contribute to Zotero's anticipated growth.