Month: October 2010

Scholarly Communications Librarian at Boston College

The Boston College Libraries are recruiting a Scholarly Communications Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Boston College Libraries seek an energetic and innovative leader to develop the Libraries' eScholarship@BC institutional repository program and associated initiatives to highlight and preserve the scholarly and research output of the University. The Scholarly Communication Librarian plays a key outreach role, promoting new forms of scholarly publication and Open Access (OA) activities and educating the Boston College community on intellectual property issues related to scholarly publishing. Working closely with both internal partners in the BC Libraries and external stakeholders (particularly faculty), The Scholarly Communication Librarian plays a central role in promoting eScholarship@BC and establishing the BC Libraries as a hub of conversation and services around scholarly communication and publishing.

| Digital Scholarship |

Trinity College Dublin Adopts Open Access Policy

Trinity College Dublin has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In a move aimed at broadening access to its research and scholarship, Trinity College Dublin has adopted a policy to make its scholarly articles available to the public for free and open online access. The new policy confirms Trinity's commitment to disseminating its research outputs and scholarship as widely as possible. This move places Trinity at the forefront of academic institutions worldwide that are pioneering the move to Open Access.

Trinity's Dean of Research, Dr David Lloyd said: "Knowledge must be accessible widely if its benefits are to impact on society. Trinity is proud to make the work of our world class researchers and scholars available on open access. This policy means that the institutional supports will be in place to assist our researchers in making their work freely available.”

Under the new policy, faculty authors give TCD nonexclusive permission to disseminate their journal articles and other scholarly publications for open access through TARA, Trinity's Access to Research Archive. The policy covers all scholarly articles, peer reviewed conference papers, reports and TCD research theses. The deposit of books, book chapters and datasets associated with published research is strongly encouraged.

TCD's Open Access policy is the first such policy adopted by an Irish university and is the result of an ongoing partnership between TCD Library and its Faculty to capture the intellectual outputs of the University, facilitate access to them via the Web and maintain and preserve that access into the future. TCD's resolution is similar to those adopted by the universities of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, but differs from those policies in that it does not require faculty members to retain copyright to their publications. Instead, it works within the boundaries of scholarly publishers' copyright policies (up to 95% of these publishers allow authors to make some version of their papers freely accessible).

The new policy was approved unanimously at Trinity's recent Research Committee meeting and will take immediate effect.

Open Access policies have been adopted by over 96 universities worldwide and 46 research funding councils. Major research funders such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, the European Research Council and all UK research funding councils have mandated Open Access, as have almost all Irish funders (such as the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Higher Education Authority (HEA)). Last year, Dublin Institute of Technology became the first Irish Higher Education Institution to adopt an Open Access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

To assist the University in providing Open Access to all scholarly papers published by its members of staff and research students, each staff member and research student will provide, immediately upon acceptance for publication, an electronic copy of the final peer-reviewed draft of each article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. This can be done either by depositing it directly in TARA via the Research Support System or by emailing it to the Library to be deposited in our open access institutional repository on the author's behalf. Metadata will be made publicly available immediately; open access to the full text paper will be available as soon as is practicable, and not later than six months after publication. Embargos will be applied as necessary.

In order to support our researchers to comply with funders' Open Access mandates and in keeping with College's Information Systems Policy Guidelines and its requirement to reduce duplication of the creation of the same data, when metadata and papers are deposited in TARA the Library will undertake to assist with the deposit and/or enable harvesting of scholarly publications to other repositories (eg PubMed Central) as required by funders such as NIH, Wellcome Trust, SFI (life sciences), and HRB. Compliance with this policy automatically confers compliance with the IRCSET, HEA, European Research Council and SFI mandates.

The policy will apply to all scholarly articles, peer reviewed conference papers, reports and TCD research theses written while the person is a member of staff or a research student except for any publications completed before the adoption of this policy. The deposit of books, book chapters and datasets associated with published research is strongly encouraged. The Library will undertake to develop and monitor a plan for a service or mechanism that will render compliance with this policy as convenient for our researchers as possible.

| Digital Scholarship |

Harvard Signs Budapest Open Access Initiative and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

Harvard University has signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Harvard is committed to making research freely and widely available and working with other organizations to support this goal. Harvard’s endorsement of these two proclamations expresses the university’s support for the principles of open access, consistent with other policy actions that the university has undertaken, including enactment of open access policies in our faculties, development of open access repositories for distributing Harvard research, and support for open access journals through leadership in the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity.

| Digital Scholarship |

Daily Tweets 2010-10-20

"Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research"

Yassine Gargouri et al. have published "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research" in PLoS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Background

Articles whose authors have supplemented subscription-based access to the publisher's version by self-archiving their own final draft to make it accessible free for all on the web (“Open Access”, OA) are cited significantly more than articles in the same journal and year that have not been made OA. Some have suggested that this “OA Advantage” may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of 27,197 articles published 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Logistic regression analysis showed that the advantage is independent of other correlates of citations (article age; journal impact factor; number of co-authors, references or pages; field; article type; or country) and highest for the most highly cited articles. The OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but skewed. Its size is indeed correlated with quality, just as citations themselves are (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations).

Conclusions/Significance

The OA advantage is greater for the more citable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. It is hoped that these findings will help motivate the adoption of OA self-archiving mandates by universities, research institutions and research funders.

| Digital Scholarship |

One Year On: Evaluating the Initial Impact of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL)

RIN and the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) have released One Year On: Evaluating the Initial Impact of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL).

Here's an excerpt:

SHEDL was formally established as a ‘bloc’ purchaser for the nineteen Scottish HEIs by SCURL, the Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries, in 2008. Its first three licences, comprising over 1,500 online journals published by the American Chemical Society, Cambridge University Press and Springer, came into effect in January 2009.

This report presents the findings of an evaluation of changes to usage and cost-per-use since SHEDL was established. This report cannot show long-term trends, since it covers only the first year of SHEDL’s existence. Nevertheless, it provides an overview of the initial changes that have followed the introduction of the three SHEDL licences.

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Services Librarian at California State University, Northridge

California State University, Northridge's Oviatt Library is recruiting a Digital Services Librarian. Minimum salary of $57,084 for Senior Assistant or $65,628 for Associate Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The successful applicant will provide vision and direction for a growing suite of services supporting scholarship; provide leadership in the continued development and management of the CSUN digital archives; keep current with the latest technologies, and develop and implement ideas for applications in new and current services; provide expertise and leadership for current and future CSUN e-scholarship projects, such as electronic journal publishing and data curation; provide expertise on intellectual property issues; maintain awareness and develop in-depth knowledge of new technology, relevant national standards and best practices related to digitization and scholarship; and coordinate resource management and training for digitization and associated standards. Work cooperatively and maintain effective, creative, and flexible working relationships with colleagues, faculty, staff and students. Work closely and cooperatively with the Curator of Special Collections and Archives, Cataloging Coordinator, and Collection Development Coordinator.

| Digital Scholarship |

"Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies"

Chris Armbruster has self-archived "Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

A first generation of open access policy development and implementation is coming to a close. It is thus possible to begin evaluation. Evaluating implementation establishes evidence, enables reflection, and may foster the emergence of a second generation of open access policies.

This study is based on a small number of cases, examining the implementation of open access around the world. Some of the pioneer institutions with open access mandates have been included, as well as some newer cases. The emergence of the new stakeholders in publishing is examined, such as digital repositories, research funders and research organisations.

Because this is a groundbreaking study, no claim is made that the results are representative. The emphasis is on variety and on defining a methodological standard. Each case is reconstructed individually on the basis of public documents and background information, and supported by interviews with professionals responsible for open access implementation.

| Digital Scholarship |

Daily Tweets 2010-10-19

Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Issues Statement on Open Scholarship

The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) has issued a statement on open scholarship. CAUL has also established COSI (CAUL Open Scholarship Initiative).

Here's an excerpt:

CAUL and its members seek to facilitate Open Scholarship by:

  • Collaborating with researchers, research institutions and publishers to raise awareness of the principles, practice and benefits of open access publishing.
  • Working with researchers and others to enable appropriate open access to both their published works and their primary research data.
  • Advocating and implementing policies to ensure fair use of copyrighted information for educational and research purposes.
  • Cooperating with the Australian Government to improve access to scholarly information through maximising the amount of information in the public domain or otherwise available without economic restriction through open access to publicly funded research findings and data.
  • Developing infrastructure components, including institutional repositories, that will facilitate open access to scholarly information

| Digital Scholarship |

JISC Open Access Week Microsite

JISC has established an Open Access Week microsite.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Interactive resources for vice chancellors, senior managers and heads of information services will help them explore open access publishing from today as part of an international week of events involving over 60 countries.

JISC is bringing advice on implementing open access to the attention of universities and research institutions through a series of briefing papers, interviews and web resources released each day this week on a special site. The schedule of topics for the week's resources is:

Monday: Putting open access policy in place
Tuesday: Making an open access policy effective
Wednesday: Funding open access developments
Thursday: Measuring the benefits of open access
Friday: Open access copyright and licensing

| Digital Scholarship |

University of Tromsø Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Tromsø in Norway has adopted an open access policy.

Here's the English translation:

Free access to scientific results is an important prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy, for the free exchange of opinions and to enable science to be a tool for the development of society and industry. The University of Tromsø has as its goal that all scientific publications from the university shall be made available either in an Open Access journal or in an institutional repository. Hence, the University of Tromsø will adhere to the following basic principles of Open Access to scientific results.

  • Self-archiving: The University of Tromsø has as its general rule that students and researchers shall self-archive their publications in Munin, the university’s institutional repository. Publications will be made available through Munin within the constraints of the agreements the authors have made with the publisher and publishers’ principles for self-archiving. The University Library of Tromsø has the responsibility for investigating and ensuring compliance with publishers’ policies and other questions regarding intellectual property rights in this context.
  • Choice of publishing venue: The University of Tromsø has as its general rule that students and researchers shall – provided publications are of equal scientific worth and stature – choose publishing venues that provide the freest access to the publications, either through having a positive attitude to self-archiving or by being an Open Access publishing venue.
  • The University as a publisher: The University shall endeavour to make journals and other publications published by the University Open Access publications. It is a goal that all publications published by the University shall permit self-archiving, and that self-archiving of the final published version (publisher’s PDF) shall be encouraged.

| Digital Scholarship |

SPARC Announces Start of Open Access Week 2010

SPARC has announced the start of Open Access Week 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today marks the start of Open Access Week 2010, as thousands of scholars, faculty, and students in nearly 90 countries worldwide participate in events to raise awareness and advance understanding of the benefits of Open Access (OA). The week features the voices of top researchers who have stepped forward with first-hand accounts of how Open Access to research has positively impacted them and their ability to do their work.  In opening remarks today, OA Week organizers note:

"The exciting opportunity we have with this year's Open Access Week stems from the fact that Open Access is mature enough that good examples now exist of what you can do as a scholar in an open-access enabled world that you simply can't do in a closed environment."

With these words, Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition and organizer of OA Week), tees up the official 2010 Open Access Week Online Kick-off Event. Leading the event is pioneering Open Access advocate Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who currently directs the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Varmus is joined by Dr. Cameron Neylon, a biophysicist and open research advocate; Dr. Mona Nemer, professor and vice-president for research at the University of Ottawa; Dr. Roger Wakimoto, Director of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research; and a host of other leading researchers from around the globe. This recorded event can be viewed online at http://www.vimeo.com/15881200 by anyone, in any time zone, on any day during OA Week.

Presenters paint a clear picture of how Open Access has contributed to changing the research landscape and point to opportunities that lay ahead. Dr. Varmus describes Open Access as an "incredibly important development in the history of science," and adds:

"Open access publishing… establishes the framework in which a much wider repertoire of adventures can take place… All of these adventures are tremendously exciting because they markedly enrich the experience of being a scientist, of reading the work of others, and of exchanging views with others in the scientific community."

Dr. Neylon notes how popular news stories now highlight a growing amount of research published in open-access journals, which make that material directly available to people who want to dig deeper:

"We've made more of this available to people, to form their own opinions, but at the same time they're now going to expect to be able to contribute back, to be able to bring their expertise to the research process."

He suggests that continuing to reach a wider community, but also "really engaging" with them, should be the focus of Open Access advocates in the coming years.

Dr. Arianna Betti, professor of philosophy at VU University Amsterdam, describes the open-access Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its rapid entry update process: "This model increases collaboration, puts collective intelligence at work, and speeds up research."

The Kick-Off Event, along with the voices of a large international host of researchers, will be highlighted in Open Access Week programs everywhere and is now available through the Open Access Week Web site at www.openaccessweek.org/video.

A global event now entering its fourth year, Open Access Week (October 18 to 24) is an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to share ideas with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in establishing Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, research organizations, non-profits, businesses, and others use as a valuable platform to launch expanded open-access publication funds, institution-wide open-access policies, and new reports on the societal and economic benefits of OA.

| Digital Scholarship |

Daily Tweets 2010-10-18

Digital Archivist at Columbia University

The Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library is recruiting a Digital Archivist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (requisition number: 0001678):

The Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) seeks a skilled and accomplished electronic records archivist to help design and implement a curatorial and archival program for born-digital materials. While this position is in the RBML, it will work with all of Columbia's special collections units in developing and coordinating a robust and consistent archival program for born digital materials.

Reporting to the Curator of Manuscripts and University Archivist, the Digital Archivist is responsible for identifying and managing born digital content in RBML collections.

Teesside University Adopts Self-Archiving Mandate

Teesside University in the UK has launched its institutional repository, TeesRep, and adopted a self-archiving mandate.

Here's the mandate:

For record keeping, research asset management and performance evaluation purposes, and in order to maximise the visibility, accessibility, usage and impact of our institution’s research output, all Teesside University researchers are mandated to deposit the publicly available output of the University’s research activity into TeesRep, the University’s Institutional Repository.

Associate Director for Digital Library Software Development at Indiana University

The Indiana University Digital Library Program is recruiting an Associate Director for Digital Library Software Development.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Manages the staff and projects of the IU Digital Library Program's (DLP) systems development group. Manages a team of seven programmer/analysts, database administrators, and system administrators across multiple projects; works with other DLP and Library Technologies managers to define new projects and set priorities; manages and schedules software development projects and team members' assignments; coordinates deployment and management of production systems with other groups in the Libraries and in UITS, estimating time and resources required for software development activities; and defines processes for quality assurance, defining programming standards, mentoring and assisting in the professional development of team members, and directing and participating in requirements analysis, architecture, design, coding, testing, deployment, and support of software. Functions as a member of the Library Technologies and Digital Libraries management group and the Digital Library Program planning team. Participates in organization and unit-wide planning initiatives and the development of overall strategic plans and architectures for digital library systems.

"The Size of the EU Public Domain"

Rufus Pollock and Paul Stepan have self-archived "The Size of the EU Public Domain."

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports results from a large recent study of the public domain in the European Union. Based on a combination of catalogue and survey data our figures for the number of items (and works) in the public domain extend across a variety of media and provide one of the first quantitative estimates of the 'size' of the public domain in any jurisdiction.

See also their related eprint "The Value of the EU Public Domain."

Daily Tweets 2010-10-17

New XHTML Version of Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access with Live Links

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography is now available as an XHTML website with live links to many included works. All versions of the bibliography are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

This bibliography presents over 1,100 selected English-language scholarly works useful in understanding the open access movement's efforts to provide free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature. The bibliography primarily includes books and published journal articles. (See the "Preface" for further details about scope and selection criteria).

Daily Tweets 2010-10-10

Daily Tweets 2010-10-08

Riding the Wave—How Europe Can Gain from the Rising Tide of Scientific Data

The High-Level Group on Scientific Data has released Riding the Wave—How Europe Can Gain from the Rising Tide of Scientific Data.

Here's an excerpt:

A fundamental characteristic of our age is the rising tide of data — global, diverse, valuable and complex. In the realm of science, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. This report, prepared for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Information Society and Media, identifies the benefits and costs of accelerating the development of a fully functional e-infrastructure for scientific data — a system already emerging piecemeal and spontaneously across the globe, but now in need of a far-seeing, global framework. The outcome will be a vital scientific asset: flexible, reliable, efficient, cross-disciplinary and cross-border.

The benefits are broad. With a proper scientific e-infrastructure, researchers in different domains can collaborate on the same data set, finding new insights. They can share a data set easily across the globe, but also protect its integrity and ownership. They can use, re-use and combine data, increasing productivity. They can more easily solve today's Grand Challenges, such as climate change and energy supply. Indeed, they can engage in whole new forms of scientific inquiry, made possible by the unimaginable power of the e-infrastructure to find correlations, draw inferences and trade ideas and information at a scale we are only beginning to see. For society as a whole, this is beneficial. It empowers amateurs to contribute more easily to the scientific process, politicians to govern more effectively with solid evidence, and the European and global economy to expand.

"Keeping Bits Safe: How Hard Can It Be?"

David S. H. Rosenthal has published "Keeping Bits Safe: How Hard Can It Be?" in ACM Queue.

Here's an excerpt:

There is an obvious question we should be asking: how many copies in storage systems with what reliability do we need to get a given probability that the data will be recovered when we need it? This may be an obvious question to ask, but it is a surprisingly hard question to answer. Let's look at the reasons why.

To be specific, let's suppose we need to keep a petabyte for a century and have a 50 percent chance that every bit will survive undamaged. This may sound like a lot of data and a long time, but there are already data collections bigger than a petabyte that are important to keep forever. The Internet Archive is already multiple petabytes.