Category: Open Access

"Open Textbooks—An Untapped Opportunity for Universities, Colleges and Schools"

Vivien Rolfe and Beck Pit have published "Open Textbooks—An Untapped Opportunity for Universities, Colleges and Schools" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

The pilot phase of the UK Open Textbook project reached completion in April 2018. This article discusses the project, what open textbooks are, and why they are an untapped opportunity for universities, colleges and schools. The North American models of open textbook creation and uptake (adoption) are designed to help reduce university student financial worries and enhance learning opportunities, and provide much-needed resources for schools (or the K12 system in the US and Canada). The ability to repurpose books leads to innovative and engaging pedagogies including students as co-authors. Yet in the UK, the level of discussion and awareness of the opportunities afforded by open textbooks, and the existence of a small number of UK initiatives, is poor.

The aim of the UK Open Textbook project was to raise awareness and host activities to encourage the adoption of open textbooks. The results of the project are discussed, along with the policy, cultural and practice changes required to scale up these approaches. Why should our learners miss out?

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Library Publishing Coalition: An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 1.0.

The Library Publishing Coalition has released An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 1.0..

Here's an excerpt:

Library publishing is distinguished in part from other types of scholarly publishing by a focus on adherence to the values and ethics of librarianship. An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing supports good practice in this area by providing resources and guidance in a number of ethical areas of importance to library publishers. Version 1.0 (published July 2018) covers publishing practice; accessibility; diversity, equity, and inclusion; privacy and analytics; and academic and intellectual freedom.

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Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography

The Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography includes over 125 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the digital scholarly publishing activities of academic libraries since the late 1980's, especially their open access book and journal publishing activities. The bibliography covers the following subtopics: pioneering academic library publishing projects in the 1980's and 1990's, early digital journals and serials published by librarians (as distinct from libraries), library-based scholarly publishing since the Budapest Open Access Initiative, technical publishing infrastructure, and library and university press mergers/partnerships and other relevant works.

Most sources have been published from January 2002 through July 2018; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography has links to included works. Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

The Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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"The Weakest Link—Workflows in Open Access Agreements: The Experience of the Vienna University Library and Recommendations for Future Negotiations"

Rita Pinhasi et al. have published "The Weakest Link—Workflows in Open Access Agreements: The Experience of the Vienna University Library and Recommendations for Future Negotiations" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

In recent years open access (OA) publishing agreements have left a lasting impact on several aspects of the research life cycle, and on the manner in which institutions work with publishers and researchers to support the transition to OA. Apart from the immediate financial implications, one significant challenge libraries are facing is the sub-optimal level of workflow infrastructure that could determine the success or failure of otherwise innovative approaches. This article will examine the Vienna University Library’s hands-on experience with OA agreements and the implementation of relevant workflows. It will describe existing workflows, review the benefits of the various systems in place and identify areas for improvement. The paper will also propose items for discussion for organizations when negotiating OA agreements with publishers and will highlight potential pitfalls to be avoided.

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Cornell University Library Repository Principles and Strategies Handbook

Erin Faulder et al. have self-archived the "Cornell University Library Repository Principles and Strategies Handbook."

Here's an excerpt:

The handbook provides support for both new and existing repository managers, comprising both recommended practices and specifically identified action steps that will allow them to track their progress and identify gaps. Each section of the handbook covers a different strategic area of repository management, standing largely on its own and linking to other sections when appropriate. Although there is no primary section order, we recommend starting with Defining Repository Scope and Service Planning. The handbook specifically addresses principles and practices pertaining to digital repositories, where a digital repository can be defined as: a system, the purpose of which is to store, present, and preserve a collection of data for which the library provides services. That is, the term refers specifically to the application as opposed to the content (collections, objects and metadata) within.

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"The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access"

Julie Baldwin and Stephen Pinfield have published "The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Whilst take-up of open access (OA) in the UK is growing rapidly due partly to a number of funder mandates, managing the complexities of balancing compliance with these mandates against restrictive publisher policies and ingrained academic priorities, has resulted in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) often struggling with confused researchers, complex workflows, and rising costs. In order to try to address this situation, the UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) was formulated to bypass the root causes of many of these challenges by implementing a licensing mechanism for multiple-mandate compliance in one single policy. This is the first empirical study to focus on the genesis of the UK-SCL and how its implementation has been conceived thus far. A qualitative research method was used, taking the form of 14 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from the initiative across the UK. The results indicate that those working within UK HEIs are concerned with the complexity of the current OA policy landscape and are frustrated with the inertia within the current system, which has resulted in higher costs, further publisher restrictions, and has not addressed the underlying tensions in academic culture. The UK-SCL is seen by its initiators as a way to achieve further transition towards OA and take back some element of control of the content produced at their institutions. The study concludes by modelling the ways in which the UK-SCL is intended to impact relationships between key stakeholders, and discussing possible implementation futures.

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"More Than 1 Million Images Now Publicly Available at library.artstor.org!"

Artstor has released "More Than 1 Million Images Now Publicly Available at library.artstor.org!."

Here's an excerpt:

Artstor has made more than 1 million image, video, document, and audio files from public institutional collections freely available to everyone—subscribers and non-subscribers alike—at library.artstor.org. These collections are being shared by institutions who make their content available via JSTOR Forum, a tool that allows them to catalog, manage, and share digital media collections and make them discoverable to the widest possible audience.

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"Looking for Commitment: Finnish Open Access Journals, Infrastructure and Funding"

Jyrki Ilva has published "Looking for Commitment: Finnish Open Access Journals, Infrastructure and Funding" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

Most of the 100+ Finnish scholarly journals are published by small learned societies. Since 2015, the National Library of Finland and the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies have been working on a joint project which aims to provide the journals with the support they need for making a transition to open access. The project has launched an OJS-based shared publication platform (Journal.fi), which is already used by 50 journals. It has also been developing a new funding model for the journals. Since the subscription and licensing costs paid by the research libraries for these journals have been very small, it is not possible to simply use these funds to pay for open access. Instead, the project has been working on a consortium-based model, under which the Finnish research organizations and funders would commit themselves to providing long-term funding to the journals. In return, the journals would pledge to follow strict standards in openness, licensing, peer review and infrastructure.

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University of California: "Re: Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication"

The University of California's University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication has released "Re: Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication."

Here's an excerpt:

1. No copyright transfers. Our authors shall be allowed to retain copyright in their work and grant a Creative Commons Attribution license of their choosing.

2. No restrictions on preprints. Our authors shall have the right to submit for publication work they have previously made available as preprints.

3. No waivers of OA Policy. Publishers shall not require our authors to provide waivers of our Institutional OA Policy as a condition for publishing our work.

4. No delays to sharing. Publishers shall make work by our authors immediately available for harvest or via automatic deposit into our Institutional OA repository or another public archive.

5. No limitations on author reuse. Our authors shall have the right to reuse figures, tables, data, and text from their published work without permission or payment.

6. No impediments to rights reversion. Publishers shall provide a simple process for our authors to regain copyright in their previously published work.

7. No curtailment of copyright exceptions. Licenses shall not restrict, and should instead expressly protect, the rights of authors, institutions, and the public to reuse excerpts of published work consistent with legal exceptions and limitations on copyright such as fair use.

8. No barriers to data availability. Our authors shall have the right to make all of their data, figures, and other supporting materials from their published work publicly available.

9. No constraints on content mining. Publishers shall make licensed materials open, accessible, and machine-readable for text and data mining by our researchers, at no additional cost and under terms that allow retention and reuse of results.

10. No closed metadata. Publishers shall make bibliographic records, usage metrics, and citation data for our authors freely available, easy to parse, and machine-readable.

11. No free labor. Publishers shall provide our Institution with data on peer review and editorial contributions by our authors in support of journals, and such contributions shall be taken into account when determining the cost of our subscriptions or OA fees for our authors.

12. No long-term subscriptions. Publishers shall provide our Institution with plans and timelines for transitioning their subscription journals to OA.

13. No permanent paywalls. Our Institution shall receive perpetual access for previously licensed content and back files shall be made freely available once a journal transitions to OA.

14. No double payments. Publishers shall provide our Institution with data on hybrid OA payments from our authors and such payments shall reduce the cost of our subscriptions.

15. No hidden profits. Publishers shall use transparent pricing for the services they provide our authors when levying article processing charges and other fees associated with publishing.

16. No deals without OA offsets. Our Institution shall only enter into publishing agreements that include offsets for OA publishing by our authors.

17. No new paywalls for our work. Work by our authors shall be made OA on the publisher’s website as part of subscription terms for new journals.

18. No non-disclosure agreements. Publisher agreements with our Institution shall be transparent and shall not contain terms that prevent the sharing of their contents.

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"ScholarlyHub: A Progress Report at Six Months"

Guy Geltner and John Willinsky have self-archived "ScholarlyHub: A Progress Report at Six Months."

Here's an excerpt:

ScholarlyHub (SH) was launched in November 2017 as a portal to fund and create a social network for scholarship-using individuals and communities that is supported and directed from the bottom up and not beholden to venture capitalists on the one hand and governments on the other. As an inclusive, member-run portal, it hopes to connect rather than replace numerous non-profit and open-source OA initiatives, which tend to lack a visible and attractive front end, and which may not currently be interoperable. If its goals can be realized, SH may offer one solution to the full workflow platforms that for-profit conglomerates are on the cusp of achieving. This practitioner’s paper presents the key characteristics of SH and offers an early progress report.

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"Collecting Inclusive Usage Metrics for Open Access Publications: the HIRMEOS Project"

Javier Arias has self-archived "Collecting Inclusive Usage Metrics for Open Access Publications: the HIRMEOS Project."

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access has matured for journals, but its uptake in the book market is still delayed, despite the fact that books continue to be the leading publishing format for social sciences and humanities. The 30-months EU-funded project HIRMEOS (High Integration of Research Monographs in the European Open Science infrastructure) tackles the main obstacles of the full integration of five important digital platforms supporting open access monographs. The content of participating platforms will be enriched with tools that enable identification, authentication and interoperability (via DOI, ORCID, Fundref), and tools that enrich information and entity extraction (INRIA (N)ERD), the ability to annotate monographs (Hypothes.is), and gather usage and alternative metric data. This paper focuses on the development and implementation of Open Source Metrics Services that enable the collection of OA Metrics and Altmetrics from third-party platforms, and how the architecture of these tools will allow implementation in any external platform, particularly in start-up Open Access publishers.

Read more about it: "Shared Infrastructure for Next- Generation Books: HIRMEOS."

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"How Green Is Our Valley?: Five-Year Study of Selected LIS Journals from Taylor & Francis for Green Deposit of Articles"

Jill Emery has published "How Green Is Our Valley?: Five-Year Study of Selected LIS Journals from Taylor & Francis for Green Deposit of Articles" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

This study reviews content from five different library and information science journals: Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, Collection Management, College & Undergraduate Libraries, Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship and Journal of Library Administration over a five-year period from 2012–2016 to investigate the green deposit rate. Starting in 2011, Taylor & Francis, the publisher of these journals, waived the green deposit embargo for library and information science, heritage and archival content, which allows for immediate deposit of articles in these fields. The review looks at research articles and standing columns over the five years from these five journals to see if any articles were retrieved using the OA Button or through institutional repositories. Results indicate that less than a quarter of writers have chosen to make a green deposit of their articles in local or subject repositories. The discussion outlines some best practices to be undertaken by librarians, editors and Taylor & Francis to make this program more successful.

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