Open Access – Page 77

Towards a UK Digital Public Space—A Blueprint Report

The Strategic Content Alliance has released Towards a UK Digital Public Space—A Blueprint Report.

Here's an excerpt:

"Imagine … that much of the UK's publicly held cultural and heritage media assets could be found in a unified online space … connected together, searchable, open, accessible, visible and usable … in a way that allows individuals, institutions and machines to add additional material, meaning and context to each other's media, indexed and tagged to the highest level of detail … This emerging vision of a free-to-everyone, open access environment for learning and creative endeavour has been referred to as a digital public space."

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Fedora 4 Production Release

The international Fedora repository community and DuraSpace have released the Fedora 4 production release.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This significant release signals the effectiveness of an international and complex community source project in delivering a modern repository platform with features that meet or exceed current use cases in the management of institutional digital assets. Fedora 4 features include vast improvements in scalability, linked data capabilities, research data support, modularity, ease of use and more.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

DOAJ Journal Analysis: "Intersections: The Third Half"

Walt Crawford has published "Intersections: The Third Half" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Most of this essay (pp. 7-19) is the "Third Half" of the two-part Journals and "Journals" examination in the October/November and December 2014 issues-adding another 1,200-odd bio/med journals from DOAJ and looking at overall patterns. The essay also includes four briefer discussions related to DOAJ and gold OA journals.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"A Living Open Book"

Peter Suber has published "A Living Open Book" in Ebooks in Education: Realising The Vision.

Here's an excerpt:

This is a case study of my short book, Open Access (Suber 2012a). The book is not "enhanced" in the way that a growing number of digital academic books are enhanced. It has no graphics, no multimedia, and no interactivity beyond links, and does not offer different layers or pathways for readers at different levels. From that point of the view the book is conventional and text-oriented. But it has two other enhancements worth highlighting. First, the full text is open access, which benefits authors and readers, and sometimes also publishers. Second, the book has a companion web site of open-access updates and supplements, which benefits all three groups.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Adoption of Open Access Funds among Canadian Academic Research Libraries, 2008-2012"

Crystal Hampson has published "The Adoption of Open Access Funds among Canadian Academic Research Libraries, 2008-2012" in Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

Here's an excerpt:

To examine academic libraries' responses to OA publishing charges, this article explores the adoption of OA funds among Canadian academic research libraries from 2008 to 2012 by analyzing results from a series of previously published surveys. The findings are then examined in light of Everett Rogers' Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) to consider the question of whether or not OA funds are becoming a standard service in Canadian academic research institutions. Adoption in Canada is briefly compared to that in the United States and United Kingdom. The paper concludes that, as of 2012, OA funds were becoming common but were not a standard service in Canadian academic research libraries and that libraries were actively participating in the development of OA funding models.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future

Martin Paul Eve has published Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future with Cambridge University Pres.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

I am extremely pleased to announce that my book, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future has today been published by Cambridge University Press. The book offers a background to open access and its specifics for the humanities disciplines, as well as setting out the economics and politics of the phenomenon. It also has a very fine preface by Peter Suber! You can download the book for absolutely free (under a CC BY-SA license) at the official website (click the green "open access" button). You can also buy an extremely good value paperback copy, with all my royalties going to Arthritis Research UK, from the usual suspects.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Adopts Open Access Policy

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt:

As of January 1, 2015 our Open Access policy will be effective for all new agreements. During a two-year transition period, publishers will be permitted to apply up to a 12 month embargo period on the accessibility of the publication and its underlying data sets. This embargo period will no longer be allowed after January 1, 2017.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Bringing The DOAJ to a New Level"

Lars Bjørnshauge has published "Bringing The DOAJ to a New Level" in ScieCom info.

Here's an excerpt:

Most promising projects do not make the transition to a service, much effort and many great ideas are lost. DOAJ has managed this transition since years, but now we are coming closer to the moment of truth. Whether what had turned out to be a social, organizational and managerial experiment: a community funded, crowdsourced free service, really can meet the expectations from increasingly demanding stakeholders.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History"

James Shulman has published "Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, writing about the struggles of publishing in art history noted that "It is a paradox of the digital revolution that it has never been easier to produce and circulate a reproductive image, and never harder to publish one." If publishing in general is in crisis because of the seismic re-ordering in a digital world, the field of art history is the extreme tail of the spectrum; rights holders are accustomed to licensing image content for limited edition print runs. Given this particularly challenging corner of the publishing work, a project initiated by the Metropolitan Museum offers some hope of a collaborative way forward. What sociological re-engineering enabled progress on this problem? It is possible that there are other lessons here too, that might throw at least streaks of light on other process re-engineering provoked by digital innovation in publishing?

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Case Study of a Book Published under a Creative Commons License

Here's a brief case study of how one book under a Creative Commons license evolved and was accessed.

In 2005, the Association of Research Libraries published my book, the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. With ARL's agreement, I made an open access PDF available on Digital Scholarship.

In 2006, I converted the book into an open access XHTML website and published the Open Access Bibliography Author Index and the Open Access Bibliography Title Index.

In 2008, I worked with Open Access Directory staff to convert it to wiki format and publish it as the basis for the Bibliography of Open Access.

In 2010, I published Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography as an open access PDF file, an open access XHTML website, and a low-cost paperback. All versions of the bibliography were under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. This derivative work was an updated version of the Open Access Bibliography that was more narrowly focused on scholarly treatments of open access.

Below are the Digital Scholarship use statistics for the two books as of October 31, 2014. In this analysis, only HTML files or PDF files are counted as "page views"; image files and other supporting website files are excluded. This analysis also excludes spider use.

Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals: over 355,000 page views.
Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: over 152,000 page views.

That's a total of over 507,000 page views. For the measured time period, about 7.9% of all file requests to Digital Scholarship failed. Consequently, I'll eliminate 7.9% of the above page views and estimate that there were over 466,000 successful page views. This tally does not include any access statistics from ARL or the OAD (nor does it include paperback sales).

If the multi-file HTML versions of the books are eliminated from consideration, the two books still had a total of over 173,000 PDF requests (excluding spider requests), adjusted to an estimated 159,000 plus successful PDF requests.

To put these use statistics in perspective, in 2005, Willis Regier (Director of the University of Illinois Press) estimated that the typical university press book sold between 400 to 800 copies.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Summary of SHARE Community Meeting, Fall 2014"

ARL has released "Summary of SHARE Community Meeting, Fall 2014."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On October 13-14, 2014, members of the SHARE community gathered in Crystal City, Virginia, for their first face-to-face meeting. Attendees included more than half the members of the SHARE working groups (communications, technical, repository, and workflow), as well as SHARE Notification Service prototype participants and other stakeholders. The two-day meeting was intended to showcase progress on the Notification Service; identify challenges and opportunities related to the Notification Service prototype; explore future SHARE projects; and delve into ways in which the higher education community can play a proactive role in the stewardship of research. The meeting was convened with the generous support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Intersections: Journals and ‘Journals’: Taking a Deeper Look: Part 2: DOAJ Subset and Additional Notes"

Walt Crawford has published "Intersections: Journals and 'Journals': Taking a Deeper Look: Part 2: DOAJ Subset and Additional Notes" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

If you've been reading various commentaries about Gold OA journals-including Part 1-you may be wondering where all those supposed no-fee Gold OA journals are. This piece helps to tell that story. Specifically, of 2,843 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of May 7, 2014 that have an English interface version, aren't from either OASPA members or Beall-list publishers, and are not about aspects of medicine or biology-and that actually published one or more articles between January 2011 and June 30, 2014-more than 78% do not charge fees of any sort, and those journals published 53% of the articles published by the whole group during that period. Those percentages grow to almost 92% and more than 81%, respectively, for 1,426 journals in the humanities and social sciences.

This article looks at the "DOAJ set" in depth, including new tables that show distribution of articles (and journals publishing articles during a year) on a year-by-year basis, including the percentage of free journals and articles from those journals for each year.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Focusing on Student Research In The Institutional Repository DigitalCommons@USU"

Danielle Barandiaran et al. have published "Focusing on Student Research In The Institutional Repository DigitalCommons@USU" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Student research is a significant and rapidly growing component of the institutional repository (IR) at Utah State University (USU). A briefing paper prepared for Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) points to student works as one of nine purposes for an IR.1 It is not uncommon to find undergraduate and graduate theses and dissertations in IRs. In 2013, an analysis of 283 U.S. repositories using the bepress or DSpsace platforms indicated 71% include this type of student research. However, other student research such as posters, presentations, or papers were only found in 38% of these repositories. Utah State University's IR actively solicits student research resulting from research groups and individuals, as well as posters and creative works featured in the university's Student Showcase symposium.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Harvard’s 11 Announcements for Open Access Week 2014"

Peter Suber has released "Harvard's 11 Announcements for Open Access Week 2014."

Here's an excerpt:

Harvard has taken a series of new steps to support open access to research. The best evidence lies in the 11 announcements released by the Office for Scholarly Communication for Open Access Week 2014 (October 20-24). Here's a brief recap of the series. . . .

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society announced that the Center's faculty directors and staff have adopted an open-access policy. In a landmark unanimous vote, the Berkman Center became the first research center at Harvard to adopt an open-access policy, and the first to extend the scope of Harvard's open-access policies beyond the faculty.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The ‘Total Cost of Publication’ in a Hybrid Open-Access Environment: Institutional Approaches to Funding Journal Article-Processing Charges in Combination with Subscriptions"

S. Pinfield et al. have self-archived "The 'Total Cost of Publication' in a Hybrid Open-Access Environment: Institutional Approaches to Funding Journal Article-Processing Charges in Combination with Subscriptions."

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyses data from 23 UK institutions covering the period 2007 to 2014 modelling the total cost of publication (TCP). It shows a clear rise in centrally-managed APC payments from 2012 onwards, with payments projected to increase further. As well as evidencing the growing availability and acceptance of OA publishing, these trends reflect particular UK policy developments and funding arrangements intended to accelerate the move towards OA publishing ('Gold' OA). Whilst the mean value of APCs has been relatively stable, there was considerable variation in APC prices paid by institutions since 2007. In particular, 'hybrid' subscription/OA journals were consistently more expensive than fully-OA journals. Most APCs were paid to large 'traditional' commercial publishers who also received considerable subscription income. New administrative costs reported by institutions varied considerably. The total cost of publication modelling shows that APCs are now a significant part of the TCP for academic institutions, in 2013 already constituting an average of 10% of the TCP (excluding administrative costs).

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

All Harvard Schools Now Have Open Access Policies

With the adoption of an open access policy in June by the Harvard Medical School, all Harvard schools now have open access policies.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

Harvard Medical School adopted an open-access policy on June 18, 2014, by a unanimous vote of the Faculty Council. The new policy covers both "quad"-based and clinical faculty. Now all Harvard schools have open-access policies.

Like the other Harvard policies, the Medical School policy insures that faculty members automatically retain a license to share their research papers freely through DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard), the University’s open-access repository. Faculty also have the option to waive this license for any article, preserving their freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. When faculty write articles covered by the Medical School policy and the policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they need only deposit once to comply with both.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Purdue e-Pubs Repository Tops 8 Million Downloads

The Purdue e-Pubs repository has had over 8 million downloads.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

To date, every college on Purdue's West Lafayette campus has a presence in the repository. Purdue e-Pubs continues to be a central place on campus advancing the impact of scholarship at the global, national and local level. Purdue University Libraries began providing the Purdue e-Pubs service to the campus community in 2006 as a means to openly share research and scholarship in a stable, open, and citable format.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Library Publishing Directory, Second Edition

Library Publishing Coalition has released the Library Publishing Directory, second edition .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Published just in time for Open Access Week, the Directory illustrates the many ways in which libraries are actively transforming and advancing scholarly communications in partnership with scholars, students, university presses, and others.

In documenting the breadth and depth of activities in this field, this resource aims to articulate the unique value of library publishing; establish it as a significant and growing community of practice; and to raise its visibility within a number of stakeholder communities, including administrators, funding agencies, other scholarly publishers, librarians, and content creators.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"PeerJ Grows Steadily With Papers, Authors"

Phil Davis has published "PeerJ Grows Steadily With Papers, Authors" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

PeerJ is growing, publishing more papers and attracting more authors, although it is not clear whether the company is moving toward financial sustainability. In a crowded market of multidisciplinary open access journals, the success/failure of PeerJ may be determined when it receives its first Impact Factor.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Open Access Advantage for American Law Reviews"

James M. Donovan et al. have self-archived "The Open Access Advantage for American Law Reviews."

Here's an excerpt:

Articles available in open access formats enjoy an advantage in citation by subsequent law review works of 53%. For every two citations an article would otherwise receive, it can expect a third when made freely available on the Internet. This benefit is not uniformly spread through the law school tiers. Higher tier journals experience a lower OA advantage (11.4%) due to the attention such prestigious works routinely receive regardless of the format. When focusing on the availability of new scholarship, as compared to creating retrospective collections, the aggregated advantage rises to 60.2%. While the first tier advantage rises to 16.8%, the mid-tiers skyrocket to 89.7%. The fourth tier OA advantage comes in at 81.2%.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Data from Nature and Palgrave Macmillan’s Author Insights Survey

Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan have released data from their Author Insights Survey.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The survey, which contains views from 30,466 researchers, is the biggest publisher survey of authors' views to be made open access.

NPG and Palgrave Macmillan are making this anonymised data available in order to achieve greater understanding between authors, funders and publishers, particularly with regard to open access.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Estimating Open Access Mandate Effectiveness: I. The MELIBEA Score"

Philippe Vincent-Lamarre et al. have self-archived Estimating Open Access Mandate Effectiveness: I. The MELIBEA Score.

Here's an excerpt:

MELIBEA is a Spanish database that uses a composite formula with eight weighted conditions to estimate the effectiveness of Open Access mandates (registered in ROARMAP). We analyzed 68 mandated institutions for publication years 2011-2013 to determine how well the MELIBEA score and its individual conditions predict what percentage of published articles indexed by Web of Knowledge is deposited in each institution's OA repository, and when. We found a small but significant positive correlation (0.18) between MELIBEA score and deposit percentage. We also found that for three of the eight MELIBEA conditions (deposit timing, internal use, and opt-outs), one value of each was strongly associated with deposit percentage or deposit latency (immediate deposit required, deposit required for performance evaluation, unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but no opt-out for deposit requirement). When we updated the initial values and weights of the MELIBEA formula for mandate effectiveness to reflect the empirical association we had found, the score's predictive power doubled (.36). There are not yet enough OA mandates to test further mandate conditions that might contribute to mandate effectiveness, but these findings already suggest that it would be useful for future mandates to adopt these three conditions so as to maximize their effectiveness, and thereby the growth of OA.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Exposing the Predators: Methods to Stop Predatory Journals"

Margot Wehrmeijer has self-archived "Exposing the Predators: Methods to Stop Predatory Journals."

Here's an excerpt:

This thesis looks at three possible methods to stop predatory journals: black-and white-lists, open peer review systems and new metrics. Black- and white-lists have set up rules and regulations that credible publishers and journals should follow. Open peer review systems should make it harder for predatory publishers to make false claims about their peer review process. Metrics should measure more aspects of research impact and become less liable to gaming. The question is, which of these three methods is the best candidate to stop predatory journals.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Wall Street Analysts Say Open Access Has Failed Due to Lack of Focus, but Their Analysis Might Help It Succeed"

Curt Rice has published "Wall Street Analysts Say Open Access Has Failed Due to Lack of Focus, but Their Analysis Might Help It Succeed" in The LSE's Daily Blog on American Politics and Policy.

Here's an excerpt:

The absence of clear leadership at the helm of the open access movement is made painfully clear in a recent report about Elsevier's value as a company, entitled Goodbye to Berlin—The Fading Threat of Open Access. Why could the authors of this report at Bernstein Research let go of their earlier concerns and now upgrade their predictions about Elsevier's stock? "The rise of OA," they write, "has inflicted little or no damage on the leading subscription publishers."

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Imperative for Open Altmetrics"

Stacy Konkiel, Heather Piwowar, and Jason Priem have published "The Imperative for Open Altmetrics" in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

If scholarly communication is broken, how will we fix it? At Impactstory—a non-profit devoted to helping scholars gather and share evidence of their research impact by tracking online usage of scholarship via blogs, Wikipedia, Mendeley, and more—we believe that incentivizing web-native research via altmetrics is the place to start. In this article, we describe the current state of the art in altmetrics and its effects on publishing, we share Impactstory's plan to build an open infrastructure for altmetrics, and describe our company's ethos and actions.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"