Open Access – Page 79

"Emerald Group Publishing Tests ZEN, Increases Prices: What Does It Mean?"

Richard Poynder has published "Emerald Group Publishing Tests ZEN, Increases Prices: What Does It Mean?" in Open and Shut?

Here's an excerpt:

So why has Emerald chosen to trial ZEN [Zero Embargo Now] with some of it library journals, what role did the LAG play in the decision, and what do members of the LAG feel about the associated 70% increase in the APCs of 32 engineering and technology journals?

In the hope of finding out I emailed Emerald and asked where I could find a list of advisory group members. It turns out that these are not publicly available.

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Scopus Will Include Open Access Indicator for Indexed Journals

As of July 29, Scopus will include an open access indicator for indexed journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Out of the +21,000 active journals indexed in Scopus, 3,785 are currently (June 2015) registered as Open Access (OA) journals. . . .

In Scopus, journals are registered as being OA journals only if they are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or both of the following sources: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD).

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Who Needs Open Access? Greek Academic Libraries Do

The Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL-Link) has ended its contracts with all e-journal publishers due to the financial crisis.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement (news item link scrolls on banner):

HEAL-Link informs you of the termination of the agreements with all publishers as of 01.07.2015 due to the inability to collect the remaining half of the budget for the current year, despite the efforts that have been made and are continued, in cooperation with the Board of Rectors and the Ministry of Education. A

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CHORUS and ORCID Sign Memorandum of Understanding

CHORUS and ORCID have signed a memorandum of understanding.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Our plans include supporting simple and non-ambiguous links between researchers and funders by linking CHORUS article records to ORCID ID researcher records, building awareness of the ORCID registry among funding agency researchers and administrators, and encouraging the use of persistent identifiers for researchers and organizations to support public access to research works.

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Emerald Announces Zero Embargo Trial for Library and Information Science Journals

Emerald has announced a zero embargo trial for library and information science journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Emerald Group Publishing, global publisher linking research and practice, today announces the launch of its Green Open Access, Zero Embargo trial, applicable for all mandated articles submitted to the company's Library and Information Science (LIS) and selected Information and Knowledge Management journals.

This change allows authors to deposit the post-print version of the article into their respective institutional repository immediately upon official publication, rather than after Emerald's 24 month embargo period for mandated articles. . . .

The evaluation of this trial will help to inform future Emerald Open Access initiatives. Emerald will work with its Librarian Advisory Group to assess the impact of the trial, by monitoring the quality and volume of submissions, feedback from authors, and readership figures from both the Emerald platform and institutional repositories.

"Dutch Universities Start Elsevier Boycott—Will This Be a Game Changer or Will Publisher Profits Remain Unaffected?"

LSE Impact of Social Sciences has released "Dutch Universities Start Elsevier Boycott—Will This Be a Game Changer or Will Publisher Profits Remain Unaffected?."

Here's an excerpt:

Led by vice chancellors, Dutch universities have recently announced plans for a country-wide boycott of the academic publisher Elsevier. This boycott has the potential to be a significant game changer in the relationship between the research community and the world's largest academic publisher. But how will it affect open access momentum in the UK and around the world? Here we have brought together two expert views on the subject. Danny Kingsley, the Head of Scholarly Communication at University of Cambridge and Steven Harnad, longtime advocate for open access, share their views on what the Dutch boycott can hope to achieve.

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"Scholarly Communication as a Core Competency: Prevalence, Activities, and Concepts of Scholarly Communication Librarianship as Shown through Job Advertisements"

Craig Finlay et al. have published "Scholarly Communication as a Core Competency: Prevalence, Activities, and Concepts of Scholarly Communication Librarianship as Shown through Job Advertisements" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION The dynamic nature of the scholarly communication landscape has produced a need for the creation of positions specifically focused on these issues. Yet, no clear title or job description for scholarly communication librarianship has emerged. The lack of standardization in this area is problematic for educators, professionals, and prospective professionals. METHODS Analyzing 13,869 job advertisements published between 2006 and 2014, this study attempts to examine the prevalence of scholarly communication terms and activities and the types of positions in which these terms and activities appear. RESULTS This study finds an increase in the use of the term "scholarly communication" in the title or text of job advertisements over the last nine years, with more than 7% of positions in the most recent year containing the term. CONCLUSIONS An analysis of the levels of engagement with scholarly communication demonstrates that jobs with substantial levels of engagement are increasing; whereas those requiring passive knowledge or awareness of scholarly communication issues are decreasing. Jobs with scholarly communication as a primary job responsibility are differentiated by a focus on repositories, open access, copyright, authors' rights, and intellectual property differentiate core scholarly communication positions.

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"Dutch Boycott of Elsevier—A Game Changer?"

Danny Kingsley has published "Dutch Boycott of Elsevier—A Game Changer?" in Unlocking Research.

Here's an excerpt:

A long running dispute between Dutch universities and Elsevier has taken an interesting turn. Yesterday Koen Becking, chairman of the Executive Board of Tilburg University who has been negotiating with scientific publishers about an open access policy on behalf of Dutch universities with his colleague Gerard Meijer, announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier.

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. If this way of putting pressure on the publishers does not work, the next step would be to ask reviewers to stop working for Elsevier. After that, scientists could be asked to stop publishing in Elsevier journals. . . .

The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities. It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

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Public Knowledge Project Announces Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study

Public Knowledge Project has announced its Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce the launch of the Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study. This two-year initiative, in collaboration with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and other important stakeholders, will explore the feasibility of establishing publishing cooperatives that bring together libraries, journals, scholarly societies, presses, and others as a financially sustainable open access model for peer-reviewed scholarly publishing. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing a grant of $460,000 to support the project.

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"The Impact of Open Access on Collection Management"

Adelia Grabowsky has published "The Impact of Open Access on Collection Management" in Virginia Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This article examines if and how the integration of OA materials has changed collection and/or access management activities within academic libraries.

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DSpace@MIT Tops 3 Million Downloads

MIT's DSpace@MIT repository has had over 3 million downloads as of the end of April.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT now contains over 16,600 articles, which collectively were downloaded over 90,000 times in April.

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"The OA Landscape in Summary Form: Act Now!"

Walt Crawford has published "The OA Landscape in Summary Form: Act Now!" in Walt at Random.

Here's an excerpt:

The full set of 29 subject discussions that extend this summer's Library Technology Report issue "~~The State of~~ Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism" has been posted, and will appear on Fridays from now through September 11, 2015. (Oops: The actual title is Open Access Journals: Idealism and Opportunism.)

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23 Groups Oppose Elsevier’s New Sharing and Hosting Policy

SPARC has released "New Policy from Elsevier Impedes Open Access and Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

[Statement]

On April 30, 2015, Elsevier announced a new sharing and hosting policy for Elsevier journal articles. This policy represents a significant obstacle to the dissemination and use of research knowledge, and creates unnecessary barriers for Elsevier published authors in complying with funders' open access policies. In addition, the policy has been adopted without any evidence that immediate sharing of articles has a negative impact on publishers' subscriptions.

Despite the claim by Elsevier that the policy advances sharing, it actually does the opposite. The policy imposes unacceptably long embargo periods of up to 48 months for some journals. It also requires authors to apply a "non-commercial and no derivative works" license for each article deposited into a repository, greatly inhibiting the re-use value of these articles. Any delay in the open availability of research articles curtails scientific progress and places unnecessary constraints on delivering the benefits of research back to the public.

Furthermore, the policy applies to "all articles previously published and those published in the future" making it even more punitive for both authors and institutions. This may also lead to articles that are currently available being suddenly embargoed and inaccessible to readers.

As organizations committed to the principle that access to information advances discovery, accelerates innovation and improves education, we support the adoption of policies and practices that enable the immediate, barrier free access to and reuse of scholarly articles. This policy is in direct conflict with the global trend towards open access and serves only to dilute the benefits of openly sharing research results.

We strongly urge Elsevier to reconsider this policy and we encourage other organizations and individuals to express their opinions.

The statement is available here and we welcome others to show their support by also endorsing it.

The statement has been signed by the following groups:

COAR: Confederation of Open Access Repositories
SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
ACRL: Association of College and Research Libraries
ALA: American Library Association
ARL: Association of Research Libraries
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries
Australian Open Access Support Group
IBICT: Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology
CARL: Canadian Association of Research Libraries
CLACSO: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales
COAPI: Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (USA)
EIFL
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Greater Western Library Alliance
LIBER: European Research Library Association
National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences
OpenAIRE
Open Data Hong Kong
Research Libraries UK
SANLiC: South African National Licensing Consortium
University of St Andrews Library

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University of Windsor Senate Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Windsor Senate has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In recognition of the importance of providing open access to Windsor research, and building on the momentum of the Tri-Council Open Access Policy (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC), University Senate passed the University of Windsor's own open access policy (OA), Friday May 8. . . .

In Canada, the recent release of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications requires grant recipients, as of May 2015, to take steps to ensure that peer-reviewed journal publications arising from supported research are made freely accessible within 12 months of publication.

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University of Colorado Boulder Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Colorado Boulder has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"We are delighted that the Chancellor's Executive Committee has approved an Open Access policy for the campus that was endorsed by the Boulder Faculty Assembly, the Council of Deans, and the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor," said University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. "CU-Boulder proudly joins the ranks of other campuses in higher education that have created such policies in the interest of openly sharing their published intellectual assets."

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"Two Years of Transformative Open Data for Public Good"

The White House has released "Two Years of Transformative Open Data for Public Good."

Here's an excerpt:

Two years ago, President Obama signed an Executive Order (E.O.) to improve how our government shares information for the benefit of the American people. The E.O. meant that for the first time in history, Federal government data was required to be open by default with common standards and machine-readable formats. As a result, government information is now more easily discoverable with the necessary safeguards to prevent release of sensitive and personally identifiable information. . . .

Today, more than 130,000 datasets reside on data.gov, the repository for the U.S. Government's open data. Data.gov is updated daily with datasets on important issues such as Climate, Public Safety, Health, and Education. Users can find data on the consumer complaints filed against their banks, on-time performance of airlines, or health indicators in their communities such as the prevalence of heart disease or cancer. One reason this is so important is that open data allows businesses, software developers, and anyone else who's interested to create consumer-friendly applications to help us all make better-informed decisions about health care, transportation, energy use, and more. Open data also has other positive impacts, such as fueling creation of new businesses and jobs. And the best part is that we're just getting started.

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"The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky"

Richard Poynder has published "The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky" in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

I was fortunate enough to draw together a wonderful team, led by the Associate University Librarian Brian Owen and technical wonder Alec Smecher at Simon Fraser University Library, who, through the research and development funds we were able to raise, created open source systems for scholarly workflow management and publishing. Together, we created Open Journal Systems (OJS) beginning in 2002, to answer the question of what will it cost to put a journal online. . . .

Over the course of the next decade, the use of OJS has spread across the globe to the point where—with 8,000 journals actively using it in 2013—we now feel a considerable responsibility at PKP for ensuring that this system provides a high-quality editorial workflow and publishing environment, and all the more so with roughly half of those journals in the Global South.

So in terms of your question on what PKP has developed into, I would say that it has become primarily but not entirely an open source software development and community support project in a global scale.

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Faculty Council Unanimously Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Faculty Council has unanimously adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Resolution 2015-9: On Endorsing a University Open Access Policy represented more than a year of work by a 35-member faculty Open Access Task Force. Chairs Todd Vision and Julie Kimbrough told the University Gazette that they worked diligently to craft a policy recommendation that could be applied differently according to the needs of various disciplines.

UNC-CH is the 51st university or university unit to have adopted an open access policies by a unanimous faculty vote.

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"Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?"

Walt Crawford has published "Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

That title is not my own opinion or question—but it feels like the appropriate title for this odd roundup, covering several dozen items I've tagged over the last two years (or so) as " oa-anti. " The tag doesn't necessarily mean the item was a flat-out attack on open access (even with the typical "some of my best friends are OA, but… " nonsense that's usually now phrased as "I am/this publisher is/a big proponent of OA, however… "). It means that, in skimming the item initially, it seemed to register as something that either seemed to undermine OA or could be used as an attack on OA—or, in some cases, it's discussing somebody else attempting to undermine OA. At the end of this mostly-unsorted set of items, I note a handful of " oa-pro " items for a little balance.

You can help support Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large and Crawford's open access research by donating as little as $2 per month via PayPal.

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"Thumbs Down for the Freemium Model? Researchers Reject Nature’s Fast Track Peer Review Experiment"

David Crotty has published "Thumbs Down for the Freemium Model? Researchers Reject Nature's Fast Track Peer Review Experiment" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

NPG launched a four-week trial in their megajournal Scientific Reports. The journal features a Gold open access (OA) business model, where accepted authors pay a $1,495 article processing charge (APC). In the trial, authors willing to pay an additional $750 upfront would get their decision in three weeks. NPG would be able to offer this additional speed by outsourcing the peer review process to Rubriq, a service offered by the private company Research Square.

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"Stepping Back from Sharing"

Kevin Smith has published "Stepping Back from Sharing" in Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Here's an excerpt:

Two major features of this retreat from openness need to be highlighted. First, it imposes an embargo of at least one year on all self-archiving of final authors' manuscripts, and those embargoes can be as long as four years. Second, when the time finally does roll around when an author can make her own work available through an institutional repository, Elsevier now dictates how that access is to be controlled, mandating the most restrictive form of Creative Commons license, the CC-BY-NC-ND license for all green open access.

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"Global Scholarship: The Role of Subject Repositories in Advancing Research from the Developing World"

Julia Kelly and Linda Eells have published "Global Scholarship: The Role of Subject Repositories in Advancing Research from the Developing World" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

While subject repositories successfully fill a scholarly communication niche in particular disciplines, they have not been recognized for the important role they play in promoting global scholarship. Repositories such as AgEcon Search make valuable and unique contributions by increasing publishing options for researchers and thus exposing and distributing research produced in the developing world.

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Elsevier: "Unleashing the Power of Academic Sharing"

Elsevier has released "Unleashing the Power of Academic Sharing."

Here's an excerpt:

Elsevier's updated sharing and hosting policies explain how articles published with Elsevier may be shared and made available. These provide a more clear and consistent framework that is aligned with the rest of the publishing industry, and which is based on feedback from our authors and institutional partners. While we know the policy changes will not go as far as some would like, we believe they strike an appropriate balance between the rights and responsibilities of sharing.

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Disrupting the Subscription Journals’ Business Model for the Necessary Large-Scale Transformation to Open Access

The Max Planck Digital Library has released Disrupting the Subscription Journals' Business Model for the Necessary Large-Scale Transformation to Open Access .

Here's an excerpt:

This paper makes the strong, fact-based case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The existing journals, with their well-tested functionalities, should be retained and developed to meet the demands of 21st century research, while the underlying payment streams undergo a major restructuring. There is sufficient momentum for this decisive push towards open access publishing. The diverse existing initiatives must be coordinated so as to converge on this clear goal. The international nature of research implies that this transformation will be achieved on a truly global scale only through a consensus of the world's most eminent research organizations. All the indications are that the money already invested in the research publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services. The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks. The goal is to preserve the established service levels provided by publishers that are still requested b y researchers, while redefining and reorganizing the necessary payment streams. By disrupting the underlying business model, the viability of journal publishing can be preserved and put on a solid footing for the scholarly developments of the future.

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"A Network Approach to Scholarly Communication Infrastructure"

Rebecca Kennison and Lisa Norberg have published "A Network Approach to Scholarly Communication Infrastructure" in EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

The open-access movement, fueled by the digital revolution, is transforming the business of scholarly communication, affecting the entire value chain. Rapidly emerging technologies have been crucial enablers of this transformation, blurring traditional roles and attracting new participants. The infrastructure and the economic framework established to support a centuries-old model of scholarly publishing are no longer adequate to the task. We believe that a radically different approach is required-one that is open, flexible, collaborative, and networked.

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