Category: Open Access

DuraSpace Launches DSpaceDirect

DuraSpace has launched DSpaceDirect.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today the DuraSpace organization is pleased to announce the public launch of DSpaceDirect—the only hosted repository solution for low-cost discovery, access, archiving, and preservation. DSpaceDirect is now available with convenient features that include fast start-up, you-pick customization, no-cost upgrades, content preservation options, anytime data access and all-the-time data control—all at a price that puts solutions for long-term access to digital scholarly assets within reach of institutions of any size. . . .

Built on DSpace, the most widely-used repository application in the world with more than 1,500 installed instances, DSpaceDirect was inspired by the idea that the past creates the future as each generation builds knowledge on the scholarship that came before. DSpaceDirect is a hosted DSpace repository service that allows institutions of any size to afford to keep their digital content safe and accessible over time. Small institutions are able to get a repository up and running right away that can be made available to patrons as well as to new users worldwide. Users say that the DSpaceDirect easy start-up accelerates discussions about digital content stewardship and preservation best practices at their institutions.

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"A DSpace Mobile Theme for San Diego State University"

Mini Vamadevan Pillai has self-archived "A DSpace Mobile Theme for San Diego State University."

Here's an excerpt:

This thesis is an attempt to install and customize a DSpace mobile theme for San Diego State University. The work also includes development of additional features like adding navigational bars, adding administrative login capabilities, accessing administrative navigational panel via mobile theme. The mobile theme supports other features like search, advanced search, recent submissions, submissions and workflow. With the widespread use of mobile telephony, providing a mobile theme for SDSU DSpace will reach out to faculty and other interested parties.

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"Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall"

Walt Crawford has published "Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

This is the first of a trio of essays: two related to fairly specific situations, one covering a range of ethical discussions. Depending on how you define "ethics," I could also include sections on Elsevier and OA, embargoes, fallacious and misleading anti- OA arguments and the whole area of peer review. Or maybe not. In any case, we lead off with the sad case of Jeffrey Beall.

Since Beall's chief claim to fame is his ever-growing list of supposedly predatory OA journals, and since I'm showing the case for treating Beall as a questionable source, I have to say this: In case you're thinking "Walt's claiming there are no scam OA journals," I'm not—and toward the end of this essay, I'll quote some useful ways to avoid scam journals regardless of their business model.

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PLOS Mandates Immediate Open Access to Article-Related Data

PLOS has mandated that author's provide immediate open access to article-related data upon publication.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In an effort to increase access to this data, we are now revising our data-sharing policy for all PLOS journals: authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article. Beginning March 3rd, 2014, all authors who submit to a PLOS journal will be asked to provide a Data Availability Statement, describing where and how others can access each dataset that underlies the findings. This Data Availability Statement will be published on the first page of each article.

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Columbia University’s School of Social Work Adopts Open Access Policy

Columbia University's School of Social Work has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) is pleased to announce that the School of Social Work at Columbia University has implemented an open access resolution, in which all faculty and staff have resolved that they commit to making their scholarly works accessible to the public. The policy went into immediate effect after Social Work faculty voted unanimously in favor of the resolution at their faculty meeting on December 2, 2013. . . .

The implementation of the School of Social Work open access resolution comes after the recent adoption of an open access resolution at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health in May 2013, which was the first school at the university to make scholarly research available to the public and free online. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory became the first program at Columbia to adopt an open access resolution in January 2011, which was followed by Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' adoption of a policy in June 2011.

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"SCOAP3 Lifts Off: An Interview with Ann Okerson"

David Wojick has published "SCOAP3 Lifts Off: An Interview with Ann Okerson" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

Q: SCOAP3 seems pretty complicated to me. As I understand it they make deals with leading particle physics journals, so that when those libraries that participate in SCOAP3 pay the article publishing charges, everyone's subscription price is either lowered or eliminated, depending on whether some or all of the articles are paid for. Is that correct?

A: Roughly put, that's true. "They" are "we" in this case. Let me note here that without the interest and participation of the publishers, SCOAP3 would not have launched on January 1st, already with hundreds of 2014 articles in the SCOAP3 repository at CERN and now flowing in on a daily basis. The SCOAP3 Technical Working Group developed, in conjunction with the Steering Committee, a set of criteria that formed the basis for publisher participation. Publishers received the Invitation to Tender and responded by describing in detail the way in which they would participate and at what cost per article.

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Only 20.56 % of Jounals in DOAJ Use CC BY or CC BY-SA License

The post "CC-BY Dominates under the Creative Commons licensed Journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)" analyzes the use of Creative Commons licences by journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Here's an excerpt:

A total of 2,016 (or 20.56 %) of the guided journal in DOAJ therefore use a license (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA), which is compatible with the requirements of the Open Definition and allow a restriction-free use of the contents within the meaning of Open Access defined the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the RCUK Open Access policy and the Berlin Declaration.

If we consider the subset of journals that use any CC license that the claims of the Open Definition sufficient licenses dominate even slightly: About 54% of all journals that use a CC license , use either CC-BY ( 52.77 %) or CC-BY-SA (1.40 %). Surprisingly low is the proportion of journals which use the most restrictive CC license CC-BY-NC-ND : Only 737 journals (7.52 % of all journals and 19.80% under the CC-licensed journals). This license variant neither allows edits or allows to create derivative works (such as translations) nor a commercial use is possible. Surprisingly allow more than half (2,060, 55.35 %) of which is under a CC license Journals a commercial exploitation of the contents, only 44.65% (1662) prohibit this.

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E-print Copyright Debate Continues: "Its the Content, Not the Version!"

Kevin Smith has published "Its the Content, Not the Version!" in Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Here's an excerpt:

Throughout this discussion, the proponents of the position that copyright is transferred only in a final version really do not make any legal arguments as such, just an assertion of what they wish were the situation (I wish it were too). But here is a legal point—the U.S. copyright law makes the difficulty with this position pretty clearly in section 202 when it states the obvious principle that copyright is distinct from any particular material object that embodies the copyrighted work. So it is simply not true to say that version A has a copyright and version B has a different copyright.

See also: "Where Copyrights Come from (Part I)—Copyediting Does–Not–Create a New Copyright" by Nancy Sims.

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"Guest Post: Charles Oppenheim on Who Owns the Rights to Scholarly Articles"

Charles Oppenheim has published "Guest Post: Charles Oppenheim on Who Owns the Rights to Scholarly Articles" in Open and Shut.

Here's an excerpt:

Posting D [draft article] on an OA repository is the so-called "Harnad-Oppenheim" solution, first proposed by Stevan Harnad and me more than 10 years ago.

When the solution was first enunciated, publishers dismissed it for two reasons: firstly, why would anyone want to read a draft when the final perfect version can be obtained via the publisher? And secondly, it would be difficult to track down a copy of D anyway. Their comments remain valid today, though the second one is not as strong because of services such as Google Scholar. But no publisher suggested that the solution was illegal because publishers owned the copyright to D, and they were right not to do so. The law is clear that I own the copyright in D. That is why I am so puzzled that some recent non-publisher commentators seem to think publishers own the copyright in D.

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Open Science Win: Johnson & Johnson Clinical Trial Data Sharing Agreement

Johnson & Johnson has announced a clinical trial data sharing agreement with the Yale School of Medicine.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Johnson & Johnson today announced that its subsidiary, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, has entered into a novel agreement with Yale School of Medicine's Open Data Access (YODA) Project that will extend its commitment to sharing clinical trials data to enhance public health and advance science and medicine. Under the agreement, YODA will serve as an independent body to review requests from investigators and physicians seeking access to anonymized clinical trials data from Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, and make final decisions on data sharing. This is the first time any company has collaborated with a completely independent third party to review and make decisions regarding every request for clinical data.

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"It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why Instrumentalist Arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science Are Not Enough"

The Impact of Social Science has republished Eric Kansa's "It's the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why Instrumentalist Arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science Are Not Enough."

Here's an excerpt:

Neoliberal universities primarily serve the needs of commerce. They need to churn out technically skilled human resources (made desperate for any work by high loads of debt) and easily monetized technical advancements. . . .

How can something so wonderful and right as "openness" further promote Neoliberalism? After all, aren't we the rebels blasting at the exhaust vents of Elsevier's Death Star? But in selling openness to the heads of foundations, businesses, governments and universities, we often end up adopting the tropes of Neoliberalism. As a tactic, that's perfectly reasonable. As a long-term strategy, I think it's doomed.

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Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives

The U.S. PIRG Education Fund has released Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, a survey released by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund shows that 65% of student consumers have opted out of buying a college textbook due to its high price, and of those students, 94% they suffer academically.

Over the past decade, college textbook prices have increased by 82%, or at three times the rate of inflation. . . .

Open textbooks are faculty-written and peer-reviewed like traditional textbooks, but they are published under an open license, meaning they are free online, free to download, and affordable in print. 82% of survey respondents said they would do significantly better in a course if the textbook were free online and a hard copy was optional, which is exactly how open textbooks work.

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John Willinsky Gets SPARC Innovator Award

John Willinsky has received a SPARC Innovator Award.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the late 1990s, Willinsky founded the Public Knowledge Project and developed Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free, open source platform that allows journals to be more easily and affordably published online. The results speak for themselves—today, more than 1.5 million articles are published in journals using the OJS platform. In 2012 alone, over 5,000 journals published at least 10 articles using the software Willinsky and his team pioneered.

Because Willinsky is both a visionary and pragmatist who brings effective business teams together, SPARC honors Willinsky with its January 2014 Innovator Award.

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Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

CREATe has released Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review.

Here's an excerpt:

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP.

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Safe to Be Open: Study on the Protection of Research Data and Recommendation for Access And Usage

OpenAIRE has released Safe to Be Open: Study on the Protection of Research Data and Recommendation for Access And Usage.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This study addresses the most important legal issues when implementing an open access e-infrastructure for research data. It examines the legal requirements for different kinds of usage of research data in an open access infrastructure, such as OpenAIREplus, which links them to publications. The existing legal framework regarding potentially relevant intellectual property (IP) rights is analysed from the general European perspective as well as from that of selected EU Member States. Various examples and usage scenarios are used to explain the scope of protection of the potentially relevant IP rights. In addition different licence models are analysed in order to identify the licence that is best suited to the aim of open access, especially in the context of the infrastructure of OpenAIREplus. Based on the outcomes of these analyses, some recommendations to the European legislator as well as data- and e-infrastructure providers are given on improving the rights situation in relation to research data.

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"Have Digital Repositories Come of Age? The Views of Library Directors"

David Nicholas et al. have published "Have Digital Repositories Come of Age? The Views of Library Directors" in Webology.

Here's an excerpt:

This survey of approximately 150 repositories assessed the achievements, impact, and success of digital repositories. Results show that while the size and use of repositories has been relatively modest, almost half of all institutions either have, or are planning, a repository mandate requiring deposit and small gains have been made in raising the profile of the library within the institution. Repositories, then, have made a good deal of progress, but they have not quite come of age.

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Congress Madates Open Access for Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies

The passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 mandates open access for federal agencies under the Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Senate subcommittee with research budgets of $100 million or more.

Here's an excerpt from the bill:

SEC. 527. Each Federal agency, or in the case of an agency with multiple bureaus, each bureau (or operating division) funded under this Act that has research and development expenditures in excess of $100,000,000 per year shall develop a Federal research public access policy that provides for—

  • the submission to the agency, agency bureau, or designated entity acting on behalf of the agency, a machine-readable version of the author's final peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals describing research supported, in whole or in part, from funding by the Federal Government;
  • free online public access to such final peer-reviewed manuscripts or published versions not later than 12 months after the official date of publication; and
  • compliance with all relevant copyright laws.

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"Supporting Public Access to Research Results"

P. Scott Lapinski, David Osterbur, Joshua Parker and Alexa T. McCray have published "Supporting Public Access to Research Results" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

We posed the question of what services an academic library can best provide to support the NIH Public Access Policy. We approached the answer to this question through education, collaboration, and tool-building. As a result, over the last four years we have engaged over 1,500 participants in discussions of public access to research results, forged alliances with dozens of partners, and built online tools to ease the process of complying with the NIH policy. We conclude that librarians working in collaboration with other key constituencies can have a positive impact on improving access to the results of scientific research.

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"Multidimensional Journal Evaluation of PLOS ONE"

Christel Fein has published "Multidimensional Journal Evaluation of PLOS ONE" in Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Services.

Here's an excerpt:

All 28,852 documents published in PLOS ONE during the 5-year-period between 2007 and 2011 have been extracted from Web of Science. This data provides the basis for the evaluation. The data concerning the conducted evaluation has been collected as well as analysed multidimensionally, to demonstrate more fully the complex structures and aspects of the impact, prestige and position of PLOS ONE, and to assess the information and data obtained as specifically as possible. Based on Juchem, Schlögl, and Stock (2006) and Haustein (2012), a framework of five dimensions of journal evaluation has been applied, in which each contains several metrics to analyse scientific periodicals from various perspectives, i.e. journal output,journal content, journal perception, journal citations, and journal management.

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SCOAP3 High-Energy Physics Open Access Publishing Initiative Launches on 1/1/2014

The SCOAP3 High-Energy Physics open access publishing initiative will launch on 1/1/2014.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

After intense preparations and consensus building, CERN1 has today confirmed that the SCOAP3 Open Access publishing initiative will start on 1 January 2014. With the support of partners in 24 countries2, a vast fraction of scientific articles in the field of High-Energy Physics will become Open Access at no cost for any author: everyone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information.

Convened at CERN this is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations. SCOAP3 enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers. . . .

The objective of SCOAP3 is to grant unrestricted access to scientific articles appearing in scientific journals, which so far have only been available to scientists through certain university libraries, and generally unavailable to the wider public. Open dissemination of preliminary information, in the form of pre-peer-review articles known as preprints, has been the norm in High-Energy Physics and related disciplines for two decades. SCOAP3 sustainably extends this opportunity to high-quality peer-review service, making final version of articles available, within the Open Access tenets of free and unrestricted dissemination of science with intellectual property rights vested in the authors and wide re-use opportunities. In the SCOAP3 model, libraries and funding agencies pool resources currently used to subscribe to journals, in co-operation with publishers, and use them to support the peer-review system directly instead.

The SCOAP3 initiative looks forward to establishing further partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where scientists will enjoy the advantages of Open Access and many libraries and library consortia will benefit from reductions in their subscription costs. . . .

More information–publishers and scientific societies participating in SCOAP3:
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
Elsevier
Hindawi
Institute of Physics Publishing
Jagellonian University
Oxford University Press
Physical Society of Japan
SISSA Medialab
Springer
Società Italiana di Fisica

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"Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia"

Denise Troll Covey has published "Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia" in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society.

Here's an excerpt:

This article places the struggle to open access to the dissertation in the context of the crisis in doctoral education and the transition from print to digital literacy. It explores the underlying cultural calcification and agoraphobia that deter engagement with openness. Solving the problems will require overhauling the curriculum and conventions of doctoral education. Opening access to dissertations is an important first step, but insufficient to end the crisis. Only opening other dimensions of the dissertation — the structure, media, notion of authorship, and methods of assessment — can foster the digital literacy needed to save PhD programs from extinction. If higher education institutions invested heavily in remedying obsolete practices, the remedies would reverberate throughout the academy, accelerate advancement in the disciplines, and revolutionize scholarly publishing. The article ends with a discussion of the significant role librarians could play in facilitating needed changes given appropriate institutional commitment.

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"Cultures of Access: Differences in Rhetoric around Open Access Repositories in Africa and the United States and Their Implications for the Open Access Movement"

Natalia T. Bowdoin has self-archived "Cultures of Access: Differences in Rhetoric around Open Access Repositories in Africa and the United States and Their Implications for the Open Access Movement."

Here's an excerpt:

For this study I examined the rhetoric used by OA institutional repositories and what this rhetoric may say about different "cultures of OA." I conducted textual analysis of 46 websites of OA repositories in the United States and 14 Sub-Saharan African nations. Analysis of the specific rhetoric used to present the OA repositories reveals differing views on the importance of OA in terms of cultural ideas about information control, access to information, and social capital.

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"American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice"

Gail P. Clement has published "American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

A stark incongruity in the treatment of academic scholarship persists on many U.S. campuses today. Faculty authors are generally free to publish in whatever vehicle suits their needs and goals, while also expected (or mandated) to deposit their works in the open access university repository. By contrast, graduate students typically must send their scholarship to a single commercial publisher for toll-access, while also required to submit their works to the university repository.

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"PeerJ—A Case Study in Improving Research Collaboration at the Journal Level"

Peter Binfield has published "PeerJ—A Case Study in Improving Research Collaboration at the Journal Level" in the latest issue of Information Services & Use.

Here's an excerpt:

PeerJ Inc. is the Open Access publisher of PeerJ (a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (an un-peer-reviewed or collaboratively reviewed preprint server), both serving the biological, medical and health sciences.

The Editorial Criteria of PeerJ (the journal) are similar to those of PLOS ONE in that all submissions are judged only on their scientic and methodological soundness (not on subjective determinations of impact, or degree of advance). PeerJ's peer-review process is managed by an Editorial Board of 800 and an Advisory Board of 20 (including 5 Nobel Laureates).

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"The Political Economy of Federally Sponsored Data"

Bart Ragon has published "The Political Economy of Federally Sponsored Data" in the latest issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Librarian involvement in the Open Access (OA) movement has traditionally focused on access to scholarly publications. Recent actions by the White House have focused attention on access on the data produced from federally sponsored research. Questions have emerged concerning access to the output of federally sponsored research and whether it is a public or private good. Understanding the political battle over access to federally funded research is closely tied to the ownership of the peer review process in higher education and associated revenue streams, and as a result, interest groups seeking to influence government regulation have politicized the issues. As a major funder of research in higher education, policies from the federal government are likely to drive change in research practices at higher education institutions and impact library services. The political economy of federally sponsored research data will shape research enterprises in higher education and inspire a number of new services distributed throughout the research life cycle.

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