Category: Open Access

Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for Voluntary and Charitable Sector Organisations

JISC has released Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for Voluntary and Charitable Sector Organisations.

Here's an excerpt:

We have learned in this study that the voluntary and charitable sector has an appetite and need for scholarly research that it cannot currently satisfy. The organisations contributing to the study have described the importance of research to the voluntary and charitable sector's commitment to playing its very distinctive role in the most effective way it can. In scoping interviews, case studies and survey responses, VCOs have identified a consistent set of barriers to accessing research. They have shown too that they are creative and resourceful, finding ways to overcome these barriers some of which might place them on or over the border of copyright infringement. We do not think that VCOs should be put in the position of having to choose between what is legally permitted and what they feel is ethically required of them in order to fulfil their charitable objectives. We think too that if the VCS is being asked to expand its role and play an increasing part in delivering public services, then access to research is essential. In this final chapter, we provide some recommendations which, we hope, will go some way to widening the voluntary and charitable sector's access to scholarly research outputs.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals: This is an excellent resource for its extensive background documentation of the open access arguments and issues. — Ann Jensen, Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, no. 43 (2005) | Digital Scholarship |

Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research to the Public Sector

JISC has released Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research to the Public Sector.

Here's an excerpt:

The total cost to the public sector of accessing journal papers is around £135 million per annum. The savings that accrue from the availability of Open Access articles (using both Green and Gold routes) amount to £28.6 million (£26 million in access fees and £2.6 million in time savings).

Extending the number or articles available through Open Access further increases the potential for savings. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via Open Access would save the public sector £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved. Increasing the number of journal papers accessed through Open Access to 25% would save the public sector an extra £29 million.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

MIT Establishes Open Access Working Group in Response to Elsevier’s New Article Posting Policies

MIT has established an Open Access Working Group in response to Elsevier's new article posting policies.

Here's an excerpt from the "New Open Access Working Group Formed: Formulating Response to Elsevier's Policy Change":

The wording [of the Elsevier posting policy] is very unclear; no one is quite sure what a "systematic posting mandate" is. Duke, for one, who has an open access policy very much like ours, has concluded that such policies aren't "mandates" since they allow people to opt out, and hence that they are not covered by the new Elsevier posting policy. But it is clear that Elsevier is trying to do what it can to undermine such policies, and to confuse faculty about what they are and are not allowed to do. Certainly that is the interpretation of the Coalition for Open Access Repositories, who, in their response, "strongly oppose the changes made by Elsevier to its article posting policies" and "join the research community in condemning Elsevier for its recent business practices and lobbying that undermine policies and activities promoting open access to scholarly literature."

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship |

Harvard: "Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing: Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained"

Harvard University's Faculty Advisory Council on the Library has issued "Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing: Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained"

Here's an excerpt:

Since the Library now must change its subscriptions and since faculty and graduate students are chief users, please consider the following options open to faculty and students (F) and the Library (L), state other options you think viable, and communicate your views:

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies (F).

2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access (F).

3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning (F).

4. Contact professional organizations to raise these issues (F).

5. Encourage professional associations to take control of scholarly literature in their field or shift the management of their e-journals to library-friendly organizations (F).

6. Encourage colleagues to consider and to discuss these or other options (F).

7. Sign contracts that unbundle subscriptions and concentrate on higher-use journals (L).

8. Move journals to a sustainable pay per use system, (L).

9. Insist on subscription contracts in which the terms can be made public (L).

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

"Citing Patterns in Open Access Journals: A Study of D-Lib Magazine"

Moin Ahmad and Mohammad Nazim have self-archived "Citing Patterns in Open Access Journals: A Study of D-Lib Magazine" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

The study was intended to investigate the pattern of citing references of research articles published in D-Lib Magazine during 2002-2008. A total of 4775 citations were collected from 295 articles published during the period. Articles classified as editorial materials, power point slides, book reviews, columns, reports and news items were excluded. References all articles were collected and Microsoft Office Excel 2007 was used for analyses. The aspects analysed focus on year-wise distribution of articles and cited references, types of documents cited, country and language of cited documents, file format and domain of cited references, etc.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

University of Illinois at Chicago Library Faculty Approve Open Access Policy

The University of Illinois at Chicago Library faculty have approved an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"An open access policy ensures the broadest possible access to the fruits of research and scholarship, and important goal of academic research libraries. We hope this action by the Library faculty will serve as a model to other college faculties at UIC," said University Librarian Mary Case.

The policy requires Library faculty to grant UIC a non-exclusive license to make copies of their articles available publicly in the UIC's open access institutional repository, INDIGO. The policy also encourages faculty to retain the copyright to their work. . . .

Drafted by the Scholarly Communication Committee, the policy also exhibits flexibility toward faculty pursuing tenure. The committee, understanding the importance for such faculty to publish in peer-reviewed journals that can require an author to sign over copyright to publish, will grant case-by-case waivers. When a faculty member must sign over copyright, he or she is encouraged to deposit a draft of their article in the UIC open access institutional repository, noted [Sandra] De Groote.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73. | Digital Scholarship |

Rice University Faculty Senate Approves Open Access Policy

According to a tweet today by Geneva Henry, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Rice University’s Fondren Library, Rice University’s Faculty Senate has approved an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the Rice University Open-Access Mandate Position Paper (2/12/2012):

To assist Rice in distributing the scholarly publications, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the publication at no charge to a representative designated by the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office will make the scholarly publication available to the public in an open-access repository, the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive. Upon request, the scholarly publication will not be made available to the public for an agreed upon embargo period.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

"You’ve Signed on to the Boycott, Now What? A SPARC Guide for Campus Action"

SPARC has released "You've Signed on to the Boycott, Now What? A SPARC Guide for Campus Action."

Here's an excerpt:

In light of the recent, failed attempt to abridge access to scholarly articles via the Research Works Act (RWA), a growing number of researchers have expressed their frustration with the status quo in scholarly publishing, and are interested in learning about concrete actions that they can take to effect positive change. SPARC has prepared this resource for our members, to help you to engage your faculty and researchers, and talk with them about options for taking such action.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73. | Digital Scholarship |

World Bank Adopts Open Access Policy Putting Works Under Creative Commons Attribution License

The World Bank has adopted an Open Access Policy that puts its works under a CC BY 3.0 License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Two years after opening its vast storehouse of data to the public, the World Bank is consolidating more than 2,000 books, articles, reports and research papers in a search-engine friendly Open Knowledge Repository, and allowing the public to distribute, reuse and build upon much of its work—including commercially. . . .

The repository and Creative Commons licenses are part of a new open access policy that takes effect on July 1 and will be phased in over the next year.

Read more about it at "World Bank to Introduce Open Access Policy."

| Works about Open Access by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. | Digital Scholarship |

The Power of Open

The Creative Commons has released The Power of Open.

Here's an excerpt:

Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. Now more than 400 million CC-licensed works are available on the Internet, from music and photos, to research findings and entire college courses. Creative Commons created the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. More importantly, millions of creators took advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity.

The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators. Some are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization that uses CC while partnering with the world’s largest media companies. Others like nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon use CC licensing as an essential element of a lifestyle of openness in pursuit of creativity. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content, art and ideas to the rest of the world.

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73.

"Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?"

College & Research Libraries has released an preprint of "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?"

Here's an excerpt:

An increasing number of higher education institutions worldwide are requiring submission of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by graduate students and are subsequently providing open access to these works in online repositories. Faculty advisors and graduate students are concerned that such unfiltered access to their work could diminish future publishing opportunities. This study investigated social sciences, arts and humanities journal editors' and university press directors' attitudes toward ETDs. The findings indicate that manuscripts which are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case by case basis by 82.8% of journal editors and 53.7% of university press directors polled.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access

UNESCO has released Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access by Alma Swan.

Here's an excerpt:

The Policy Guidelines can be used by individuals as a basic text on Open Access and related policies. While we recommend that beginners to the world of Open Access should read it from cover to cover, people having some understanding of OA may like to start reading from any of the sections. Decision-makers, administrators and research managers should focus on Sections 8 and 9 that capture all relevant issues of OA policy development. At the end of this document, you will find examples of different types of OA policies (Appendix 1), and three policy templates (Appendix 2) to choose and adopt.

| Works about Open Access by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. | Digital Scholarship |

"An Open Access Policy for the University of California: Materials for Discussion and Consultation"

The University of California's University Committee on the Library and Scholarly Communication has released "An Open Access Policy for the University of California: Materials for Discussion and Consultation."

Here's an excerpt:

This document is intended to spur discussion about a university-wide open access policy at the University of California. The Faculty of the University of California (coordinated by the University Committee on Libraries and Scholarly Communication) has created a model version of this policy, included here, along with many frequently asked questions about the issue. This is not an official proposed policy, but a document for discussion and debate. UCOLASC hope to make UC faculty broadly aware of the issues, and to help answer questions about it before the official policy is drafted and circulated in the spring of this year (2012).

Read more about it at "UC Open Access Policy to Be Debated."

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

"The Dutch Research Repositories Monitor 2011" (Report Synopsis)

SURF has released an English synopsis of The Dutch Research Repositories Monitor 2011.

Here's an excerpt:

This study measures the effects of the two networks of repositories [DARE programme and SURFshare programme], charts the current situation, and explores possible scenarios for the future. It is in part a follow-up to the study Dutch Academic Repositories SURFshare Baseline Survey [Nederlandse Academische Repositories, SURFshare Nulmeting] of March 2010. That study was a baseline survey of the Dutch universities’ repositories carried out at the end of 2008 and with additional research in the first half of 2009. Important statistics in the study concern the 2007 calendar year. In other words, despite being published in 2010, the results were in fact a number of years old, namely from the start of the SURFshare programme.

Read more about it at "Open Access to Dutch Research Stagnating."

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

"FPRAA Takes Center Stage at Congressional Hearing"

In "FPRAA Takes Center Stage at Congressional Hearing, Andrea Higginbotham summarizes the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight’s recent hearing on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests.

The hearing also featured testimonies from two members of scholarly societies—Fred Dylla (the American Institute of Physics), and Crispin Taylor (the American Society of Plant Biologists) who expressed concerns with various components of FRPAA. They argued that the current system is working well, and worried that their societies—which are currently funded almost entirely from revenue from subscription based publications—would see a significant decrease in revenue if FRPAA were to be enacted. . . .

Dr. Stuart Shieber, Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University, argued that open access to research is an intrinsic public good. He quoted Thomas Jefferson, noting "the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people."

Shieber suggested that traditional publishing market is a dysfunctional one—library budgets for serials continue to shrink while journal profit margins increase. He spoke to the growing body of research demonstrating the economic growth occurs from increased innovations from openly accessible research. He discussed several forward-thinking open access publishing models, and focused on the need for policies that facilitate full utility of digital information in order to enable scholarship and research.

Read more about it at the previous DigitalKoans post, "House Hearing on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests" (lists testimony and other documents from the hearing).

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73.

House Hearing on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests

The House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing today on Federally Funded Research: Examining Public Access and Scholarly Publication Interests.

Here are the documents that have been released for this hearing:

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

"Will An Institutional Repository Hurt My SSRN Ranking? Calming the Faculty Fear"

James M. Donovan and Carol A. Watson have published "Will An Institutional Repository Hurt My SSRN Ranking? Calming the Faculty Fear" in the latest issue of AALL Spectrum.

Here's an excerpt:

Plans for a new IR project within the law school, however, can quickly find such worthy motives swept aside as faculty members invariably voice some version of the following comments: "Won't posting my articles elsewhere steal downloads away from SSRN? That would lower my rankings in SSRN and perhaps reduce my professional stature."

One can regret that law academics today reflexively cower at the thought of appearing to perform poorly on any new ranking system that crosses their path, no matter how dubious. Even so, there can be no denying that SSRN, or the Social Science Research Network, has earned a respectable cachet among the professoriate.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Federal Research Public Access Act Gains 24 New Co-sponsors

The Federal Research Public Access Act has gained 24 new bipartisan co-sponsors.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The new co-sponsors. . . join the bill's original sponsors, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS). These new supporters reflect the consistently broad and bi-partisan appeal of this policy, which would ensure that taxpayers are guaranteed free, online access to articles reporting on the results research that their tax dollars have funded.

This issue was explored in depth at a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, hosted by the office of Rep. Mike Doyle. The briefing featured two expert speakers. First, Dr. Neil Thakur, Special Assistant to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Deputy Director for Extramural Research and Program Manager for the NIH Public Access Policy, presented a thorough view of that agency's experience with their landmark Public Access policy. He noted that the NIH considers public access as central to their mission, and as a critical component in ensuring that the public's investment in NIH-funded research is leveraged to its fullest.

He was followed by Elliot Maxwell, Program Director of the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development and author of the recent Kaufman Foundation for Entrepreneurship-funded report, "The Future of Taxpayer-Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results?" Maxwell presented a synopsis of the report focusing on the potential impacts of expanding the NIH Policy to other U.S. Federal science agencies. He explored the potential benefits this expansion might have on scientific productivity, economic growth, innovation and national competitiveness.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

"The Effects of Open Access Mandates on Institutional Repositories in the UK and Germany"

Sabine Elisabeth Puskas has self-archived her Master's dissertation, "The Effects of Open Access Mandates on Institutional Repositories in the UK and Germany," in the Loughborough University Institutional Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

There is evidence that institutional mandates do have effects on institutional repositories in different ways, e.g. on content deposited and service provision. The effects vary according to the characteristics of repositories and the approach taken by institutions. The research results also indicate that the experiences of institutions with a mandate and the expectations of institutions without one are almost identical across both the UK and Germany, although the developmental context of institutional repositories and institutional mandates in these two countries are very different.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

"Wait for It. . . Commons, Copyright and the Private (Re)Ordering of Scientific Publishing"

Jorge L. Contreras has self-archived "Wait for It. . . Commons, Copyright and the Private (Re)Ordering of Scientific Publishing" in SSRN.

In this paper, Contreras critiques various open access strategies, and he proposes that publishers be granted one-year exclusive licenses as an alternative to these strategies.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

SAS Open Journals: Final Report

Peter Webster has self-archived SAS Open Journals: Final Report in SAS-Space

Here's an excerpt:

The culture of open access journal publishing is not yet well established amongst the smaller arts and humanities journals which we intend to engage in this project in the longer term. However, as the business model for this type of small self-published journal comes under increasing pressure, SAS Open Journals now offers a lowcost solution. . . .

The project developed a re-usable overlay journal interface, using Amicus Curiae as the exemplar, thus completing the transition of that journal from print to web. This system is now available, at minimal cost, to journals produced within the School, and to publications by cognate learned societies. The system will greatly increase open access publishing capacity in the humanities and social sciences, and further fulfil the School's RPF mission. To date, two further journals have committed themselves to using SAS Open Journals.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Fresh from Research Works Act Defeat, Association of American Publishers and Other Publishers Oppose Federal Research Public Access Act

Eighty-one publishers have sent a letter to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Senator Susan M. Collins, and other legislators opposing the Federal Research Public Access Act.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The 81 signatories' main points of opposition to FRPAA are:

  • It requires that final manuscripts of researchers' journal articles that explain, interpret and extensively report the results of federally-funded research—manuscripts which have undergone publishers' validation, digital enhancement, production, interoperability and distribution processes—be publicly available online, worldwide, no more than six months after publication.
  • The one-size-fits-all six-month deadline for every federal agency that funds research ignores well-known significant differences in how each research discipline discovers and uses individual articles, periods that can last several years before costs are recovered.
  • It limits where government-funded researchers may publish their work.
  • It undermines publishers' investments in new business models that currently provide unprecedented access for the public to such works for free or at modest cost.
  • At a time when Congress is looking to cut unnecessary expenses in federal government and focus budgets on priorities, FRPAA imposes additional costs on all federal agencies by requiring them to divert critical research funding to the creation and management of new databases, archives and infrastructure to handle dissemination of these articles—functions already being performed by private-sector publishers.

The signatories are:

  • AACC International
  • Acoustical Society of America
  • American Association for Cancer Research
  • American Association for Clinical Chemistry
  • American Association of Anatomists
  • American Association of Immunologists
  • American Association of Physicists in Medicine
  • American Association of Physics Teachers
  • American Astronomical Society
  • The American Ceramic Society
  • American Chemical Society
  • American College of Chest Physicians
  • American College of Physicians
  • American Dental Association
  • American Fisheries Society
  • American Geophysical Union
  • American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • American Institute of Biological Sciences
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
  • American Institute of Physics Publishing
  • American Mathematical Society
  • American Meteorological Society
  • American Physiological Society
  • American Phytopathological Society
  • American Psychiatric Publishing
  • American Psychological Association
  • American Public Health Association
  • American Roentgen Ray Society
  • American Society for Investigative Pathology
  • American Society for Nutrition
  • American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
  • American Society of Agronomy
  • American Society of Animal Science
  • American Society of Clinical Oncology
  • American Society of Hematology
  • American Society of Plant Biologists
  • APMI International
  • ARVO—Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
  • ASQ—American Society for Quality
  • Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)
  • AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing
  • Biophysical Society
  • Cambridge University Press
  • Crop Science Society of America
  • Ecological Society of America
  • Elsevier
  • The Endocrine Society
  • Entomological Society of America
  • F.A. Davis Company
  • GeoScienceWorld
  • Gival Press LLC
  • The Histochemical Society
  • Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
  • IEEE
  • Institute of Food Technologists
  • International and American Associations for Dental Research
  • International Association for the Study of Pain
  • John Wiley & Sons
  • Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
  • The McGraw-Hill Companies
  • Mycological Society of America
  • National Ground Water Association
  • The Optical Society
  • The Ornithological Council
  • The Physiological Society
  • Poultry Science Association
  • The Professional Animal Scientist
  • The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
  • SAE International
  • Seismological Society of America
  • SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
  • Silverchair Science+Communications, Inc.
  • Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine
  • Society for the Study of Reproduction
  • Society of Economic Geologists, Inc.
  • Soil Science Society of America
  • Springer Publishing Company
  • Taylor & Francis
  • Thieme Publishers
  • University of the Basque Country Press
  • Walters Kluwer

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship |

"Scholarly Communication Strategies in Latin America’s Research-Intensive Universities"

Juan Pablo Alperin, Gustavo E. Fischman, and John Willinsky have self-archived "Scholarly Communication Strategies in Latin America's Research-Intensive Universities" in the SUSE Open Archive.

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access—scholarship that is "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions" (Suber, 2011)—has dramatically changed the research landscape in universities worldwide in the twenty-first century. In Latin America, regional Open Access initiatives (if not officially labeled "open access") have permeated most research-intensive universities and national science evaluation systems and have begun to alter the way that local research is perceived. Furthermore, the prominence of Open Access, regionally and globally, has become a significant force in transforming previous traditions and systems used by universities in Latin America in the production and access to scientific knowledge, having a profound influence on its position within what might be thought of as the global knowledge exchange.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

LITA Publishes First Open Access Issue of Information Technology and Libraries

The Library Information Technology Association has published the first open access issue of Information Technology and Libraries under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Here's an excerpt from the "Editor's Comments":

Welcome to the first issue of Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL) as an open-access, e-only publication. As announced to LITA members in early January, this change in publishing model will help ensure the long-term viability of ITAL by making it more accessible, more current, more relevant, and more environmentally friendly. ITAL will continue to feature high-quality articles that have undergone a rigorous peer-review process, but it will also begin expanding content to include more case studies, commentary, and information about topics and trends of interest to the LITA community and beyond. Look for a new scope statement for ITAL shortly.

Of special interest to DigitalKoans readers is Abigail J. McDermott's "Copyright: Regulation Out of Line with Our Digital Reality?" article.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |