Category: Publishing

"Multi-Stage Open Peer Review: Scientific Evaluation Integrating the Strengths of Traditional Peer Review with the Virtues of Transparency and Self-Regulation"

Ulrich Pöschl has published "Multi-Stage Open Peer Review: Scientific Evaluation Integrating the Strengths of Traditional Peer Review with the Virtues of Transparency and Self-Regulation" in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.

Here's an excerpt:

The traditional forms of scientific publishing and peer review do not live up to all demands of efficient communication and quality assurance in today's highly diverse and rapidly evolving world of science. They need to be advanced and complemented by interactive and transparent forms of review, publication, and discussion that are open to the scientific community and to the public. The advantages of open access, public peer review, and interactive discussion can be efficiently and flexibly combined with the strengths of traditional scientific peer review.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Going for Gold? The Costs and Benefits of Gold Open Access for UK Research Institutions: Further Economic Modelling

JISC has released Going for Gold? The Costs and Benefits of Gold Open Access for UK Research Institutions: Further Economic Modelling.

Here's an excerpt:

Based on this analysis, the main findings are:

  • so long as research funders commit to paying publication costs for the research they fund, and
  • publication charges fall to the reprint author's home institution,
  • all research-intensive universities would see the greatest savings, and universities would see savings from (worldwide) Gold OA when article-processing charges are at the current averages,
  • in a transition period, providing Open Access through the Green route offers the greatest economic benefits to individual universities, unless additional funds are made available to cover Gold OA costs

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

League of European Research Universities Releases The LERU Roadmap towards Open Access

The League of European Research Universities has released The LERU Roadmap towards Open Access.

Here's an excerpt:

  • The idea of Open Access is not new; the first major international statement on Open Access was set out in the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002.4 However, 'the pathway' to Open Access is not a smooth one. Many parties are involved and there are many competing interests. There are costs and there are advocates, agnostics and critics. There are gains and impacts which need to be carefully assessed.
  • This Roadmap traverses some of this landscape and aims to assist LERU members who wish to put in place structures, policies and practices to facilitate Open Access. Whilst the Roadmap is primarily intended for LERU members, other European universities may find it useful.

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

"Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World"

Jorge L. Contreras has self-archived "Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated "open access" (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries.

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

Green Open Access: PEER: Final Report

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released the PEER: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the EC eContentplus programme2, has been investigating the potential effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The project ran from 1 September 2008–31 May 2012. . . .

Collectively, the project has provided insights and evidence indicating:

  • How large-scale archiving may affect journals
  • Whether it increases access
  • How it will affect the broader ecology of European research
  • Which factors influence the readiness to deposit in institutional and disciplinary repositories
  • What the cost drivers are for publishers and repositories

The project also released PEER Usage Study—Descriptive Statistics for the Period March to August 2011 and PEER Usage Study—Randomised Controlled Trial Results.

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

"Finch Group" Open Access Report: Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications

The Research Information Network has released Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings. For background on the report, see "Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings."

Here's an excerpt:

This report tackles the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them. It has been produced by an independent working group made up of representatives of universities, research funders, learned societies, publishers, and libraries. The group's remit has been to examine how to expand access to the peer-reviewed publications that arise from research undertaken both in the UK and in the rest of the world; and to propose a programme of action to that end.

We have concentrated on journals which publish research results and findings. Virtually all are now published online, and they increasingly include sophisticated navigation, linking and interactive services. Making them freely accessible at the point of use, with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used, offers the potential

Our aim has been to identify key goals and guiding principles in a period of transition towards wider access. We have sought ways both to accelerate that transition and also to sustain what is valuable in a complex ecology with many different agents and stakeholders.

In "Finch Group report on OA in the UK," Peter Suber said of the report:

Bottom line: On the plus side, the Finch group wants a massive shift to OA. It prefers immediate to embargoed OA, and it prefers libre to gratis OA. Some of its reasons for preferring gold to green OA are based on real virtues of gold. On the minus side, most of its reasons for preferring gold to green OA are based on a distorted and jaundiced view of green. The group implies that green cannot be libre (8.9, 8.28), which is false. It implies that green cannot be peer reviewed (8.26) which is false. It implies that green cannot be immediate or must be embargoed (8.28), which is false. It virtually disregards the role of green OA in disseminating peer-reviewed research and values green primarily for providing access to data, and access to grey literature, and preservation. One can see the effect of publisher lobbying on the group's misinformed disparagement of green OA and the group's high priority to save incumbent publishers from risk.

Read more about it at "U.K. Panel Backs Open Access for All Publicly Funded Research Papers."

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

Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP Community Survey Report: Spring 2012

The Association of American University Presses has released Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP Community Survey Report: Spring 2012

Here's an excerpt:

In addition to gathering data about e-book revenue, digital marketing and discovery strategies, and format and channel availability, we also asked respondents to share their opinions about major concerns or hurdles they are facing, and to tell us more about their presses' e-book goals.

| Digital Scholarship |

"Green and Gold Open Access Percentages and Growth, by Discipline"

Yassine Gargouri, Vincent Lariviere, Yves Gingras, Les Carr, and Stevan Harnad have self-archived "Green and Gold Open Access Percentages and Growth, by Discipline" in ePrints Soton.

Here's an excerpt from:

Most refereed journal articles today are published in subscription journals, accessible only to subscribing institutions, hence losing considerable research impact. Making articles freely accessible online ("Open Access," OA) maximizes their impact. Articles can be made OA in two ways: by self-archiving them on the web ("Green OA") or by publishing them in OA journals ("Gold OA"). We compared the percent and growth rate of Green and Gold OA for 14 disciplines in two random samples of 1300 articles per discipline out of the 12,500 journals indexed by Thomson-Reuters-ISI using a robot that trawled the web for OA full-texts. We sampled in 2009 and 2011 for publication year ranges 1998-2006 and 2005-2010, respectively. Green OA (21.4%) exceeds Gold OA (2.4%) in proportion and growth rate in all but the biomedical disciplines, probably because it can be provided for all journals articles and does not require paying extra Gold OA publication fees. The spontaneous overall OA growth rate is still very slow (about 1% per year). If institutions make Green OA self-archiving mandatory, however, it triples percent Green OA as well as accelerating its growth rate.

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

Open Access Publishing: PeerJ Announced

PeerJ has issued a press release about its open access publishing services.

Here's an excerpt:

PeerJ Inc. (http://peerj.com), a new Open Access academic publishing company, formally announced itself today. Founded by seasoned academic publishing and technology professionals from PLoS ONE and Mendeley, PeerJ will publish a broad based, rapid, peer-reviewed journal ('PeerJ') and an innovative preprint server ('PeerJ PrePrints'). PeerJ will open for submissions in Summer 2012, and will publish its first articles in December 2012. . . .

PeerJ will publish all well reported, scientifically sound research in the Biological and Medical Sciences. The journal will operate a rigorous peer review process and will deliver the highest standards in everything it does. . . .

Unique among academic publishers, PeerJ provides authors with low cost lifetime memberships giving them the rights to publish their papers freely thereafter. Three membership plans exist—Basic, Enhanced and Investigator. All member plans confer lifetime rights, and the three tiers allow members to publish once, twice, or an unlimited number of times per year in PeerJ. Each author on a paper must be a member and the Basic membership plan is just $99.

Read more about it at "Scholarly Publishing 2012: Meet PeerJ."

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

Association of American Publishers Issues Statement on Georgia State University E-Reserves Copyright Case Ruling

The Association of American Publishers has issued a statement on the Georgia State University e-reserves copyright case ruling.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

At the same time, we are disappointed with aspects of the Court's decision. Most importantly, the Court failed to examine the copying activities at GSU in their full context. Many faculty members have provided students with electronic anthologies of copyrighted course materials which are not different in kind from copyrighted print materials. In addition, the Court's analysis of fair use principles was legally incorrect in some places and its application of those principles mistaken. As a result, instances of infringing activity were incorrectly held to constitute fair use. . . .

The Court's ruling has important implications for the ongoing vitality of academic publishing as well as the educational mission of colleges and universities. Contrary to the findings of the Court, if institutions such as GSU are allowed to offer substantial amounts of copyrighted content for free, publishers cannot sustain the creation of works of scholarship. The resources available to educators will be fundamentally impaired.

| E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Issue Brief: GSU Fair Use Decision Recap and Implications"

ARL has released "Issue Brief: GSU Fair Use Decision Recap and Implications."

Here's an excerpt:

Although the decision is certainly not perfect (the use of bright line rules for appropriate amount under factor 3 is particularly troubling), Judge Evans has written a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the issues, and her opinion represents an overwhelming victory for Georgia State individually, a major defeat for the plaintiff publishers and for the AAP and CCC, and overall a positive development for libraries generally. The substance of the opinion is not ideal, but it is far more generous than the publishers have sought, it establishes a very comfortable safe harbor for fair use of books on e-reserve, and libraries remain free to take more progressive steps.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

Georgia State University E-Reserves Copyright Case Ruling (Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al.)

The ruling is in for the Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al. case.

Here's an excerpt from the ruling:

Of the 99 alleged infringements that Plaintiffs maintained at the start of trial, only 75 were submitted for post-trial findings of fact and conclusions of law. This Order concludes that the unlicensed use of five excerpts (of four different books) infringed Plaintiffs' copyrights. The question now is whether Georgia State's 2009 Copyright Policy caused those infringements. The Court finds that it did, in that the policy did not limit copying in those instances to decidedly small excerpts as required by this Order. Nor did it proscribe the use of multiple chapters from the same book. Also, the fair use policy did not provide sufficient guidance in determining the "actual or potential effect on the market or the value of the copyrighted work," a task which would likely be futile for prospective determinations (in advance of litigation). The only practical way to deal with factor four in advance likely is to assume that it strongly favors the plaintiff-publisher (if licensed digital excerpts are available).

Read more about it at "The GSU Decision—Not an Easy Road for Anyone" and “Inside the Georgia State Opinion.”

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010: "SEP [Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography] is compiled with utter professionalism. It reminds me of the work of the best artisans who know not only every item that leaves their workshops, but each component used to create them—providing the ideal quality control." — Péter Jacsó ONLINE 27, no. 3 (2003): 73-76. | Digital Scholarship |

"Data Citation and Publication by NERC’s Environmental Data Centres"

Sarah Callaghan, Roy Lowry, and David Walton have published "Data Citation and Publication by NERC's Environmental Data Centres" in the latest issue of Ariadne.

Here's an excerpt:

NERC and their environmental data centres want to ensure that the archived datasets are first-class scientific objects, and that the researchers responsible for creating them receive appropriate recognition for their efforts. NERC have set up the Science Information Strategy (SIS) to provide the framework for NERC to work more closely and effectively with its scientific communities in delivering data and information management services. . . .

The NERC SIS Data Citation and Publication Project aims to create a way of promoting access to data, while simultaneously providing the data creators with full academic credit for their efforts. We are therefore developing a mechanism for the formal citation of datasets held in the NERC data centres, and are working with academic journal publishers to develop a method for the peer review and formal publication of datasets.

| Research Data Curation Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

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 |

"Fully Digital: Policy and Process Implications for the AAS"

Chris Biemesderfer has self-archived "Fully Digital: Policy and Process Implications for the AAS" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

In the near term, we anticipate that enterprise-scale printing will be phased out in the next 2-3 years, as the library subscribers to the journals stop acquiring the print products. We are going to be looking to web-to-print solutions so that customized print products can be specified by the customers themselves, thus allowing the AAS to focus on the larger issues of professional scholarly communication. In the meantime, we are thinking about a business model for the Society that offers only online subscriptions, and we are preparing to charge authors in 2011 based on the quantities of digital material that are submitted, rather than based on the number of typeset pages of the authors' text.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | 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 |

The Rise of E-reading

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released The Rise of E-reading.

Here's an excerpt:

One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year, and this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks. In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Nature Publishing Group Launches Linked Data Platform and Puts Data in Public Domain

The Nature Publishing Group has launched a linked data platform.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today is pleased to join the linked data community by opening up access to its publication data via a linked data platform. NPG's Linked Data Platform is available at http://data.nature.com.

The platform includes more than 20 million Resource Description Framework (RDF) statements, including primary metadata for more than 450,000 articles published by NPG since 1869. In this first release, the datasets include basic citation information (title, author, publication date, etc) as well as NPG specific ontologies. These datasets are being released under an open metadata license, Creative Commons Zero (CC0), which permits maximal use/re-use of this data.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | 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 |

"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 |

"Enhancing Scholarly Publications: Developing Hybrid Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences"

Nicholas W. Jankowski, Andrea Scharnhorst, Clifford Tatum, and Zuotian Tatum have self-archived "Enhancing Scholarly Publications: Developing Hybrid Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Enhancing publications has a long history but is gaining acceleration as authors and publishers explore electronic tablets as devices for dissemination and presentation. Enhancement of scholarly publications, in contrast, more often takes place in a Web environment and is coupled with presentation of supplementary materials related to research. The approach to enhancing scholarly publications presented in this article goes a step further and involves the interlinking of the "objects" of a document: datasets, supplementary materials, secondary analyses, and post-publication interventions. This approach connects the user-centricity of Web 2.0 with the Semantic Web. It aims at facilitating long-term content structure through standardized formats intended to improve interoperability between concepts and terms within and across knowledge domains. We explored this conception of enhancement on a small set of books prepared for traditional academic publishers. While the project was primarily an exercise in development, the conclusion section of the article reflects on areas where conceptual and empirical studies could be initiated to complement this new direction in scholarly publishing.

For related information, see the SURF Enhancing Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences project website.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report

James L. Mullins et al. have self-archived the Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report in e-Pubs,. In 2011, a more detailed preliminary version of the report was released, and readers may want to consult that as well.

Here's an excerpt:

This report briefly presents the findings and recommendations of the "Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success" project which investigated the extent to which publishing has now become a core activity of North American academic libraries and suggested ways in which further capacity could be built. The research described (consisting of a survey, some case studies, three workshops, and a set of further reading recommendations) was mainly conducted between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011. It was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Libraries Studies, made to Purdue University Libraries in collaboration with the Libraries of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah.

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