No Contract Awarded for GPO Mass Digitization of All Federal Publications

The U.S. Government Printing Office has been unable to award a contract for the digitization of all Federal publications.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 2004, GPO proposed digitizing all retrospective Federal publications back to the earliest days of the Federal Government. Following the conduct of a pilot project in 2006 and its evaluation in 2007, we issued an RFP in 2008 for a cooperative relationship with a public or private sector participant or participants where the uncompressed, unaltered files created as a result of the conversion process would be delivered to GPO at no cost to the Government, for ingest into GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys). Unfortunately, we were unable to make an award for this RFP in the allocated timeframe.

We are very disappointed in this setback, but are currently developing new digitization alternatives. In addition to our longstanding goal of serving as one of the repositories for electronic files through the submission of material to FDsys, our focus for digitization will be on coordinating projects among institutions, assisting in the establishment and implementation of preservation guidelines, maintaining a registry of digitization projects, and ensuring that there is appropriate bibliographic metadata for the titles in the collection.

Gawronski v. Amazon.com: Amazon's New Kindle Deletion Rules

As a result of the settlement of the Gawronski et al. v. Amazon.com Inc et al. case (about the deletion of George Orwell e-books), Amazon.com will comply with new rules regarding deletion of digital works on Kindles.

Here's an excerpt:

For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal, non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work (e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to a Device). This paragraph does not apply to (a) applications (whether developed or offered by Amazon or by third parties), software or other code; (b) transient content such as blogs; or (c) content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action by the Device user to save older issues.

Read more about it at "Amazon Settles Kindle '1984' Lawsuit" and "Amazon.com to Pay $150,000 to Settle Suit Challenging Take-Back of 1984."

Peter Suber on "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals"

Peter Suber has published "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

I start with three disparities:  the gap between journal performance and what prevailing metrics say about journal performance (#1); the gap between the vision of OA embodied in the Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin statements and the access policies at 85% of OA journals (#2); and the gap between a journal's quality and its prestige, even when the quality is high (#3).  Then I move on to seven kinds of doubt:  doubts about quality (#4), preservation (#5), honesty (#6), publication fees (#7), sustainability (#8), redirection (#9), and strategy (#10).

Publishing and the Ecology of European Research Project Releases PEER Annual Report—Year 1

The Publishing and the Ecology of European Research project has released PEER Annual Report—Year 1.

Here's an excerpt:

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the EC eContentplus programme, is investigating the 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.

Peer-reviewed journals play a key role in scholarly communication and are essential for scientific progress and European competitiveness. The publishing and research communities share the view that increased access to the results of EU-funded research is necessary to maximise their use and impact. However, they hold different views on whether mandated deposit in open access repositories will achieve greater use and impact. There are also differences of opinion as to the most appropriate embargo periods. No consensus has been reached on a way forward so far.

The lack of consensus on these key issues stems from a lack of clear evidence of what impact the broad and systematic archiving of research outputs in open access repositories might be, but PEER aims to change this through building a substantial body of evidence, via the development of an "observatory" to monitor the effects of systematic archiving over time.

New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Make Half-Million Public Domain Books Available

The New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies are making a half-million public domain books available for sale as digitized or printed copies.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Readers and researchers looking for hard-to-find books now have the opportunity to dip into the collections of one of the world's most comprehensive libraries to purchase digitized copies of public domain titles. Through their Digitize-on-Demand program, Kirtas Technologies has partnered with The New York Public Library to make 500,000 public domain works from the Library's collections available (to anyone in the world).

"New technology has allowed the Library to greatly expand access to its collections," said Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. "Now, for the first time, library users are able to order copies of specific items from our vast public domain collections that are useful to them. Additionally the program creates a digital legacy for future users of the same item and a revenue stream to support our operations. We are very pleased to participate in a program that is so beneficial to everyone involved."

Using existing information from NYPL's catalog records, Kirtas will make the library's public domain books available for sale through its retail site before they are ever digitized. Customers can search for a desired title on www.kirtasbooks.com and place an order for that book. When the order is placed, only then is it pulled from the shelf, digitized and made available as a high-quality reprint or digital file.

What makes this approach to digitization unique is that NYPL incurs no up-front printing, production or storage costs. It also provides the library with a self-funding, commercial model helping it to sustain its digitization programs in the future. Unlike other free or low-cost digitization programs, the library retains the rights and ownership to their own digitized content.

Frankfurt Book Fair Publisher Survey

The Frankfurt Book Fair has released a summary of the results of a recent survey of 840 international publishing company representatives.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

As a general rule, digital products still only comprise a small fraction of sales: Around 60 per cent of those polled estimate that considerably less than ten per cent of their revenue will come from digital sources in 2009. However, this will change in the next two years in the opinion of those polled: 41 per cent of those polled calculate sales of up to ten per cent for 2011 and 58 per cent anticipate that digital products will comprise a considerably higher share of total sales. The percentage of those who assume that 26 to 100 per cent of their revenue will come from digital products in two years increased from 24 per cent (2009) to 38 per cent (2011).

The idea that digital content will generate more sales than the traditional book business is also gradually becoming more of a reality. Around 50 per cent of industry experts now see the year 2018 as the turning point: In a comparable survey taken one year ago, 40 per cent saw this date as a "changing of the guard." In 2008, 27 per cent were of the opinion that digital would never overtake print—today that number is only 22 per cent.

Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

MediaCommons Press has launched and released its first publication, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. MediaCommons gets support from the Institute for the Future of the Book and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This book-in-progress focuses on the social and institutional changes that will be required within colleges and universities in the U.S. in order for digital scholarly publishing to become a viable reality.

The manuscript is here published in full, in an commentable format designed to promote a new open mode of peer review.

The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying?

ACRL, ALA, and ARL have released The Google Books Settlement: Who Is Filing And What Are They Saying?.

Here's an excerpt:

The Association of Research Libraries, the American Library Association, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have prepared this document to summarize in a few pages of charts some key information about the hundreds of filings that have been submitted to the federal district court presiding over the Google Books litigation. The Google Books Settlement is the proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit brought against Google, Inc. by groups and individuals representing authors and publishers who objected to Google’s large-scale scanning of in-copyright books to facilitate its Book Search service. The Settlement would bind not only the groups who sued Google, but also most owners of copyrights in printed books ("class-members"), unless they choose to opt out of the Settlement. Class-members who opt out retain their right to sue Google over its scanning activities, but will not be part of the collective licensing scheme created by the Settlement. Under the Settlement, participating class-members will get a one-time payment in compensation for past scanning as well as a share of Google’s future revenues from its scanning activities. A new, non-profit entity called the Book Rights Registry will represent rightsholders under the Settlement going forward.

Kenneth Crews on the U.S. Department of Justice Google Book Search Settlement Filing

In "Justice and Google Books: First Thoughts about the Government's Brief," Kenneth Crews, Director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University, discusses the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division's filing on the Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's an excerpt:

The filing is remarkable for its lucid dissection of select issues. It is diplomatic, and it holds out repeated hope for the continued talks among the parties to the case. But clearly the DOJ does not like what it sees.

BioMed Central Launches Its 200th Open Access Journal

BioMed Central has launches its 200th open access journal, the Journal of Angiogenesis Research.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This major milestone reflects a growing trend as senior academics and learned societies turn to open access to publish their new journals or to improve the reach and visibility of their existing journals.

The success of any scientific journal, open access or subscription based, depends on it receiving a good number of high-quality papers in its area of interest. But for a subscription-based journal to succeed, it faces the additional hurdle of selling enough subscriptions to pay for its costs. In the current financial environment, libraries are increasingly having to trim their collections and are finding it virtually impossible to purchase new titles. This makes launching new subscription-based journals extremely challenging. Also, learned societies or scientific institutions who publish only a small number of titles are struggling to maintain their subscription numbers in competition with the larger publishers who sell collections of titles under the "big deal." In contrast, more and more institutions and funding bodies are making funds available for scientists to publish their papers in open access journals (see our recent blog posting on the Open Access Compact).

As a result of this situation, BioMed Central has recently seen an increasing number of institutions and societies choosing to take the open access route, either to launch new journals or increasingly to convert their existing journals to open access. Just this year, additions to our portfolio include Genetics, Selection and Evolution, owned and supported by INRA (the French National Institute for Agricultural Research), and Journal of Biomedical Science, which is supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan. These are established journals with impact factors and good rankings in their subject categories in the Journal Citation Report.  Also moving towards a re-launch with BioMed Central is Allergy, Asthma and Clinical Immunology, the official journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. In addition, several societies have launched new journals with us this year, including Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology and Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome.

Our experience with journals which have transferred to open access shows that they increase their submission levels and impact factors. For instance, the 50 year old Acta Veterinaria Scandanavica has doubled its submissions and nearly trebled its impact factor within three years of moving to BioMed Central. The journal has already risen to an upper mid-table position in the "Veterinary Sciences" category of the Journal Citation Report (57/134 in 2008), from its previous position in the lower reaches of the category.

Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing Postponed

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has postponed the October 7th fairness hearing for the Google Book Search Settlement; however, a status conference will occur on that date.

Here's the ruling.

Read more about it at "Google Judge Calls 'Status Conference' for 7th October" and "Judge Agrees to Postpone Google Books Hearing."

"Copyright as Information Policy: Google Book Search from a Law and Economics Perspective"

Douglas Lichtman, Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, has self-archived "Copyright as Information Policy: Google Book Search from a Law and Economics Perspective" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The copyright system has long been understood to play a critical role when it comes to the development and distribution of creative work. Copyright serves a second fundamental purpose, however: it encourages the development and distribution of related technologies like hardware that might be used to duplicate creative work and software that can manipulate it. When it comes to issues of online infringement, then, copyright policy serves two goals, not one: protect the incentives copyright has long served to provide authors, and at the same time facilitate the continued emergence of innovative Internet services and equipment. In this Chapter, I use the Google Book Search litigation as a lens through which to study copyright law’s efforts to serve these two sometimes-competing masters. The Google case is an ideal lens for this purpose because both the technology implications and the authorship implications are apparent. With respect to the technology, Google tells us that the only way for it to build its Book Search engine is to have copyright law excuse the infringement that is today by design part of the project. With respect to authorship, copyright owners are resisting that result for fear that the infringement here could significantly erode both author control and author profitability over the long run. I myself am optimistic that copyright law can and will balance these valid concerns. The Chapter explains how, discussing not only the formal legal rules but also the economic intuitions behind them.

Pamela Samuelson: "DOJ Says No to Google Book Settlement"

In "DOJ Says No to Google Book Settlement," noted copyright expert Pamela Samuelson examines the U.S. Department of Justice's Google Book Search Settlement filing.

Here's an excerpt:

Among the most significant recommendations DOJ made for modifying the Proposed Settlement is one to ameliorate the risk of market foreclosure as to institutional subscriptions. DOJ suggests the parties should find a way to "provide some mechanism by which Google's competitors could gain comparable access to orphan works." That is, DOJ is recommending that Google, the Authors Guild and the publishers find a way to let firms such as Amazon.com and Microsoft get comparable licenses to out-of-print books, particularly to orphans. Google has previously denied that it was possible to include competitors in any license granted through the settlement. It will be interesting to see if the litigants want the settlement badly enough to conjure up a way to extend the license to firms other than Google.

"Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals"

Caroline J. Savage and Andrew J. Vickershave have published "Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals" in PLoS One.

Here's an excerpt:

We requested data from ten investigators who had published in either PLoS Medicine or PLoS Clinical Trials. All responses were carefully documented. In the event that we were refused data, we reminded authors of the journal's data sharing guidelines. If we did not receive a response to our initial request, a second request was made. Following the ten requests for raw data, three investigators did not respond, four authors responded and refused to share their data, two email addresses were no longer valid, and one author requested further details. A reminder of PLoS's explicit requirement that authors share data did not change the reply from the four authors who initially refused. Only one author sent an original data set. . . .

We received only one of ten raw data sets requested. This suggests that journal policies requiring data sharing do not lead to authors making their data sets available to independent investigators.

Comments on U.S. Copyright Office's "Mandatory Deposit of Published Electronic Works Available Only Online" Proposal

Comments on the U.S. Copyright Office's "Mandatory Deposit of Published Electronic Works Available Only Online" proposal are available, including comments by the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries.

Here's the Copyright Office's description of the proposal:

The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online.

The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory deposit until a demand for deposit of copies or phonorecords of such works is issued by the Copyright Office. They would also set forth the process for issuing and responding to a demand for deposit, amend the definition of a "complete copy" of a work for purposes of mandatory deposit of online—only works, and establish new best edition criteria for electronic serials available only online. The Copyright Office seeks public comment on these proposed revisions.

Nature Publishing Group Will Publish New Open Access Journal, Nature Communications

The Nature Publishing Group has announced that it will publish a new open access journal, Nature Communications, starting in April 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Nature Communications will publish high-quality peer-reviewed research across the biological, chemical and physical sciences, and will be the first online-only Nature-branded journal.

"As a born-digital publication, Nature Communications will provide readers and authors with the benefits of enhanced web technologies alongside a rapid, yet rigorous, peer-review process." says Sarah Greaves, Publisher of Nature Communications. "Nature Communications will offer authors high visibility for their papers on the nature.com platform, access to a broad readership and efficient peer review with fast publication. For readers, the journal will offer functionality including interactive browsing and enhanced metadata to enable sorting by keywords."

Nature Communications will publish research papers in all areas of the biological, chemical and physical sciences, encouraging papers that provide a multidisciplinary approach. The research will be of the highest quality, without necessarily having the scientific reach of papers published in Nature and the Nature research journals, and as such will represent advances of significant interest to specialists within each field. A team of independent editors, supported by an external editorial advisory panel, will make rapid and fair publication decisions based on peer review, with all the rigour expected of a Nature-branded journal.

To ensure Nature Communications responds to changes in journal publishing, authors will be able to publish their work either via the traditional subscription route, or as open access through payment of an article processing charge (APC).

Authors who choose the open-access option will be able to license their work under a Creative Commons license, including the option to allow derivative works. Authors who do not choose the open-access option will still enjoy all of the benefits of NPG's self-archiving policy and manuscript deposition service.

"Developments in publishing and web technologies, coupled with increasing commitment by research funders to cover the costs of open access, mean the time is right for a journal that offers editorial excellence and real choice for authors." said David Hoole, Head of Content Licensing at NPG.

U.S. Department of Justice Files Objection to Google Book Search Settlement

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed an objection to the Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's an excerpt:

Nonetheless, the breadth of the Proposed Settlement—especially the forward-looking business arrangements it seeks to create—raises significant legal concerns. As a threshold matter, the central difficulty that the Proposed Settlement seeks to overcome—the inaccessibility of many works due to the lack of clarity about copyright ownership and copyright status—is a matter of public, not merely private, concern. A global disposition of the rights to millions of copyrighted works is typically the kind of policy change implemented through legislation, not through a private judicial settlement. If such a significant (and potentially beneficial) policy change is to be made through the mechanism of a class action settlement (as opposed to legislation), the United States respectfully submits that this Court should undertake a particularly searching analysis to ensure that the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 ("Rule 23") are met and that the settlement is consistent with copyright law and antitrust law. As presently drafted, the Proposed Settlement does not meet the legal standards this Court must apply.

This Memorandum sets forth the concerns of the United States with respect to the current version of the Proposed Settlement; these concerns may be obviated by the parties' subsequent changes to the agreement. Commenters' objections to the Proposed Settlement fall into three basic categories: (1) claims that the Proposed Settlement fails to satisfy Rule 23; (2) claims that the Proposed Settlement would violate copyright law; and (3) claims that the Proposed Settlement would violate antitrust law. In the view of the United States, each category of objection is serious in isolation, and, taken together, raise cause for concern. . . .

This Court should reject the Proposed Settlement in its current form and encourage the parties to continue negotiations to modify it so as to comply with Rule 23 and the copyright and antitrust laws.

Read more about it at "Do Justice Department Objections Spell Doom for Google's Online Book Deal?," "DOJ: Court Should Reject Google Book Search Settlement," and "Government Urges Changes to Google Books Deal."

"The York Digital Journals Project: Strategies for Institutional Open Journal Systems Implementations"

College & Research Libraries has released a preprint of "The York Digital Journals Project: Strategies for Institutional Open Journal Systems Implementations" by Andrea Kosavic.

Here's an excerpt:

Embarking on a university-wide journal hosting initiative can be a resource-intensive undertaking. Providing such a service, however, can be equally rewarding as it positions the library as both partner and colleague in the publishing process. This paper discusses ideas and strategies for institutional journal hosting gleaned over two years by the York Digital Journals Project. Suggestions for startup including policy considerations and service models are discussed. Ideas for advertising and networking are explored as well as the question of project sustainability.

NPR Interview: "Who Should Control The Virtual Library?"

NPR has released a digital audio recording and transcript of an interview with Daphne Keller (Google), Fred Von Lohmann (EFF), and Jessica Vascellaro (Wall Street Journal) about the Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's an excerpt:

[Von Lohmann] Unlike a bookstore or even a library, because these books will live online on Google's computers, where you will be accessing them, Google will have the ability to watch every page you read, how long you spend on any particular page, what page you read a minute ago and what page you're going to read a week from now. It really is as though every book comes with a surveillance camera that comes home with you. So we think it's really critical that this arrangement builds in real strong privacy protections because our nation's bookstores and libraries have fought hard for that, and we think we should accept no less online.

University of Michigan Press Opts in to Google Settlement

The University of Michigan Press has opted in to the Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

University of Michigan Press has decided to opt in to the terms of the Settlement and is beginning the process of claiming books digitized by Google under its Book Search program. We will claim all titles under copyright on behalf of our authors.

ARL Releases "Summary on House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing: 'Competition and Commerce in Digital Books' (Sept. 10, '09)"

The Association of Research Libraries has released "Summary on House Committee on the Judiciary Hearing: 'Competition and Commerce in Digital Books' (Sept. 10, '09)."

Here's an excerpt:

The panel of witnesses was evenly divided on these issues, with four unequivocally in favor of the settlement, including representatives from Google and the Authors Guild. Three witnesses were unequivocally opposed, including Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters and a representative from Amazon.com. The eighth witness, law professor Randall Picker of the University of Chicago, was ambivalent and suggested several changes that he felt would cure potential problems with the Settlement. A complete list of witnesses appears on the last page of this summary, with hyperlinks to the written testimony of each witness.

Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley Commit to Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity

Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley have committed to a Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Open-access scholarly journals have arisen as an alternative to traditional publications that are founded on subscription and/or licensing fees. Open-access journals make their articles available freely to anyone, while providing the same services common to all scholarly journals, such as management of the peer-review process, filtering, production, and distribution.

According to Thomas C. Leonard, university librarian at UC Berkeley, "Publishers and researchers know that it has never been easier to share the best work they produce with the world. But they also know that their traditional business model is creating new walls around discoveries. Universities can really help take down these walls and the open-access compact is a highly significant tool for the job."

The economic downturn underscores the significance of open-access publications. With library resources strained by budget cuts, subscription and licensing fees for journals have come under increasing scrutiny, and alternative means for providing access to vital intellectual content are identified. Open-access journals provide a natural alternative.

As Dartmouth Provost Barry P. Scherr sees it, "Supporting open-access publishing is an important step in increasing readership of Dartmouth research and, ultimately, the impact of our research on the world."

Since open-access journals do not charge subscription or other access fees, they must cover their operating expenses through other sources, including subventions, in-kind support, or, in a sizable minority of cases, processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal. While academic research institutions support traditional journals by paying their subscription fees, no analogous means of support has existed to underwrite the growing roster of fee-based open-access journals.

Stuart Shieber, Harvard's James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University's Office for Scholarly Communication, is the author of the five-member compact. According to Shieber, "Universities and funding agencies ought to provide equitable support for open-access publishing by subsidizing the processing fees that faculty incur when contributing to open-access publications. Right now, these fees are relatively rare. But if the research community supports open-access publishing and it gains in importance as we believe that it will, those fees could aggregate substantially over time. The compact ensures that support is available to eliminate these processing fees as a disincentive to open-access publishing."

The compact supports equity of the business models by committing each university to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open-access journal articles written by its faculty for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.

Additional universities are encouraged to visit the compact web site and sign on.

Cornell Provost Kent Fuchs offers his perspective on participating in the compact. "As part of its social commitment as a research university," Fuchs says, "Cornell strives to ensure that scholarly research results are as widely available as possible. The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity could increase access to scholarly literature while at the same time ensuring that the valuable services that publishers provide are supported."

A full account of the motivation for the compact can be found in the article "Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing," published in the open-access journal Public Library of Science Biology.

"Supporting OA journals is an investment in a superior system of scholarly communication," states Peter Suber of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in Washington, DC, and a fellow of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and Harvard University's Office for Scholarly Communication. "Before this compact, a number of funding agencies and universities were willing to pay OA journal processing fees on behalf of their grantees and faculty. It's significant that five major universities recognize the need to join the effort, extend fee subsidies to a wider range of publishing scholars, enlist other institutions, and start to catch up with their long practice of supporting traditional—or non-OA—journals."

Summing up the compact, MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif observes, "The dissemination of research findings to the public is not merely the right of research universities: it is their obligation. Open-access publishing promises to put more research in more hands and in more places around the world. This is a good enough reason for universities to embrace the guiding principles of this compact."

Read more about it at "Interview: Stuart Shieber."

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Releases First Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Results

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has released its first quarter fiscal year 2010 results.

Here's an excerpt:

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa and JWb) announced today that revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 grew 2% on a currency neutral basis, a result of strong growth in Higher Education (HE) and Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly (STMS) journals. As expected, Professional/Trade (P/T) revenue was down from last year’s first quarter. Including the $21 million negative effect of foreign exchange, Wiley’s revenue declined 3% to $388 million. . . .

Global STMS revenue for the first quarter advanced 2% to $229 million on a currency neutral basis, but declined 5% including unfavorable foreign exchange of $15 million. Increased revenue from journal subscriptions, new journal business, and global rights was partially offset by softness in books, advertising, and backfiles. Some of the shortfall in backfiles is due to timing.

Direct contribution to profit declined 4% from prior year to $94 million on a currency neutral basis, or 3% including favorable foreign exchange. The decline reflects the benefit of a bankruptcy recovery ($2 million) in the prior year, as well as increased journal royalties, editorial costs, and selling expenses, partially due to timing. . . .

For the quarter, journal revenue of $191 million was up 5%, excluding a negative foreign exchange impact of $11 million. The increase is attributed to higher subscription revenue and rights income, new business, and journal reprints, partially offset by lower revenue from backfiles and advertising.

Digital Video: Google's Chief Legal Officer Testifies at Hearing on "Competition and Commerce in Digital Books"

A digital video of David C. Drummond, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer at Google, testifying at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Competition and Commerce in Digital Books" is available on YouTube.