Category: Publishing

More Coverage of the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

Here are some additional articles/postings about the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.

Fair Copyright in Research Works Act: Bill Opposing Open Access Reintroduced in House

Rep. John Conyers has reintroduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801) in the House.

Here's an excerpt from Peter Suber's posting:

The Fair Copyright Act is to fair copyright what the Patriot Act was to patriotism.  It would repeal the OA policy at the NIH and prevent similar OA policies at any federal agency.  The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is Chairman, and where he has consolidated his power since last year by abolishing the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.  The Judiciary Committee does not specialize in science, science policy, or science funding, but copyright. 

The premise of the bill, urged by the publishing lobby, is that the NIH policy somehow violates copyright law.  The premise is false and cynical.  If the NIH policy violated copyrights, or permitted the violation of copyrights, publishers wouldn't have to back this bill to amend US copyright law.  Instead, they'd be in court where they'd already have a remedy.  For a detailed analysis of the bill and point by point rebuttal to the publishing lobby's rhetoric, see my article from October 2008.

I'll have more soon on ways to mobilize in opposition to the bill and support the NIH and the principle of public access to publicly-funded research.  Meantime, if you're a US citizen and your representative is a member of the Judiciary Committee, it's not to early to fire off an email/fax/letter/phone call to your representative opposing the bill and defending the NIH policy.  You can find ammo here:

Also see: "Bill Banning NIH-Like Public Access is Reintroduced in Congress."

Cornell University Library to Offer More Than 80,000 POD Books on Amazon.com

The Cornell University Library is increasing its print-on-demand books on Amazon.com to over 80,000 titles.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

By the end of 2009, tens of thousands of new books will be added to the approximately 6,000 items in Cornell’s collection already available on Amazon. All of the books are in the public domain in the United States, and many are currently out of print.

"Although demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value," said Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. "This initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books—they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf."

Positive feedback from users helped contribute to the decision to expand the number of titles available. "The publication of this little book adds valuable primary source material for students of the War of 1812. Bravo to Cornell for making it available," one customer wrote. Another said, "Words cannot express how grateful I am that Cornell University saw fit to republish these two papers."

The books that will be added throughout 2009 were digitized with the support of Microsoft over the last two years. These new volumes represent a substantial part of the Library’s rare and unique offerings printed before 1923.

They will reflect Cornell’s subject strengths, including American history, English literature, astronomy, food and wine, general engineering, the history of science, home economics, hospitality and travel, human sexuality, labor relations, Native American materials, ornithology, veterinary medicine and women's studies. Collections already available for reprint from Amazon include New York state historical literature, core historical literature in agriculture, historical math monographs and materials related to home economics.

Cornell University Library has been a cutting-edge participant with print-on-demand services and mass digitization initiatives, partnering with multiple outlets to make its collections available to the public. The partnership with Amazon began in 2006, and the Library is currently engaged in a large-scale digitization initiative with Google that will create 500,000 digitized books over the next six years.

For a sample of the titles offered on Amazon, go to bookstore.library.cornell.edu, and check Amazon.com throughout the year to see new titles as they are added.

Harvard University Press Launches Open Access Law Journal

The Harvard University Press has launched the Journal of Legal Analysis, an open access journal published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

A couple things make the JLA different than the average law journal. First, it's online. At the end of each year, articles will be bundled, printed, and sold to those who wish to procure such a volume, but the focus is on the website, where all articles will be posted, for free, as soon as they are ready for publication. In addition, we're hoping the journal fills a gap in the legal publishing landscape by providing a peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal that covers the entire academy. In the words of Editor-in-Chief Mark Ramseyer: "Until JLA, there has not been a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journal that covered the whole span of the legal academy. There have been faculty-edited journals for subfields, but not for the entire discipline. With the JLA, we are trying to create a faculty-edited journal that will be the flagship journal for the law school faculty as a whole."

“How to Improve the Google Book Search Settlement”

James Grimmelmann, Associate Professor at New York Law School, has made available "How to Improve the Google Book Search Settlement" in the Berkeley Electronic Press' Selected Works.

Here's the abstract:

The proposed settlement in the Google Book Search case should be approved with strings attached. The project will be immensely good for society, and the proposed deal is a fair one for Google, for authors, and for publishers. The public interest demands, however, that the settlement be modified first. It creates two new entities—the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth—with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways. We the public have a right to demand that those entities be subject to healthy, pro-competitive oversight, and so we should.

Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits

JISC has released Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Sharing research information via a more open access publishing model would bring millions of pounds worth of savings to the higher education sector as well as benefiting UK plc. This is one of the key findings from a new research project commissioned by JISC.

Professor John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne’s Victoria University and Professor Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead research that would throw light on the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing.

The research centred on three models which include:

  • Subscription or toll access publishing which involves reader charges and use restrictions;
  • Open access publishing where access is free and publication is funded from the authors’ side; and
  • Open access self-archiving where academic authors post their work in online repositories, making it freely available to all Internet users.

In their report, Houghton et al. looked beyond the actual costs and savings of different models and examined the additional cost-benefits that might arise from enhanced access to research findings.

The research and findings reveal that core scholarly publishing system activities cost the UK higher education sector around £5 billion in 2007. Using the different models, the report shows, what the estimated cost would have been:

  • £230 million to publish using the subscription model,
  • £150 million to publish under the open access model and
  • £110 million to publish with the self-archiving with peer review services plus some £20 million in operating costs if using the different models.

When considering costs per journal article, Houghton et al. believe that the UK higher education sector could have saved around £80 million a year by shifting from toll access to open access publishing. They also claim that £115 million could be saved by moving from toll access to open access self-archiving.

In addition to that, the financial return to UK plc from greater accessibility to research might result in an additional £172 million per annum worth of benefits from government and higher education sector research alone.

NetLibrary to Offer Five E-Book Collections for Sony’s Reader Digital Book

OCLC's NetLibrary will offer five Sony Reader Mobile Collections for Sony’s Reader Digital Book.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The program includes a Reader model PRS-505, a collection of titles from leading publishers and all required licenses. Using the library’s PC, librarians can download a mobile collection title or titles from the NetLibrary site to the Reader as necessary.

Libraries that purchase Mobile Collections will be able to offer their patrons the ability to check out Readers for onsite or offsite use, depending on the policy established by each library. Collections, selected by NetLibrary’s collections librarian, include Career Development and Business Self Help (30 titles), Management and Leadership (22 titles), Popular Fiction (29 titles), Romance (19 titles) and Young Adult Fiction (24 titles).

"Google & the Future of Books"

Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University, has published "Google & the Future of Books" in the The New York Review of Books.

Here's an excerpt:

As an unintended consequence [of the Google Book Settlement], Google will enjoy what can only be called a monopoly—a monopoly of a new kind, not of railroads or steel but of access to information. Google has no serious competitors. Microsoft dropped its major program to digitize books several months ago, and other enterprises like the Open Knowledge Commons (formerly the Open Content Alliance) and the Internet Archive are minute and ineffective in comparison with Google. Google alone has the wealth to digitize on a massive scale. And having settled with the authors and publishers, it can exploit its financial power from within a protective legal barrier; for the class action suit covers the entire class of authors and publishers. No new entrepreneurs will be able to digitize books within that fenced-off territory, even if they could afford it, because they would have to fight the copyright battles all over again. If the settlement is upheld by the court, only Google will be protected from copyright liability.

Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues

SPARC has published Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues.

Here's an excerpt from the report's Web page:

SPARC’s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues addresses issues relevant to building sound and balanced partnerships, including:

  • Establishing governance and administrative structures;
  • Identifying funding models that accommodate the objectives of both libraries and presses;
  • Defining a partnership’s objectives to align the missions of the library and the press;
  • Determining what services to provide; and
  • Demonstrating the value of the collaboration.

Also see SPARC's new Campus-based Publishing Resource Center.

University of California Affiliated Authors Will Be Able to Publish Using Springer Open Choice as Part of Journals License

Under the terms of the journals license negotiated by the California Digital Library for the University of California Libraries, UC-affiliated authors will be able to publish in Springer journals using the Springer Open Choice option without paying additional publication fees. (Thanks to Open Access News.)

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license. Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons (by-nc: Attribution, Non-commercial) license. In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository.

The University of California-Springer agreement is the first large-scale open access experiment of its type undertaken with a major commercial publisher in North America.

"UC faculty members have told us that they want open access publishing options in order to increase the impact of their published work and eliminate barriers to educational and research use," said Ivy Anderson, director of collections for the California Digital Library, which licenses content on behalf of the University of California libraries. "Just as importantly, they want these options in the journals in which they routinely publish, without disrupting their normal research activity. The CDL agreement with Springer supports the transformation that our faculty seeks, while continuing the libraries' crucial role in facilitating access to research information. Springer is a leader among commercial publishers in open access experimentation, making it a natural partner for the University of California in this endeavor."

EDUCAUSE Review Special Section: The Case of the Textbook: Open or Closed?

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review has a special section on "The Case of the Textbook: Open or Closed?."

Here are the articles:

Here’s Why You Can’t Find That Online ALA Journal (and Other Tales of Journal Access Woes)

Apparently without warning, the American Library Association has changed the format for its journal URLs, and the old URLs are not redirected to the new ones.

Here's an example from version 73 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography ("Fair Use after CONFU" from College & Research Libraries):

  • Old URL:
    http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/
    backissues1998b/may98/candrlmay1998editorial.cfm
  • New URL:
    http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/
    crljournal/1998/may98/candrlmay1998editorial.cfm

ALA journal URLs were removed from version 74 of SEPB, and will be restored in version 75 (unless there are further changes). Since ALA does not include article page numbers in journal sites such as College & Research Libraries, they may be missing from some SEPB references, reflecting the time lag between issue publication and inclusion in standard indexing tools that I can access.

A similar issue has arisen with archived issues of RLG DigiNews, a ceased e-journal archived by OCLC.

Here's an example from version 73 of SEPB ("Benchmarking Conversion Costs: A Report from the Making of America IV Project"):

  • Old URL:
    http://digitalarchive.oclc.org/da/ViewObjectMain.jsp?fileid=0000070513:000006280584&reqid=5141#feature2
  • New URL:
    http://worldcat.org/arcviewer/1/OCC/2007/08/
    08/0000070519/viewer/file706.html#feature2

RLG DigiNews articles were removed from version 74 of SEPB, and they will be restored in a future version. (SEPB previously included virtually all articles published in this fine journal.)

“Editorial: Google Deal or Rip-Off?”

In "Editorial: Google Deal or Rip-Off?," Francine Fialkoff, Library Journal Editor-in-Chief, takes a hard look at the Google-Association of American Publishers/Authors Guild copyright settlement.

Here's an excerpt:

Clearly, the public had little standing in the negotiations that led to the recent agreement in the class-action lawsuit against Google for scanning books from library shelves. . . . Well, the suit was never about the public interest but about corporate interests, and librarians did not have much power at the bargaining table, no matter how hard those consulted pushed. While there are many provisions in the document that specify what libraries can and can't do and portend greater access, ultimately, it is the restrictions that scream out at us from the miasma of details.

Other perspectives can be found in my recently updated Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 3.

Book Industry Study Group BookDROP 1.0 Standard Released

The Book Industry Study Group's Digital Standards Committee has released BookDROP 1.0, which is "a standard intended to support the search and discovery of digital book content on the Web."

Here's an excerpt from the standard's description:

It was first published on December 8, 2008 and was developed jointly by the Book Industry Study Group and the Association of American Publishers. BookDROP defines a set of HTTP transactions between a publishers digital book archive and the websites of the publisher's syndication partners. The overall goal of BookDROP is to encourage the discovery, search, browse and distribution of digital book content across the Web while allowing publishers to manage the quality and availability of their content.

Read more about it at "BISG Unveils BookDROP Standard for Digital Book Repositories."

Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 3

The Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 3 is now available.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

SAGE Report: Meeting the Challenges: Societies and Scholarly Communication

SAGE has released Meeting the Challenges: Societies and Scholarly Communication (Thanks to Adrian K. Ho's Digital & Scholarly: News about Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age.)

Here's an excerpt:

The survey was supported by the Association for Learned Professional and Scholarly Publishers; the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers; the International Association for Science, Technical and Medical Publishers, and the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, and made available to the 600+ members of these organizations.

The online survey of 30 questions was available for response from 2 September, 2008 – 23 September, 2008.

118 responses were completed during this time—reflecting approximately 19% of the organizations contacted.

Societies cited the major challenges facing them as international presence for their organization; membership retention and growth; provision of online services; resources (funding and income); and Open Access. International presence was the most highly-ranked attribute for societies (49%), with particular importance placed on sales representation on a global scale.

Stanford's HighWire Press Hits 5 Million Article Mark

With the addition of a backfile 1884 article, "Dermatitis Herpetiformis," in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, hit the five million article mark. Over two million of those articles are freely available.

Read more about it at "5 Million Articles Online at HighWire: The Evolution of an e-Publishing Platform."

Digital Video: Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?

The Columbia University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Program has released "Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?," a digital video of the meeting of the same name. (Thanks to Adrian K. Ho of Digital & Scholarly: News about Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age.)

Here's the abstract:

Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session.