"Why Principal Investigators Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health Publish in the Public Library of Science Journals"

Nancy Pontika has published "Why Principal Investigators Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health Publish in the Public Library of Science Journals" in Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The Institutes-funded investigators submitted to the Public Library of Science journals because they favour the high impact factor, fast publication speed, fair peer-review system and the articles/ immediate open access availability.

Conclusions. The requirements of the National Institutes' public access policy do not influence the investigators' decision to submit to one of the Public Library of Science journals and do not increase their familiarity with open access publishing options.

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Monographs and Open Access: A Report to HEFCE

The HEFCE has released Monographs and Open Access: A Report to HEFCE.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  • Monographs are a vitally important and distinctive vehicle for research communication, and must be sustained in any moves to open access. The availability of printed books alongside the open-access versions will be essential.
  • Contrary to many perceptions, it would not be appropriate to talk of a crisis of the monograph; this does not mean that monographs are not facing challenges, but the arguments for open access would appear to be for broader and more positive reasons than solving some supposed crisis.
  • Open access offers both short- and long-term advantages for monograph publication and use; many of these are bound up with a transition to digital publishing that has not been at the same speed as that for journals.
  • There is no single dominant emerging business model for supporting open-access publishing of monographs; a range of approaches will coexist for some time and it is unlikely that any single model will emerge as dominant. Policies will therefore need to be flexible.

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"Macmillan + Springer: Some Lessons to Learn, Some Twists to Watch"

Kent Anderson has published "Macmillan + Springer: Some Lessons to Learn, Some Twists to Watch" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

The competition this merger creates at the top of the market—turning a two-billionaire race into a three-billionaire race—is unlikely to trickle down in any helpful way. More Big Deals will leave fewer scraps for others. Some top-end titles may benefit from the increased competition on the acquisitions front, but I don't think a general bidding war will break out.

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Making Open Access Work for Authors, Institutions and Publishers

The Copyright Clearance Center has released Making Open Access Work for Authors, Institutions and Publishers.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a global licensing and content solutions organization, recently brought together institutions from the UK and publishers from both the US and UK for an Open Access roundtable discussion to explore the implications of managing Open Access fees on a large scale. During this meeting, held at University College in London, the attendees examined a number of issues related to fragmentation, approach and processes, including ways vendors can play an expanded role in addressing the challenges. CCC published the group's findings in a report written by Rob Johnson, Founder and Director of Research Consulting.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Towards a UK Digital Public Space—A Blueprint Report

The Strategic Content Alliance has released Towards a UK Digital Public Space—A Blueprint Report.

Here's an excerpt:

"Imagine … that much of the UK's publicly held cultural and heritage media assets could be found in a unified online space … connected together, searchable, open, accessible, visible and usable … in a way that allows individuals, institutions and machines to add additional material, meaning and context to each other's media, indexed and tagged to the highest level of detail … This emerging vision of a free-to-everyone, open access environment for learning and creative endeavour has been referred to as a digital public space."

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

DOAJ Journal Analysis: "Intersections: The Third Half"

Walt Crawford has published "Intersections: The Third Half" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Most of this essay (pp. 7-19) is the "Third Half" of the two-part Journals and "Journals" examination in the October/November and December 2014 issues-adding another 1,200-odd bio/med journals from DOAJ and looking at overall patterns. The essay also includes four briefer discussions related to DOAJ and gold OA journals.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

CNI Executive Roundtable Report: E-Book Strategies

CNI has released CNI Executive Roundtable Report: E-Book Strategies .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

During two separate convenings of this roundtable, we explored questions that these new directions raise for institutions, the strategies that institutions are using to make choices among the available paths, the stakeholders involved, and the new programs and projects that CNI’s members are planning or have implemented. Our emphasis was on breadth rather than deep explorations of very specific issues; often we were most interested in understanding how institutions were shaping the questions and how they were exploring them, since many of these questions are far from resolution. Roundtable participants included representatives from academic libraries and information technology units from research institutions and liberal arts colleges, library associations, publishers, and aggregators/intermediaries.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"A Living Open Book"

Peter Suber has published "A Living Open Book" in Ebooks in Education: Realising The Vision.

Here's an excerpt:

This is a case study of my short book, Open Access (Suber 2012a). The book is not "enhanced" in the way that a growing number of digital academic books are enhanced. It has no graphics, no multimedia, and no interactivity beyond links, and does not offer different layers or pathways for readers at different levels. From that point of the view the book is conventional and text-oriented. But it has two other enhancements worth highlighting. First, the full text is open access, which benefits authors and readers, and sometimes also publishers. Second, the book has a companion web site of open-access updates and supplements, which benefits all three groups.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future

Martin Paul Eve has published Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future with Cambridge University Pres.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

I am extremely pleased to announce that my book, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future has today been published by Cambridge University Press. The book offers a background to open access and its specifics for the humanities disciplines, as well as setting out the economics and politics of the phenomenon. It also has a very fine preface by Peter Suber! You can download the book for absolutely free (under a CC BY-SA license) at the official website (click the green "open access" button). You can also buy an extremely good value paperback copy, with all my royalties going to Arthritis Research UK, from the usual suspects.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Bringing The DOAJ to a New Level"

Lars Bjørnshauge has published "Bringing The DOAJ to a New Level" in ScieCom info.

Here's an excerpt:

Most promising projects do not make the transition to a service, much effort and many great ideas are lost. DOAJ has managed this transition since years, but now we are coming closer to the moment of truth. Whether what had turned out to be a social, organizational and managerial experiment: a community funded, crowdsourced free service, really can meet the expectations from increasingly demanding stakeholders.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History"

James Shulman has published "Sustainable Free: Lessons Learned from the Launch of a Free Service Supporting Publishing in Art History" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, writing about the struggles of publishing in art history noted that "It is a paradox of the digital revolution that it has never been easier to produce and circulate a reproductive image, and never harder to publish one." If publishing in general is in crisis because of the seismic re-ordering in a digital world, the field of art history is the extreme tail of the spectrum; rights holders are accustomed to licensing image content for limited edition print runs. Given this particularly challenging corner of the publishing work, a project initiated by the Metropolitan Museum offers some hope of a collaborative way forward. What sociological re-engineering enabled progress on this problem? It is possible that there are other lessons here too, that might throw at least streaks of light on other process re-engineering provoked by digital innovation in publishing?

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Social, Political and Legal Aspects of Text and Data Mining (TDM)"

Michelle Brook, Peter Murray-Rust, and Charles Oppenheim have published "The Social, Political and Legal Aspects of Text and Data Mining (TDM)" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The ideas of textual or data mining (TDM) and subsequent analysis go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Originally carried out manually, textual and data analysis has long been a tool which has enabled new insights to be drawn from text corpora. However, for the potential benefits of TDM to be unlocked, a number of non-technological barriers need to be overcome. These include legal uncertainty resulting from complicated copyright, database rights and licensing, the fact that some publishers are not currently embracing the opportunities TDM offers the academic community, and a lack of awareness of TDM among many academics, alongside a skills gap.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Copyright Incentives in the GSU Appeals Court Ruling"

Kevin L. Smith has published "Copyright Incentives in the GSU Appeals Court Ruling" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

The word "incentive" appears ten times in the ruling issued last month by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the Georgia State University (GSU) copyright infringement case, but it is slightly unclear in this rather odd opinion just who is the object of the incentive created by copyright.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Case Study of a Book Published under a Creative Commons License

Here's a brief case study of how one book under a Creative Commons license evolved and was accessed.

In 2005, the Association of Research Libraries published my book, the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. With ARL's agreement, I made an open access PDF available on Digital Scholarship.

In 2006, I converted the book into an open access XHTML website and published the Open Access Bibliography Author Index and the Open Access Bibliography Title Index.

In 2008, I worked with Open Access Directory staff to convert it to wiki format and publish it as the basis for the Bibliography of Open Access.

In 2010, I published Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography as an open access PDF file, an open access XHTML website, and a low-cost paperback. All versions of the bibliography were under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. This derivative work was an updated version of the Open Access Bibliography that was more narrowly focused on scholarly treatments of open access.

Below are the Digital Scholarship use statistics for the two books as of October 31, 2014. In this analysis, only HTML files or PDF files are counted as "page views"; image files and other supporting website files are excluded. This analysis also excludes spider use.

  • Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals: over 355,000 page views.
  • Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: over 152,000 page views.

That's a total of over 507,000 page views. For the measured time period, about 7.9% of all file requests to Digital Scholarship failed. Consequently, I'll eliminate 7.9% of the above page views and estimate that there were over 466,000 successful page views. This tally does not include any access statistics from ARL or the OAD (nor does it include paperback sales).

If the multi-file HTML versions of the books are eliminated from consideration, the two books still had a total of over 173,000 PDF requests (excluding spider requests), adjusted to an estimated 159,000 plus successful PDF requests.

To put these use statistics in perspective, in 2005, Willis Regier (Director of the University of Illinois Press) estimated that the typical university press book sold between 400 to 800 copies.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Summary of SHARE Community Meeting, Fall 2014"

ARL has released "Summary of SHARE Community Meeting, Fall 2014."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On October 13-14, 2014, members of the SHARE community gathered in Crystal City, Virginia, for their first face-to-face meeting. Attendees included more than half the members of the SHARE working groups (communications, technical, repository, and workflow), as well as SHARE Notification Service prototype participants and other stakeholders. The two-day meeting was intended to showcase progress on the Notification Service; identify challenges and opportunities related to the Notification Service prototype; explore future SHARE projects; and delve into ways in which the higher education community can play a proactive role in the stewardship of research. The meeting was convened with the generous support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Comment, Discuss, Review: An Essential Guide to Post-Publication Review Sites"

Andy Tattersall has published "Comment, Discuss, Review: An Essential Guide to Post-Publication Review Sites" in LSE Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

The debate on whether which is the best way forward for post-publication review will continue and like other topics such as measurement of research, there appears to be no 'silver bullet'. Instead there is a collection of sites and tools operating in silos, all offering to solve a problem, that being the lack of post publication discussion and assessment. Below are a list of some of the main tools and sites offering some kind of comment, discussion or review system—it is not exhaustive or comprehensive, but it will give you some idea as to what they are and do.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Effect of Discovery Systems on Online Journal Usage: A Longitudinal Study"

Michael Levine-Clark et al. have published The Effect of Discovery Systems on Online Journal Usage: A Longitudinal Study in Insights: The UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Many academic libraries are implementing discovery services as a way of giving their users a single comprehensive search option for all library resources. These tools are designed to change the research experience, yet very few studies have investigated the impact of discovery service implementation. This study examines one aspect of that impact by asking whether usage of publisher-hosted journal content changes after implementation of a discovery tool. Libraries that have begun using the four major discovery services have seen an increase in usage of this content, suggesting that for this particular type of material, discovery services have a positive impact on use. Though all discovery services significantly increased usage relative to a no discovery service control group, some had a greater impact than others, and there was extensive variation in usage change among libraries using the same service. Future phases of this study will look at other types of content.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Intersections: Journals and ‘Journals’: Taking a Deeper Look: Part 2: DOAJ Subset and Additional Notes"

Walt Crawford has published "Intersections: Journals and 'Journals': Taking a Deeper Look: Part 2: DOAJ Subset and Additional Notes" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

If you've been reading various commentaries about Gold OA journals-including Part 1-you may be wondering where all those supposed no-fee Gold OA journals are. This piece helps to tell that story. Specifically, of 2,843 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals as of May 7, 2014 that have an English interface version, aren't from either OASPA members or Beall-list publishers, and are not about aspects of medicine or biology-and that actually published one or more articles between January 2011 and June 30, 2014-more than 78% do not charge fees of any sort, and those journals published 53% of the articles published by the whole group during that period. Those percentages grow to almost 92% and more than 81%, respectively, for 1,426 journals in the humanities and social sciences.

This article looks at the "DOAJ set" in depth, including new tables that show distribution of articles (and journals publishing articles during a year) on a year-by-year basis, including the percentage of free journals and articles from those journals for each year.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The ‘Total Cost of Publication’ in a Hybrid Open-Access Environment: Institutional Approaches to Funding Journal Article-Processing Charges in Combination with Subscriptions"

S. Pinfield et al. have self-archived "The 'Total Cost of Publication' in a Hybrid Open-Access Environment: Institutional Approaches to Funding Journal Article-Processing Charges in Combination with Subscriptions."

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyses data from 23 UK institutions covering the period 2007 to 2014 modelling the total cost of publication (TCP). It shows a clear rise in centrally-managed APC payments from 2012 onwards, with payments projected to increase further. As well as evidencing the growing availability and acceptance of OA publishing, these trends reflect particular UK policy developments and funding arrangements intended to accelerate the move towards OA publishing ('Gold' OA). Whilst the mean value of APCs has been relatively stable, there was considerable variation in APC prices paid by institutions since 2007. In particular, 'hybrid' subscription/OA journals were consistently more expensive than fully-OA journals. Most APCs were paid to large 'traditional' commercial publishers who also received considerable subscription income. New administrative costs reported by institutions varied considerably. The total cost of publication modelling shows that APCs are now a significant part of the TCP for academic institutions, in 2013 already constituting an average of 10% of the TCP (excluding administrative costs).

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

All Harvard Schools Now Have Open Access Policies

With the adoption of an open access policy in June by the Harvard Medical School, all Harvard schools now have open access policies.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

Harvard Medical School adopted an open-access policy on June 18, 2014, by a unanimous vote of the Faculty Council. The new policy covers both "quad"-based and clinical faculty. Now all Harvard schools have open-access policies.

Like the other Harvard policies, the Medical School policy insures that faculty members automatically retain a license to share their research papers freely through DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard), the University’s open-access repository. Faculty also have the option to waive this license for any article, preserving their freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. When faculty write articles covered by the Medical School policy and the policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they need only deposit once to comply with both.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Library Publishing Directory, Second Edition

Library Publishing Coalition has released the Library Publishing Directory, second edition .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Published just in time for Open Access Week, the Directory illustrates the many ways in which libraries are actively transforming and advancing scholarly communications in partnership with scholars, students, university presses, and others.

In documenting the breadth and depth of activities in this field, this resource aims to articulate the unique value of library publishing; establish it as a significant and growing community of practice; and to raise its visibility within a number of stakeholder communities, including administrators, funding agencies, other scholarly publishers, librarians, and content creators.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"PeerJ Grows Steadily With Papers, Authors"

Phil Davis has published "PeerJ Grows Steadily With Papers, Authors" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

PeerJ is growing, publishing more papers and attracting more authors, although it is not clear whether the company is moving toward financial sustainability. In a crowded market of multidisciplinary open access journals, the success/failure of PeerJ may be determined when it receives its first Impact Factor.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Open Access Advantage for American Law Reviews"

James M. Donovan et al. have self-archived "The Open Access Advantage for American Law Reviews."

Here's an excerpt:

Articles available in open access formats enjoy an advantage in citation by subsequent law review works of 53%. For every two citations an article would otherwise receive, it can expect a third when made freely available on the Internet. This benefit is not uniformly spread through the law school tiers. Higher tier journals experience a lower OA advantage (11.4%) due to the attention such prestigious works routinely receive regardless of the format. When focusing on the availability of new scholarship, as compared to creating retrospective collections, the aggregated advantage rises to 60.2%. While the first tier advantage rises to 16.8%, the mid-tiers skyrocket to 89.7%. The fourth tier OA advantage comes in at 81.2%.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Data from Nature and Palgrave Macmillan’s Author Insights Survey

Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan have released data from their Author Insights Survey.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The survey, which contains views from 30,466 researchers, is the biggest publisher survey of authors' views to be made open access.

NPG and Palgrave Macmillan are making this anonymised data available in order to achieve greater understanding between authors, funders and publishers, particularly with regard to open access.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Fair-Use and E-Reserves: "A Reversal for Georgia State"

Kevin Smith has published "A Reversal for Georgia State" in Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Here's an excerpt:

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its ruling in the publisher appeal of a district court decision that found most instances of electronic reserve copying at Georgia State to be fair use. The appellate court ruling is 129 pages long, and I will have much more to say after I read it carefully. But the hot news right now is that the Court of Appeals has reversed the District Court's judgment and remanded the case back for proceedings consistent with the new opinion. The injunction issued by the District Court and the order awarding costs and attorney's fees to GSU have been vacated.

Read more about it at "Publishers Win Reversal of Court Ruling That Favored 'E-Reserves' at Georgia State U." and "A Win for Publishers."

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"