Publishing – Page 93 – DigitalKoans

"Degrees of Openness: Access Restrictions in Institutional Repositories"

Hélène Prostand Joachim Schöpfel have published "Degrees of Openness: Access Restrictions in Institutional Repositories" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Institutional repositories, green road and backbone of the open access movement, contain a growing number of items that are metadata without full text, metadata with full text only for authorized users, and items that are under embargo or that are restricted to on-campus access. This paper provides a short overview of relevant literature and presents empirical results from a survey of 25 institutional repositories that contain more than 2 million items. The intention is to evaluate their degree of openness with specific attention to different categories of documents (journal articles, books and book chapters, conference communications, electronic theses and dissertations, reports, working papers) and thus to contribute to a better understanding of their features and dynamics. We address the underlying question of whether this lack of openness is temporary due to the transition from traditional scientific communication to open access infrastructures and services, or here to stay, as a basic feature of the new and complex cohabitation of institutional repositories and commercial publishing.

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

"Estimates of the Continuously Publishing Core in the Scientific Workforce"

John P. A. Ioannidis et al. have published "Estimates of the Continuously Publishing Core in the Scientific Workforce" in PLOS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

The proportion of the scientific workforce that maintains a continuous uninterrupted stream of publications each and every year over many years is very limited, but it accounts for the lion's share of researchers with high citation impact. This finding may have implications for the structure, stability and vulnerability of the scientific workforce.

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

STM Releases Its Own Open Access Licenses

The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has released its own collection of open access licenses.

Here's an excerpt:

STM believes that publishers should have the tools to offer a wide variety of appropriate licensing terms dependent on their economic model and business strategy. To that end, the Association has produced sample licences for a variety of uses within open access publishing.

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

"Implementing CHORUS: Big Decisions Loom for Publishers"

Angela Cochran has published "Implementing CHORUS: Big Decisions Loom for Publishers" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

The implementation is not without complications. Publishers need to make some pretty serious decisions on how to proceed. The biggest decision may be exactly what to expose in order to comply with any forthcoming public access mandates. The options are to make the accepted manuscripts (AM) publicly available for papers derived from federal funds or to allow access to the final PDF or version of record (VoR). Either is acceptable under federal requirements.

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

Innovation in E-book Lending

The International Publishers Association has released Innovation in E-book Lending.

Here's an excerpt:

This special report assesses recent developments in e-lending, both in the trade and the academic sector, studying innovative approaches from the US, France, Sweden and Brazil. What these different projects have in common is that they are based on licenses which provide libraries with the conditions to acquire and lending e-books while putting publishers in control of lending terms. This allows publishers not just to protect their revenue streams, but to expand them.

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

Preserving eBooks

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preserving eBooks.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Written by Portico's Amy Kirchhoff and Sheila Morrissey, and published in association with Charles Beagrie Ltd., this report discusses the current developments and issues with which public, national and higher education libraries, publishers, aggregators and preservation institutions must contend to ensure long-term access to eBook content.

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

SCOAP3 Has Published 2,000 Articles

The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³) has published 2,000 articles.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Two thousand Open Access articles have been published with SCOAP³ funding since January 2014 in 10 journals from 11 publishers and learned societies. These articles are released under a CC-BY license, and openly accessible on publishers websites. In addition, articles are also immediately available on the SCOAP³ repository at repo.scoap3.org in several formats, including PDF/A and XML for text-mining and other purposes. Scientists from over 80 countries have freely published in SCOAP journals so far.

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

Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey June 2014

Taylor & Francis has released the Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey June 2014.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the first few months of 2014 Taylor & Francis carried out a worldwide survey, with the aim of exploring journal authors' views on open access.

Having previously conducted a survey on open access in 2013, we have been able to see how authors' opinions have developed, and whether the discussion and debate on open access has helped to inform and shape views.

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

"The Subversive Proposal at 20"

Richard Poynder has published "The Subversive Proposal at 20" in Open and Shut?

Here's an excerpt:

Twenty years ago yesterday, cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad posted a message on a mailing list, a message he headed "A Subversive Proposal." This called on all researchers to make copies of the papers they published in scholarly journals freely available on the Internet. . . .

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Subversive Proposal, I emailed Harnad nine questions yesterday. These questions are published below, with Harnad's answers attached.

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

"Measuring the Broader Impact of Research: The Potential of Altmetrics"

Lutz Bornmann has self-archived "Measuring the Broader Impact of Research: The Potential of Altmetrics."

Here's an excerpt:

Today, it is not clear how the impact of research on other areas of society than science should be measured. While peer review and bibliometrics have become standard methods for measuring the impact of research in science, there is not yet an accepted framework within which to measure societal impact. Alternative metrics (called altmetrics to distinguish them from bibliometrics) are considered an interesting option for assessing the societal impact of research, as they offer new ways to measure (public) engagement with research output. Altmetrics is a term to describe web-based metrics for the impact of publications and other scholarly material by using data from social media platforms (e.g. Twitter or Mendeley). This overview of studies explores the potential of altmetrics for measuring societal impact. It deals with the definition and classification of altmetrics. Furthermore, their benefits and disadvantages for measuring impact are discussed.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Can Libraries Help Stop this Madness?"

Kevin L. Smith has published "Can Libraries Help Stop this Madness?" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

If university presses can make a successful transition to less-expensive digital publishing, we should support that transition as fully as we can, but we should withhold funds where the digital product reflects the high prices and other inefficiencies mandated by print.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Countries in the Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet)"

Thomas Eger et al. have self-archived "The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Countries in the Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet)."

Here's an excerpt:

We discuss the results of a survey conducted between April 2013 and May 2014 in six Mediterranean countries and covering 2,528 researchers from Spain (1,291), Portugal (142), France (380), Italy (596), Turkey (131) and Greece (130). We compare the results to our German survey with 1,913 respondents. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher's awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Accordingly, the publishing culture (e.g. reputation, publishing language) but also other issues like age and certain policies (MedOANet) may explain why researchers make more frequent use of OA publishing in some countries and disciplines.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Price of Big Science: Saturation or Abundance in Scientific Publishing?"

Caroline S. Wagner and Dae Joong Kim have published "The Price of Big Science: Saturation or Abundance in Scientific Publishing?" in Policy and Complex Systems.

Here's an excerpt:

The rate of production of scientific publications appears to be continuing on an exponential growth curve against the prediction of Derek de Solla Price. (This article examines only publications, but it has been noted that scientific data (Borgman, Wallis, and Enyedy 2007) and e-Science (Hey and Trefethen 2005) are also growing phenomena, as well.) The growth of scientific publications has many possible causes, but the system itself appears to be operating efficiently. The networked nature of global science (Wagner and Leydesdorff 2005), the expansion of source materials and venues, the expansion of the practice of science to new places, the application of science to new problems (such as climate change), and the rise of China as a scientific power all may be contributing to the very rapid growth in output, increasing the complexity of the system.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Multidimensional Assessment of Scholarly Research Impact"

Henk F. Moed and Gali Halevi have self-archived "The Multidimensional Assessment of Scholarly Research Impact."

Here's an excerpt:

This article introduces the Multidimensional Research Assessment Matrix of scientific output. Its base notion holds that the choice of metrics to be applied in a research assessment process depends upon the unit of assessment, the research dimension to be assessed, and the purposes and policy context of the assessment. An indicator may by highly useful within one assessment process, but less so in another. For instance, publication counts are useful tools to help discriminating between those staff members who are research active, and those who are not, but are of little value if active scientists are to be compared one another according to their research performance. This paper gives a systematic account of the potential usefulness and limitations of a set of 10 important metrics including altmetrics, applied at the level of individual articles, individual researchers, research groups and institutions. It presents a typology of research impact dimensions, and indicates which metrics are the most appropriate to measure each dimension. It introduces the concept of a meta-analysis of the units under assessment in which metrics are not used as tools to evaluate individual units, but to reach policy inferences regarding the objectives and general setup of an assessment process.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles"

Theodore C. Bergstrom et al. have published "Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An open access eprint is not available.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Research Data Sharing: Developing a Stakeholder-Driven Model for Journal Policies"

Paul Sturges et al. have self-archived "Research Data Sharing: Developing a Stakeholder-Driven Model for Journal Policies."

Here's an excerpt:

The Journal Research Data (JoRD) Project was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded feasibility study on the possible shape of a central service on journal research data policies. The objectives of the study included, amongst other considerations: to identify the current state of journal data sharing policies and to investigate the views and practices of stakeholders to data sharing. The project confirmed that a large percentage of journals do not have a policy on data sharing, and that there are inconsistencies between the traceable journal data sharing policies. Such a state leaves authors unsure of whether they should deposit data relating to articles and where and how to share that data. In the absence of a consolidated infrastructure for the easy sharing of data, a journal data sharing model policy was developed. The model policy was developed from comparing the quantitative information gathered from analysing existing journal data policies with qualitative data collected from the stakeholders concerned. This article summarises the information gathered, outlines the process by which the model was developed and presents the model journal data sharing policy in full.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"PLOS Data Policy: Catalyst for a Better Research Process"

Emma Ganley has published "PLOS Data Policy: Catalyst for a Better Research Process" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

PLOS is seeking to ensure the ongoing utility of research, as making a paper openly accessible is enhanced enormously if that paper is linked seamlessly to the data from which it was constructed. In a time when post-publication peer review is more prevalent and data frequently come under intense public scrutiny, with whistle-blowers, blogs, and websites dedicated to investigating the validity and veracity of scientific publications, requiring access to the relevant data leads to a more rigorous scientific record.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"A Comparison of Citations, Downloads And Readership Data for an Information Systems Journal"

Christian Schlögl et al. have published "A Comparison of Citations, Downloads And Readership Data for an Information Systems Journal" in a special issue on altmetrics of Research Trends.

Here's an excerpt:

In our analysis we identified a high (though not a perfect) correlation between citations and downloads which was slightly lower between downloads and readership frequencies and again between citations and readership counts. This is mainly due to the fact that the used data (sources) are related either to research or at least to teaching in higher education institutions.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Ebook Pricing Hikes Amount to Price-Gouging"

Boston Library Consortium has released "Ebook Pricing Hikes Amount to Price-Gouging" as a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Here's an excerpt:

Consequently, the BLC will lower the price ceiling below which individual titles are eligible to be included in our ebook program, we will reduce the availability of back-list titles at high price points, and we will increase the portion of our consortial budget that is allocated to those publishers whose pricing remains reasonable. In this way, we mean to reward what we regard as fair dealing, as we attempt to limit the budget impact of what appears plainly to be price-gouging.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

De Gruyter Releases Its Books in ePub3 Format

De Gruyter has released its frontlist titles in the ePub3 format.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The ePub format supports variable font sizes as well as the dynamic adjustment of content to the device's screen size. EBooks in the ePub format are released as a single file, as opposed to the one-file-per-chapter format of PDF-based eBooks. De Gruyter is one of the first academic presses worldwide to offer customers the choice between the ePub and PDF formats when purchasing an eBook.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Big Deals: Beyond the Damage: Circulation, Coverage and Staffing

Walt Crawford has published Beyond the Damage: Circulation, Coverage and Staffing.

Here's an excerpt from chapter one:

Big-Deal Serials Purchasing: Tracking the Damage looks almost entirely at four aspects of library spending and changes in that spending: total spending, current serials, "books" (all other acquisitions) and the remainder”what's left over for staff, automation, preservation, etc.

This book looks at some other aspects of academic libraries and how they have changed from 2002 through 2012: circulation, coverage and staffing. It's designed to complement the LTR report. Indeed, I assume that readers will have access to the report, as it includes details on which academic libraries are included and excluded. This book uses exactly the same universe of libraries (2,594 in all) as the report. I believe this book (and the supplementary PDF) will provide useful additional insights into what's happened in academic libraries over a decade in which Big Deals supposedly improved serials pricing problems”but still had serials spending taking more and more of a sometimes-shrinking overall pie…

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Teaching an Old University Press Publisher New Tricks: Living in the Present and Preparing for the Future of Scholarly Communications"

Patrick H. Alexander has published "Teaching an Old University Press Publisher New Tricks: Living in the Present and Preparing for the Future of Scholarly Communications" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

University presses currently exist in the dual worlds of print and digital publishing. Current staffing needs require that they hire personnel with skills and experience that mirror that present duality. Training and maintaining a skilled workforce requires a commitment to flexibility and an openness to the ever-changing nature of scholarly communication. As the scholarly publishing ecosystem continues to evolve, university presses will need to look to a future workforce that has additional training, knowledge, and experience beyond the traditional skills associated with academic publishing, one that fully embraces the realities of a digital world, the habits of new generations of researchers, and the increasing role of technology in scholarly communication. This article looks at what the future might look like, what skills might be required, and how one might prepare for that future.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Learned Society Attitudes towards Open Access: Report on Survey Results

EDP Open has released Learned Society Attitudes towards Open Access: Report on Survey Results.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Key findings include:

Learned societies overwhelmingly agree that Open Access will inevitably place some learned societies' journals into financial jeopardy.

Competing with large Open Access specialist publishers was also considered a significant challenge for learned societies.

Gold Open Access is the Open Access method that is least offered by learned society journals, however nearly two-thirds of learned societies indicated that they would like to be offering this option.

More than ever before, with so many journals being published Open Access of dubious origin, learned societies should look to endorse content with a stamp of quality and authority.

Collaboration between learned societies could help in the transition to Open Access, by pooling resources and sharing complex tasks.

Two-thirds of all learned societies are also looking for support on best approach to OA, and compliance with funder mandates.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Open Access: Markup of Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology Act Reduces Embargo Period

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has marked up the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act (FIRST Act), significantly reducing the embargo period for making works open access.

Here's an excerpt from "FIRST Act Amended to Make Open Access Provision Actually Pretty Good":

Calling this [Section 303 in the prior version of the bill] a "public access" section is a charitable reading: it extended embargo periods to up to three years, it allowed for simple linking to articles rather than the creation of an archive, and it delayed implementation unnecessarily long. (We've ranted about this bill time and again.)

But a glimmer of hope appeared at yesterday's markup. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Zoe Lofgren, introduced an amendment that radically changed Section 303. The new amendment [pdf] maps closely onto Sensenbrenner's Public Access to Public Science Act (H.R. 3157). It sets the embargo period at 12 months (like the NIH's current policy), though it allows stakeholders to extend this by 6 months if they can show a "substantial and unique harm." The amendment was also designed to facilitate long-term preservation, broad analysis of works, and closer investigation of broad copyright licenses. The current version is not perfect, but it is much improved—huge kudos to Sensenbrenner and Lofgren for standing up for open access.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Canadian Researchers’ Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours

Canadian Science Publishing has released Canadian Researchers' Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Some key findings described in the report:

Researchers agree with principle, not cost, of open access (OA)

Almost half of the researchers reported publishing more than half of their research in open access format in past 2 years, yet availability of open access was 8 times less important than impact factor and 13 times less important than journal reputation when selecting a journal

For those who have published OA, institutions and tri-agency funding typically cover cost, yet many researchers indicated they did not know whether Canada's major funding bodies support OA

Peer review, reach, and discoverability are considered most important journal features

Use of repositories differs widely across disciplines

Laboratory/institutional blogs or websites and social media are increasingly being used for research dissemination

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap