Category: Publishing

Encouraging Digital Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities: White Paper

The University of North Georgia has released Encouraging Digital Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities: White Paper.

Here's an excerpt:

This project, led by the University Press of North Georgia, and funded by a Digital Start-Up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities focused on exploring the peer review process and increasing its usefulness to presses and scholars publishing digitally. By exploring this issues we have made recommendations for best practices in digital publishing, specifically for small academic presses. Through surveys and a workshop of key stakeholder groups (press directors, college administrators, humanities faculty, and library/technology center directors), we found a strong investment in the "gold standard" of double- or single-blind peer review. Working within the current academic publishing structure (including publishing in print) was a priority, even to presses and faculty members who were actively exploring digital publishing and open access models. On closer inspection, we realized that the various stakeholders valued the current peer review process for different reasons. And we found that the value of peer review goes beyond vetting the quality of scholarship and manuscript content. Based on these findings, we considered ways to obtain these benefits within the current academic structure through innovative peer review processes. At the same time, we looked for ways of offsetting potential risks associated with these alternative methods. We considered cost effective ways to accommodate the needs of the disparate constituencies involved in academic publishing while allowing room for digital publishing. While our findings focus primarily on small academic presses, they also have significant implications for the open access community.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Preservation, Trust and Continuing Access for e-Journals

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preservation, Trust and Continuing Access for e-Journals.

Here's an excerpt:

This report discusses current developments and issues which libraries, publishers, intermediaries and service providers are facing in the area of digital preservation, trust and continuing access for e-journals. It also includes generic lessons and recommendations on outsourcing and trust learnt in this field of interest to the wider digital preservation community. It is not solely focused on technology, and covers relevant legal, economic and service issues.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Cost Differentials between E-Books and Print in Academic Libraries"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "Cost Differentials between E-Books and Print in Academic Libraries."

Here's an excerpt:

A survey conducted at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) has confirmed for academic libraries the work of Gray and Copeland on e-books being more expensive than print for public libraries. For AUM, the mean cost for e-books are significantly higher than for the print counterpart of those titles. The cost differentials between the two formats show e-books as being consistently higher than print in initial price. This consistency holds true across all LC classifications, regardless of whether or not the title is published by a university press or a commercial press.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Open Access Movement Grows Up: Taking Stock of a Revolution"

Heather Joseph has published "The Open Access Movement Grows Up: Taking Stock of a Revolution" in a special issue on open access of PLOS Biology.

Here's an excerpt:

Overall, the story of the OA movement over the past ten years has been one of demonstrable progress. To be sure, the road has not been a smooth one. There have been stumbles, wrong turns, false starts, and bruising battles, particularly in the policy arena. But if we weigh the indicators of progress made by the OA movement against the intensity and complexity of the obstacles it has faced in the first decade, there's reason for great optimism as we head into the next ten years.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Publishing Priorities of Biomedical Research Funders"

Ellen Collins has published "Publishing Priorities of Biomedical Research Funders" in BMJ Open.

Here's an excerpt:

Publicly funded and large biomedical research funders are committed to open access publishing and are pleased with recent developments which have stimulated growth in this area. Smaller charitable funders are supportive of the aims of open access, but are concerned about the practical implications for their budgets and their funded researchers. Across the board, biomedical research funders are turning their attention to other priorities for sharing research outputs, including data, protocols and negative results. Further work is required to understand how smaller funders, including charitable funders, can support open access.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Open Access Clauses in Publishers’ Licenses: Current State and Lessons Learned

COAR has released Open Access Clauses in Publishers' Licenses: Current State and Lessons Learned.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As Open Access (OA) policies and laws are being adopted world-wide, the scholarly community is shifting its efforts from advocacy towards practical implementation and support. One of the major routes for making articles open access is through OA repositories. However the variety and lack of clarity of publishers' policies regarding article deposit can be a significant barrier to author compliance of OA policies.

In order to overcome this barrier, some organizations have successfully negotiated authors' or deposit rights with publishers in the context of purchasing content licenses. This report documents the existing OA licensing language that has been implemented by organizations around the world and presents some suggestions for their successful adoption. The report concludes that OA clauses offer a feasible option for institutions to address some of the obstacles to article deposit into repositories.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Library Publishing Directory

The Library Publishing Coalition has released the Library Publishing Directory.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Published in October 2013, the Library Publishing Directory provides a snapshot of the publishing activities of 115 academic and research libraries, including information about the number and types of publications they produce, the services they offer authors, how they are staffed and funded, and the future plans of institutions that are engaged in this growing field. . . .

Specifically it is hoped that this Directory will:

  • Introduce all readers to the emerging field of library publishing and help articulate its unique characteristics as a distinctive "publishing field."
  • Facilitate collaboration among library publishers and other publishing entities, especially the university presses and learned societies that share their values.
  • Alert authors of scholarly content to a range of potential publishing partners dedicated to supporting their experimentation with new forms of scholarly communication and open access business models.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

OAPEN-NL: A Project Exploring Open Access Monograph Publishing in the Netherlands

SURF has released OAPEN-NL: A Project Exploring Open Access Monograph Publishing in the Netherlands.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Between June 2011 and November 2012, fifty Open Access monographs in various subject areas were published in Open Access by nine participating publishers. For every Open Access title, the publishers provided a similar title that was published in the conventional way. Data were collected about usage, sales and costs, to study the effect of Open Access on monographs. OAPEN-NL consisted of a quantitative and a qualitative research component, measuring the effects of Open Access publishing and the perceptions and expectations of publishers and authors.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Mandates and the Contributions of Open Genomic Data"

Jingfeng Xia has published "Mandates and the Contributions of Open Genomic Data" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This research attempts to seek changing patterns of raw data availability and their correlations with implementations of open mandate policies. With a list of 13,785 journal articles whose authors archived datasets in a popular biomedical data repository after these articles were published in journals, this research uses regression analysis to test the correlations between data contributions and mandate implementations. It finds that both funder-based and publisher-based mandates have a strong impact on scholars' likelihood to contribute to open data repositories. Evidence also suggests that like policies have changed the habit of authors in selecting publishing venues: open access journals have been apparently preferred by those authors whose projects are sponsored by the federal government agencies, and these journals are also highly ranked in the biomedical fields. Various stakeholders, particularly institutional administrators and open access professionals, may find the findings of this research helpful for adjusting data management policies to increase the number of quality free datasets and enhance data usability.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"A Cross Disciplinary Study of Link Decay and the Effectiveness of Mitigation Techniques"

Jason Hennessey and Steven Xijin Ge have published "A Cross Disciplinary Study of Link Decay and the Effectiveness of Mitigation Techniques" in BMC Bioinformatics.

Here's an excerp:

We accessed 14,489 unique web pages found in the abstracts within Thomson Reuters' Web of Science citation index that were published between 1996 and 2010 and found that the median lifespan of these web pages was 9.3 years with 62% of them being archived. Survival analysis and logistic regression were used to find significant predictors of URL lifespan. The availability of a web page is most dependent on the time it is published and the top-level domain names. Similar statistical analysis revealed biases in current solutions: the Internet Archive favors web pages with fewer layers in the Universal Resource Locator (URL) while WebCite is significantly influenced by the source of publication. We also created a prototype for a process to submit web pages to the archives and increased coverage of our list of scientific webpages in the Internet Archive and WebCite by 22% and 255%, respectively.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Seer of Science Publishing"

Tania Rabesandratana has published "The Seer of Science Publishing" in a special issue of Science on "Communication in Science: Pressures and Predators".

Here's an excerpt:

"Nobody reads journals," says science publisher Vitek Tracz, who has made a fortune from journals. "People read papers." Tracz sees a grim future for what has been the mainstay of scientific communication, the peer-reviewed print journal.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Altmetrics Bibliography

Digital Scholarship has released the Altmetrics Bibliography, which includes over 50 selected English-language articles and technical reports that are useful in understanding altmetrics.

The "altmetrics" concept is still evolving. In "The Altmetrics Collection," Jason Priem, Paul Groth, and Dario Taraborelli define altmetrics as follows:

Altmetrics is the study and use of scholarly impact measures based on activity in online tools and environments. The term has also been used to describe the metrics themselves—one could propose in plural a "set of new altmetrics." Altmetrics is in most cases a subset of both scientometrics and webometrics; it is a subset of the latter in that it focuses more narrowly on scholarly influence as measured in online tools and environments, rather than on the Web more generally.

Sources have been published from January 2001 through September 2013.

The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, italicized links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?"

College & Research Libraries has released a preprint of "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences?"

Here's an excerpt:

In academia, there is a growing acceptance of sharing the final electronic version of graduate work, such as a thesis or dissertation, in an online university repository. Though previous studies have shown that journal editors are willing to consider manuscripts derived from electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), faculty advisors and graduate students continue to raise concerns that online discoverability of ETDs negatively impact future opportunities to publish those findings. The current study investigated science journal policies on open access ETDs and found that more than half of the science journals contacted (51.4%) reported that manuscripts derived from openly accessible ETDs are welcome for submission and an additional 29.1% would accept revised ETDs under certain conditions.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations"

Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert, and Lawrence Lessig have self-archived "Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

We document a serious problem of reference rot: more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs found within U.S. Supreme Court opinions do not link to the originally cited information.

Given that, we propose a solution for authors and editors of new scholarship that involves libraries undertaking the distributed, long-term preservation of link contents.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"A Look at Altmetrics and Its Growing Significance to Research Libraries"

Emily Puckett Rodgers and Sarah Barbrow have self-archived "A Look at Altmetrics and Its Growing Significance to Research Libraries" in Deep Blue.

Here's an excerpt:

This document serves as an informational review of the emerging field and practices of alternative metrics or altmetrics. It is intended to be used by librarians and faculty members in research libraries and universities to better understand the trends and challenges associated with altmetrics in higher education. It is also intended to be used by research libraries to offer guidance on how to participate in shaping this emerging field.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Green OA Needed in UK: Open Access: Fifth Report of Session 2013-14

The House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee has released Open Access: Fifth Report of Session 2013-14.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Government's commitment to increasing access to published research findings, and its desire to achieve full open access, are welcome, says the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in a Report published today. However, whilst Gold open access is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully open access world is a mistake, says the Report.

The Report calls on the Government and RCUK to reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Diamond Model of Open Access Publishing: Why Policy Makers, Scholars, Universities, Libraries, Labour Unions and the Publishing World Need to Take Non-Commercial, Non-Profit Open Access Serious"

Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval have published "The Diamond Model of Open Access Publishing: Why Policy Makers, Scholars, Universities, Libraries, Labour Unions and the Publishing World Need to Take Non-Commercial, Non-Profit Open Access Serious" in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique: Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society.

Here's an excerpt:

In the Diamond Open Access Model, not-for-profit, non-commercial organizations, associations or networks publish material that is made available online in digital format, is free of charge for readers and authors and does not allow commercial and for-profit re-use.

The fact that Diamond Open Access (DOA) has a digital format does not hinder that it is also made available in the form of printed publications in addition. We consider it as part of the model that publishers can charge for the actual printing costs without making monetary profits, but provide the digital version without charges. Publication "free of charge" means that neither authors nor individual readers nor institutions such as libraries have to pay for obtaining access to the literature published under the Diamond Open Access Model. Also authors or their institutions do not have to pay publication fees, article processing charges or other fees for getting articles published.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Draft Policy on Open Access for Data and Information

The EU e-infrastructure coordination pro-iBiosphere project has released the Draft Policy on Open Access for Data and Information.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The document addresses legal issues that hamper an integrative system for managing biodiversity knowledge in Europe. It describes the importance for scientists to have access to documents and data in order to synthesize disparate information and to facilitate data mining (or similar research techniques). It explores some aspects of copyright and database protection that influence access to and re-use of biodiversity data and information and refers to exceptions and limitations of copyright or database protection provided for within the relevant EU Directives.

The scientists also suggest that publicly funded institutions should refrain from claiming intellectual property rights for biodiversity data and information published or made accessible by them. Re-use of biodiversity data and information for research purposes should be allowed without any form of authorization. The only claims that publicly funded institutions should make are to ensure users fully acknowledge the sources of information that they rely on.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Publishing Delay in Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Journals"

Bo-Christer Björk and David Solomon have self-archived "The Publishing Delay in Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Journals."

Here's an excerpt:

Using a stratified random sample we studied average publishing delays in 2700 papers published in 135 journals sampled from the Scopus citation index. The shortest overall delays occur in science technology and medical (STM) fields and the longest in social science, arts/humanities and business/economics. Business/economics with a delay of 18 months took twice as long as chemistry with a 9 month average delay. Analysis of the variance indicated that by far the largest amount of variance in the time between submission and acceptance was among articles within a journal as compared with journals, disciplines or the size of the journal. For the time between acceptance and publication most of the variation in delay can be accounted for by differences between specific journals.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Inevitability of Open Access: Update One"

David W. Lewis has self-archived "The Inevitability of Open Access: Update One" in IUPUIScholarWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper updates the author's 2012 article, "The Inevitability of Open Access" with recently published data. As a result it is possible to predict that Gold OA could account for 50 percent of the scholarly journal articles sometime between 2018 and 2020, and 90 percent of articles as soon as 2021 and more conservatively by 2024.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Mining for Gold: Identifying the Librarians’ Toolkit for Managing Hybrid Open Access"

Jill Emery has published "Mining for Gold: Identifying the Librarians' Toolkit for Managing Hybrid Open Access" in the latest issue of Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2012, the author and colleagues surveyed eight publishers that had been involved with the Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (PEER) project to learn about the state of hybrid journal publishing. At the same time, one of the key questions asked to a panel of librarians at the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers May 2012 Meeting was what role librarians would play if scholarly publishing shortly went open access (OA) across the board? From the survey of the market, and the rapid OA developments in the UK and EU that include hybrid OA, a picture has begun to emerge of what roles librarians can play with regard to supporting hybrid OA publishing at their institutions. This article focuses on developing new partnerships within a given institution, looks at new budgetary models and the tracking of local scholarship creation. Current pertinent standards are highlighted.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Science-Metrix Releases Three Reports on Open Access

Science-Metrix has released three reports on open access: Proportion of Open Access Peer-Reviewed Papers at the European and World Levels—2004-2011, Open Data Access Policies and Strategies in the European Research Area and Beyond, and Open Access Strategies in the European Research Area.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The first report measures the availability of scholarly publications in 22 fields of knowledge across the European Research Area, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States, between 2004 and 2011. . . .

The second report, focusing on open access policies, showed a growing trend in the adoption of such policies by governments and other funding bodies. . . .

The third report found that open access to scientific data is less developed and more difficult to implement than open access to scholarly publications, both in terms of policies and infrastructure.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"A Framework for Systematic Analysis of Open Access Journals and its Application in Software Engineering and Information Systems"

Daniel Graziotin, Xiaofeng Wang, and Pekka Abrahamsson have self-archived "A Framework for Systematic Analysis of Open Access Journals and its Application in Software Engineering and Information Systems" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

This study empirically demonstrated that high publication charges are not sufficiently justified by the publishers, which often lack transparency and may prevent authors from adopting Open Access. It showed that there are no features provided by journals with publication fees, which are not offered by those not requiring charges to authors. The article warned the authors to investigate which agreements have been signed by the journal publisher in order to ensure visibility to accepted papers. It also raised important concerns like that the articles of three fourths of Open Access journals in Software Engineering and Information Systems may be in danger of disappearing if the journals lose their content. Last but not least, this study showed that Open Access journals and publishers in the fields of Software Engineering and Information Systems have a significant margin of improvement regarding the perceived trustworthiness.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

e-InfraNet: ‘Open’ as the Default Modus Operandi for Research and Higher Education

The the e-InfraNet project has released e-InfraNet: 'Open' as the Default Modus Operandi for Research and Higher Education.

Here's an excerpt:

The basis for the policy framework is an overview of the current 'Open' landscape outlining contexts, drivers, achievements and effects of the various 'opens', as well as a number of common issues. Because of this commonality, coordinating the vision and approach can benefit all 'opens' individually, and contribute to the development of 'Open' as the default modus operandi for the research and higher education sectors. A pragmatic approach to the implementation of the vision will ensure the necessary flexibility to adjust for the diversity in the various 'opens' themselves and in their geographic and disciplinary contexts.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Elsevier Buys Woodhead Publishing, including Chandos Publishing

Elsevier has bought Woodhead Publishing Limited, including Chandos Publishing. Chandos is a major library and information science book publisher.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced it has acquired Woodhead Publishing Limited, an award-winning, UK-based publisher known for its high-quality content in the fields of materials science, food science, engineering, energy & environmental technology, textile technology and biomedicine. The acquisition of Woodhead Publishing also includes Chandos Publishing, which is known for its strong publishing program in library information science and Asian studies.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap