Category: Publishing

University of Michigan Press Launches Maize Books, a Nontraditional Press with an Open Access Option

The University of Michigan Press has launched Maize Books, which will offer an open access publishing option.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The University of Michigan Press, a unit of Michigan Publishing, is committed to producing and disseminating high-quality scholarship. As part of that commitment, we're proud to announce Maize Books, a new Michigan Publishing imprint. This imprint represents a lean, responsive model for publishing scholarly and creative works. We understand that scholarship can take many forms, and that traditional academic publishers arena't always interested in items that don't fit the typical categories of a "monograph" or a "journal article." . . .

The University of Michigan Press has the tools and the expertise to help you distribute your scholarship, regardless of its form, and we offer methods to make your work discoverable, accessible, and preservable for the long term. In keeping with our mission to explore new forms of scholarly publishing, Maize Books titles will be evaluated by the acquiring editors and Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Press. They will undergo peer review when desirable, including experimental forms of peer review designed to suit the requirements of individual publications.

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Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Adopts Open Access Policy

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In accordance with their open access resolution, Mailman School researchers commit to having their published scholarly articles included in Columbia's digital repository, Academic Commons, where content is freely available to the public, or in another repository, such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, that makes the research publicly available. . . .

The resolution covers all scholarly journal articles as of May 1. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, permitting the researcher to request that an article that appears in a journal that insists on exclusivity not have that piece included in the repository.

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"Hot Times for Open Access"

Walt Crawford has published "Hot Times for Open Access" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

These are hot times for open access. Maybe not a tipping point, certainly not where everything will be in a couple of years, but more action—and even more progress—than I'd seen in a while.

What we have here is a hybrid: part catching up with three vibrant months in the development of OA, part supplemental material for my OA precon-ference in Vancouver, Washington. This issue ap-pears slightly after that preconference—but attendees got early access to it. That hybrid nature may affect the organization, always sketchy in any case. It also means a few things are noted that wouldn't qualify as new material.

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"Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications"

Science Europe has released "Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications." Science Europe is an "association of 51 European national research organisations."

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore the Science Europe Member Organisations:

  • will continue to support any valid approaches to achieve Open Access, including those commonly referred to as the "green" and "gold" routes; . . . .
  • stress that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository, and made available in Open Access in all cases no later than six months following first publication. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the delay may need to be longer than six months but must be no more than 12 months; . . .
  • require that funding of Open Access publication fees is part of a transparent cost structure, incorporating a clear picture of publishers' service costs;. . . .
  • stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent "double dipping" and increase cost transparency;

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Library Copyright Alliance Files Brief in Georgia State University E-Reserves Case

The Library Copyright Alliance has filed a brief in the Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P. Becker et al. e-reserves copyright case that was prepared by the EFF and Jonathan Band.

Here's an excerpt from the EFF announcement:

In the amicus brief filed today, EFF urges the appeals court to see what the district court saw: the vast majority of uses at issue were protected fair uses. Moreover, as a practical matter, the licensing market the publishers say they want to create for e-reserves will never emerge—not least because libraries can't afford to participate in it. Even assuming that libraries could pay such fees, requiring this would thwart the purpose of copyright by undermining the overall market for scholarship. Given libraries' stagnant or shrinking budgets, any new spending for licenses must be reallocated from existing expenditures, and the most likely source of reallocated funds is the budget for collections. An excerpt license requirement thus will harm the market for new scholarly works, as the works assigned for student reading are likely to be more established pieces written by well-known academics. Libraries' total investment in scholarship will be the same but resources will be diverted away from new works to redundant payments for existing ones, in direct contradiction of copyright's purpose of "promot[ing] progress."

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"The Winds of Change: Periodicals Price Survey 2013"

Stephen Bosch and Kittie Henderson have published "The Winds of Change: Periodicals Price Survey 2013" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This year, the serials pricing data indicates that prices are increasing at about the same rate as last year. Increases seemed to have plateaued at about 6% for 2013. Data from the merged ISI indexes shows a 6% increase for 2013, unchanged from 2012. EBSCO's MasterFILE Premier and Academic Search Premier show similar results: average prices for titles in MSP increased 5% for 2013, while average prices for titles in ASP increased 6% in 2013, the same increase as for 2012. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), on the other hand, advanced 1.7% for 2012, which means serials inflation continues to far exceed general inflationary pressures and library budget adjustments.

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"House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access"

The UK Parliament has released an uncorrected transcript of "House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access."

Here's an excerpt (below comments by Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access, Reed Elsevier):

With the Government's policy that we are all implementing, we will see an increase in the amount of hybrid open-access publishing done at scale. For the open-access components of that hybrid publishing, it is clear that the costs are sustainable through the article-publishing charges. For the subscription part of those titles, the costs continue to need to be covered through the subscription model. If the content is freely available too quickly, there will be no need for libraries to continue to pay those subscription costs. While we have not seen clear evidence of an undermining or cancellation of subscriptions at this point, there is evidence, such as that Audrey referred to, that librarians are watching this space very closely and are very mindful of it. We have also seen that where content is deposited at scale, there can be an erosion of transactional revenues-the pay-per-view business model. Those are very modest components of most of our revenue streams, but again it is a potential early-warning sign.

See also the video of the session.

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Article-Level Metrics—A SPARC Primer

SPARC has released Article-Level Metrics—A SPARC Primer.

Here's an excerpt:

Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individual articles are being discussed, shared, and used. ALMs can be employed in conjunction with existing metrics, which have traditionally focused on the long-term impact of a collection of articles (i.e., a journal) based on the number of citations generated. This primer is designed to give campus leaders and other interested parties an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities, and how they can be used in the tenure and promotion process.

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"Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?"

Bo-Christer Björk has published "Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change. A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA. Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

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Perception Analysis of Scholarly E-Books in the Humanities at the Collegiate Level

ACLS Humanities E-Book has released Perception Analysis of Scholarly E-Books in the Humanities at the Collegiate Level.

Here's an excerpt:

At present, there is significant market confusion regarding e-book selections in the academic marketplace, particularly in the humanities. University acquisition librarians, unsure of what the offerings actually are, have found themselves unsure of where to allocate funds, which has resulted in the postponement of e-book purchases. This paper provides a current assessment of the status of e-book offerings in the humanities.

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ACRL Makes Entire College & Research Libraries Archive Freely Available

ACRL has made the entire College & Research Libraries archive freely available.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"Digitizing the archives of the premier research journal for academic librarianship provides a tremendous new asset for our profession," said ACRL President Steven J. Bell of Temple University. "Creating and sharing this rich resource demonstrates ACRL's ongoing commitment to promote and deliver on the promise of open access. It is a treasure trove of content where the academic librarians of today and tomorrow will delve into our history, understand how we evolved and make new discoveries that could stimulate groundbreaking research and innovation of real benefit to academic librarianship."

C&RL archival contents from 1939 through 1996 were digitized through the generous volunteer efforts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. The library's Digital Content Creation department performed scanning and metadata creation for the approximately 340 back file issues of the journal in 2011 and 2012. The digitized files were added to the journal's online presence with the financial assistance of the ACRL Friends Fund.

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"Recent Developments in Open Access"

Arthur Sale has self-archived "Recent Developments in Open Access" in UTAS ePrints.

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access to the world's research literature has been an obvious development since the emergence of the Internet. To everyone, it appears clear that the costs of disseminating research could drop dramatically. Yet, progress in achieving it is strangely slow. This paper explores recent developments in open access, including:

  • The recent Australian NH&MRC and ARC mandates for open access deposit in university repositories, and how universities are responding to them
  • The UK&'s Finch Report, and Lord Krebs&' Committee Report
  • Recent USA and German developments
  • Gradual growth in open access journals, and the challenge for universities and their libraries of transferring reader-side fees (subscriptions) to author-side fees (publication charges)
  • The emergence of submission fees so that highly selective journals need not transfer all the costs of rejections onto successful articles
  • Fake conferences and journals which exist only to extract attendance or publication fees
  • Newer publishing models
  • The recent emergence of a third route to open access based on social networking.

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Sustainability of Open Access Services—Report Phase 3: The Collective Provision of Open Access Resources

SPARC has released Sustainability of Open Access Services—Report Phase 3: The Collective Provision of Open Access Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is the third in a series which examines issues relating to the economic sustainability of critical infrastructure services that support the operation and growth of open-access dissemination of scholarly and scientific research. This report is intended to guide funders and project planners in constructing and coordinating collective funding models capable of supporting open-access infrastructure resources. The report:

  • reviews the fundamentals of robust sustainability modeling (Section 2);
  • outlines the economic and institutional issues that confront those seeking to sustain free infrastructure services and discusses the implications of free models for an initiative's ability to provide an optimal level of service (Section 3); and
  • identifies strategies for overcoming institutional free ridership in the design of funding models and describes practical mechanisms for coordinating the collective provision of infrastructure services (Section 4).

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"The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Germany"

Thomas Eger, Marc Scheufen, and Daniel Meierrieks have self-archived "The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Germany" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

We discuss the results of a survey conducted in fall 2012 and covering 2,151 researchers in Germany. 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. Our results reveal that the relevance of OA within a discipline may explain why researchers from particular disciplines do (not) publish OA. Besides, several aspects like copyright law, age, profession or the inherent reward system of a discipline play a role. As a consequence, the paper emphasizes that a "one-size-fits-all" approach as promoted by most recent policy approaches is little promising for providing an effective framework for shaping the future of scholarly publishing.

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Open Monograph Press, Release 1.0

The Public Knowledge Project has released the Open Monograph Press, Release 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

OMP is designed to assist university presses, learned societies, and scholar-publishers interested in publishing scholarly books in print-on-demand and multiple electronic formats, whether on an open access or purchase basis. OMP is intended to:

  • Handle edited volumes, with different authors for each chapter;
  • Involve editors, authors, reviewers, designers, indexers, and others in book production;
  • See submission through multiple rounds of both internal and external reviews;
  • Utilize industry standard ONIX for bookseller metadata requirements (e.g., Amazon);
  • Create document libraries for submissions, recording contracts, permissions, etc.;
  • Handle thumbnail covers in Catalog, as well as Spotlight features; and
  • Enable Series Editors to see books through review to publication.

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Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment

The the Association of College & Research Libraries has released Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment.

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper, we identify three intersections between information literacy and scholarly communications that have developed as a result of the effects of the digital age on scholarly publishing and on teaching information research skills:

  1. ) economics of the distribution of scholarship (including access to scholarship, the changing nature of scholarly publishing, and the education of students to be knowledgeable content consumers and content creators);
  2. ) digital literacies (including teaching new technologies and rights issues, and the emergence of multiple types of non-textual content);
  3. ) our changing roles (including the imperative to contribute to the building of new infrastructures for scholarship, and deep involvement with creative approaches to teaching).

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University of Rhode Island Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Rhode Island has adopted an open access policy.

This year, Amherst College, the College of Wooster, Connecticut College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Library Faculty, and Wellesley College have all adopted open access policies.

(See Peter Suber's Google+ announcements of these policies.)

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Entire Editorial Board of Journal of Library Administration Resigns

There have been several reports stating that the editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration has resigned. The Journal of Library Administration is published by Taylor & Francis, which publishes a number of library and information science journals.

Here's an excerpt from Brian Mathews's "So I'm Editing This Journal Issue and . . ." in which he quotes an e-mail from Damon Jaggars:

"The Board believes that the licensing terms in the Taylor & Francis author agreement are too restrictive and out-of-step with the expectations of authors in the LIS community."

"A large and growing number of current and potential authors to JLA have pushed back on the licensing terms included in the Taylor & Francis author agreement. Several authors have refused to publish with the journal under the current licensing terms."

"Authors find the author agreement unclear and too restrictive and have repeatedly requested some form of Creative Commons license in its place."

"After much discussion, the only alternative presented by Taylor & Francis tied a less restrictive license to a $2995 per article fee to be paid by the author. As you know, this is not a viable licensing option for authors from the LIS community who are generally not conducting research under large grants."

"Thus, the Board came to the conclusion that it is not possible to produce a quality journal under the current licensing terms offered by Taylor & Francis and chose to collectively resign."

The Editorial Board members are:

Damon Jaggars (Editor)
Kristin Antelman
Chris Bourg
Lisa German
Fred M. Heath
Paula T. Kaufman
Deanna B. Marcum
Sarah C. Michalak
James G. Neal
Ann J. Wolpert
Makoto Nakamoto
Stephen Town

Read more about it at "Editorial Board Resigns from T&F Journal to Protest Restrictive Licensing," "The Journal of Library Administration," and "My Short Stint on the JLA Editorial Board."

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"Beyond TEI: Returning the Text to the Reader"

Christian Wittern has published "Beyond TEI: Returning the Text to the Reader" in the latest issue of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative.

Here's an excerpt:

Much research and effort has been invested in creating a versatile format for digital texts and the TEI is now widely used in many communities. Much less consolidated thought has been spend to publish and distribute digital texts in ways that are most useful to scholars. To remedy this situation, this paper proposes new, additional publication forms for digital texts through distributed version control systems. This will allow publication and maintainence of several different versions of a text. In some respects, this will be similar to publishing a college or paperback edition of the text established in a critical edition. In addition to this, the user of a text published through such a system can subscribe to later changes or corrections of an edition. The architectural model proposed in this paper tries to contribute to a fundamental protocol that could form the base for applications serving the long-term needs of research and scholarship.

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eBook Use and Acceptance in an Undergraduate Institution

Springer has released eBook Use and Acceptance in an Undergraduate Institution.

Here's an excerpt :

The survey finds high use of eBooks at Wellesley College, with 70% of the respondents indicating they have used eBooks. Other recent international surveys of eBook use have shown 52-64% of students or faculty responding that they have used eBooks (Figure 10). Within the general U.S. population 21% of adults reported having used eBooks in 2011. Some eBook use by Wellesley students and faculty may be non-academic, leisure reading, but half of Wellesley's eBook users report having used eBooks from the Wellesley College Library's collection.

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"F1000 Recommendations as a New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison with Citations"

Ludo Waltman and Rodrigo Costas have self-archived "F1000 Recommendations as a New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison with Citations" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

F1000 is a post-publication peer review service for biological and medical research. F1000 aims to recommend important publications in the biomedical literature, and from this perspective F1000 could be an interesting tool for research evaluation. By linking the complete database of F1000 recommendations to the Web of Science bibliographic database, we are able to make a comprehensive comparison between F1000 recommendations and citations. We find that about 2% of the publications in the biomedical literature receive at least one F1000 recommendation. Recommended publications on average receive 1.30 recommendations, and over 90% of the recommendations are given within half a year after a publication has appeared. There turns out to be a clear correlation between F1000 recommendations and citations. However, the correlation is relatively weak, at least weaker than the correlation between journal impact and citations.

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"SSRN and Law Journals—Rivals or Allies?"

Ian Ramsay has self-archived "SSRN and Law Journals—Rivals or Allies?" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The author identifies and evaluates the respective merits of publication in law journals and publication on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)—the largest open access repository for legal scholarship. This evaluation leads to the conclusion that at this stage of the evolution of law journals and SSRN, there are advantages in authors publishing both in journals and on SSRN. However, publication on SSRN can have particular advantages for authors in smaller countries.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

De Gruyter Adopts Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND License for Open Access Content

De Gruyter has adopted the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license for its open access content.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Effective immediately De Gruyter and Versita will be publishing all Open Access content under the uniform application of Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. This means that publications may be copied, disseminated, and otherwise made public by users under the following conditions:

  • The name of the author/copyright owner must be mentioned in the manner requested by the author/copyright owner.
  • The publication and its content may not be used in its Open Access format for commercial purposes.
  • The publication and its content may not be edited, modified, or otherwise changed. . . .

In 2012 De Gruyter and Versita published over 10,000 Open Access articles in some 300 journals. Since 2009 a large number of books and book chapters have also been published under the Open Access standard.

| A Look Back at 22 Years as an Open Access Publisher | Digital Scholarship |

Open Access: Presentations from the Academy of Social Sciences’ Implementing Finch Conference Published

The Academy of Social Sciences has released a Professional Briefings issue that contains the presentations from its two-day Implementing Finch conference.

Here's an excerpt:

Moving to the recommendations, Dame Janet wished to correct some misunderstandings. The main recommendation was for a mixed economy including both the 'author pays' and subscription models of publishing. The report did not recommend a rapid move to Gold open access ('author pays') and anticipated a mixed economy for the foreseeable future. However the report did recommend that the policy direction should be set towards Gold open access and envisaged the balance between the two models of publishing would shift over time.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (paperback, PDF file, and XHTML website; over 1,100 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

EFF and Public Knowlege’s Comments on Copyright Office’s Orphan Works Inquiry

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have released their comments on the Notice of Inquiry by the Copyright Office for comments regarding orphan works, Docket No. 2012-12.

Here's an excerpt:

A range of options, none of them exclusive, can alleviate the problems created by the prevalence of orphan works. Even in the absence of more systemic change that can stem the growing number of works whose copyright information disappears into obscurity, the application of fair use and legislative work on damages reduction (both for orphan works specifically and for good faith fair uses generally) can allow a variety of users to bring a variety of works to the public. Mass digitization projects promise to be a part of that process, and should be able to proceed in many cases under current law. However, more ambitious plans for broader, publicly available MDPs could be incentivized to serve the public interest with additional damages limitations, attended by public interest conditions. We

| Google Books Bibliography (XHTML website; over 320 entries) | Digital Scholarship |