Scholarly Books – DigitalKoans

Ebook from SciELO: We So Loved Open Access

In this book, the origins and evolution of the open access movement are explored from the perspective of individuals who actively participated. These pioneers of open access shared their experiences, successes, collaborations, and visions for the future on the occasion of SciELO’s 25th anniversary. The book pays tribute to their pioneering efforts and the crucial role played by SciELO in supporting open access and spotlighting regions of the world that were previously underrepresented in global academic communication. This celebration demonstrates how SciELO firmly placed these regions on the map of global academic communication and contributed to strengthening the open access movement throughout its successful journey.

https://tinyurl.com/4v2f9dzk

"Supporting Open Access for 20 Years: Five Issues That Have Slowed the Transition to Full and Immediate OA"

Current estimates suggest that more than 50% of the world’s research articles are published open access and that there are around 20,000 fully OA journals. Data also indicates that publishing OA is, on average, cheaper than publishing in subscription journals. For example, an analysis by Delta Think shows that around 45% of all scholarly articles were published as paid-for open access in 2021, but this accounted for just under 15% of the total journal publishing revenue.

However, after two decades of discussions, advocacy, policy development and strategy, can this level of OA be considered a success, particularly when half of all research articles published today is hidden behind a paywall? I think not.

https://tinyurl.com/2s396wh7

Knowledge Exchange Report: "Alternative Publishing Platforms. What Have We Learnt?"

From our sample, no pattern emerged of any discipline appearing to be more innovative than any others, and indeed most alternative platforms seemed to be open to use by all fields.

Most platforms within this survey were replacing the function of existing publishers in publishing research articles, books and conference proceedings. There was some innovation around peer review. Considering both of these aspects, only a small group of fewer than 10 of the 45 platforms should probably be described as truly exploring "alternative ways" of doing things.

Only 11 of the platforms said that they solely concentrated on the methodological quality of the work, 2 solely on the impact of the work. Most said it was up to the editors to decide on criteria for assessment — the platforms themselves were agnostic. This is an area where further work might help elucidate the philosophies of different platforms when it comes to research assessment.

https://tinyurl.com/59eknvy6

"Promoting Open Access in Research-Performing Organizations: Spheres of Activity, Challenges, and Future Action Areas "

Open access (OA) has become a critical issue in science policy and affects a wide range of activities in universities and research labs. Research-performing organizations (RPOs), defined as publicly funded universities and research institutions, face significant challenges in shaping the OA transformation. This article examines the spheres of activity available to RPOs for shaping the OA transformation, using a categorization of 22 spheres of activity related to OA. These spheres of activity include strategy and communication, services and infrastructures, business relationships with publishers, and collaborations. Current challenges and future action areas in promoting OA are also described, providing support for RPOs in handling OA and highlighting key issues. The categorization can serve as a tool for systematically assessing OA activities at RPOs and shows that OA is a cross-cutting issue in these organizations. Collaboration on OA activities, both within and beyond organizations, presents a challenge. To effectively promote OA, it is crucial to strengthen the interaction between funding agencies and RPOs. Libraries are critical stakeholders, playing a vital role in advancing OA at the local, national, and international levels in partnership with RPO management and other partners in faculty, administration, and information technology.

https://tinyurl.com/s3xepnhh

Ithaka S+R: Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study

Key Insights

OA titles can generate significant print revenue. While there may be some tradeoff between OA editions and print sales, publishers can produce print sales revenue from their OA lists. Publishers may wish to take such revenue into account in considering business models for OA publication today.

OA titles can generate meaningful digital revenue. When made available through consumer channels such as Kindle, ebooks that are available openly on other platforms can in parallel generate meaningful consumer sales. Publishers may benefit from giving focused consideration specific to OA monographs to their pricing and windowing tactics for such channels.

Outliers are essential. A small number of OA titles sell particularly well, just as is historically the case in traditional monograph sales models. Publishers bearing this in mind will be thinking in terms of the sustainability and growth of their lists overall rather than each title individually.

Titles with both hard and soft cover formats generate the most revenue. This may be the result of format choices publishers based on market forecasting, so from our data we cannot be sure that there is a causal relationship. Still, publishers may wish to give additional attention to their format strategy for OA books.

Sales vary widely by field. History, arts, and humanities saw lower unit sales while social sciences saw higher unit sales and STEM fields saw the greatest. Publishers may need to pursue different sustainability models for OA books based on their field.

An opportunity to increase print sales? There is currently significant friction for users in navigating from digital to print editions. Publishers and digital distribution platforms should work together to create a more seamless reader experience from digital discoverability of and engagement with the OA version to potential print sales.

https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.319642

"USC Press and University Libraries Launch Open-Access Publishing Platform"

The University of South Carolina Press and University Libraries are embarking on a new collaborative venture: Open Carolina, an open-access publishing platform. . . .

Many ventures into open scholarly resources are planned as temporary pilot operations because they are funded by time-limited grant pools. Thanks to consistent funding from the Libraries, Open Carolina has a sustainable model that will allow scholars with limited publishing funds to share their research via the platform, partially or totally foregoing associated fees. In its inaugural year, the Libraries aim to fund four full-length books and support is in place to make the program sustainable for years to come and allow Open Carolina to grow steadily.

Open Carolina will offer opportunities to a wide range of scholars and researchers regardless of university affiliation.

https://tinyurl.com/yn7zd3ta

"Global Visibility of Publications through Digital Object Identifiers"

This brief research report analyzes the availability of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) worldwide, highlighting the dominance of large publishing houses and the need for unique persistent identifiers to increase the visibility of publications from developing countries. The study reveals that a considerable amount of publications from developing countries are excluded from the global flow of scientific information due to the absence of DOIs, emphasizing the need for alternative publishing models. The authors suggest that the availability of DOIs should receive more attention in scholarly communication and scientometrics, contributing to a necessary debate on DOIs relevant for librarians, publishers, and scientometricians.

https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1207980

"Finding the Right Platform: A Crosswalk of Academy-Owned and Open-Source Digital Publishing Platforms"

A key responsibility for many library publishers is to collaborate with authors to determine the best mechanisms for sharing and publishing research. Librarians are often asked to assist with a wide range of research outputs and publication types, including eBooks, digital humanities (DH) projects, scholarly journals, archival and thematic collections, and community projects. These projects can exist on a variety of platforms both for profit and academy owned. Additionally, over the past decade, more and more academy owned platforms have been created to support both library publishing programs. Library publishers who wish to emphasize open access and open-source publishing can feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of available academy-owned or -affiliated publishing platforms. For many of these platforms, documentation exists but can be difficult to locate and interpret. While experienced users can usually find and evaluate the available resources for a particular platform, this kind of documentation is often less useful to authors and librarians who are just starting a new publishing project and want to determine if a given platform will work for them. Because of the challenges involved in identifying and evaluating the various platforms, we created this comparative crosswalk to help library publishers (and potentially authors) determine which platforms are right for their services and authors’ needs.

https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:59231/

Paywall: "A Study on Copyright Issues of Different Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) Modes"

The paper will explore CDL modes by combing CDL practices and programs from research papers and official website documents of different library organizations. Then, based on legal frameworks of CDL in the US, Canada and the UK which are summarized, copyright issues of CDL modes are analyzed from perspectives of implementing institution, service resources, and usage mode. Finally, some copyright recommendations for sustainable development of CDL are proposed.

https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006231190654

"Generative AI, ChatGPT, and Google Bard: Evaluating the Impact and Opportunities for Scholarly Publishing"

My group within Wiley Partner Solutions designs and develops intelligent services that leverage advanced AI, big data, and cloud technologies to support publishers and researchers in open access and open science environments. To identify both benefits and risks of generative AI for our industry, we tested ChatGPT and Google Bard for authoring, for submission and reviews, for publishing, and for discovery and dissemination. I hope that our findings will inspire you to find fresh ideas for using Generative AI, and will stimulate further conversation about this new and controversial but potentially beneficial tool.

https://tinyurl.com/2y2ue6zr

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) Project: TOME Stakeholder Value Assessment: Final Report

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of University Presses published a final report assessing the success of the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) project. The five-year pilot project engaged with more than 60 university presses and more than 150 open access scholarly works to encourage sustainable digital publication of and public access to scholarly books. The Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME) project was launched in 2018 to publish humanities and social science scholarship on the internet, where these peer-reviewed works can be fully integrated into the larger network of scholarly and scientific research. The final report examines whether the pilot’s community of writers, institutions, libraries, and presses found it useful.

https://tinyurl.com/3wr7wv37

"Will Building LLMs [AI Large Language Models] Become the New Revenue Driver for Academic Publishing?"

In a world where peer-reviewed content holds value for Generative AI companies, the question arises whether content that is locked behind a paywall has greater value than OA content. . . . Will publishers who still have a lot of content locked up, such as IEEE or NEJM, retain the most valuable assets? Will publishers that limit licensing to more restrictive terms such as CC BY-NC and CC BY-NC-ND have revenue streams denied to those exclusively using CC BY licenses? . . . Could authors receive income from their work via a CMO (Collective Management of Copyright) license, regardless of the agreement they have with the publisher?

https://tinyurl.com/zm6u5spc

"MIT Press’s Direct to Open (D20) Achieves Second Year Goal, Opens Access to Eighty-Two New Books in 2023"

Thanks to the support of libraries participating in Direct to Open (D2O), the MIT Press will publish its full list (see below) of 2023 scholarly monographs and edited collections open access on the MIT Press Direct platform. . . .

In its second year, 322 libraries, an increase of 33% from the first year, from around the globe committed to support D2O. Expanding D2O’s international footprint, the Press also entered into all-in agreements with Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Konsortium der sächsischen Hochschulbibliotheken, as well as central licensing and invoicing agreements with Council of Australian University Librarians, Center for Research Libraries; Greater Western Library Alliance, MOBIUS, Northeast Research Libraries, Jisc, Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation, SCELC, and Lyrasis.

https://tinyurl.com/yc7vv3tc

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Powering Research with Dimensions AI Assistant"

Imagine using AI to leverage the power of Dimensions with the click of a button. That’s exactly what you can do with Dimensions AI Assistant: your interaction with the world’s research knowledge is assisted by a powerful AI that takes you beyond keywords to a semantically rich summary with references, fully contextualizing the results and linking them with the literature. Digital Science has announced a closed beta release of Dimensions AI Assistant, which will allow users to achieve their goals quicker by helping them find the most relevant research and receive relevant synposes, leveraging the power of the Dimensions large language model, Dimensions General Science-BERT, and Open AI’s GPT models.

https://tinyurl.com/4w2jfukt

"Elsevier takes Scopus to the Next Level with Generative AI"

Scopus AI will help early-career researchers and seasoned academics alike through:

Summarized views based on Scopus abstracts: Researchers obtain a concise and trustworthy snapshot of any research topic, complete with academic references, reducing lengthy reading time and the risk of hallucinations.

Easy navigation to “Go Deeper Links” for extended exploration: Scopus AI provides relevant queries for further exploration, leading to hidden insights in various research topics.

Natural language queries: Researchers can ask questions about a subject in a natural, conversational manner.

A soon-to-be-added graphical representation, offering new perspectives of interconnected research themes: Scopus AI visually maps search results, offering a comprehensive overview that allows researchers to navigate complex relationships easily.

https://tinyurl.com/27xxj465

"Big Ten Open Books"

Big Ten Open Books connects readers everywhere to fully accessible, trusted books from leading university presses. The first collection of 100 books is on the subject of Gender and Sexuality Studies. The ebooks are free-to-read by anyone with an Internet connection. They are also openly-licensed under Creative Commons licenses which make most of the titles free-to-reuse in any non-commercial way. . . .

The works in this collection have all been previously published by university presses and have undergone a rigorous selection and quality certification process that allows readers and users of this collection to trust the veracity of the content made available. Participating presses are Indiana University Press, Michigan State University Press, Northwestern University Press, Purdue University Press, University of Michigan Press, and University of Wisconsin Press.

https://tinyurl.com/37y66ccw

"Spotlight on: Schol-AR "

Schol-AR transforms standard scientific PDF articles into fully digital entities, enabling the inclusion of interactive digital media and scientific data directly into manuscripts. Schol-AR is designed specifically to provide full digital integration in a manner that benefits the publishers, authors, and readers of the research community. An introductory video can be seen at https://www.Schol-AR.io/demo/

https://tinyurl.com/4yvmc29m

"The Relationship between University Presses, E-Book Vendors, and Academic Libraries: A Platform Theory Analysis"

We investigate the relations among university presses, academic libraries, and e-book vendors, by examining university presses’ perceptions of academic libraries and e-book vendors, and presses’ perceptions of themselves and the university press community. Findings are drawn from one-on-one interviews with 19 participants from 18 different university presses in the United States during 2020–2021. We observe a market structure for HSS e-books where most presses were satisfied with Big Four e-book vendors, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, ProQuest, and JSTOR, and lacked strong incentives to search for new e-book vendors. We find that most presses often treat libraries, including the one from the same institution, as their customers with limited interactions; findings also show university presses’ varied self-imaging, along with a shared perception about the collegiality of the university press community.

https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006231185883

The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy: How Publishers and Platforms Have Reshaped the Way We Read in the Digital Age

This report explains that, while there is nothing new about publishers’ desire to seek novel ways to increase revenues, along with control and surveillance of readers, the new publisher-platform partnership creates a mechanism to align the ebook market with those goals. That new market alignment raises questions about whether these shifts are the best option for readers and institutional book buyers, particularly libraries. It also raises questions about how the newest players in the market — ebook distribution platforms — shape things to align with their own interests.

In order to fully understand the dynamics at play, we interviewed over 30 stakeholders that fill various essential roles in the ebook marketplace, from publishers to platform CEOs to literary agents, librarians, and lawyers. We discussed the priorities, concerns, and constraints that help shape their participation in the ebook marketplace. Our goal was to understand and document how this world looks through their eyes, and synthesize those views into broader conclusions.

https://tinyurl.com/4762bbyv

"Archiving Website-Based References in Academic Papers: Problems Caused by Reference Rot, Potential Solutions and Limitations"

With this background in mind, this paper has three objectives. First, it provides several examples of studies that have attempted to quantify or characterize reference rot of web-based references, and consequences of this phenomenon. Second, we provide a short practical ‘manual’ that would allow academics or editors to manually archive web-based references at the Internet Archive. Third, we assess some technical and practical suggestions for improving the landscape of digital information preservation while taking into account human and technological limitations.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1560

Paywall: The Strategic Marketing of Science, Technology, and Medical Journals: A Business History of a Dynamic Marketplace, 2000–2020

This book analyzes the various economic and marketing strategies utilized by the five major STM commercial scholarly journal publishers since 2000. This period has witnessed tremendous economic, marketing, and technological growth including the migration from a print only to a hybrid publishing format. With this growth, the industry has also seen the rise of open access publishing, copyright challenges by websites such as Sci-Hub, the emergence of sharing platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, as well as the impact of Plan S on publishers, universities, and authors.. . . Scrutinizing the different managerial, marketing, technology, and economic-financial strategies crafted by scholarly journal publishers between 2000-2020, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of the industry’s attempts to identify, understand, cope with, and minimize or defeat the herculean threats to its business model.

https://tinyurl.com/5n6rd8xy

"SSP Conference Debate: AI and the Integrity of Scholarly Publishing"

At the annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing held in Portland, Oregon last month, the closing plenary session was a formal debate on the proposition "Resolved: Artificial intelligence will fatally undermine the integrity of scholarly publishing." Arguing in favor of the proposition was Tim Vines, founder of DataSeer and a Scholarly Kitchen Chef. Arguing against was Jessica Miles, Vice President for Strategy and Investments at Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

https://tinyurl.com/ururdfvw

"The State of the Field: An Excerpt From the 2023 Library Publishing Directory"

The most common material types reported in 2023 were journals (89%), conference papers and proceedings (80%), theses and dissertations (75%), educational resources (66%), and monographs (60%). Under half of respondents (46%) reported publishing datasets. Other material types reported include gray literature, newsletters, multimedia, expansive digital publications, and databases. . . . Over 80% of respondents provide copyright support and DOI assignment. Over half provide metadata services (71%), author advisory services (66%), training (66%), ISSN registry (64%), hosting of supplemental content (60%), cataloging (56%), and analytics (55%). The decline in the number of library publishers providing digitization services holds steady with 49% of respondents in 2023 identifying it as one of their services.

https://tinyurl.com/yhwp4pph

Access the entire directory.

"Open Access Books through Open Data Sources: Assessing Prevalence, Providers, and Preservation"

In total, 396,995 unique records were identified from the OA book bibliometric sources, of which 19% were found to be included in at least one of the preservation services. The results suggest reason for concern for the long tail of OA books distributed at thousands of different web domains as these include volatile cloud storage or sometimes no longer contained the files at all.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2023-0016

"New UVM Press Breaks Down Barriers to Scholarly Publishing"

The University of Vermont has launched an open-access academic press aimed at removing the financial barrier between peer-reviewed research and audiences worldwide. Fully funded by the university and overseen by UVM Libraries, the UVM Press operates under a "diamond open access model"— meaning that authors pay no fees to publish with the press, and readers pay no fees to access the press’s published materials. . . .

Bryn Geffert, UVM’s dean of libraries, has experience with open-access publishing having launched the Amherst College Press in 2013. Geffert also led a consortium of libraries in establishing the open-access Lever Press in 2016. Geffert believes that the role of a library is to connect patrons to information, making UVM Libraries a logical partner for managing the UVM Press.

https://tinyurl.com/bdfa8msf