Category: Scholarly Books

"Can Microsoft Academic Help to Assess the Citation Impact of Academic Books?"

Kayvan Kousha and Mike Thelwall have self-archived "Can Microsoft Academic Help to Assess the Citation Impact of Academic Books?"

Here's an excerpt:

Despite recent evidence that Microsoft Academic is an extensive source of citation counts for journal articles, it is not known if the same is true for academic books. This paper fills this gap by comparing citations to 16,463 books from 2013-2016 in the Book Citation Index (BKCI) against automatically extracted citations from Microsoft Academic and Google Books in 17 fields. About 60% of the BKCI books had records in Microsoft Academic, varying by year and field. Citation counts from Microsoft Academic were 1.5 to 3.6 times higher than from BKCI in nine subject areas across all years for books indexed by both. Microsoft Academic found more citations than BKCI because it indexes more scholarly publications and combines citations to different editions and chapters. In contrast, BKCI only found more citations than Microsoft Academic for books in three fields from 2013-2014. Microsoft Academic also found more citations than Google Books in six fields for all years. Thus, Microsoft Academic may be a useful source for the impact assessment of books when comprehensive coverage is not essential.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Want to Support Open Access? Volunteer for the Open Access Tracking Project

The Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) provides a constant stream of up-to-date information about open access issues in a primary feed and in a number of secondary feeds that focus on specialized OA subtopics. It offers the primary feed in a variety of distribution options, including email, Google+, HTML, RSS, Twitter, and others. It is an invaluable source of information for open access advocates, research data specialists, and scholarly communication specialists, and it provides important support for the open access movement as a whole.

Based at the Harvard Open Access Project, the OATP was launched by Peter Suber. Suber's SPARC Open Access Newsletter and his Free Online Scholarship Newsletter played an important part in getting the open access movement off the ground. The OATP continues the mission of those groundbreaking publications using the open source TagTeam software, which was developed for the OATP.

Launched with the help of grant funding, the OATP will enter a new an all-volunteer phase at the end of August 2018. To continue this crowd-sourced project, new volunteers are needed. You can help move the OA agenda forward by being one of them. This wiki page explains how you can join the team and start tagging.

By volunteering just a bit of time to the OATP, you can make a significant difference.

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"Open Textbooks—An Untapped Opportunity for Universities, Colleges and Schools"

Vivien Rolfe and Beck Pit have published "Open Textbooks—An Untapped Opportunity for Universities, Colleges and Schools" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

The pilot phase of the UK Open Textbook project reached completion in April 2018. This article discusses the project, what open textbooks are, and why they are an untapped opportunity for universities, colleges and schools. The North American models of open textbook creation and uptake (adoption) are designed to help reduce university student financial worries and enhance learning opportunities, and provide much-needed resources for schools (or the K12 system in the US and Canada). The ability to repurpose books leads to innovative and engaging pedagogies including students as co-authors. Yet in the UK, the level of discussion and awareness of the opportunities afforded by open textbooks, and the existence of a small number of UK initiatives, is poor.

The aim of the UK Open Textbook project was to raise awareness and host activities to encourage the adoption of open textbooks. The results of the project are discussed, along with the policy, cultural and practice changes required to scale up these approaches. Why should our learners miss out?

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Library Publishing Coalition: An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 1.0.

The Library Publishing Coalition has released An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Version 1.0..

Here's an excerpt:

Library publishing is distinguished in part from other types of scholarly publishing by a focus on adherence to the values and ethics of librarianship. An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing supports good practice in this area by providing resources and guidance in a number of ethical areas of importance to library publishers. Version 1.0 (published July 2018) covers publishing practice; accessibility; diversity, equity, and inclusion; privacy and analytics; and academic and intellectual freedom.

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Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography

The Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography includes over 125 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the digital scholarly publishing activities of academic libraries since the late 1980's, especially their open access book and journal publishing activities. The bibliography covers the following subtopics: pioneering academic library publishing projects in the 1980's and 1990's, early digital journals and serials published by librarians (as distinct from libraries), library-based scholarly publishing since the Budapest Open Access Initiative, technical publishing infrastructure, and library and university press mergers/partnerships and other relevant works.

Most sources have been published from January 2002 through July 2018; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography has links to included works. Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

The Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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"Collecting Inclusive Usage Metrics for Open Access Publications: the HIRMEOS Project"

Javier Arias has self-archived "Collecting Inclusive Usage Metrics for Open Access Publications: the HIRMEOS Project."

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access has matured for journals, but its uptake in the book market is still delayed, despite the fact that books continue to be the leading publishing format for social sciences and humanities. The 30-months EU-funded project HIRMEOS (High Integration of Research Monographs in the European Open Science infrastructure) tackles the main obstacles of the full integration of five important digital platforms supporting open access monographs. The content of participating platforms will be enriched with tools that enable identification, authentication and interoperability (via DOI, ORCID, Fundref), and tools that enrich information and entity extraction (INRIA (N)ERD), the ability to annotate monographs (Hypothes.is), and gather usage and alternative metric data. This paper focuses on the development and implementation of Open Source Metrics Services that enable the collection of OA Metrics and Altmetrics from third-party platforms, and how the architecture of these tools will allow implementation in any external platform, particularly in start-up Open Access publishers.

Read more about it: "Shared Infrastructure for Next- Generation Books: HIRMEOS."

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"Announcing LSE Press—A New Open Access Publishing Platform for the Social Sciences"

Kieran Booluck has published "Announcing LSE Press—A New Open Access Publishing Platform for the Social Sciences" in LSE Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

In addition to journals, LSE Press intends to publish a range of book publications, including more traditional research monographs, short-form monographs, and even textbooks. Again, offering authors viable open access routes to publication is of increased importance here, in response to a changing policy environment and the announcement by HEFCE—now Research England—that future Research Excellence Framework assessments will extend open access requirements to include books as well as journals.

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Open Access and Monographs: Where Are We Now?

The British Academy has released Open Access and Monographs: Where Are We Now?.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Academy argues that any future model for open access monograph publication needs to be properly funded with additional money. And a generous list of exceptions will need to be defined—for example 'crossover' books which merit submission to the REF but which also make an important contribution to the UK’s 'trade' publishing industry.

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"The Academic Book and Its Digital Dilemmas"

Paul Spence, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at King's College London, has published "The Academic Book and Its Digital Dilemmas" in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

Here's an excerpt:

Focusing in particular on the arts and humanities, this article asks how, and under what conditions, the digitally mediated long-form academic publication might hold a viable future. It examines digital disruption and innovation within humanities publishing, contrasts different models and outlines some of the key challenges facing scholarly publishing in the humanities. This article examines how non-traditional entities, such as digital humanities research projects, have performed digital publishing roles and reviews possible implications for scholarly book publishing's relationship to the wider research process. It concludes by looking at how digital or hybrid long-form publications might become more firmly established within the scholarly publishing landscape.

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"Digital Delivery Breathes New Life into Professional Books and Scholarly Monographs"

Simba Information has released "Digital Delivery Breathes New Life into Professional Books and Scholarly Monographs."

Here's an excerpt:

Scholarly and professional e-books sales increased globally by 5.6% in 2017 and will grow an additional 4.8% in 2018, revitalizing a medium publishers once wrote off, according to the latest report from Simba Information.

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"Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bil"

SPARC has released "Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bil."

Here's an excerpt:

In a landmark victory for the Open Education movement, the U.S. Congress has included funding for a $5 million open textbook grant program in the Fiscal Year 2018 omnibus appropriations bill unveiled today. This marks the first major investment by Congress explicitly in open educational resources (OER) as a solution to the high cost of college textbooks, and underscores that course materials are a significant factor in making higher education affordable. The FY18 omnibus is expected to proceed swiftly to votes in the House and Senate and get signed into law this week.

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"What Should We Do with All These Books? A Feasibility Study on Collaborative Monograph Solutions"

Hazel Woodward and Helen Henderson have published "What Should We Do with All These Books? A Feasibility Study on Collaborative Monograph Solutions" in Insights: The UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries in the UK are under increasing pressure to reduce their estate footprint or increase learning space in the library. Following the success of the UKRR, the National Monographs Steering Committee commissioned Information Power Ltd (IPL) to explore potential solutions for the collaborative management of monographs in the UK. Desk research and interviews with existing collaborations worldwide showed that there were three potential models in use: distributed storage and shared collection, physical consolidation of print materials into a shared repository and shared or co-operative storage facility. Interviews with key stakeholders in the UK HE sector and an online survey established that there was an appetite for collaborative management. The key issues include funding, sustainability and business models; shared bibliographic data; collection analysis; governance, leadership and administration; duplicate materials policy; and storage and retrieval from storage. IPL recommended that a national membership organization be formed (UKRR-M) which would offer a national solution with physical consolidation of print materials into a shared repository collection with central administration.

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UW Press Joins UW Libraries

https://uwpressblog.com/2018/02/21/uw-press-joins-uw-libraries/

Keywords: University of Washington Press, University of Washington Libraries

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The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: A Report Prepared by Knowledge Unlatched Research

Knowledge Unlatched Research has released The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: A Report Prepared by Knowledge Unlatched Research.

Here's an excerpt:

This report explores the extent to which Open Access (OA) specialist scholarly books can be seen by the communities that might make use of them. It also identifies the key challenges that will need to be tackled in order to ensure that OA books are fully integrated into digital landscapes of scholarship; as well as the steps that need to be taken to achieve this goal. The report focuses on Open Access books made available by publishers and platforms that are part of the OPERAS network, which is focused on the development of European research infrastructure for the development of open scholarly communication. Specialist scholarly books are the core research output of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ensuring that they are integrated into digital landscapes of scholarship will play a decisive role in the future of these disciplines, and their impact on the world. Identifying gaps in existing infrastructure and creating a roadmap to address them is vital groundwork.

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"Reimagining the Digital Monograph Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers"

The Journal of Electronic Publishing has released "Reimagining the Digital Monograph Design Thinking to Build New Tools for Researchers."

JSTOR Labs, an experimental product development group within the not-for-profit digital library JSTOR, undertook an ideation and design process to develop new and different ways of showing scholarly books online, with the goal that this new viewing interface be relatively simple and inexpensive to implement for any scholarly book that is already available in PDF form. This paper documents that design process, including the recommendations of a working group of scholars, publishers, and librarians convened by JSTOR Labs and the Columbia University Libraries in October 2016. The prototype monograph viewer developed through this process—called "Topicgraph"—is described herein and is freely available online at https://labs.jstor.org/topicgraph.

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"Cost Estimates of an Open Access Mandate for Monographs in the UK’s Third Research Excellence Framework"

Martin Paul Eve et al. have published "Cost Estimates of an Open Access Mandate for Monographs in the UK's Third Research Excellence Framework" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

The recent ‘Consultation on the second Research Excellence Framework' (REF) in the UK contains an annex that signals the extension of the open access mandate to monographs. In the service of promoting discussion, rather than prescribing a forward route, this article estimates the costs of implementing such a mandate based on REF 2014 volume, taking the criteria signalled in the annex, and identifies funding sources that could support it. We estimate that to publish 75% of anticipated monographic submission output for the next REF would require approximately £96m investment over the census period. This is equivalent to £19.2m per year. Academic library budgets as they are currently apportioned would not support this cost. However, these sums are but a fraction of the total quality-related funding, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council budgets. We close with a series of provocative suggestions for how the mandate could be implemented.

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"Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories"

Anna Marie Johnson et al. have published "Dissertation to Book? A Snapshot of Dissertations Published As Books in 2014 and 2105, Available in Open Access Institutional Repositories" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

Only a small percentage of books published as dissertations were found in ProQuest and then subsequently in IRs. The number of libraries holding book titles with corresponding dissertations in IRs dropped between 2014 and 2015.

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"Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case"

Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren has published "Sustainable Open Access Publishing: Preconditions, Dialog, and Continuous Adaptation: The Stockholm University Press Case" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing..

Here's an excerpt:

Given the demand for open access publishing in the context of expensive article processing charges and acquisition costs scholarly publishing needs to be transformed. I believe that university libraries are in a good position to contribute to this change. I begin with describing what Stockholm University Press is, what we do and how. I continue with describing why we do it and for whom. I conclude by pointing out some lessons learned.

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"Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan"

Jason Colman has published "Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

To solve this problem [publishing open access books], Michigan Publishing Services has developed both a house service publishing imprint, Maize Books, and a white-labeled book publishing program, branded by University units, all running on the same technical and financial infrastructure. With an emphasis on Open Access with flexible Creative Commons licensing and affordable Print on Demand and EBook options combine workflow efficiencies with a menu of chargeback services to cover the costs of their production and allow staffing to be scaled to meet emerging needs.

This brief case study details Michigan Publishing Services’s program for books as it stands today, explains its approach to sustainability, and offers a few thoughts about when this model is suitable and when it is not.

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