Category: Scholarly Books

"Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing: Investigating Faculty Publishing Habits to Evaluate Library Collection Alignment"


Introduction: This investigation, originally conceived as a method for informing Albertsons Library on creative solutions to the collections budget shortfall, sought to determine an institution’s faculty perceptions of publishing and/or using open access (OA) materials, as well as to identify future mechanisms that would shift perceptions of OA publishing to a more favorable light, thereby fostering adoption of OA materials in faculty research and teaching. Methods: The study used an anonymous electronic survey of 468 faculty members, with a response rate of nearly 34%. Results and Discussion: Respondents indicated a mixed set of adoption, with equal distribution in willingness to engage with OA journals and publications. Quality of OA publications, combined with concerns for tenure and promotion, holds faculty back from utilizing OA journals and publications in their own research and in the classroom. Conclusion: The data collected through the course of this perceptions survey provide important insight into the perceptions of faculty at this point in time, laying the groundwork for future surveys to evaluate growth in engagement with OA publishing. Though the data provided do not immediately alleviate collections budget constraints at Albertsons Library, the survey contributed to a more holistic understanding of faculty publishing behavior in OA journals.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13216

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

"European Commission Grants Substantial Funding to Improve Institutional Publishing for Science"


The project "Creating a Robust Accessible Federated Technology for Open Access (CRAFT-OA), carried out by 23 experienced partners from 14 European countries, coordinated by the University of Gättingen, Germany will start in January 2023 and run for 36 months. . . . The project focuses on four strands of action to improve the Diamond OA model: (1) Provide technical improvements for journal platforms and journal software (2) Build communities of practice to foster overall infrastructure improvement (3) Increase visibility, discoverability and recognition for Diamond OA publishing (4) Integrate Diamond OA publishing with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and other large-scale data aggregators.

https://operas.hypotheses.org/6016

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

TRLN Guide to Negotiating Accessibility in E-Resource Licenses


This resource is meant to serve as a reference tool for library staff involved in licensing and e-resources management as they advocate for strong accessibility assurances in their formal contracts with service and content providers. Each component of TRLN’s preferred accessibility language has been broken down into various components and discussed. The components include: a reference to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a reference to Section 508, a reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the provision of a VPAT, the institution’s right to modify content to make it accessible for end users, and the provider’s responsibility to respond to and remedy accessibility-related complaints and issues

http://bit.ly/trln-a11y-eresource-license

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

"FAIRifying a Scholarly Publishing Service: Methodology Based on the OpenEdition’s Internal FAIR Audit"


The FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) constitute a guide whose aim is to improve the management of digital scholarly resources. Nevertheless, the literature regarding data services other than data repositories is still scarce.OpenEdition is a digital infrastructure for open scholarly communication in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) that carried out an internal full review to assess the degree of FAIRness of its activities. The objective of this paper is to present the methodology employed by OpenEdition’s team and the recommendations for the FAIRification of a publishing system, and hence, the elements for the FAIR Publishing Toolkit. The FAIR review was conducted in three main phases: preparation, assessment, and result phase, which listed the recommendations for the FAIR principles implementation. The preparation phase gathered the available information to define the perimeter of the FAIR review. It comprised two steps: the landscape study and the exam of actual use cases. The assessment phase contextualized the FAIR principles according to the scholarly publishing context, defined the datasets to be analyzed, carried outa FAIR maturity review per dataset, and analyzed the state of the art of some important FAIR-related elements. The result phase produced the recommendations, organized as priorities and extended objectives. The priority recommendations regard persistent identifiers and licensing policies. The extended objectives focus on authors’ information management, controlled vocabularies, machine-actionability, and Digital Management Plans.

https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.1540

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

"Columbia University Joins the Palace Project Platform and App"


The Palace Project ("Palace"), the nonprofit library-centered platform and e-reader app for digital content and services, announced today that the Columbia University Library has adopted its platform. The Palace Project is an easy-to-use platform for the management and delivery of ebooks, audiobooks, and other e-content and puts libraries at the center of their communities’ digital experience. . . . The Palace App is available for iOS and Android. . . . In addition to Columbia University, New York University (NYU) and the University of California are academic library partners.

https://librarytechnology.org/pr/28210

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

John Willinsky: Copyright’s Broken Promise: How to Restore the Law’s Ability to Promote the Progress of Science


In Copyright’s Broken Promise, John Willinsky presents the case for reforming copyright law so that it supports, rather than impedes, public access to research and scholarship. He draws on the legal strategy of statutory licensing to set out the terms and structures by which the Copyright Act could ensure that publishers are fairly compensated for providing immediate open access.

https://cutt.ly/E15zPXH

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

"Accountability in the Knowledge Commons: Lessons from Next Generation Library Publishing and the 2022 Values and Principles Summit"


Values and principles provide a scaffold for community governance of the knowledge commons, engaging stakeholders in the construction of a system that encourages participants to adhere to a shared set of ethical and functional practices. This article introduces the FOREST Framework for Values-Driven Scholarly Communication, a toolkit and approach developed by the Next Generation Library Publishing project to assess a community or organization’s alignment with scholarly values and principles. The article situates the FOREST Framework within the context of other initiatives advancing values-based scholarly communication and explains the importance of assessment mechanisms as a core element in governing an equitable and sustainable knowledge commons. It also synthesizes the findings of a half-day summit hosted in February 2022 that convened representatives of values-and-principles-based frameworks and initiatives in scholarly communication to strategize a collective future for these efforts.

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.588

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

"‘Anna’s Archive ’ Opens the Door to Z-Library and Other Pirate Libraries"


Anna’s Archive is basically a meta-search engine that can find content from third-party ‘pirate’ sources. . . . The Z-Library links rely on the Tor version of the site, which remains online. However, the goal is to ultimately make all content available through IPFS [InterPlanetary File System] as well. This would make it pretty much impossible to take down, similar to the Library Genesis forks, which also use IPFS.

https://cutt.ly/pMZYb6Y

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

"Authors Guild Applauds Arrest, Indictment of Major E-Book Pirates"


"While we are heartened by the takedown and the resulting reduction in harm to authors, we are not unsympathetic to the plight of those college and other students who have perhaps felt forced to resort to such illegal pirate websites and other free sources of textbooks to help them manage the extremely high cost of higher education," Rasenberger [Authors Guild CEO] said. "However, these students’ anger is misdirected. The exorbitant cost of education should not be borne by authors and publishers but by the universities, and it should not be used to justify reliance on foreign criminals for textbooks or to trivialize the immense personal and economic harm Z-Library was causing authors who are trying to make a living under increasingly difficult and hostile economic circumstances."

https://cutt.ly/hMPgka5

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

"Guest Post – Charleston 2022 – Finding Paths to Open Access Book Publishing"


So just to summarize, there are two facts that are often overlooked when we discuss how university presses generally recover the costs of publishing their frontlist of new titles and how they might finance open access for monographs:

  1. A very large portion of a university press’s sales are not to academic libraries. Libraries are key to a university press’s overall success, and our model doesn’t work without them, but our model also depends on other revenue sources;
  2. Most of a university press’s annual revenues derive not from sales of new books, but from sales of previously published titles collectively known as the "backlist," which are generally those titles that were published more than twelve months ago. The sales of these titles may adversely be impacted by the availability of open access formats as readers transition to digital.

https://cutt.ly/gMPfZB7

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

"Digital Books Wear Out Faster than Physical Books"


Mega-publishers are saying electronic books do not wear out, but this is not true at all. The Internet Archive processes and reprocesses the books it has digitized as new optical character recognition technologies come around, as new text understanding technologies open new analysis, as formats change from djvu to daisy to epub1 to epub2 to epub3 to pdf-a and on and on. This takes thousands of computer-months and programmer-years to do this work. This is what libraries have signed up for—our long-term custodial roles.

Also, the digital media they reside on changes, too—from Digital Linear Tape to PATA hard drives to SATA hard drives to SSDs. If we do not actively tend our digital books they become unreadable very quickly.

Then there is cataloging and metadata. If we do not keep up with the ever-changing expectations of digital learners, then our books will not be found. This is ongoing and expensive.

https://cutt.ly/VMTDGdL

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

"Readers Have Borrowed over 3 Billion Digital Books through Overdrive"


From the very first library checkout of an ebook through OverDrive back in 2003, we have had one vision: to create a world enlightened by reading. . . . It took us four years to reach the first 1 million checkouts in 2007 and another five to reach 100 million in 2012. In 2018, our all-time checkouts reached one billion. And now, twenty years after that very first ebook checkout, thanks to readers, librarians, and booklovers like you, we have reached three billion checkouts.

https://cutt.ly/5MTS5N8

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

"Perspectives on E-books and Digital Textbooks and the Way Ahead"


This article presents a range of perspectives on current issues around e-book and textbook supply and consumption in libraries and universities. It is an attempt to provide an analysis of the often-contentious issues arising and also offers an insight into the positions of all the various parties involved. Whilst there might not be agreement or consensus on the causes of issues and the way to proceed, the article attempts to coalesce various perspectives, in the hope of achieving a greater understanding of different stakeholders. Much of the debate in recent years has focused on the situation in the United Kingdom, but similar issues exist in many other countries and an insight into the international perspective is provided. We also offer some commentary on ways forward for both the short and longer term.

http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.599

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

"MIT Press Direct to Open Books Downloaded More than 176,312 Times in Ten Months"


In 2021, the MIT Press launched Direct to Open (D2O), a bold, innovative model for open access (OA) to scholarship and knowledge. To date, about 50 of the 80 scholarly monographs and edited collections in the Direct to Open model in 2022 have been published and these works have been downloaded over 176,000 times. . . . The MIT Press has also seen an increase in the readership of scholarly monographs and edited collections. While a typical printed scholarly monograph might sell only a few hundred copies total, chapters from the open access version of these titles have already been downloaded up to 25,000 times.

https://cutt.ly/oMyMCNi

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

Investments in Open: Association of Research Libraries US University Member Expenditures on Services, Collections, Staff, and Infrastructure in Support of Open Scholarship


In total, 46 of the 102 institutions provided full or partial results. Summary results are divided into the following categories: read-and-publish or transitional agreements, article processing charges (APC) or OA funds, non-APC-based OA publishing models, institutional repository services, OA journal hosting and publishing services, and open monographs.

The survey found that the total aggregate spending on open access for all 46 responding libraries was $32 million USD, with an average expenditure per institution of $785,940. This represents an average of 2.26% of the total library budget spent on open, ranging from 0.19% to 11.02% across respondent libraries. As a portion of the total amount of expenses spent on OA infrastructure, the majority of funds are invested in read-and-publish agreements (~$20 million) followed by institutional repository infrastructure with investments of 17% of total OA expenses (~$5 million) across the 46 institutions.

https://cutt.ly/nMuAMbT

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

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


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. Data quality issues, varying definitions of OA across services, and inconsistent implementation of unique identifiers were discovered as key challenges. The study includes recommendations for publishers, libraries, data providers, and preservation services for improving monitoring and practices for OA book preservation.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7305489

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

"The Digital First Sale Doctrine in a Blockchain World: NFTs and the Temporary Reproduction Exception"


At time of writing, this is the first piece of legal scholarship on NFTs that examines their interaction with the first sale doctrine. This Note examines the rise of the NFT phenomenon and the historical articulation of the first sale doctrine in the digital era. As NFTs present challenges for the copyright owner’s reproduction right, this Note recommends legislative intervention to clarify the doctrine’s applicability within the digital marketplace. This Note proposes an addition to the Copyright Act of 1976 that expressly allows for a first sale to be effective upon a digital transfer, albeit under certain conditions. Amending the act in this manner promotes the Copyright Act’s purpose of balancing the interests of copyright owners and consumers in a dynamic digital marketplace, and serves as a guide that will be necessary to avoid legal ambiguities and increased litigation.

https://cutt.ly/DN3TV8v

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

"The Challenging State of University Campus and Library Open Access Policies"


Introduction: This study investigates whether United States university libraries’ commitment to increasing open access (OA) to scholarly outputs as demonstrated by their support of campus level OA policies translates into adoption of OA policies that apply specifically to library employees. Method: This mixed-methods study used an anonymous survey and optional open-ended interviews of scholarly communications librarians at Carnegie Classification Doctoral Universities (Very High Research [R1] and High Research [R2]) to gather information about OA policies or statements at their institutions and/or within their libraries. Results & Discussion: Variation in campus culture and governance structure meant the path from creation to adoption to implementation of a campus and/or library OA policy was similarly varied. The research reveals librarians’ motivations for and contributions to advancement of OA on their campuses, and sometimes also within their libraries. Conclusion: Many of the rationales driving adoption of campus OA policies similarly drive adoption of library-specific OA policies. Those surveyed whose institutions did have library-based OA policies referenced both the importance of leading by example and alignment with institutional mission and values.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13049

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

"What Does Open Research Look Like in My Field? New Researcher Case Studies Show How It’s Done"


Today UKRN releases both an updated version of its primer on open research in different disciplines, and a new set of accompanying case studies, hosted on dedicated UKRN pages for each discipline.

The case studies—23 so far—are based on interviews conducted during summer 2022 with active researchers across the UK and beyond. They describe a wide range of research practices across diverse fields of research, from art and design to condensed matter physics, and outline both why and how openness is relevant.

They cover topics such as open access and open data and software, but also co-production, pre-registration, preprints, ethics, the roles of infrastructure, and of other actors such as funders, standards bodies and community groups.

https://cutt.ly/zNpjQM1

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

Co-creating a Healthy and Diverse Open Access Market: Issue Brief


This analysis indicates that the open access market falls some way short of a ‘perfect’ market, but does not (yet) suffer from the most uncompetitive characteristics of the paywalled market. . . . It remains possible that market forces may prove more effective in shaping a healthy and diverse OA market than they have been in the paywalled market. For example, the involvement of authors in payment workflows may make them more sensitive to the prices they pay. Competition in the market could also increase as OA publishers increasingly come to be viewed as service providers rather than content owners. However, there are a number of indications that the open access market is becoming less healthy and less diverse over time.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5497891

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

Springer Nature Group Annual Progress Report 2021 Released

" In 2021, we published our one millionth OA article, an industry first. By 2024, we aim to have at least half of all our primary research published OA. . . . In 2021, our fully OA journals waived fees of more than €18.4 million for authors in financial need, including €6.6 million for researchers in lower-income countries"

https://cutt.ly/zBuSZAT

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