Category: Scholarly Communication

Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics Workshop Materials Added to Scholarly Communication Toolkit

ACRL has added materials from its Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics Workshop to its Scholarly Communication Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is extending the reach of the "Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics" workshop by adding related materials to its popular Scholarly Communication Toolkit. The materials—including short videos, presentations templates and handouts—were developed for the half-day workshop offered at the ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle and traveling to five locations around the country this summer (http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/april2009/acrlscroadshowhosts.cfm). Now librarians can make use of these tools to enhance their own knowledge or adapt them to offer related workshops on their own campuses. The Scholarly Communication Toolkit is available online at http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/.

Developing a basic understanding of scholarly communication issues should be a high priority for every librarian. Enhancing understanding of how scholars work along with the systems, tools and technology to support the evolving work of the creation, personal organization, aggregation, discovery, preservation, access and exchange of information in all formats is one of six strategic priorities for 2009-13 developed by the ACRL Board of Directors (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/whatisacrl/index.cfm). The newly developed tools support this strategic priority, with a focus on new methods of scholarly publishing and communication, copyright and intellectual property and economics along with open access and openness as a principle.

Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation

The SURFfoundation has released Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This study examines the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scientific and scholarly publishing in the Netherlands. It is a follow-up of the Australian study 'Research Communication Costs, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits' (Houghton et al. 2006) and the UK/JISC study 'Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models'. The Dutch study was commissioned by SURFfoundation and led by Professor John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne's Victoria University and Jos de Jonge and Marcia van Oploo of EIM Business & Policy Research in the Netherlands. . . .

The study Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation compares three publication models. The greatest advantage is offered by the Open Access model, which means that the research institution or the party financing the research pays for publication and the article is then freely accessible. Adopting this model could lead to an annual saving of EUR 133 million. Even if the Netherlands were the only country to adopt this publication model and continued to pay for licences to access periodicals, there would still be a saving of EUR 37 million.

Digital Library Jobs: Systems and Digitization Librarian at Jewish Theological Seminary

The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is recruiting a Systems and Digitization Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Working with ExLibirs products (ALEPH and DigiTool) to resolve problems, answer questions and communicate solutions. Implementation of new features and applications to support library services; perform system analysis and application development to facilitate the use of technology in the library; manages the Integrated Library System and digital assets management system in line with the priorities set by the Library management. This position plans, develops and implements improvements to, or expansions of the ILS, digital assets management system and its related applications in order to support library users and staff.

“Summary and Conclusions. Final Chapter of Scholarly Communication for Librarians“

Heather Morrison has self-archived "Summary and Conclusions. Final Chapter of Scholarly Communication for Librarians" in E-LIS.

Scholarly Communication for Librarians is written from the perspective of a passionate advocate for Open Access and transformative change in scholarly communication, and is based on a course first taught at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Topics covered include perspectives from the different groups involved in scholarly communication, including the scholars themselves, journals, publishers, and librarians. There are chapters devoted to Author’s Rights and Intellectual Property, Economics, Open Access, and Emerging Trends and Formats. The following summary highlights the major points of each chapter.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (6/10/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Choosing a Digital Asset Management System That's Right for You"; "Customized Mapping and Metadata Transfer from DSpace to OCLC to Improve ETD Work Flow"; "EThOS: From Project to Service"; E-Journals: Their Use, Value and Impact; "E-Theses and Indian Academia: A Case Study of Nine ETD Digital Libraries and Formulation of Policies for a National Service"; "Evaluation of Digital Repository Software at the National Library of Medicine"; Journal Authors' Rights: Perception and Reality; "The KB e-Depot: Building and Managing a Safe Place for e-Journals"; "Publish and Cherish with Non-Proprietary Peer Review Systems"; "Planting Seeds for a Successful Institutional Repository: Role of the Archivist as Manager, Designer, and Policymaker"; "Putting the Public in the Public Domain: The Public Library's Role in the Re-Conceptualization of the Public Domain"; and "Towards a Repository-Enabled Scholar's Workbench: RepoMMan, REMAP and Hydra."

“Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication: A Case Study of Engaging Liaison Librarians for Outreach to Faculty”

College & Research Libraries has made a preprint of "Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication: A Case Study of Engaging Liaison Librarians for Outreach to Faculty" available.

Here's an excerpt:

This narrative, single-case study examines how liaison librarians at the University of Minnesota (UMN) came to include advocating for reform of the scholarly communication system among their core responsibilities. While other libraries may hire a coordinator or rely on a committee to undertake outreach programs, UMN has defined baseline expertise in scholarly communication for all librarians who serve as liaisons to disciplinary faculty members. By “mainstreaming” scholarly communication duties, UMN is declaring these issues central to the profession.1 This intrinsic study uses evidence gathered from open-ended interviews with three participants, supplemented by documentation. It explores the context of these changes, systems thinking, and new mental models.

Ph.D. Scholarship in Digital Rights and Digital Scholarship

EPrints Services is sponsoring a Ph.D. scholarship in Digital Rights and Digital Scholarship at the EPSRC Web Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Southampton.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Web has had a huge impact on society and on the scientific and scholarly communications process. As more attention is paid to new e-research and e-learning methodologies it is time to stand back and investigate how rights and responsibilities are understood when "copying", "publishing" and "syndicating" are fundamental activities of the interconnected digital world.

Applicants with a technical background (a good Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Information Technology or similar) are invited for this 4-year research programme, which begins in October 2009 with a 1-year taught MSc in Web Science and is followed by a three year PhD supervised jointly by the School of Law and the School of Electronics and Computer Science. The full four-year scholarships (including stipend) is available to UK residents.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (5/15/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, "The Economics of Open Access Publishing," "Estimating the Potential Impacts of Open Access to Research Findings," "Fair to Whom?," "Making the Case for an Institutional Repository to Your Provost," Policy-making for Research Data in Repositories: A Guide, "Self-Archiving Journal Articles: A Case Study of Faculty Practice and Missed Opportunity," "The Stratified Economics of Open Access," and "Where There's a Will There's a Way?: Survey of Academic Librarian Attitudes about Open Access."

Water Environment Research Foundation Adopts Embargo Free Access Policy

The Water Environment Research Foundation will make its reports freely available after a two-year embargo period. Reports may be released for free access earlier under some conditions.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Water Environment Research Foundation today announced a new open access initiative that will bring its wastewater and stormwater research results to the forefront of scientific and technical innovation. The new policy, which was vetted with all subscribers through an initial survey and then with a follow-up invitation to comment on the proposal, will go into full effect on July 1, 2009. . . .

The open access policy has two primary components:

  • First, all WERF final research report PDF files and hard copy reports remain available exclusively to subscribers, or available for sale to the public, through WERF and its publishing partners for two years. After the initial two years, all WERF final research report PDF files will be "open access," free to the general public, from the WERF website. (Tools are not part of the open access initiative.)
  • Second, if the WERF Board of Directors, Research Council, Communications Advisory Committee, or executive director determine that an earlier release of a final research report is in the public’s and subscribers' interest, they will need a majority vote in the affirmative to enact "open access" for that report before the 2-year open access date. Once WERF designates a report as open access, a PDF version of the report will be available, free of charge, on the WERF website.

Version 75, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 75 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,400 articles, books, and other digital and printed sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition is now available as a paperback book.

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

Dedication
1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
Digital Libraries
Electronic Books and Texts
Electronic Serials
General Electronic Publishing
Images
Legal
Preservation
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
SGML and Related Standards

The 2006, 2007, and 2008 annual PDF editions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are also available.

An article about the bibliography ("Evolution of an Electronic Book: The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography") has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Digital Videos from Columbia’s Scholarly Communication Program’s Research without Borders 2008-2009 Program

A complete set of digital videos from Columbia University's Scholarly Communication Program's "Research without Borders" 2008-2009 program is now available.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The inaugural year of Research without Borders featured speakers at the forefront of the open access movement as well as experts in scholarly publishing, information policy, and copyright law. Harvard Professor Stuart Shieber kicked off the series in the fall semester, tracing the development of Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Open Access Policy. The second panel, with Marian Hollingsworth from Thomson Reuters, Jevin West of Eigenfactor.org, and Johan Bollen of the MESUR project, debated the controversial Impact Factor, a metric of scholarly journals' prominence. Helen Tartar and Sanford Thatcher, leaders of Fordham and Penn State University Presses, respectively, joined Columbia Libraries' Ree DeDonato for the third event, which focused on the future of scholarly monographs.

The spring semester opened with a discussion on the benefits of open science with Bora Zivkovic of the Public Library of Science, Jean-Claude Bradley of Drexel University, and Barry Canton of OpenWetWare and Ginkgo BioWorks. In March, UCLA's Christine Borgman, author of Scholarship in the Digital Age (2007), spoke to a packed room on information infrastructure and policy. The final event explored the implications of copyright trends for research, featuring SPARC's Heather Joseph, Michael Carroll of Washington Law School at American University, and Kenneth Crews of the Columbia University Copyright Advisory Office.

The Research Without Borders series will continue in the 2009-10 academic year with six new events on topics including scholarly blogging, open data, and open-access business models. Stay connected to the Program by following ScholarlyComm at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm, by joining the Scholarly Communication Program Facebook group, and through the iTunesU page. For more information on the Program and the series, please email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu, or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu.

DigitalKoans

Paperback Version: Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition

Digital Scholarship has published the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. as a paperback book. The paperback book is available from Lulu for $40. It is 231 pages long, 8.5" x 11", and has perfect binding. The book is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

SEP [Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography] is compiled with utter professionalism. It reminds me of the work of the best artisans who know not only every item that leaves their workshops, but each component used to create them—providing the ideal quality control. . . . The selection of items is impeccable. I have yet to find journal articles irrelevant to the scope of the bibliography. SEP could be used as a benchmark in evaluating abstracting/indexing databases that proudly claim to have coverage of electronic publishing, but do not come close to SEP." Jacsó, Péter. "Peter's Picks & Pans." ONLINE 27, no. 3 (2003): 73-76. (Full review)

Digital Scholarship receives about $25 per copy from the sale of the book, which helps subsidize the continued publication of the freely available digital versions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography and other Digital Scholarship publications. At present, Digital Scholarship does not carry external advertising or receive any other kind of external support. Between 4/20/05 and 4/30/09, Digital Scholarship received over 19 million file requests from over 3.9 million visitors from 220 countries.

book cover

DigitalKoans

ACRL Picks Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics Workshop Sites

From 46 applications representing about 150 colleges, universities, consortia and library networks, ACRL has selected the sites for this year's Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with the Basics workshop.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Recognizing that scholarly communication issues are central to the work of all academic librarians and all types of institutions, ACRL is underwriting the costs of delivering this proven content by sending expert presenters on the road.

The institutions selected are:

  • ACRL Louisiana Chapter, Baton Rouge, La.
  • Auraria Library, Denver
  • State University of New York at Buffalo Libraries, Buffalo, N.Y.
  • University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
  • Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis

"At a time of cuts in travel budgets for libraries and librarians, ACRL is providing this valuable educational experience at locations all across the country. It is vital to the work of all academic librarians to understand the basics of the evolving scholarly communication system," said Richard Fyffe, ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee co-chair and Rosenthal librarian of the college at Grinnell College. "We want to be sure that during this time of constrained budgets, the momentum for encouraging positive change in scholarly publishing not be lost." . . .

Led by two expert presenters, this structured interactive overview of the scholarly communication system supports individual or institutional strategic planning and action. The workshop focuses on new methods of scholarly publishing and communication, open access and openness as a principle, copyright and intellectual property and economics, providing a foundational understanding for attendees

Host sites are partnering with other institutions in their area to extend the reach to as diverse an audience as possible. Library staff, including liaison librarians, catalogers, access services and senior management from two-year, liberal arts, master's, comprehensive and doctoral institutions will attend the workshops.

Presentations from UK Serials Group’s 32nd Annual Conference Are Available

Presentations from UK Serials Group 32nd Annual Conference are now available (plenary sessions and breakout sessions).

Here's a quick sample:

Special Section in Economics Analysis and Policy on the Economics of Open Access

The latest issue of Economics Analysis and Policy has a special section devoted to the economics of open access (thanks to Christian Zimmermann).

Here are the articles:

Randy J. Olsen Wins Inaugural Howard Goldstein Award to Advance Scholarly Communication

Randy J. Olsen, University Librarian for the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, has won the first BioOne/SPARC Howard Goldstein Award to Advance Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Randy J. Olsen has held leadership positions in the Utah Library Association, the American Library Association, Research Libraries Group, Greater Western Libraries Association, Mountain Plains Library Association, and Utah Academic Library Council. He currently chairs the Library and Scholarly Communications Advisory Council at Brigham Young University and currently serves as a member of the Steering committee for SPARC. . . .

A pragmatist, Olsen initiated a series of concrete steps that have since provided sustainable models for a growing number of important campus publications. These solutions have likewise served as a direction for others to follow. It was Olsen's idea, for example, to hire Jeff Billiston as the Scholarly Communications Librarian to identify and provide publication services and programs. In 2006, Olsen encouraged Billiston to develop an institutional repository that now hosts the legacy issues for 12 publications, with several more to come. In 2007, Olsen became aware of several campus journals in danger of extinction as print-only publications. Careful review of each journal's situation resulted in a variety of solutions that range from a library-sponsored investment in the development of Open Journal Systems software for peer-review and content management, to customized varieties of Open Access publication.

It was Olsen's suggestion that four faculty members attend the Association of Research Library's Institute on Scholarly Communication in 2007. Knowledge about publishing options gained at this event enabled one of BioOne's newest journals, the Western North American Naturalist, to identify a solution to its critical need to modernize. Now in its second year in the BioOne.2 collection, WNAN has increased its distribution and begun to earn important revenue to help sustain its program.

Challenged once again by Olsen, WNAN's publisher the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU concluded that because their companion, Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist, is not their main revenue-producing publication, the best way to enhance its distribution was to add it to BioOne's Open Access collection. The two publications are now seamlessly available to users and their editorial staff is better able to manage both products. According to WNAM's grateful editor Mark Belk, Olsen has thus helped his publications meet their mission to communicate science broadly. Olsen's efforts to engage University leaders in this conversation have helped Belk strengthen his argument for the support necessary to ensure production for the good of the entire research community.

Abby Smith Named Director of Virginia’s Scholarly Communication Institute

Abby Smith has been named the Director of the University of Virginia Library’s Scholarly Communication Institute

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian, and Diane Parr Walker, Deputy University Librarian at the University of Virginia Library and Co-Principal Investigators of the Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI), announced today that Richard E. Lucier will step down as director of SCI, and that Abby Smith, currently senior advisor to SCI, will become Director, effective April 10, 2009. Bethany Nowviskie, currently SCI program associate, will become Associate Director.

Richard Lucier founded the Institute in 2003, together with Deanna Marcum, and under his leadership, SCI has worked to advance scholarly communication through annual summer Institutes and working with and advising Institute participants throughout the year. Lucier has actively advised SCI participants in the development of EthicShare, the Architecture Visual Resources Network (recently launched as SAHARA), and the Online Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. . . .

Abby Smith is a historian and consulting analyst with special interest in the creation, preservation, and use of the cultural record in a variety of media; the impact of digital information technologies on cultural heritage institutions; and the evolving role of information as a public good. Formerly director of programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources, she has been with the Institute since its inception, and served as senior advisor since 2006: "I look forward to leading the Scholarly Communication Institute at this promising juncture in the evolution of the humanities, when scholars are embracing new technologies in imaginative ways to advance research and share it more broadly. Richard has set a clear course for SCI, focused on collaborative actions that serve scholarship broadly and change not just the work we do, but, just as importantly, the way that we work."

In addition to her role as associate director of SCI, Bethany Nowviskie is Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library. She holds a doctoral degree in English from the University of Virginia and has taught courses in literature, bibliography, and new media aesthetics and design. Nowviskie has been active in the digital humanities since 1995.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (4/8/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Case Study in Data Curation at Johns Hopkins University"; "E-Print Depositing Behavior of Physicists and Astronomers: An Intradisciplinary Study"; "A Field Guide to Misunderstandings about Open Access"; "Innkeeper at the Roach Motel"; "'The Law Is the True Embodiment of Everything That's Excellent': Mandates—A View from the United States: Based on a Presentation Given at the UKSG Seminar 'Mandating and the Scholarly Journal Article: Attracting Interest on Deposits?', London, 29 October 2008"; "Learned Societies and Open Access: Key Results from Surveys of Bioscience Societies and Researchers"; "Leveraging Short-Term Opportunities to Address Long-Term Obligations: A Perspective on Institutional Repositories and Digital Preservation Programs"; "Library Access to Scholarship: The Death of Journals (Film at 11)"; "Perceptions and Experiences of Staff in the Planning and Implementation of Institutional Repositories"; "Scholarly Journal Information-Seeking and Reading Patterns of Faculty at Five US Universities"; "Scientific Journal Publishing: Yearly Volume and Open Access Availability"; and "Signs of Epistemic Disruption: Transformations in the Knowledge System of the Academic Journal."

E-Journals: Their Use, Value and Impact

The Research Information Network has released E-Journals: Their Use, Value and Impact.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report was undertaken by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at University College London for the RIN to provide a detailed analysis of how academic researchers in the UK have responded to the provision of e-journals, and how this has shaped their information seeking behaviour and their usage of e-journals. The project looked at:

  • investigating researchers behaviour: looking at levels and patterns of use, the content viewed and how they navigate to it
  • finding out how researchers' behaviours may vary by subjects and disciplines, and the type of university they study at
  • gathering and analysing evidence of relationships between researchers' behaviour and institutional spending on e-journals, and
  • gathering and analysing evidence of relations between researchers' behaviour and research productivity, outputs, including number of publications produced, citations attracted and the results of research evaluation.

Humanities Book Publishing Crisis: Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own

The American Enterprise Institute has released Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own by Mark Bauerlein.

Here's an excerpt:

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University and former director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, examines the pressure on humanities professors to "publish publish publish" and explains why the abundance of research offers diminishing returns. He laments the consequences for undergraduate education and student engagement and suggests that students, faculty, and the broader society would be well-served if we revisited this aged and problematic compact. . . .

Read more about it at "Unread Monographs, Uninspired Undergrads."

Presentations from the 9th International Bielefeld Conference

Presentations from the 9th International Bielefeld Conference are now available.

Here's a few quick selections:

  • Communicating the Results of Research: How Much Does It Cost, and Who Pays?, Michael Jubb (slides) (audio)
  • IR Also Means Institutional Responsibility, Leo Waaijers (slides) (audio)
  • University Investment in the Library: What's the Return?, Carol Tenopir (slides) (audio)

Digital Videos from Texas A&M's the Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age Symposium

Texas A&M University has made digital videos of presentations from its recent the Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age Symposium available.

Speakers included:

  • Georgia K. Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, University of Texas at Austin
  • Michael J. Jensen, Director of Publishing Technologies, National Academies Press
  • Michael A. Keller, Stanford University Librarian, Director of Academic Information Resources, Publisher of HighWire Press, and Publisher of Stanford University Press
  • Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information
  • David E. Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs, National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges
  • Stuart M. Shieber, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication, Harvard University
  • Donald J. Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

Harvard University Press has published How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.

Here's an excerpt from the book description:

In the academic evaluation system known as "peer review," highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world.

Read more about it at "The 'Black Box' of Peer Review."

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (3/4/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Establishing a Central Open Access Fund"; "How the Media Frames 'Open Access'"; "Legal Scholarship, Electronic Publishing, and Open Access: Transformation or Steadfast Stagnation?"; MetaTools—Investigating Metadata Generation Tools: Final Report; "Open Access Publishing in High-Energy Physics"; "Practical Digital Asset Management and the University Library"; "A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures"; "Two Scenarios for How Scholarly Publishers Could Change Their Business Model to Open Access"; "Re-Introduction of the Bill to Kill the NIH Policy"; "Scholarly Communication Initiatives at Georgetown University: Lessons Learned," and "The State of the Nation: A Snapshot of Australian Institutional Repositories."