Category: Scholarly Communication

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."

Free at Your Campus: The ACRL Scholarly Communications 101 Road Show

If your institution meets its criteria, ACRL is offering to bring its Scholarly Communications 101 Road Show to your campus at no cost.

Here's an excerpt from the Road Show Web site:

Participants will:

  • Understand scholarly communication as a system to manage the results of research and scholarly inquiry and be able to describe system characteristics, including academic libraries and other major stakeholders and stakeholder interests, major types and sources of current stress and evolution, and key indicators of size, complexity, and rates of change
  • Enumerate new modes and models of scholarly communication; business models; research & social interaction models (from blogs, curated websites, etc), and peer review models and examples of the ways in which academic libraries have or can initiate or support those models
  • Be able to select and cite key principles, facts, and messages relevant to current or nascent scholarly communication plans and programs in their institutions, e.g. as preparation for library staff or faculty outreach, to contextualize collection development decisions

Empowering People: Indiana University's Strategic Plan for Information Technology 2009

Indiana University's Office of the Vice President for Information Technology has released Empowering People: Indiana University's Strategic Plan for Information Technology 2009.

Of particular interest is section "C12 Recapturing the Scholarly Record," which starts on page 35.

Here's an excerpt:

As a grand-challenge domain IU has limited ability to unilaterally affect scholarly communication models. IU does, however, have great opportunities to lead like-minded institutions and other stakeholders in collective efforts to pioneer new models. These may include partnerships and consortia with other universities that are also examining such directions, new relationships with publishers and the commercial sector, and new approaches for engagement with professional associations to help achieve mutual aims.

One area for exploration is the possibility of a publishing infrastructure that is owned (or managed as a back-office production contract) by colleges and universities. This "Big Digital Machine" could provide efficiencies and economies of scale as a means for professional societies, journal editors, university presses, and others to produce, distribute, and preserve their scholarly communications without a need to put university and commercial values in conflict. There are many questions regarding the feasibility, funding model, and efficacy of a universities-owned Big Digital Machine, and any such capability would need to be able to support a diverse set of journal funding and subscription models, for-fee and open access for monographs, and other means that afford business-model control to each scholarly community. There is evidence for reasoned optimism in this approach, however, as many community source software development projects, library consortia, and other higher education collaborations have demonstrated that a cooperative approach can achieve economy-of-scale efficiencies while respecting and preserving institutional values.

David W. Lewis Named Assistant Vice President for Digital Scholarly Communications at Indiana

David W. Lewis, Dean of the University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, has been named Assistant Vice President for Digital Scholarly Communications in the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information Technology. Lewis will serve for two years in this capacity while retaining his duties as Dean of IUPUI's University Library.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In his new role, Lewis will provide university-wide leadership for Recommendation 12, "Recapturing the Scholarly Record," which is described as a grand challenge in Empowering People, IU’s strategic IT plan.

Recommendation 12 envisions a set of actions for IU to "pursue a position of leadership in the development (with partners) of new, sustainable models for scholarly publication, dissemination, and curation that enable scholars—and their collective communities—to re-assert control over rights to the scholarly record and its institutional preservation."

The plan, developed with the involvement of more than 140 members of the university community in response to a charge from President McRobbie, was endorsed by the IU Trustees in December 2008.

In announcing the appointment, IU Vice President for IT Brad Wheeler said, "The complexities and challenges for economically sustaining scholarly communications are great, and this is a timely opportunity for IU to assess a full range of options for the future. David's appointment assures the focused effort we need to help coalesce many ideas into actionable plans."

As assistant vice president, Lewis will engage in extensive dialogue with IU's faculty and research scholars, librarians, faculty council committees, the IU Press, UITS, and other research universities.

"Libraries are at the center of the many complex issues regarding scholarly publication and dissemination," said Patricia Steele, Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries. "We've worked diligently help find solutions. Having David in a leadership role leverages his knowledge of these issues and the critical understanding he brings as a librarian."

Lewis joined Indiana University in 1993 as the head of public services at IUPUI University Library and has served as dean since 2000. He has a bachelor's degree in history from Carleton College, a master's of library science degree from Columbia University, and certificates of advanced study in librarianship from the University of Chicago and Columbia University.

ARL, AAU, CNI, and NASULGC Release "The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship—A Call to Action"

The Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, have released "The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship."

Here's an excerpt:

Primary Recommendation: Campuses should initiate discussions involving administration and faculty about modifying current practices and/or its intellectual property policies such that the university retains a set of rights sufficient to ensure that broad dissemination of the research and scholarly work produced by its faculty occurs. . . .

Some specific institutional strategies include:

  • Initiate a process to develop an institutional dissemination plan by explicitly evaluating existing dissemination activities, policies relating to promotion and tenure, and policies regarding faculty copyrights. For instance, charge a campus blue ribbon task force to advise the provost on key issues raised by the emergence of new forms of scholarly publishing and the gains that might be had by utilizing more effective ways of sharing the high quality results of the processes of scholarly and creative endeavor.
  • With this foundation, develop priorities for supporting new dissemination strategies that enhance the value of the multifaceted investments in faculty research and scholarship by promoting the broadest possible access to it.
  • Engage departments on campus in developing fresh articulations of the criteria that are appropriate for judging the quality of contributions to their discipline, criteria that embrace emerging forms of scholarly work, where those possess the same attributes of quality and contribution to new knowledge, and do not rely solely on traditional publications and historic practices.
  • Develop institutional policies that enable the university to disseminate the full range of its community’s products now and in the future.
  • Where local dissemination infrastructure exists (such as institutional repositories), promote its use and expand its capabilities as required. Where needed, build new infrastructure that supports documentation of the products of faculty work, both for grant management and compliance and for more general purposes.
  • Seek opportunities to invest in shared dissemination infrastructure with other institutions – through shared facilities or by contributing funds to the development of dissemination services by another institution.
  • Encourage faculty authors to modify contracts with publishers so that their contracts permit immediate open access or delayed public access to peer reviewed work in a manner that does not threaten the viability of the journals or monographs.
  • Develop policies or strategies that redirect resources from high cost /low value dissemination practices to development of dissemination mechanisms residing inside the academy.
  • Where universities support presses, work to realign presses more directly with the university mission. Encourage press investments in dissemination activities that correspond to areas of excellence on campus. Consider revising reporting relationships to encourage collaboration between presses and libraries. Invest in press/library collaborations.

Ray English Named Winner of 2009 Hugh C. Atkinson Award

Ray English, Director of libraries at Oberlin College, has received the 2009 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

"Ray English has provided transformative leadership within his own institution, his state and region, in ACRL and as a national leader in scholarly communications through SPARC," said Sarah Michalak, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award committee chair and university librarian/associate provost for University Libraries at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "The award has been given to a college librarian only once before in its 21 year history."

English was a primary founder of the ACRL scholarly communication program, serving as chair of the task force that led to the program and also as chair of the Scholarly Communication Committee from its inception until 2006. He is a long-time member and current chair of the SPARC steering committee, of which Oberlin College is a founding member. English has also lectured and written extensively on scholarly communication issues and open access. Since 1988, he has served on more than 15 ALA and ACRL committees and is a former member of the ACRL Board of Directors (1996-98).

Under English’s leadership, Oberlin became the first private, liberal arts college library to join OhioLINK. In addition, he participated in a cooperative effort with four other Ohio private colleges in establishing a new consortium, the Five Colleges of Ohio, which received a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for library resource sharing. He also coordinated a $475,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to incorporate information literacy into the liberal arts curriculum of the Ohio Five schools. English additionally served as co-project director of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership grant to create a library diversity intern program at Oberlin College from 2000-02 and since 2003 has directed four separate multi-institution grants from the Mellon Foundation totaling more than $2 million that are designed to attract undergraduates from diverse backgrounds into the library profession and encourage leadership development. The Oberlin College Library received the 2002 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the college category.

English received his A.B. with honors in German from Davidson College in 1969. He earned his masters in German literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971, where he also received his M.S.L.S. in 1977 and earned his PhD in German literature in 1978.

The Hugh C. Atkinson Award is jointly sponsored by four divisions of the American Library Association: ACRL, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), the Library Leadership and Management Association (LAMA) and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). The award is funded from an endowment established to honor Hugh C. Atkinson.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition Published

The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition is now available from Digital Scholarship. Annual editions of the bibliography are PDF files designed for printing. This edition is over 285 pages long.

It presents over 3,350 articles, books, and other printed and electronic 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 bibliography has the following sections:

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

GPeerReview: Google's Peer Review Tool

Google is developing a peer review tool called GPeerReview. (Thanks to Google Scholar Blog.)

Here's an excerpt from the project page:

With GPeerReview, you can:

  • Publish immediately (and get reviews later),
  • Seek an unlimited number of reviews,
  • Verify the integrity of the reviews,
  • Verify the credibility of the reviewers,
  • Publish without limitation on format, style, or number of pages,
  • Maintain complete copyright ownership of your works, and
  • Enhance the acclaim of your already-published works.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (2/4/09)

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: "Always On: Libraries in a World of Permanent Connectivity," Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues, Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, Future Directions in Metadata Remediation for Metadata Aggregators, "Open Access Policy Options for Funding Agencies and Universities," The Research Library’s Role in Digital Repository Services: Final Report of the ARL Digital Repository Issues Task Force, Sustaining the Digital Investment: Issues and Challenges of Economically Sustainable Digital Preservation, and Understanding PREMIS.

New from ARL: Developing a Scholarly Communication Program in Your Library

The Association of Research Libraries has released a new guide: "Developing a Scholarly Communication Program in Your Library."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide provides background information and outlines steps for setting up a scholarly communication program at your library and on your campus.

Scholarly communication initiatives can take many forms and focus on different issues, such as the University of California’s innovative recruitment of faculty publications into its eScholarship Repository, the University of Minnesota’s author’s rights education program, or SPARC’s student-focused "Right to Research" campaign. Whatever the issues particularly relevant to your institution, librarians can engage faculty members, students, and administrators to make a significant impact on the scholarly landscape.

This online guide offers both generic tools you can adapt locally under a Creative Commons license and examples of how these tools have been implemented at other schools. The guide provides you with help at your point of need, and leverages the expertise and experience of library colleagues everywhere.

The guide offers advice on the following stages of creating and managing a scholarly communication program:

  • Establish Structure
  • Build Knowledge
  • Scan Environment
  • Go Public
  • Evaluate Program
  • Learn More

Kate Wittenberg Named Project Director, Client and Partnership Development at Ithaka

Kate Wittenberg, formerly Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), has been named Project Director, Client and Partnership Development at Ithaka.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In her new role, Wittenberg will focus on building partnerships among scholars, academic centers, publishers, libraries, technology providers, societies, and foundations with an interest in promoting the development of digital scholarship and learning. From proposal creation to market research, business development, and product planning, she will draw on her years of work with scholars and experience building online academic resources to help digital publishing stakeholders identify, build, and sustain innovative initiatives. . . .

Wittenberg spent most of her career at Columbia, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Columbia University Press until 1999, and went on to found and direct EPIC (the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia) for the university. EPIC was a pioneering initiative in digital publishing, and a model publishing partnership for libraries, presses, and academic IT departments. Some of the ventures produced by EPIC include CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online), Gutenberg-E (a reinvention of the monograph as an electronic work), and Jazz Studies Online. Wittenberg brings to Ithaka more than two decades of experience working with faculty, a deep understanding of libraries, first hand experience of digital projects centered within academic institutions, and a wide knowledge of the digital landscape and disciplinary trends. She has worked closely with a number of foundations, and has built a strong reputation in the community through her work at Columbia, her many speaking and consulting engagements around digital publishing, and her numerous publications.

JSTOR and Ithaka Merge

JSTOR and Ithaka Merge have merged and they are now known as Ithaka.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

JSTOR was founded in 1995 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a shared digital library to help academic institutions save costs associated with the storage of library materials and to vastly improve access to scholarship. Today, more than 5,200 academic institutions and 600 scholarly publishers and content owners participate in JSTOR. Ithaka was started in 2003 by Kevin Guthrie, the original founder of JSTOR, with funding from the Mellon Foundation as well as The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. Ithaka was established to aid promising not-for-profit digital initiatives and to provide research and insight on important strategic issues facing the academic community. Ithaka has become known for its influential reports including the 2007 University Publishing in A Digital Age and the 2008 Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources. It is the organizational home to Portico, a digital preservation service, and NITLE, a suite of services supporting the use of technology in liberal arts education.

The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing system-wide costs through collective action.

This is a natural step for these organizations. JSTOR and Ithaka already work closely together, sharing a common history, values, and fundamental purpose. During 2008, the Ithaka-incubated resource Aluka was integrated into JSTOR as an initial step, further strengthening ties between the organizations. JSTOR will now join Portico and NITLE as a coordinated set of offerings made available under the Ithaka organizational name. . .

In addition to JSTOR, Portico, and NITLE, Ithaka's existing research and strategic services groups will remain important parts of the enterprise. The board will be composed of Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees, with Henry Bienen, President of Northwestern University, serving as Chairman and Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation as Vice Chairman.

Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits

JISC has released Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Sharing research information via a more open access publishing model would bring millions of pounds worth of savings to the higher education sector as well as benefiting UK plc. This is one of the key findings from a new research project commissioned by JISC.

Professor John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne’s Victoria University and Professor Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead research that would throw light on the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing.

The research centred on three models which include:

  • Subscription or toll access publishing which involves reader charges and use restrictions;
  • Open access publishing where access is free and publication is funded from the authors’ side; and
  • Open access self-archiving where academic authors post their work in online repositories, making it freely available to all Internet users.

In their report, Houghton et al. looked beyond the actual costs and savings of different models and examined the additional cost-benefits that might arise from enhanced access to research findings.

The research and findings reveal that core scholarly publishing system activities cost the UK higher education sector around £5 billion in 2007. Using the different models, the report shows, what the estimated cost would have been:

  • £230 million to publish using the subscription model,
  • £150 million to publish under the open access model and
  • £110 million to publish with the self-archiving with peer review services plus some £20 million in operating costs if using the different models.

When considering costs per journal article, Houghton et al. believe that the UK higher education sector could have saved around £80 million a year by shifting from toll access to open access publishing. They also claim that £115 million could be saved by moving from toll access to open access self-archiving.

In addition to that, the financial return to UK plc from greater accessibility to research might result in an additional £172 million per annum worth of benefits from government and higher education sector research alone.

SPARC Announces Election Results

SPARC has announced its 2008 election results.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

I am pleased to announce that the following individuals have been selected by SPARC’s voting membership to serve on the SPARC Steering Committee for three-year terms (January 2009-December 2011), effective next month:

  • Jonathan Miller, Rollins College (non-ARL director)
  • Randy Olsen, Brigham Young University (ARL director)
  • Patricia Renfro, Columbia University (staff representative)
  • Lee Van Orsdel, Grand Valley State University (non-ARL director) . . .

The new members join the current members of the SPARC Steering Committee:

  • Jun Adachi, Japanese National Institute of Informatics, for SPARC Japan
  • Larry Alford, Temple University
  • Sherrie Bergman, Bowdoin College
  • David Carlson, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
  • Faye Chadwell, Oregon State University Libraries
  • Ray English, Oberlin College (chair)
  • Diane Graves, Trinity University
  • Thomas Hickerson, University of Calgary
  • Paula Kaufman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Bas Savenije, Utrecht University Library, for SPARC Europe
  • Vicki Williamson, University of Saskatchewan, for the Canadian Association of Research Libraries

Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development

OCLC Research has released Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development

Here's an excerpt:

Research libraries exist to support scholarly work. In recent years, the literature on scholarly practices and information use has been growing, and research libraries should be prospering from this increased base of knowledge. Unfortunately, the profession has no effective means for systematically monitoring or synthesizing the published results. This review begins to address the problem by reporting on the state of knowledge on scholarly information behavior, focusing on the information activities involved in the research process and how they differ among disciplines. It provides an empirical basis for identifying promising directions and setting priorities for development of digital information services to support and advance scholarship.

Presentations from the CNI Fall 2008 Task Force Meeting

Presentations, handouts, and project links are available for project briefings at the CNI Fall 2008 Task Force Meeting.

Here is a selection of presentations:

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 3

The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 3 is now available from Digital Scholarship.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

Important Reminder: "New URLs for Digital Scholarship FeedBurner Feeds."

Updated ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit Released

The Association of College and Research Libraries has released an updated version of its Scholarly Communication Toolkit. It has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The toolkit continues to provide context and background by summarizing key issues to offer quick, basic information on scholarly communication topics. It also links to examples of specific tools, including handouts, presentations and videos for libraries to adapt and use on their own campuses. . . .

“Given the current economic climate, it's natural to ask if scholarly communication activities are a luxury or a distraction,” said Richard Fyffe, librarian of the college for Grinnell College and co-chair of ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Committee. “We define scholarly communications issues as central to the mission of virtually every kind of academic library because they are central to the mission of our institutions. We feel libraries need to maintain a commitment to awareness, understanding, ownership and activism.”

The updated toolkit serves as a resource for scholarly communication discussions inside the library, outreach programs to faculty and administrators and library school students seeking to incorporate these issues into their course work. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee, as part of its efforts to keep the toolkit current, encourages librarians to contribute tools and case studies on their local scholarly communication campaigns. Simply post a comment describing your tool and provide a link in the appropriate tab.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (1/14/09)

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: "Attracted to Open Access Journals: A Bibliometric Author Analysis in the Field of Biology"; "Cultural Dimensions of Digital Library Development, Part I: Theory and Methodological Framework for a Comparative Study of the Cultures of Innovation in Five European National Libraries"; "Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly Article Seeking and Reading Patterns"; "The Gutenberg-e Project: Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing Born-Digital Monographs"; "The Integration of Open Access Journals in the Scholarly Communication System: Three Science Fields"; "Libraries and Repositories"; "Open Access in 2008"; "The Role and Future of the Monograph in Arts and Humanities Research"; "Scholarly E-Books: The Views of 16,000 Academics: Results from the JISC National E-Book Observatory"; and "Unbundling Fair Uses."

Version 74, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 74 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,350 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 bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

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 and 2007 annual editions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (PDF files designed for printing) 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.

2,900+ Authors for One Article

Philip Davis at The Scholarly Kitchen has commented on "The ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider," an article that has over 2,900 authors.

Here's an excerpt:

Either the definition of authorship in high energy physics will need to change, or other methods for evaluating individuals will take dominance over publications. Collectively, this community will help draft new rules.

ARL Report: Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication

The Association of Research Libraries has released Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication by Nancy L. Maron and K. Kirby Smith, plus a database of associated examples.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In the spring of 2008, ARL engaged Ithaka’s Strategic Services Group to conduct an investigation into the range of online resources valued by scholars, paying special attention to those projects that are pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional formats and are considered innovative by the faculty who use them. The networked digital environment has enabled the creation of many new kinds of works, and many of these resources have become essential tools for scholars conducting research, building scholarly networks, and disseminating their ideas and work, but the decentralized distribution of these new-model works has made it difficult to fully appreciate their scope and number.

Ithaka’s findings are based on a collection of resources identified by a volunteer field team of over 300 librarians at 46 academic institutions in the US and Canada. Field librarians talked with faculty members on their campuses about the digital scholarly resources they find most useful and reported the works they identified. The authors evaluated each resource gathered by the field team and conducted interviews of project leaders of 11 representative resources. Ultimately, 206 unique digital resources spanning eight formats were identified that met the study’s criteria.

The study’s innovative qualitative approach yielded a rich cross-section of today’s state of the art in digital scholarly resources. The report profiles each of the eight genres of resources, including discussion of how and why the faculty members reported using the resources for their work, how content is selected for the site, and what financial sustainability strategies the resources are employing. Each section draws from the in-depth interviews to provide illustrative anecdotes and representative examples.

Highlights from the study’s findings include:

  • While some disciplines seem to lend themselves to certain formats of digital resource more than others, examples of innovative resources can be found across the humanities, social sciences, and scientific/technical/medical subject areas.

  • Of all the resources suggested by faculty, almost every one that contained an original scholarly work operates under some form of peer review or editorial oversight.

  • Some of the resources with greatest impact are those that have been around a long while.

  • While some resources serve very large audiences, many digital publications—capable of running on relatively small budgets—are tailored to small, niche audiences.

  • Innovations relating to multimedia content and Web 2.0 functionality appear in some cases to blur the lines between resource types.

  • Projects of all sizes—especially open-access sites and publications—employ a range of support strategies in the search for financial sustainability.