Scholarly Communication – Page 23

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines

The Center for Studies in Higher Education has released Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines.

Here's an excerpt:

We describe here the results of our research conducted between 2007 and 2010. In the interest of developing a deeper understanding of how and why scholars do what they do to advance their academic fields, as well as their careers, our approach focused on finegrained analyses of faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly communication lifecycle, including career advancement, sharing, collaborating, informal and formal publishing, resource generation, and engaging with the public. The report is based on the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science. We concentrated on assessing scholars’ attitudes and needs as both producers and users of research results. The report is divided into eight chapters, which include a document synthesizing our research results plus seven detailed disciplinary case studies.

David H. Carlson Elected SPARC Steering Committee Chair

David H. Carlson, Dean of Library Affairs at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has been elected Chair of the SPARC Steering Committee. Carlson has been a committee member since 2008.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Carlson brings to the Chair position a rich and deep perspective informed by working with a variety of libraries and institutions in his career, including a teaching college, large research-intensive university, and a library consortium. He has served extensively with the board of directors at the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), and currently serves on the boards of directors for the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and BioOne.

Carlson has been an active participant in industry-level scholarly communication activities, especially those related to library-vendor relations. He led the library community in successfully securing a reversal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) decision to stop supplying new Science content to JSTOR. He has spearheaded Open Access activities at SIUC, and was responsible for launching the campus's open-access repository. Carlson has also been active supporter of national public access policies and has been a vocal advocate of the NIH Public Access Policy as well as the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

"David Carlson is a committed advocate who sees things through to their conclusion," said Heather Joseph, SPARC's Executive Director. "His experience with institutions of all types, and his commitment to deepening the impact of research through expanding access will help SPARC make important new strides in the coming years. The committee and I look forward to having David's leadership to help us address the challenges and opportunities before us."

"The matters facing SPARC are vital to not just libraries but the academy," said Carlson. "Indeed, as technology provides greater access to tools and platforms that permit creative contributions, the issues are becoming increasingly important to society as a whole. It is a critical time to show the detrimental effects of restrictive laws and regulations, and to advance requirements for public access to research sponsored by government agencies." He added, "I look forward to working as Chair of SPARC to pursue key avenues toward change at this crucial juncture."

SPARC's voting membership, which includes representatives from over 150 academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada, also elected the following individuals to serve on the SPARC Steering Committee for three-year terms beginning January 1:

Maggie Farrell, University of Wyoming (non-ARL director)

Rick Luce, Emory University (ARL director)

Lorraine Harricombe, University of Kansas (ARL director)

Steering Committee members whose terms concluded in December include outgoing Chair (2005 through 2009) Ray English (Oberlin College), Larry Alford (Temple University), Sherrie Bergman (Bowdoin College), Diane Graves (Trinity University), and Randy Olsen (Brigham Young University).

The full SPARC Steering Committee represents ARL and non-ARL libraries in the U.S. and Canada as well as SPARC Europe, SPARC Japan, CARL, and AASHL. The full list is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/about.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (1/20/10)

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: "Copyright Renewal for Libraries: Seven Steps toward a User-Friendly Law"; "Data Curation Program Development in U.S. Universities: The Georgia Institute of Technology Example"; "D-Lib Magazine: Its First 13 Years"; "Open Access: Advice on Working with Faculty Senates"; "A Metadata Best Practice for a Scientific Data Repository"; "Metadata Decisions for Digital Libraries: A Survey Report"; "Metadata for Special Collections in CONTENTdm: How to Improve Interoperability of Unique Fields through OAI-PMH"; "Open Access in 2009"; " Paying for Open Access? Institutional Funding Streams and OA Publication Charges"; "Preservation in the Age of Google: Digitization, Digital Preservation, and Dilemmas"; "Technologies Employed to Control Access to or Use of Digital Cultural Collections: Controlled Online Collections"; and "Sticker Shock and Looming Tsunami."

Report and Recommendations from the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable

The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable has released the Report and Recommendations from the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund "as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal."

The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles.

The various communities represented in the Roundtable have been working to develop recommendations that would improve public access without curtailing the ability of the scientific publishing industry to publish peer- reviewed scientific articles.

The Roundtable’s recommendations, endorsed in full by the overwhelming majority of the panel (12 out of 14 members), "seek to balance the need for and potential of increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise," according to the report. . . .

The Roundtable identified a set of principles viewed as essential to a robust scholarly publishing system, including the need to preserve peer review, the necessity of adaptable publishing business models, the benefits of broader public access, the importance of archiving, and the interoperability of online content.

In addition, the group affirmed the high value of the "version of record" for published articles and of all stakeholders' contributions to sustaining the best possible system of scholarly publishing during a time of tremendous change and innovation.

To implement its core recommendation for public access, the Roundtable recommended the following:

Agencies should work in full and open consultation with all stakeholders, as well as with OSTP, to develop their public access policies. Agencies should establish specific embargo periods between publication and public access.

Policies should be guided by the need to foster interoperability.

Every effort should be made to have the Version of Record as the version to which free access is provided.

Government agencies should extend the reach of their public access policies through voluntary collaborations with non-governmental stakeholders.

Policies should foster innovation in the research and educational use of scholarly publications.

Government public access policies should address the need to resolve the challenges of long-term digital preservation.

OSTP should establish a public access advisory committee to facilitate communication among government and nongovernment stakeholders.

Lawrence Lessig on "Open Content and the Ethics of Science"

A presentation by Lawrence Lessig, Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, on "Open Content and the Ethics of Science" at the University of Amsterdam Symposium on Open Content is now available on Blip.tv.

Institutional Repository Bibliography, Version 2

Version two of the Institutional Repository Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship.

The Institutional Repository Bibliography presents over 700 selected English-language articles, books, technical reports, and other scholarly textual sources that are useful in understanding institutional repositories. This version significantly expands coverage of technical reports and adds a search function (Google index update for version two may take a few days).

Most sources have been published between 2000 and the present; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories for published articles. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

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

1 General
2 Country and Regional Institutional Repository Surveys
3 Multiple-Institution Repositories
4 Specific Institutional Repositories
5 Institutional Repository Digital Preservation Issues
6 Institutional Repository Library Issues
7 Institutional Repository Metadata Issues
8 Institutional Repository Open Access Policies
9 Institutional Repository R&D Projects
10 Institutional Repository Research Studies
11 Institutional Repository Software
Appendix A. About the Author

The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may also be of interest:

Enhanced Publications: Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories

The Amsterdam University Press has released the SURF Foundation/DRIVER's Enhanced Publications: Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The traditional publication will be overhauled by the 'Enhanced Publication.' This is a publication that is enhanced with research data, extra materials, post publication data, and database records. It has an object-based structure with explicit links between the objects. In this book a state-of-the-art overview is given of the structural elements of an Enhanced Publication, as well as publication models, interrelationship and repository issues. The use of Enhanced Publications evokes questions on object models and functionalities. In-depth study is made of these subjects. More practically, a sample is given of datasets in enhanced publications and a demonstrator on how an enhanced publication can be visualised. In the final section, this book deals with long-term preservation issues, linking to the developments of digital repositories that are studied in other books in this series.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (12/16/09)

Especially interesting are: "Dublin Core Metadata Semantics: An Analysis of the Perspectives of Information Professionals," "Enhancing Scientific Communication through Aggregated Publications Environments," "How to Publish Data Using Overlay Journals: The OJIMS Project," "Increasing the Productivity of Interactions between Subject and Institutional Repositories," "Open Access and the Google Book Settlement" and "SCOAP3 and Open Access."

Version 77, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 77 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,620 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 available as a paperback book and as a Kindle e-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 and User Authentication
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Maria Bonn Named Associate University Librarian for Publishing at Michigan

Maria Bonn has been named Associate University Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. Bonn is currently the Director of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Scholarly publishing and libraries are both in tremendous upheaval as a result of major technological change," said Paul N. Courant, dean of libraries, who noted the new post has been created to oversee the library's growing suite of publishing and scholarly communications initiatives.

"We need leaders with the vision and insight to help us thrive in this new environment, and find new ways to support the academy's mission of communicating its discoveries and ideas," Courant said. "Maria Bonn is the right person to play this new and exciting role on behalf of Michigan and the academy more broadly."

For the last 10 years, Bonn has pioneered the production of electronic books and journals. Her role has included developing the profile of the library in scholarly communication. Under Bonn's leadership, the Scholarly Publishing Office was created.

The experimental publishing unit provides electronic publishing tools and systems for both born-digital and converted publications, publishes a reprint series of public domain works from the library's collections. The unit is also involved in several collaborative activities including the ACLS Humanities EBook project, the LLMC-Digital project, the Digital Culture Books Imprint, Open Humanities Press, and the Text Creation Partnership.

"Creating this new position signals a unique awareness on the part of the University of Michigan that the University's publishing activity can best be supported and grown in the context of the library," Bonn said.

According to Bonn, the library has already created a powerful publishing capacity by bringing together the University of Michigan Press, the Scholarly Publishing Office, Deep Blue, and the Text Creation Partnership under one umbrella.

"This alliance gives us the potential to make a significant intervention in mission-driven scholarly publishing," she said. "I look forward to building upon the existing strengths of the publishing units to create resources and services that meet the needs of the university and of the larger scholarly community."

Bonn will also serve as an advisor to the University community on issues surrounding scholarly publishing and communication policy and will support innovative projects in those areas both in and out of the library.

Bonn has a doctorate in American literature from SUNY Buffalo and a master's in information and library science from U-M. She published work on contemporary American literature, particularly the literature of arising from American involvement in Vietnam. She spent several years as an academic and instructor at universities including the Sichuan International Studies University in Chongqing, China and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

After receiving her MILS in 1996, Bonn joined the U-M Library first as an interface specialist for the Digital Library Production Service, then in Digital Library Program Development, where she began the work that grew into the Scholarly Publishing Office.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (11/18/09)

Especially interesting are: "The 'Big Deal': A Survey of How Libraries Are Responding and What the Alternatives Are"; "Digital Library of the Caribbean: A User-Centric Model for Technology Development in Collaborative Digitization Projects"; "The 'DOD' and 'POD' Project in Context at McGill: Part of Digitizing Collections to Preserve Content, Provide Access and Enrich Research"; "Economists Online: User Requirements for a Subject Repository"; Income Models for Open Access: An Overview of Current Practice; "Knowledge as a Public Good"; "Open Access Repositories in Computer Science and Information Technology: An Evaluation"; "Research Online: Digital Commons as a Publishing Platform at the University of Wollongong, Australia"; and "The Scholarly Communication Process within the University Research Corridor (Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University): A Case Study in Cooperation."

Proceedings of the 155th ARL Membership Meeting

ARL has released the Proceedings of the 155th ARL Membership Meeting. Presentations are in digital audio, PowerPoint, and/or PDF formats.

Here's a selection:

"A Scientist’s View of Open Access," Bernard Schutz (PowerPoint, audio available)
"A River Runs Through It," Sayeed Choudhury (PowerPoint, audio available)
"Leading from the Middle: Open Access at KU," Lorraine J. Haricombe (PowerPoint, audio available)
"The Changing Role of Special Collections in Scholarly Communications," Donald J. Waters (PDF)
"Library Options for Publishing Support," October Ivins and Judy Luther (PowerPoint, audio available)

CNI Conversations Series Podcasts

The Coalition for Networked Information launched the CNI Conversations series with Clifford A. Lynch in September.

Two podcasts are now available:

Oct. 6, 2009
Discussion topics included:

Internet2

NDIIPP storage systems symposium

Bamboo Project

University libraries and presses

Sept. 15, 2009
Discussion topics included:

DataNet

Google Books proposed settlement

Library measures for the challenging economic climate

Future of newspapers

The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery

Microsoft Research has released The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.

Of particular interest is the "Scholarly Communication" chapter.

Here are some selections from that chapter:

"Jim Gray’s Fourth Paradigm and the Construction of the Scientific Record," Clifford Lynch
"Text in a Data-Centric World," Paul Ginsparg
"All Aboard: Toward a Machine-Friendly Scholarly Communication System," Herbert Van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze
"I Have Seen the Paradigm Shift, and It Is Us," John Wilbanks

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition Kindle Edition

The Kindle edition of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition is now available from Amazon.com.

The bibliography presents over 3,350 English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet (see the table of contents for details). Most sources have been published between 1990 and 2008; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included. 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 is also available from Amazon.com as a 372-page, 6" by 9" paperback book on white paper (ISBN: 1448624908, EAN: 139781448624904), from CreateSpace (identical to the Amazon.com edition), and from Lulu (same page length and size, but it is printed on cream paper and it does not have an ISBN or EAN.)

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (10/21/09)

Especially interesting are: "The 'Author Pays' Model of Open Access and UK-Wide Information Strategy"; "The Current Scenario of Open Access Journal Initiatives in India"; "Lending Kindle E-Book Readers: First Results from the Texas A&M University Project"; "If SWORD Is the Answer, What Is the Question?: Use of the Simple Web-Service Offering Repository Deposit Protocol"; "Institutional Repositories in Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions: User Interface Features and Knowledge Organization Systems"; "OA and IP: Open Access, Digital Copyright and Marketplace Competition"; "Publishing and the Digital Library: Adding Value to Scholarship and Innovation to Business"; "Rethinking Copyrights for the Library through Creative Commons Licensing"; "Ten Challenges for Open-Access Journals"; and "What Qualifications and Skills Are Important for Digital Librarian Positions in Academic Libraries? A Job Advertisement Analysis."

Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

MediaCommons Press has launched and released its first publication, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. MediaCommons gets support from the Institute for the Future of the Book and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This book-in-progress focuses on the social and institutional changes that will be required within colleges and universities in the U.S. in order for digital scholarly publishing to become a viable reality.

The manuscript is here published in full, in an commentable format designed to promote a new open mode of peer review.

Communicating Knowledge: How and Why UK Researchers Publish and Disseminate Their Findings

JISC and the Research Information Network have released Communicating Knowledge: How and Why UK Researchers Publish and Disseminate Their Findings.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Researchers are driven by a desire to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the world we inhabit, and to communicate their findings to others. But both governments and other funders are increasingly interested in demonstrating the social and economic returns from their investments in research, and in assessing research performance.

The many different criteria for success, and the lack of any consensus on how success should be assessed or measured, however, mean that researchers often find themselves in receipt of confused or conflicting messages. And they are pulled in different directions in deciding which channels of communication they should adopt.

This report is complimented by four supporting papers which provide detailed descriptions of the methods used, a full analysis of the data, and further details of the findings.

A related podcast is also available.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (9/16/09)

Especially interesting are: “Beyond Theory: Preparing Dublin Core Metadata for OAI-PMH Harvesting”; “Contributions of Open Access to Higher Education in Europe and Vice Versa”; Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars; “Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing”; “Musings on Fair Use”; “OA Network: An Integrative Open Access Infrastructure for Germany”; “Online Digital Thesis Collections and National Information Policy: ANTAEUS”; “Purple Cows and Fringy Propositions: The Edinburgh Repository Fringe Festival 2009”; “Reinventing Academic Publishing Online. Part II: A Socio-Technical Vision”; and “Report on OAI 6: CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, Geneva 17-19 June 2009.”

Version 76, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 76 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,480 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 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

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

Harold Varmus Announces Experimental Open Access Publication, PLoS Currents: Influenza

Harold Varmus has announced an experimental open access publication, PLoS Currents: Influenza.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable. . . .

To enable contributions to PLoS Currents: Influenza to be shared as rapidly as possible, they will not be subject to in-depth peer review; however, unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators led by Eddie Holmes (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, USA) and Peter Palese (Department of Microbiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA).

The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world's scientific and medical communities. Google Knol's features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to develop around these findings. Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

"Towards Scholarly HTML"

Peter Sefton has posted an e-print of his forthcoming Serials Review article "Towards Scholarly HTML" (dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2009.05.001) on ptsefton.

In an attempt to comply with Elsevier's author agreement, he states:

At the moment that link seems to resolve to an open version of the article, whether or not you have a subscription to the journal but I guess that will change; when it is "published" you will only see the article if you are clicking from inside a network that's on their list of subscribers. If not, you will need money to see it. But I can post the article here with the copyright statement you see below and remind you that you need to use the DOI to cite the paper should you wish to. No naughty linking back here (unless it is to reference these comments I'm adding). And no linking to the version I'm about to put in ePrints. OK? Even though you know that if you do link to the DOI some people may not be able to see the article in the future, don't do it, use the DOI link. There, I think I told you.

Note: the Elsevier version is no longer freely available.

Gideon Burton on the "The Open Scholar"

In "The Open Scholar," Gideon Burton says that open access is "great for archival purposes, but this is not the next real destination for scholarly discourse." Instead we need a new model: the "open scholar."

Here's an excerpt:

The Open Scholar, as I'm defining this person, is not simply someone who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it—at any stage of its development.

ARL Webcast: Reaching Out to Leaders of Scholarly Societies at Research Institutions

The Association of Research Libraries has released its archived "Reaching Out to Leaders of Scholarly Societies at Research Institutions" webcast. Access is free, but registration is required.

Here's an excerpt from the press release :

On August 6, 2009, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) hosted a Web conference on “Reaching Out to Leaders of Scholarly Societies at Research Institutions,” August 6, 2009, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (EDT) as part of an ongoing initiative to enhance library outreach.

Complementing the recently released guide on outreach to scholarly society leaders, the 60-minute webcast will introduce the goals and key talking points for campus outreach to leaders, editors, and members of academic scholarly societies. It will support development of faculty outreach programs at ARL member libraries by offering strategy and tactics for increasing engagement with association leaders at the institution.

Successful campus outreach should encourage and support society leaders to engage in positive change that advances the scholarly communication system, promotes new research modes, and offers a path forward in a time of paradigm shift.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (8/12/09)

Especially interesting are: "The Antaeus Column: Does the 'Open Access' Advantage Exist? A Librarian's Perspective"; "Copyright Issues in the Selection of Archival Material for Internet Access"; Creating Digital Collections: A Practical Guide; "Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing"; "If You Build It, They Will Scan: Oxford University's Exploration of Community Collections"; "Measuring Mass Text Digitization Quality and Usefulness: Lessons Learned from Assessing the OCR Accuracy of the British Library's 19th Century Online Newspaper Archive"; "Overlay Journals and Data Publishing in the Meteorological Sciences"; "PLoS ONE: New Approaches and Initiatives in the Evolution of the Academic Journal"; "Research Data Preservation and Access: The Views of Researchers"; "The Return of FRPAA"; and "Scholarly Communication: ARL as a Catalyst for Change."