Scholarly Journals – Page 74

"Linking Information Seeking Patterns with Purpose, Use, Value, and Return on Investment of Academic Library Journals"

Donald W. King and Carol Tenopir have published "Linking Information Seeking Patterns with Purpose, Use, Value, and Return on Investment of Academic Library Journals" in the latest issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

Here's an excerpt:

The emphasis of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship of how purposes of reading scholarly journals (e.g., research, teaching, current awareness, etc.) lead to the information seeking patterns used by them (e.g., how they identify articles that are read, where they obtain them, etc.), which dictates certain aspects of use (e.g., how much is read, age of articles read, format of the articles, etc.), which is related to the positive outcomes or value of reading (e.g., increased productivity, improved research or teaching, saving readers' time or money, etc.), which serves as return components of the ROI of academic library journal collections.

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"Data Management in Scholarly Journals and Possible Roles for Libraries—Some Insights from EDaWaX"

Sven Vlaeminck has published "Data Management in Scholarly Journals and Possible Roles for Libraries—Some Insights from EDaWaX" in the latest issue of LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper we summarize the findings of an empirical study conducted by the EDaWaX-Project. 141 economics journals were examined regarding the quality and extent of data availability policies that should support replications of published empirical results in economics. This paper suggests criteria for such policies that aim to facilitate replications. These criteria were also used for analysing the data availability policies we found in our sample and to identify best practices for data policies of scholarly journals in economics. In addition, we also evaluated the journals' data archives and checked the percentage of articles associated with research data. To conclude, an appraisal as to how scientific libraries might support the linkage of publications to underlying research data in cooperation with researchers, editors, publishers and data centres is presented.

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British Library and Portico Collaborate on E-journal Preservation

British Library and Portico will collaborate on preserving the Library's e-journal collection.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The partnership will help the British Library—along with five other legal deposit libraries—to meet regulations that recently became law in the United Kingdom and that extend the practice of legal deposit from traditional print publications to non-print publications such as e-journals, blogs and websites in the UK web domain.

Portico will utilize its established workflow and processes to create standardized and uniform journal content that can be exported to the British Library. They have started with 1,500 journals from three publishers that are already preserving content with Portico. As necessary, Portico will develop new tools for processing additional publisher content.

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G8 Science Ministers Issue Statement Supporting Open Access

The G8 science ministers have issued a statement that includes sections supporting open access.

Here's an excerpt:

Open enquiry is at the heart of scientific endeavour, and rapid technological change has profound implications for the way that science is both conducted and its results communicated. It can provide society with the necessary information to solve global challenges. We are committed to openness in scientific research data to speed up the progress of scientific discovery, create innovation, ensure that the results of scientific research are as widely available as practical, enable transparency in science and engage the public in the scientific process. We have decided to support the set of principles for open scientific research data outlined below as a basis for further discussions.

i. To the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints possible publicly funded scientific research data should be open, while at the same time respecting concerns in relation to privacy, safety, security and commercial interests, whilst acknowledging the legitimate concerns of private partners.

ii. Open scientific research data should be easily discoverable, accessible, assessable, intelligible, useable, and wherever possible interoperable to specific quality standards.

iii. To maximise the value that can be realised from data, the mechanisms for delivering open scientific research data should be efficient and cost effective, and consistent with the potential benefits.

iv. To ensure successful adoption by scientific communities, open scientific research data principles will need to be underpinned by an appropriate policy environment, including recognition of researchers fulfilling these principles, and appropriate digital infrastructure.

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Directory of Open Access Journals Releases New Selection Criteria Draft

The Directory of Open Access Journals has released a draft of its new journal selection criteria .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We have tried to construct objective criteria that can facilitate compliance verification easily. In order to be listed in the DOAJ, a journal must meet the following criteria:

Journal will be asked to provide basic information (title, ISSN, etc.), contact information, and information about journal policies

Journal is registered with SHERPA/RoMEO

Journal has an editorial board with clearly identifiable members (including affiliation information)

Journal publishes a minimum of five articles per year (does not apply for new journals)

Allows use and reuse at least at the following levels (as specified in the Open Access Spectrum, http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/howopenisit/ ):

Full text, metadata, and citations of articles can be crawled and accessed with permission (Machine Readability Level 4)

Provides free readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication (Reader Rights Level 1)

Reuse is subject to certain restrictions; no remixing (Reuse Rights Level 3)

Allow authors to retain copyright in their article with no restrictions (Copyrights Level 1)

Author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website (Author Posting Rights Level 2)

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Association of American Publishers: "Understanding CHORUS"

The Association of American Publishers has released "Understanding CHORUS."

Here's an excerpt:

The Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) is a framework for a possible public-private partnership to increase public access to peer-reviewed publications that report on federally-funded research. Conceived by publishers, CHORUS would:

Provide a full solution for agencies to comply with the OSTP memo on public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications reporting on federally-funded research

Build on publishers' existing infrastructure to enhance public access to research literature, avoiding duplication of effort, minimizing cost to the government and ensuring the continued availability of the research literature

Serve the public by creating a streamlined, cohesive way to expand access to peer-reviewed articles reporting on federally-funded research. Reflecting the OSTP memo, CHORUS will present and preserve these as digital form, final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents

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AAU, APLU, and ARL: Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Proposal

The Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and ARL have released a draft of the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) proposal.

Here's an excerpt:

Research universities are long-lived and are mission-driven to generate, make accessible, and preserve over time new knowledge and understanding. Research universities collectively have the assets needed for a national solution for enhanced public access to federally funded research output. As the principal producers of the resources that are to be made publicly available under the new White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)[1] memorandum, and that are critical to the continuing success of higher education in the United States, universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship. The new White House directive provides a compelling reason to integrate higher education's investments to date into a system of cross-institutional digital repositories that will be known as Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

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"Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature"

Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk have self-archived "Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature."

Here's an excerpt:

Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 % becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals.

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Publishers Put Forward Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States Proposal

A group of scholarly publishers has put forward a proposal to establish a Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States.

Here is a list of key posts about the proposal:

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"Riding the Crest of the Altmetrics Wave: How Librarians Can Help Prepare Faculty for the Next Generation of Research Impact Metrics"

Scott Lapinski, Heather Piwowar, and Jason Priem have published "Riding the Crest of the Altmetrics Wave: How Librarians Can Help Prepare Faculty for the Next Generation of Research Impact Metrics" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

University faculty, administration, librarians, and publishers alike are beginning to discuss how and where altmetrics can be useful towards evaluating a researcher's academic contribution.² As interest grows, libraries are in a unique position to help facilitate an informed dialogue with the various constituencies that will intersect with altmetrics on campus, including both researchers (students and faculty) and the academic administrative office (faculty affairs, research and grants, promotion and tenure committees, and so on).

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"Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition"

Heather Morrison has published "Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition" in the latest issue of First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic library budgets are the primary source of revenue for scholarly journal publishing. There is more than enough money in the budgets of academic libraries to fund a fully open access scholarly journal publishing system. Seeking efficiencies, such as a reasonable average cost per article, will be key to a successful transition. This article presents macro level economic data and analysis illustrating the key factors and potential for cost savings.

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"The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum"

Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder have self-archived "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations. We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content. We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers' attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

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"Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus"

David Solomon has published "Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications.

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Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Adopts Open Access Policy

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In accordance with their open access resolution, Mailman School researchers commit to having their published scholarly articles included in Columbia's digital repository, Academic Commons, where content is freely available to the public, or in another repository, such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, that makes the research publicly available. . . .

The resolution covers all scholarly journal articles as of May 1. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, permitting the researcher to request that an article that appears in a journal that insists on exclusivity not have that piece included in the repository.

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"Hot Times for Open Access"

Walt Crawford has published "Hot Times for Open Access" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

These are hot times for open access. Maybe not a tipping point, certainly not where everything will be in a couple of years, but more action—and even more progress—than I'd seen in a while.

What we have here is a hybrid: part catching up with three vibrant months in the development of OA, part supplemental material for my OA precon-ference in Vancouver, Washington. This issue ap-pears slightly after that preconference—but attendees got early access to it. That hybrid nature may affect the organization, always sketchy in any case. It also means a few things are noted that wouldn't qualify as new material.

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"Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications"

Science Europe has released "Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications." Science Europe is an "association of 51 European national research organisations."

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore the Science Europe Member Organisations:

will continue to support any valid approaches to achieve Open Access, including those commonly referred to as the "green" and "gold" routes; . . . .

stress that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository, and made available in Open Access in all cases no later than six months following first publication. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the delay may need to be longer than six months but must be no more than 12 months; . . .

require that funding of Open Access publication fees is part of a transparent cost structure, incorporating a clear picture of publishers' service costs;. . . .

stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent "double dipping" and increase cost transparency;

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"The Winds of Change: Periodicals Price Survey 2013"

Stephen Bosch and Kittie Henderson have published "The Winds of Change: Periodicals Price Survey 2013" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This year, the serials pricing data indicates that prices are increasing at about the same rate as last year. Increases seemed to have plateaued at about 6% for 2013. Data from the merged ISI indexes shows a 6% increase for 2013, unchanged from 2012. EBSCO's MasterFILE Premier and Academic Search Premier show similar results: average prices for titles in MSP increased 5% for 2013, while average prices for titles in ASP increased 6% in 2013, the same increase as for 2012. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), on the other hand, advanced 1.7% for 2012, which means serials inflation continues to far exceed general inflationary pressures and library budget adjustments.

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"House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access"

The UK Parliament has released an uncorrected transcript of "House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access."

Here's an excerpt (below comments by Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access, Reed Elsevier):

With the Government's policy that we are all implementing, we will see an increase in the amount of hybrid open-access publishing done at scale. For the open-access components of that hybrid publishing, it is clear that the costs are sustainable through the article-publishing charges. For the subscription part of those titles, the costs continue to need to be covered through the subscription model. If the content is freely available too quickly, there will be no need for libraries to continue to pay those subscription costs. While we have not seen clear evidence of an undermining or cancellation of subscriptions at this point, there is evidence, such as that Audrey referred to, that librarians are watching this space very closely and are very mindful of it. We have also seen that where content is deposited at scale, there can be an erosion of transactional revenues-the pay-per-view business model. Those are very modest components of most of our revenue streams, but again it is a potential early-warning sign.

Article-Level Metrics—A SPARC Primer

SPARC has released Article-Level Metrics—A SPARC Primer.

Here's an excerpt:

Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individual articles are being discussed, shared, and used. ALMs can be employed in conjunction with existing metrics, which have traditionally focused on the long-term impact of a collection of articles (i.e., a journal) based on the number of citations generated. This primer is designed to give campus leaders and other interested parties an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities, and how they can be used in the tenure and promotion process.

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ACRL Makes Entire College & Research Libraries Archive Freely Available

ACRL has made the entire College & Research Libraries archive freely available.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

"Digitizing the archives of the premier research journal for academic librarianship provides a tremendous new asset for our profession," said ACRL President Steven J. Bell of Temple University. "Creating and sharing this rich resource demonstrates ACRL's ongoing commitment to promote and deliver on the promise of open access. It is a treasure trove of content where the academic librarians of today and tomorrow will delve into our history, understand how we evolved and make new discoveries that could stimulate groundbreaking research and innovation of real benefit to academic librarianship."

C&RL archival contents from 1939 through 1996 were digitized through the generous volunteer efforts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. The library's Digital Content Creation department performed scanning and metadata creation for the approximately 340 back file issues of the journal in 2011 and 2012. The digitized files were added to the journal's online presence with the financial assistance of the ACRL Friends Fund.

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"The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Germany"

Thomas Eger, Marc Scheufen, and Daniel Meierrieks have self-archived "The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Germany" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

We discuss the results of a survey conducted in fall 2012 and covering 2,151 researchers in Germany. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher's awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Our results reveal that the relevance of OA within a discipline may explain why researchers from particular disciplines do (not) publish OA. Besides, several aspects like copyright law, age, profession or the inherent reward system of a discipline play a role. As a consequence, the paper emphasizes that a "one-size-fits-all" approach as promoted by most recent policy approaches is little promising for providing an effective framework for shaping the future of scholarly publishing.

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Entire Editorial Board of Journal of Library Administration Resigns

There have been several reports stating that the editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration has resigned. The Journal of Library Administration is published by Taylor & Francis, which publishes a number of library and information science journals.

Here's an excerpt from Brian Mathews's "So I'm Editing This Journal Issue and . . ." in which he quotes an e-mail from Damon Jaggars:

"The Board believes that the licensing terms in the Taylor & Francis author agreement are too restrictive and out-of-step with the expectations of authors in the LIS community."

"A large and growing number of current and potential authors to JLA have pushed back on the licensing terms included in the Taylor & Francis author agreement. Several authors have refused to publish with the journal under the current licensing terms."

"Authors find the author agreement unclear and too restrictive and have repeatedly requested some form of Creative Commons license in its place."

"After much discussion, the only alternative presented by Taylor & Francis tied a less restrictive license to a $2995 per article fee to be paid by the author. As you know, this is not a viable licensing option for authors from the LIS community who are generally not conducting research under large grants."

"Thus, the Board came to the conclusion that it is not possible to produce a quality journal under the current licensing terms offered by Taylor & Francis and chose to collectively resign."

The Editorial Board members are:

Damon Jaggars (Editor)
Kristin Antelman
Chris Bourg
Lisa German
Fred M. Heath
Paula T. Kaufman
Deanna B. Marcum
Sarah C. Michalak
James G. Neal
Ann J. Wolpert
Makoto Nakamoto
Stephen Town

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"F1000 Recommendations as a New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison with Citations"

Ludo Waltman and Rodrigo Costas have self-archived "F1000 Recommendations as a New Data Source for Research Evaluation: A Comparison with Citations" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

F1000 is a post-publication peer review service for biological and medical research. F1000 aims to recommend important publications in the biomedical literature, and from this perspective F1000 could be an interesting tool for research evaluation. By linking the complete database of F1000 recommendations to the Web of Science bibliographic database, we are able to make a comprehensive comparison between F1000 recommendations and citations. We find that about 2% of the publications in the biomedical literature receive at least one F1000 recommendation. Recommended publications on average receive 1.30 recommendations, and over 90% of the recommendations are given within half a year after a publication has appeared. There turns out to be a clear correlation between F1000 recommendations and citations. However, the correlation is relatively weak, at least weaker than the correlation between journal impact and citations.

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Open Access: Presentations from the Academy of Social Sciences’ Implementing Finch Conference Published

The Academy of Social Sciences has released a Professional Briefings issue that contains the presentations from its two-day Implementing Finch conference.

Here's an excerpt:

Moving to the recommendations, Dame Janet wished to correct some misunderstandings. The main recommendation was for a mixed economy including both the 'author pays' and subscription models of publishing. The report did not recommend a rapid move to Gold open access ('author pays') and anticipated a mixed economy for the foreseeable future. However the report did recommend that the policy direction should be set towards Gold open access and envisaged the balance between the two models of publishing would shift over time.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (paperback, PDF file, and XHTML website; over 1,100 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

"Open Access, Library and Publisher Competition, and the Evolution of General Commerce"

Andrew Odlyzko has self-archived "Open Access, Library and Publisher Competition, and the Evolution of General Commerce."

Here's an excerpt:

Discussions of the economics of scholarly communication are usually devoted to Open Access, rising journal prices, publisher profits, and boycotts. That ignores what seems a much more important development in this market. Publishers, through the oft-reviled "Big Deal" packages, are providing much greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation to true Open Access. In the process they are also marginalizing libraries, and obtaining a greater share of the resources going into scholarly communication. This is enabling a continuation of publisher profits as well as of what for decades has been called "unsustainable journal price escalation." It is also inhibiting the spread of Open Access, and potentially leading to an oligopoly of publishers controlling distribution through large-scale licensing.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography (paperback, PDF file, and XHTML website; over 1,100 entries) | Digital Scholarship |