Category: Scholarly Journals

Heading for the Open Road: Costs And Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications

The Research Information Network has released Heading for the Open Road: Costs And Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications (annexes).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This new report investigates the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different routes for achieving that end over the next five years, and compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK.

The report suggests that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to open access publishing (Gold open access) while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed c.£2000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

"The Costs and Potential Benefits of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models"

John W. Houghton has published "The Costs and Potential Benefits of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models" in the latest issue of Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The costs and benefits associated with alternative scholarly publishing models demonstrate that research and research communication are major activities and the costs involved are substantial. Our preliminary analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that returns to research are also substantial and that different scholarly publishing models might make a material difference to the returns realised as well as the costs faced. It seems likely from this preliminary analysis that more open access could have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they would be likely to be positive for both open access journal publishing and self-archiving alternatives.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

College & Research Libraries Becomes Immediate Open Access Journal

Joseph J. Branin, Editor of College & Research Libraries, has announced in the journal's current issue that C&RL will "lift its six-month embargo on recently published online articles and become a fully open access journal."

The announcement is an major step for the Association of College & Research Libraries, bringing its open access advocacy positions and its publication practices into alignment.

Librarians were pioneers in publishing scholarly "gold" open access journals. The first library open access journal was the The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, established in 1989 with the first issue published in 1990. It was soon followed by LIBRES (1991), Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship (1991), and MC Journal— Journal of Academic Librarianship (1993).

However, over twenty years later, most scholarly library journals still restrict access to their published PDF and/or HTML articles, although most permit self-archiving of author eprints (they may restrict where the eprints can be self-archived).

There are some fine exceptions: Ariadne, Code4Lib Journal, D-Lib Magazine, Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, the International Journal of Digital Curation, the Journal of Digital Information, the Journal of Electronic Publishing, the Journal of the Medical Library Association, Law Library Journal, and LIBER Quarterly come quickly to mind (117 open access library journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals). However, scholarly library journals from most major commercial publishers and library association publishers remain restricted access.

Consequently, ACRL's decision to go "gold open access" is an important and welcome one. Hopefully, it will encourage other divisions of the American Library Association to follow suit, providing open access to their journals without embargo periods or other access restrictions.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On January 10, 2011, the ACRL Board of Directors unanimously passed the following resolution:

Whereas ACRL supports open scholarship and access to scholarly work;

Whereas ACRL publishes C&RL, the premier journal for academic librarians; Whereas ACRL has made successive changes to increase access to the research found in C&RL;

Whereas ACRL member groups support making C&RL an open access journal;

Be it resolved, that ACRL provide open access to the electronic version of College & Research Libraries journal as of April 2011; and,

Be it further resolved, that ACRL, through this action, continues to play a leading role in advocating for new models of scholarly communication in all of the disciplines.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Author-Pays Open Access Option Using CC-By License Now Available for Many Physical Review Journals

Authors who publish in many Physical Review journals now have the option to pay an article-processing fee in order to have their articles published as open access articles under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC-By License). Two Physical Review journals (Physical Review Special Topics—Accelerators and Beams and Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research) have been fully converted to open access under the CC-By License. The APS announced a new open access journal in January, Physical Review X.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The new article-processing charges, which will cover all costs and provide a sustainable funding model, have been set at $1700 for papers in the Physical Review and $2700 for those in Physical Review Letters. The resulting open access articles will appear alongside and mixed in with subscription-funded articles, converting these journals into "hybrid" open access journals.

"The most selective of our journals must have higher article-processing charges for their open access articles," said Gene Sprouse, APS Editor in Chief. "Physical Review accepts about 60% of articles submitted and Physical Review Letters roughly 25%, so the costs are higher than in less selective journals."

Revenue from the article-processing charges will decrease the need for subscription income and help to keep the APS subscription price-per-article among the lowest of any physics journals. "We'd like to reduce the pressure on library subscriptions, while opening access more widely. Article-processing charges are a means to accomplish both," said Joseph Serene, APS Treasurer/Publisher.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

"The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access in the Law School Journal Environment"

Richard A. Danner, Kelly Leong, and Wayne V. Miller have published "The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access in the Law School Journal Environment" in the latest issue of the Law Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, drafted by a group of academic law library directors, was promulgated in February 2009. It calls for two things: (1) open access publication of law school–published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions available in "stable, open, digital formats." The two years since the Statement was issued have seen increased publication of law journals in openly available electronic formats, but little movement toward all-electronic publication. This article discusses the issues raised by the Durham Statement, the current state of law journal publishing, and directions forward.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

New Journal of Physics Now Includes Video Abstracts

The New Journal of Physics, an open access journal, now includes video abstracts.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

New Journal of Physics (NJP) has today announced the launch of video abstracts as a new integrated content stream that will give all authors the opportunity to go beyond the constraints of the written article to personally present the importance of their work to the journal's global audience.

Early contributions include videos from the groups of David Wineland, National Institute of Standards and Technology and J. Ignacio Cirac, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, talking about scalable ion traps for quantum information processing, and quantum superposition of living organisms. Researchers from more than 25 countries are represented by the videos abstracts that are published today.

One of the first contributors, Neil Wilson of the University of Warwick, UK, said of the service "We are very excited to have the opportunity to feature a video abstract alongside our NJP article. Embracing the possibilities of online media in this way allows us to present our work as we see it, and helps focus interested readers on what we believe the key points to be. We hope that being able to put faces to names, and visualize some of the research in action, will add a human touch and so help the scientific community to grow closer." His video on the structure and topography of free-standing chemically modified graphene can be viewed at http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/12/125010/.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Open Access: Report on the Implementation of Open Content Licenses in Developing and Transition Countries

The EIFL-OA advocacy program has released Report on the Implementation of Open Content Licenses in Developing and Transition Countries.

Here's an excerpt:

The survey attempted to gather information from a broad spectrum of research institutions in developing and transition countries in order to get a better understanding of the current state of the implementation of open content licenses. We looked at the web sites of 2,489 open access journals and 357 open access repositories from EIFL network countries. And this report highlights the best practices in using open content licenses by open access journals and open access repositories in developing and transition countries.

Some general findings of the survey:

Using open content licenses by open access journals:

  • We identified 556 open access journals that are licensed under open content licenses.
  • There are four types of Creative Commons licenses, which are used – the most liberal Creative Commons Attribution license, Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license, Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license and the most restrictive Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative Works license.
  • 94% of the access journals we surveyed are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license (524 open access journals in Armenia, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Lithuania, Macedonia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Thailand).
  • Nine open access journals in China, Russia and South Africa are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.
  • Three open access journals in Ghana, Nigeria and Ukraine are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.
  • And twenty open access journals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative Works license.

Using open content licenses by open access repositories:

  • We identified nine open access repositories that are licensed under open content licenses.
  • A repository of open educational materials in South Africa is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license
  • A repository of open educational materials in Kenya is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
  • One repository in China, two repositories in Poland and two repositories in Thailand are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike license.
  • A repository in South Africa is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
  • A repository hosted in Argentina is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works license.
  • Some repositories in Botswana, Poland and South Africa recommend the depositors to use Creative Commons licenses. As a result a number of publications in these repositories are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

NISO Will Make Information Standards Quarterly Open Access in 2011

The National Information Standards Organization has announced that Information Standards Quarterly will become open access in 2011.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"ISQ has undergone a significant transformation over the past three years as it moved from a newsletter to a full-color magazine," states Cynthia Hodgson, NISO Managing Editor. "With the support of a new ISQ Editorial Board and guest content editors, the contributed content has expanded significantly. Our goal with ISQ is to educate and inform our readers on standards, present practical and replicable implementations of standards-based technologies and best practices, and identify areas where standards could help to solve problems."

"ISQ provides a unique perspective with its overlapping interests to the library, publisher, and information systems and services audience," explains Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director and Publisher of ISQ. "NISO's Board of Directors strongly believes that providing the information in ISQ via open access will enhance the visibility and reach of the work of our community. We also intend to migrate the archives to open access and convert much of the backfile to electronic format."

The print version of ISQ will still be available by subscription or free to NISO members who opt-in to receive it in print. This approach, combined with the open access of the electronic version, will reduce the environmental impact and costs of print publishing while increasing the accessibility of the magazine to everyone in the NISO community and in related standards and technology arenas.

| Digital Scholarship |

Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

The Knowledge Exchange has released Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The general conclusion of the report bearing the title "Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?," written by Mark Ware, is that there are benefits to publishers in certain cases to switch to a model in which an author pays a fee when submitting an article. Especially journals with a high rejection rate might be interested in combining submission fees with article processing charges in order to make the transition to open access easier. In certain disciplines, notably economic and finance journals and in some areas of the experimental life sciences, submission fees are already common.

| Digital Scholarship |

CERN Signs COPE (Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity)

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has signed the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. CERN is the fourteenth institution to sign COPE.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

As a publicly and internationally funded research institution, CERN believes everyone should get access to its results without any financial barrier. The most important tool to implement this vision in the high-energy physics community, which CERN embodies, is the SCOAP3 initiative, through which CERN and partners in over twenty countries are working to convert to open access existing high-quality high-energy physics journals. While waiting for SCOAP3 to be operational CERN and leading publishers in the field (the American Physical Society, Elsevier, SISSA, and Springer) have reached agreements to make the scientific publications from the flagship Large Hadron Collider available open access and under a Creative Common license, as suggested by the publication policy of the CERN Physics Department.

| Digital Scholarship |

RLUK Wants Serials Price Reductions to Avoid Cuts That Would "Fatally Compromise" Research

Research Libraries UK has issued a press release about needed serials price reductions.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

At its recent conference, RLUK announced it would not support future journal big deals unless they showed real price reductions. With a cut to the teaching grant and research budgets flat at best, RLUK members believe that unless this happens they will be forced to cancel significant numbers of subscriptions which will fatally compromise the UK's capacity for research.

For the past several years JISC Collections have negotiated with the publishers on behalf of UKHE. RLUK is so worried about the current situation that it has instructed JISC Collections to secure contracts which will not only rescind the unreasonable price rises of the last three years, but also offer affordable deals for the future. If reasonable deals cannot be struck RLUK libraries will be forced to provide information resources to their researchers and students in other ways.

"The capacity of UK universities to continue to pay such large year-on-year increases for access to scholarly journals is not infinite," said Professor Michael Arthur, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds and Chair of the Russell Group of Universities. "To ensure the continued vitality of the UK's world-beating research base we need to reassess the costs of electronic access and find a new balance between the value added by publishers and the charges they make. We realise that finding such a balance may not be easy, but if we fail to address the problem now there will be serious long-term consequences for research and teaching in the UK."

"The UK Higher Education sector now spends almost £200m per year on access to journals and databases," explained David Prosser, RLUK's Executive Director. "This is 10% of the total QR funding the sector receives and increases above inflation each year. We understand the value publishers add to the publication process, but publishers must also understand that they cannot continue to increase prices at a time when budgets are so tight. We do not wish to cancel big deals, but we shall have no alternative unless the largest publishers substantially reduce their prices."

"Some RLUK members now pay over £1m a year to access journals from the largest publisher," said Phil Sykes, Chair of RLUK and Librarian at Liverpool University. "With annual journal price inflation running at double the rate of RPI since 2000, it has distorted the acquisition policies of libraries, with an ever-increasing proportion of budgets being spent on electronic big deals. This leads to diminishing funds for monographs, textbooks, and journals from smaller publishers, which cannot but damage scholarship and teaching in UKHE."

| Digital Scholarship |

E-Only Scholarly Journals: Overcoming the Barriers

The Research Information Network has released E-Only Scholarly Journals: Overcoming the Barriers.

Here's an excerpt:

This study is prompted by a concern from publishers and librarians that the retention of both printed and e-journal formats adds unnecessary costs throughout the supply chain from publisher to library to user. In view of the many advantages of electronic journals, this report sets out to understand the barriers to a move to e-only provision of scholarly journals in the UK, and to investigate what various players within the scholarly communications system could do in order to encourage such a move.

This study involved a thorough literature review, gathering and analysing information provided by publishers and librarians, and interviews with a range of publishers, librarians and academics. The results are presented in this report, along with some recommendations for action.

| Digital Scholarship |

Gary Ward Named Chairman of the Public Library of Science

Gary Ward has been named Chairman of the Public Library of Science.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

We're delighted to announce that the PLoS board of directors has appointed Gary Ward as board chairman, effective January 1, 2011. Gary has a longstanding association with PLoS as a charter member of the PLoS Biology Editorial Board, has a deep understanding of Open Access and a strong devotion to its widespread adoption.

Gary received his PhD from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and did post doc work at UC San Francisco with Marc Kirschner. He was a Senior Staff Fellow at the NIH’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, and Treasurer and Member of the Executive Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology. He is currently Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Vermont.

Gary’s Open Access credentials are as impressive as his scholarly credentials: he is Chair (through year-end) of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central National Advisory Committee, a past member of the NLM Public Access Working Group, and member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Access working group.

| Digital Scholarship |

Emerald Group Publishing Limited’s Use of the Attributor Anti-Piracy Service

In "Thanks but No Thanks Emerald," Kristin Eschenfelder reproduces and discusses a letter that she received from the Emerald Group Publishing Limited. In short, this letter says that Emerald is expanding it's use of Attributor to detect copyright violations from "cyberlockers" to "the full breadth of the internet," and it requests the URLs for her personal, institutional, and corporate websites so that they can be excluded from Attributor searches and its "legally-binding takedown notices."

Will this expanded use of Attributor affect self-archiving of articles from Emerald journals?

Emerald's publication policies are detailed in its Authors' Charter and its Review Copyright Assignment Form. Emerald requires that authors assign their article copyrights to Emerald as a condition of publication.

The Authors' Charter states that (I have added italics in certain places in the below quotes):

Authors are not required to seek Emerald's permission to re-use their own work. As an author with Emerald you can use your paper in part or in full, including figures and tables if you want to do so in a book, in another article written for us or another publisher, on your website, or any other use, without asking us first.

It further states that:

It does NOT, in any way, restrict your right or academic freedom to contribute to the wider distribution and readership of your work. This includes the right to: . . . .

2. Reproduce your own version of your article, including peer review/editorial changes, in another journal, as content in a book of which you are the author, in a thesis, dissertation or in any other record of study, in print or electronic format as required by your university or for your own career development.

3. Deposit an electronic copy of your own final version of your article, pre- or post-print, on your own or institutional website. The electronic copy cannot be deposited at the stage of acceptance by the Editor.

Authors are requested to cite the original publication source of their work and link to the published version — but are NOT required to seek Emerald's permission with regard to the personal re-use of their work as described above. Emerald never charges its authors for re-use of any of their own published works. Emerald does not allow systematic archiving of works by third parties into an institutional or subject repository.

The Review Copyright Assignment Form says:

This assignment of copyright to Emerald Group Publishing Limited is done so on the understanding that permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited is not required for me/us to reproduce, republish or distribute copies of the Work in whole or in part.

Given the above, it would appear that the author can: (1) self-archive an article on his or her personal website, (2) self-archive an article in his or her institutional repository, and (3) self-archive an article in a subject archive (the restriction is for “systematic archiving of works by third parties,” not self-archiving). Institutional repository staff or subject repository staff cannot archive articles for authors.

If this is not correct, it would be helpful to hear from Emerald what its interpretation of these documents is.

Unlike the RIAA and the MPAA, scholarly journal publishers have a limited primary customer base—academic libraries. Moreover, academic librarians are authors as well as customers, and, for some publishers, they are a significant subset of their authors. The endless serials crisis has already seriously strained relations between academic librarians and publishers. Hopefully, scholarly journal publishers will be sensible and sensitive to customer concerns in their attempts to cope with difficult digital copyright issues.

[See Emerald's reply in the comments.]

University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries Establish Open Access Journal Publishing Service

The University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries have established an Open Access Journal Publishing Service.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries have joined forces to establish an Open Access Journal Publishing Service that will support the broader dissemination of scholarship and promote the advancement of both universities’ research. Open access journals represent an emerging academic publishing model that makes the results of scholarly research freely available online to all readers who have access to the Internet. . . .

The initiative will provide support to UO and OSU faculty members for the creation, management, distribution, and preservation of open access journals, primarily based on the Open Journal System (OJS) open source software. In addition to hosting journals on an OJS server, the initiative will assist in the migration of journal content from traditional print format to digital format. The OJS program supports the full cycle of journal publishing from article submission to archiving. . . .

Plans for creating new open access journal titles are already underway at both universities. For example, at the University of Oregon the first issue of the open access journal Humanist Studies and the Digital Age is expected to appear this winter. The journal will provide scholars and students with free and immediate online access to the results of humanities research conducted by scholars throughout the world. At Oregon State University, the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum is currently offered as an open access publication, and other titles are in the development stages. The website for the service at http://journals.oregondigital.org/ provides additional information on the new program and access to individual journals.

| Digital Scholarship |

"First Results of the SOAP Project. Open Access Publishing in 2010"

Suenje Dallmeier-Tiessen et al. have self-archived "First Results of the SOAP Project. Open Access Publishing in 2010" in arXiv.

Here's an excerpt:

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has compiled data on the present offer for open access publishing in online peer-­-reviewed journals. Starting from the Directory of Open Access Journals, several sources of data are considered, including inspection of journal web site and direct inquiries within the publishing industry. Several results are derived and discussed, together with their correlations: the number of open access journals and articles; their subject area; the starting date of open access journals; the size and business models of open access publishers; the licensing models; the presence of an impact factor; the uptake of hybrid open access.

Impact Factor: "Nefarious Numbers"

Douglas N. Arnold and Kristine K. Fowler have self-archived "Nefarious Numbers" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

Despite numerous flaws, the impact factor has been widely used as a measure of quality for journals, and even for papers and authors. This has created a strong incentive to manipulate it. As we have demonstrated, it is possible to vastly increase impact factor without increasing journal quality at all. The actions of a few interested individuals can make a huge difference, yet require considerable digging to reveal. The cumulative result is that impact factor gives a very inaccurate view of journal quality. We primarily discussed one extreme example, but there is little reason to doubt that such techniques are being used to a lesser degree by many journals.

Hindawi’s Open Access Journals Get Over 2,000 Submissions per Month

Hindawi's open access journals now receive over 2,000 article submissions per month.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Hindawi is pleased to announce that its growing portfolio of open access journals have collectively received more than 2,000 monthly submissions for this first time this August, only a year and a half after having passed 1,000 monthly submissions in February 2009.

"Over the past couple of years we have seen very strong growth both from new journals that we have developed as well as from many of our more well-established journals" said Mohamed Hamdy, Hindawi's Editorial Manager. "Our five largest journals have grown to more than 700 annual submissions each, and at the same time, quite a few of the journals that we have developed within the past two years are already receiving more than 100 annual submissions."

"We are very pleased with the steady growth that we have seen in our submissions during the three and half years since we converted the last of our subscription-based journals to an open access model" said Paul Peters, Hindawi's Head of Business Development. "I believe that the success that we have seen comes from the high level of service that we provide to our authors, as well as the rigorous editorial standards of our journals. Over the past few years we have rejected about two thirds of the submissions that we receive across our journal collection, and these high standards have enabled our journals to establish strong reputations within the academic community."

Version 1, Open Access Journals Bibliography

Version one of the Open Access Journals Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. Open access journals publish articles (typically peer-reviewed articles) that are free of charge and, depending on the journal, may be able to be reused under an open license (e.g., a Creative Commons license). This bibliography presents selected English-language scholarly works that are useful in understanding open access journals. It does not cover works about e-prints or works that include open access journals in a treatment of diverse types of research materials. Most sources have been published from 1999 to the present; however, a few key sources published prior to 1999 are also included. The bibliography primarily includes books and published journal articles. A limited number of magazine articles and technical reports that are deemed to be of exceptional interest are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works.

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

  1. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, version 78
  2. Digital Scholarship 2009 (paperback and open access PDF file)
  3. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (paperback, Kindle version, and open access PDF file)
  4. Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, version 1

"Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing"

Ted Striphas has self-archived "Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing" in IU ScholarWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

This essay explores the changing context of academic journal publishing and cultural studies' envelopment within it. It does so by exploring five major trends affecting scholarly communication today: alienation, proliferation, consolidation, pricing, and digitization. More specifically, it investigates how recent changes in the political economy of academic journal publishing have impinged on cultural studies' capacity to transmit the knowledge it produces, thereby dampening the field's political potential. It also reflects on how cultural studies' alienation from the conditions of its production has resulted in the field's growing involvement with interests that are at odds with its political proclivities.

Serials Crisis: "California against Nature"

Peter Suber has published "California against Nature" in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

* If publishers have been accelerating into a brick wall for decades, and libraries have been warning about the inevitable collision for decades, then why hasn't there been a collision before now?

There are two answers. First, many collisions have already occurred, even if they came and went without the same media attention. Universities have been canceling titles by the hundreds—and in the case of big-deal cancellations, by the thousands—for years. Even when collisions are incremental and cumulative rather than sudden and explosive, they have the same finality. And they have the same catastrophic effect on access to the portion of new research that is metered out to paying customers.

Second, when universities renewed more titles than they could realistically afford, it's not because found previously undiscovered or undisclosed pots of money. It's because they made painful cuts in order to find the money. Most of these cuts came from their book budgets, extending a serials crisis in the sciences to a monograph crisis in the humanities. The long series of small collisions is a measure of the pain universities have endured to postpone a wider and larger one.

At some point there really isn't any money left, or the money can only be found through cuts more painful than journal cancellations. After several decades of hyperinflationary price increases, followed by a severe recession, continuing business as usual will bring a critical mass of universities to that critical point. Publishers aren't just witnesses to this impending crunch. Those that continue to charge hyperinflationary price increases are accelerating it. Those that won't survive the resulting shake-out, even if their own prices had been moderate and affordable, will be co-victims with researchers and research institutions.

Springer to Offer New Open Access STM Journals

Springer will offer new open access science, technology, and medicine (STM) journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Springer is expanding its open access offering to all disciplines. SpringerOpen will cover all disciplines within the science, technology and medicine (STM) fields and will be offered in cooperation with BioMed Central. The entire content of SpringerOpen journals—including research articles, reviews, and editorials—are fully and immediately open access, and are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No subscription is needed.

"We are seeing an increasing interest from our authors and from funders in all areas for open access publishing options and have responded to a need in the current market," said Wim van der Stelt, EVP Business Development, Springer. "We are happy to serve our authors and editorial boards with the publishing options they want and are also pleased to supply universities, research institutions and our other patrons with the ability to use this content online freely and conveniently."

SpringerOpen journals are e-only journals. Springer is committed to delivering high-quality articles and ensuring rapid publication as with its traditional journals, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process. The final articles are not only published in a timely manner on Springer's online information platform SpringerLink, but are also distributed to archives such as PubMed Central and to institutional repositories as requested.

SpringerOpen journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work. According to this license, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights. The journals ask the authors to pay an article-processing charge, in accordance with market standards.

"Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009"

Bo-Christer Björk et al. have published "Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009" in PLoS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Methodology/Principal Findings

The proportion of peer reviewed scholarly journal articles, which are available openly in full text on the web, was studied using a random sample of 1837 titles and a web search engine. Of articles published in 2008, 8.5% were freely available at the publishers' sites. For an additional 11.9% free manuscript versions could be found using search engines, making the overall OA percentage 20.4%. Chemistry (13%) had the lowest overall share of OA, Earth Sciences (33%) the highest. In medicine, biochemistry and chemistry publishing in OA journals was more common. In all other fields author-posted manuscript copies dominated the picture.

Conclusions/Significance

The results show that OA already has a significant positive impact on the availability of the scientific journal literature and that there are big differences between scientific disciplines in the uptake. Due to the lack of awareness of OA-publishing among scientists in most fields outside physics, the results should be of general interest to all scholars. The results should also interest academic publishers, who need to take into account OA in their business strategies and copyright policies, as well as research funders, who like the NIH are starting to require OA availability of results from research projects they fund. The method and search tools developed also offer a good basis for more in-depth studies as well as longitudinal studies.

"Rebooting the CS Publication Process"

Dan S. Wallach, Associate Professor at Rice University's Department of Computer Science, has made an eprint of "Rebooting the CS Publication Process" available.

Here's an excerpt:

Many computer science academics have been grousing about failures in our publication process. This paper catalogs many of the specific complaints that are raised and proposes some radical new solutions based on the assumption that, by eliminating physical paper entirely and going with a centralized system to manage papers, we can rethink the entire process: paper submission, revision and publication. Furthermore, having all of the metadata standardized and easily available, ranking algorithms can be easily conceived to aid in tenure cases and departmental rankings.

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