The Role of Reference Librarians in Institutional Repositories

Reference Services Review 33, no. 3 (2005) is a special issue on "the role of the reference librarian in the development, management, dissemination, and sustainability of institutional repositories (IRs)." It includes the following articles (the links are to e-prints):

Open Access Webliography

A preprint of the article "Open Access Webliography" by Adrian K. Ho and Charles W. Bailey, Jr. is now available. This annotated webliography presents a wide range of electronic resources related to the open access movement that were freely available on the Internet as of April 2005.

This article appears in the volume 33, no. 3 (2005) issue of "Reference Services Review," which is a special issue about "the role of the reference librarian in the development, management, dissemination, and sustainability of institutional repositories."

A preprint of my "The Role of Reference Librarians in Institutional Repositories" article in this issue is also available.

Both preprints are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Below is a list of the topics covered in the webliography:

  • Starting Points
  • Bibliographies
  • Debates
  • Directories—E-Prints, Institutional Repositories, and
    Technical Reports
  • Directories—Open Access and Free Journals
  • Directories and Guides—Copyright and Licensing
  • Directories and Guide—Open Access Publishing
  • Directories and Guides—Software
  • Disciplinary Archives
  • E-Serials about Open Access
  • Free E-Serials That Frequently Publish Open Access
    Articles
  • General Information
  • Mailing Lists
  • Organizations
  • Projects
  • Publishers and Distributors
  • Search Engines
  • Special Programs for Developing Countries
  • Statements
  • Weblogs

The Economics of Free, Scholar-Produced E-Journals

While highly visible, large-scale STM open access publishing ventures such as BioMed Central loom large in the free e-journal scene, small-scale scholar-produced e-journals continue to quietly publish new scholarly articles as they have done for at least 18 years now.

I won’t detour into a lengthy history lesson for those readers who weren’t there. The short version of the story is that New Horizons in Adult Education is typically seen as the first scholarly e-journal published on the Internet (it was established in Fall 1987); however, it’s important to recognize that those were primitive times Internet-wise, when distribution of ASCII article files via list servers and FTP servers were cutting-edge ventures. So, as you would image, finding tools were informal and few and far between. ARL’s publication of the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists in July 1991 was a landmark event that made the invisible visible.

For some reason, there was a mini-surge of activity in the 1989-1991 period, with the emergence of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, EJournal, Electronic Journal of Communication, Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research, Postmodern Culture, Psycoloquy, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, Surfaces, and other journals. Several editors (myself, Stevan Harnad, and John Unsworth) rocked the house at the Association of Research Libraries’ 1992 Symposium on Scholarly Publishing on the Electronic Networks to the dismay of the assembled conventional publishers, who thought we were mad as hatters because we thought that: (a) e-journals were viable, (b) we could anoint ourselves as publishers, and (c) we were giving it away for free. My recollection is that, after the last speech, there was a stunned silence followed by a spattering of applause and a frenzy of generally hostile, astonished questions.

And, as they say, the rest is history. Peter Suber’s Timeline of the Open Access Movement is a good way to get a handle on subsequent events. Someday, I’ll write more about the early e-volution of e-journals.

So, onto the topic at hand. What are the economics of free, scholar-produced e-journals?

Let’s delimit the field a bit. We are not talking about journals produced by university presses or professional associations. Scholar-produced e-journals are generally labors of love, supported by a small group of scholars who serve without pay as editors, editorial board members, and journal production staff.

They often leverage existing technical infrastructure (e.g., Web servers) at the editors’ institutions. The volume of published papers is typically fairly modest, and the papers themselves are frequently not graphically complex. Editors or other volunteers manage the peer review process (usually via electronic means) as well as copy edit and format articles. HTML and PDF are the usual distribution formats, requiring HTML editors, Word, Acrobat, or similar low-cost or free programs. Increasingly, electronic journal management systems are used to automate editorial functions and simplify journal site creation and maintenance (a prime example is the free Open Journal Systems software). "Marketing" is often done by free electronic means: journal mailing lists, table of contents messages sent to targeted subject-related mailing lists, RSS alerts, etc. Since the content is free and electronic, there is no overhead for subscription/licensing management. Since no one gets paid, human resources functions are not needed. If authors retain copyright or content is under a Creative Commons or similar license, no permissions support is needed. Since existing facilities are used (at work or at home), there is no need to rent or purchase office space. Since no money is changing hands in any form, accounting support is unnecessary.

So, what are the economics of free, scholar produced journals? The glib answer is that there are none. But, the real answer is that the costs are so low and the functions so integral to scholarship that they are easily absorbed into ongoing operational costs of universities. Even if they weren’t and scholars had to do it all on their own, server hosting solutions are so ubiquitous and cheap, free open source software is so functional and pervasive, and commercial PC software is so powerful and cheap (especially at academic discounts) that these minor costs would act as no real barrier to the production of scholar-produced e-journals.

Of course, this is not to say that there are not issues associated with the viability and sustainability of these journals, the perpetual preservation of their contents, and other difficulties, but these are topics for another day.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (8/1/05)

The biweekly update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides brief information on 15 new journal issues and other resources. Especially interesting are: "Creative Humbug? Bah the Humbug, Let’s Get Creative!," Intellectual Property and Electronic Theses, "Research at Risk," the ten-year anniversary issue of D-Lib Magazine, and "Whose Work Is It, Anyway?."

ETD Archives at ARL Libraries

This posting lists electronic theses and dissertation archives at ARL libraries that were not included in the prior "ETD Policies and Procedures at ARL Institutions" posting. The archives listed here do not include substantial ETD policy and procedure information; however, some sites provide links to more limited supporting information, such as formatting guidelines. In some cases, archives are identified here for institutions included in the prior posting because the ETD site in that posting did not include an archive link. To get a complete list of ETD archives, consult both postings. In some cases, ARL libraries do not separate out ETDs as a separate material type listing (e.g. DSpace community). Such integrated archives are not included here.

One-Page Open Access Resources Handout

Need a very short (one-page) handout that identifies a few key open access resources? My OA co-presenter (Sara Ranger) and I did, so we created one. It’s at:

http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/OAHandout.pdf

It’s available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Obviously, a number of very valuable resources had to be omitted, but, hopefully, users can employ these core resources to discover them.

ETD Policies and Procedures at ARL Institutions

What electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) policies and procedures are in use in major North American research institutions?

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) currently has 123 member libraries in the US and Canada. Below is a list of Web sites at ARL institutions that provide significant information about these institutions’ ETD policies and procedures. Some of these Web pages are on the library’s Website; some are on other university components’ Websites. This list was complied by a quick look at ARL libraries’ home pages, supplemented by limited institution-specific Google searching. Since these Websites can be difficult to find, this is likely to be partial list of relevant Websites. Please leave information about other relevant Websites in comments.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (7/18/05)

The biweekly update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides brief information on 15 new journal issues and other resources. Especially interesting are: Cataloging And Organizing Digital Resources: A How-to-Do-It Manual For Librarians, "The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Implications and Opportunities for Resource Sharing," International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2004-2005: Scholarly Publishing in an Electronic Era, "The Next Information Revolution—How Open Access Will Transform Scholarly Communications," and the latest issue of Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community.

BMC’s Impact Factors: Elsevier’s Take and Reactions to It

A growing body of research suggests that open access may increase the impact of scholarly literature (see Steve Hitchcock’s "Effect of Open Access and Downloads ("Hits") on Citation Impact: A Bibliography of Studies"). Consequently, "impact factors" play an important part in the ongoing dialog about the desirability of the open access model.

On June 23, 2005, BioMed Central issued a press release entitled "Open Access Journals Get Impressive Impact Factors" that discussed the impact factors for their journals. You can consult the press release for the details, but the essence of it was expressed in this quote from Matthew Cockerill, Director of Operations at BioMed Central:

These latest impact factors show that BioMed Central’s Open Access journals have joined the mainstream of science publishing, and can compete with traditional journals on their own terms. The impact factors also demonstrate one of the key benefits that Open Access offers authors: high visibility and, as a result, a high rate of citation.

On July 8, 2005, Tony McSean, Director of Library Relations for Elsevier, sent an e-mail message to SPARC-OAForum@arl.org "(OA and Impressive Impact Factors—Non Propter Hoc") that presented Elsevier’s analysis of the BMC data, putting it "into context with those of the major subscription-based publishers." Again, I would encourage you to read this analysis. The gist of the argument is as follows:

This comparison with four major STM publishers demonstrates that BMC’s overall IF results are unremarkable, and that they certainly do not provide evidence to support the common assertion that the open access publishing model increases impact factor scores.

My reaction was as follows.

These interesting observations do not appear to account for one difference between BMC journals and the journals of other publishers: their age. Well-established, older journals are more likely to have attained the credibility required for high IFs than newer ones (if they ever will attain such credibility).

Moreover, there is another difference: BMC journals are primarily e-journals, not print journals with derivative electronic counterparts. Although true e-journals have gained significant ground, I suspect that they still start out with a steeper hill to climb credibility-wise than traditional print journals.

Third, since it involves paying a fee, the author-pays model requires a higher motivation on the part of the author to publish in such journals, likely leading to a smaller pool of potential authors. To obtain high journal IFs, these had better be good authors. And, for good authors to publish in such journals, they must hold them in high regard because they have other alternatives.

So, if this analysis is correct, for BMC journals to have attained "unremarkable" IFs is a notable accomplishment because they have attained parity with conventional journals that have some significant advantages.

Earlier in the day, Dr. David Goodman, Associate Professor of the Palmer School of Library and Information Science, commented (unbeknownst to me since I read the list in digest form):

1/ I doubt anyone is contending that at this point any of the
BMC titles are better than the best titles from other publishers. The point is that they are at least as good as the average, and the best of them well above average. For a new publisher, that is a major accomplishment—and one that initially seemed rather doubtful. . . .

2/ Normally, publishing in a relative obscure and newly founded journal would come at some disadvantage to the author, regardless of how the journal was financed. . . .

3/ You can’t judge OA advantage from IF alone. IF refers to journals, OA advantage refers to individual articles. The most convincing studies on OA advantage are those with paired comparisons of articles, as Stevan Harnad has explained in detail.

4/ Most of the BMC titles, the ones beginning with the BMC journal of…, are OA completely. For the ones with Toll Access reviews etc., there is obviously much less availability of those portions than the OA primary research, so I doubt the usual review journal effect applies to the same extent as usual.

On July 9, 2005, Matt Cockerill sent a rebuttal to the SPARC-OAForum that said in part:

Firstly, the statistics you give are based on the set of journals that have ISI impact factors (in fact, they cover only journals which had 2003 Impact Factors). . . . Many of BioMed Central’s best journals are not yet tracked by ISI.

Secondly, comparing the percentage of Impact Factors going up or down does not seem a particularly meaningful metric. What is important, surely, is the actual value of the Impact Factor (relative to others in the field). In that regard, BioMed Central titles have done extremely well, and several are close to the top of their disciplines. . . .

Thirdly, you raise the point that review articles can boost a journal’s Impact Factor, and that many journals publish review articles specifically with the intention of improving their Impact Factor. This is certainly true, but of BioMed Central’s 130+ journals, all but six are online research journals, and publish virtually no review articles whatsoever. . . .

No reply yet from Elsevier, but, whether there is or not, I’m sure that we have not heard the last of the "impact factor" argument.

Stevan Harnad has made it clear that what he calls the "journal-affordability problem" is not the focus of open access (this is perhaps best expressed in Harnad et al.’s "The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access"). The real issue is the "research article access/impact problem":

Merely to do the research and then put your findings in a desk drawer is no better than not doing the research at all. Researchers must submit their research to peer review and then "publish or perish," so others can use and apply their findings. But getting findings peer-reviewed and published is not enough either. Other researchers must find the findings useful, as proved by their actually using and citing them. And to be able to use and cite them, they must first be able to access them. That is the research article access/impact problem.

To see that the journal-affordability problem and the article access/impact problem are not the same one need only note that even if all 24,000 peer-reviewed research journals were sold to universities at cost (i.e., with not a penny of profit) it would still be true that almost no university has anywhere near enough money to afford all or even most of the 24,000 journals, even at minimal access-tolls (http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/arlbin/arl.cgi?task=setuprank). Hence, it would remain true even then that not all would-be users could access all of the yearly 2.5 million articles, and hence that that potential research impact would continue to be lost.

So although the two problems are connected (lower journal prices would indeed generate somewhat more access), solving the journal-affordability problem does not solve the research access/impact problem.

Of course, there are different views of open access, but, for the moment, let’s say that this view is the prevailing one and that this is the most compelling argument to win the hearts and minds of scholars for open access. Open access will rise or fall based on its demonstrated ability to significantly boost impact factors, and the battle to prove or disprove this effect will be fierce indeed.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Bibliography

Update: See Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 2 for the latest ETD bibliography.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). It emphasizes formally published works. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet.

Allard, Suzie. "7th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD 2004): Distributing Knowledge Worldwide through Better Scholarly Communication, 3-5 June 2004, Lexington, Kentucky, USA." D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 9 (2004).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/allard/09allard.html

Andrew, Theo. Intellectual Property and Electronic Theses. London: JISC, 2004.
http://www.thesesalive.ac.uk/archive/IP_etheses.pdf

———. "Theses Alive!: An E-Theses Management System for the UK." (2004).
http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/423?mode=simple

Bakelli, Yahia, and Sabrina Benrahmoun. "Long-Term Preservation of Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Algeria." Libri 53, no. 4 (2003): 254-261.

Balile, Deodatus. "Africa to Get Online Research Database." SciDev.Net, 23 October 2003.
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=1068&language=1

Bevan, Simon J. "Electronic Thesis Development at Cranfield University." Program: Electronic Library & Information Systems 39, no. 2 (2005): 100-111.

Chang, Sheau-Hwang. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)." OCLC Systems & Services 18, no. 3 (2002): 109-111.

Copeland, Susan, and Andrew Penman. "The Development and Promotion of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) within the UK." New Review of Information Networking 10, no. 1 (2004): 19-32.

Cox, Fannie M, and Mary Barbosa-Jerez. "Gleanings from the 7th International Symposium on Electronic Thesis and Dissertations." Library Hi Tech News 21, no. 8 (2004): 10-12.

Douglas, Kimberly. "Report on the Fourth Annual Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 28, no. 1 (2001): 27-28.
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-01/douglas.html

Edminster, Jude, and Joe Moxley. "Graduate Education and the Evolving Genre of Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Computers and Composition 19, no. 1 (2002): 89-104.

El-Bayoumi, Janice, and Lisa Charlong. "The University of New Brunswick’s Pilot for an Electronic Theses and Dissertation Program." In Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM SIGUCCS Conference on User Services, 240-246. New York: ACM Press, 2003.

El-Sherbini, Magda, and George Klim. "Metadata and Cataloging Practices." The Electronic Library 22, no. 3 (2004): 238-248.

Fineman, Yale. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations." portal: Libraries and the Academy 3, no. 2 (2003): 219-227.

———. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Music." Notes 60, no. 4 (2004): 893-907.

Fox, Edward A., John L. Eaton, Gail McMillan, Neill A. Kipp, Paul Mather, Tim McGonigle, William Schweiker, and Brian DeVane. "Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: An International Effort Unlocking University Resources." D-Lib Magazine (September 1997).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september97/theses/09fox.html

Fox, Edward A., John L. Eaton, Gail McMillan, Neill A. Kipp, Laura Weiss, Emilio Arce, and Scott Guyer. "National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: A Scalable and Sustainable Approach to Unlock University Resources." D-Lib Magazine (September 1996).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september96/theses/09fox.html

Fox, Edward A., Shahrooz Feizabadi, Joseph M. Moxley, and Christian R. Weisser, eds. Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Sourcebook for Educators, Students, and Librarians. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2004.

Fox, Edward A., Robert Hall, and Neill Kipp. "NDLTD: Preparing the Next Generation of Scholars for the Information Age." The New Review of Information Networking 3 (1997): 59-76.

Fox, Edward A., Gail McMillan, Hussein Suleman, Marcos A. Gonçalves, and Ming Luo. "Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)." In Digital Libraries: Policy, Planning and Practice, edited by Judith Andrews and Derek Law, 167-188. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2004.

Goldsmith, Ursula Irene Anna. "Perceptions of Active Graduate Faculty at a Research Extensive University Regarding Electronic Submission of Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)." Louisiana State University, 2002.

Hagen, John H., Susanne Dobratz, and Peter Schirmbacher. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations Worldwide: Highlights of the ETD 2003 Symposium." D-Lib Magazine 9, no. 7/8 (2002).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july03/hagen/07hagen.html

Hall, Susan. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Enhancing Scholarly Communication and the Graduate Student Experience." Science & Technology Libraries 22, no. 3/4 (2002): 51-58.

Humboldt-University Berlin. ETD 2003, Sixth International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Next Steps—Electronic Thesis and Dissertations Worldwide. Berlin: Humboldt-University Berlin.
http://www.hu-berlin.de/etd2003/

Jones, Richard. "DSpace vs. ETD-db: Choosing Software to Manage Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Ariadne, no. 38 (2004).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue38/jones/

———. "The Tapir: Adding E-Theses Functionality to DSpace." Ariadne, no. 41 (2004).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue41/jones/

Kushkowski, Jeffrey D. "Web Citation by Graduate Students: A Comparison of Print and Electronic Theses." portal: Libraries and the Academy 5, no. 2 (2005): 259-276.

Lee, Kyiho. "Construction of a Full-Text Database and Service System for Korean Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 27, no. 3 (2001): 21-27.
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Mar-01/lee.html#lee

MacColl, John. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Strategy for the UK." Ariadne, no. 32 (2002).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue32/theses-dissertations/

McMillan, Gail. "Do ETDs Deter Publishers?" College & Research Libraries News 62, no. 6 (2001): 620-621.

———. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Merging Perspectives." Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 22, no. 3-4 (1996): 105-125.

———. "ETD: Electronic Theses and Dissertations." In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, edited by Miriam Drake, 1034-1040. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2003.

———. "Managing Electronic Theses and Dissertations: The Third International Symposium." College & Research Libraries News 61, no. 5 (2000): 413-414.

McMillan, Gail, Ed Fox, and John Eaton. "Evolving Genre of Electronic Theses and Dissertations." In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, edited by Ralph H. Sprague. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1999.

Moxley, Joseph M. "Universities Should Require Electronic Theses and Dissertations." EDUCAUSE Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2001): 61-63.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0139.pdf

Phanouriou, Constantinos, Neill A. Kipp, Ohm Sornil, Paul Mather, and Edward A. Fox. "A Digital Library for Authors: Recent Progress of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations." In Proceedings of the Fourth ACM conference on Digital Libraries, 20-27. New York: ACM Press, 1999.

Seamans, Nancy H. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations as Prior Publications: What the Editors Say." Library Hi Tech 21, no. 1 (2003): 56-61.

Soete, George J. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Transforming Libraries, no. 7 (1998).
http://www.arl.org/transform/etd/

Suleman, Hussein, Anthony Atkins, Marcos A. Gonçalves, Robert K. France, Edward A. Fox, Vinod Chachra, Murray Crowder, and Jeff Young. "Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: Bridging the Gaps for Global Access—Part 1: Mission and Progress." D-Lib Magazine 7, no. 9 (2001).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september01/suleman/09suleman-pt1.html

Suleman, Hussein, Anthony Atkins, Marcos A. Goncalves, Robert K. France, Edward A. Fox, Vinod Chachra, Murray Crowder, and Jeff Young. "Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: Bridging the Gaps for Global Access—Part 2: Services and Research." D-Lib Magazine 7, no. 9 (2001).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september01/suleman/09suleman-pt2.html

Suleman, Hussein, and Edward A. Fox. "Leveraging OAI Harvesting to Disseminate Theses." Library Hi Tech 21, no. 2 (2003): 219-227.
http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/archive/00000018/

———. "Towards Universal Accessibility of ETDs: Building the NDLTD Union Archive."
http://www.husseinsspace.com/publications/etd_2002_paper_union.pdf

Surratt, Brian E., and Dustin Hill. "ETD2MARC: A Semiautomated Workflow for Cataloging Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 28, no. 2 (2004): 205-223.

Teper, Thomas H., and Beth Kraemer. "Long-Term Retention of Electronic Theses and Dissertations." College & Research Libraries 63, no. 1 (2002): 61-72.

Thompson, Larry A. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Virginia Tech." Science & Technology Libraries 20, no. 1 (2001): 87-101.

Ubogu, Felix N. "Spreading the ETD Gospel: A Southern Africa Perspective." International Information & Library Review 33, no. 2/3 (2001): 249-259.

Urs, Shalini R., and K.S. Raghavan. "Vidyanidhi: Indian Digital Library of Electronic Theses." Communications of the ACM 44, no. 5 (2001): 88-89.

Weisser, Christian, John Baker, and Janice R. Walker. "Problems and Possibilities of Electronic Theses and Dissertations." Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine (November 1997).
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/nov/etds.html

Weisser, Christian, and Janice R. Walker. "Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Digitizing Scholarship for Its Own Sake." The Journal of Electronic Publishing 3, no. 2 (1997).
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-02/etd.html

Young, Jeffrey R. "Requiring Theses in Digital Form: The First Year at Virginia Tech." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 February 1998, A29-A31.

Zhang, Yin, and Kyiho Lee. "Features and Uses of a Multilingual Full-Text Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDS) System." In National Online Meeting 2001: Proceedings of the 22nd National Online Meeting, New York, May 15-17, 2001, edited by Martha E. Williams, 555-566. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2001.

Zhang, Yin, Kyiho Lee, and Bum-Jong You. "Usage Patterns of an Electronic Theses and Dissertations System." Online Information Review 25, no. 6 (2001): 370-377.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (7/5/05)

The biweekly update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides brief information on 15+ new journal issues and other resources. Especially interesting are: "Creative Commons and Creative Commons Search Tools," a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication on online scholarly publishing, a special issue of Library Hi Tech on collaborative digitization programs, a special issue of Library Trends on the commercialized web, and "The RCUK Open-Access Policy Now Open for Comment."

The Supremes Landmark Ruling on MGM vs. Grokster

The Supreme Court has ruled against Grokster. See "Supreme Court Rules against File Swapping" and "Court: File-Sharing Services May Be Sued" for details. For background information, see "File-Swap Fallout in Supreme Court Ruling" and the EFF’s MGM v. Grokster page. For in-depth discussion of the underlying issues, see Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation and Sonic Boom listed at "Digital Works Want to Be Free ."

The key quote in the ruling is:

For the same reasons that Sony took the staple-article doctrine of patent law as a model for its copyright safeharbor rule, the inducement rule, too, is a sensible one for copyright. We adopt it here, holding that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. We are, of course, mindful of the need to keep from trenching on regular commerce or discouraging the development of technologies with lawful and unlawful potential. Accordingly, just as Sony did not find intentional inducement despite the knowledge of the VCR manufacturer that its device could be used to infringe, 464 U. S., at 439, n. 19, mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough here to subject a distributor to liability. Nor would ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability in themselves. The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise.

The EFF provides other key quotes.

Here’s an interesting take on the ruling: "File-Sharing Decision Hardly Apocalyptic".

ARL issued a statement for the Library Copyright Alliance that said:

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA)­a group composed of the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and Special Libraries Association ­welcomes this balanced decision that supports the interests of libraries while addressing issues of widespread copyright infringement. By focusing on conduct that induces infringement, rather than on the distribution of technology, the decision ensures the continued availability of new and evolving digital technologies to libraries and their patrons.

The Center for Democracy and Technology’s press release said:

The court has worked to craft careful balance that allows copyright owners to pursue bad actors, but still protect the rights of technology makers. We hope this decision will preserve the climate of innovation that fostered the development of everything from the iPod to the Internet itself.

The EFF was less sanguine in their press release:

This decision relies on a new theory of copyright liability that measures whether manufacturers created their wares with the “intent” of inducing consumers to infringe. It means that inventors and entrepreneurs will not only bear the costs of bringing new products to market, but also the costs of lawsuits if consumers start using their products for illegal purposes.

And, of course, many bloggers weighed in as seen in Eric Goldman’s roundup, the lively discussion on SCOTUSblog, and the tsunami of comments on Slashdot.

According to "Congress Applauds File-Sharing Ruling" Congress is unlikely to take any immediate action as a result of the ruling.

Robert Summer, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America and former president of Sony Music International, said of the music industry reaction to the verdict: "The response across the board was one of elation."

Open Access News Update

From June 24, 2005 to June 30, 2005, Open Access News was down, and I posted Peter Suber’s e-mail updates here. OAN is now up, and Peter has updated it with the missing postings. My updates have been deleted from this posting.

Links to the OAN messages in question are below.

June 30 posting (2 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2063.html

June 30 posting (7 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2062.html

June 29 posting (1 item)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2061.html

June 29 posting (5 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2060.html

June 28 posting (4 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2059.html

June 28 posting (2 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2056.html

June 27 posting (2 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2055.html

June 27 posting (6 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2054.html

June 26 posting (5 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2053.html

June 25 posting (11 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2051.html

June 24 posting (2 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2048.html

June 24 posting (7 items)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2043.html

Key Open Access Concepts

An excerpt from the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (OAB) that provides a brief overview of OA concepts is now available in HTML-tagged format. Additional links have been added, and old links checked and updated. As part of the OAB, it is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

http://www.escholarlypub.com/oab/keyoaconcepts.htm

Navigating the Library Blogosphere

Needless to say, there has been rapid growth in blogging by librarians over the last few years, and library blogosphere has become more varied and complex. Here are some directories of library web logs to help you navigate the library blogosphere:

Want more information about library web logs? Try Susan Herzog’s BlogBib.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (6/20/05)

The biweekly update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides brief information on 20+ new journal issues and other resources. Especially interesting are: A Companion to Digital Humanities, "EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers," an issue of the Journal of Library Administration on licensing, Online Submission and Peer Review Systems, "Open Access Self-Archiving: An Author Study," and "Using Dublin Core."

The Counting Game

Let’s say you run a research library and you have JSTOR. You are convinced that JSTOR is a safe, permanent electronic archive that fully substitutes for the included print journal volumes. It makes sense to take a second look at those print volumes. It’s a large number of volumes, and space (as always) is tight. What to do? You could withdraw them, you could put them in remote storage, or you could do nothing.

A question that might come to mind is: What impact will withdrawing these volumes have on my volume count? And, if your library is in ARL, a second question might be: what impact would withdrawing these volumes have on my ARL ranking?

Of course, if you are at one of the very top-tier libraries, this might be the proverbial drop in the bucket. If not, it might have an effect, possibly a big effect if you are at the bottom of the rankings.

Another interesting twist comes when the same questions come to bear on cooperative print archives. The idea is that a group of libraries band together and put one archival copy of book or journal volumes in a collective print repository, freeing up a considerable amount of collective space. Perhaps it’s in response to a shift to electronic access, or perhaps it’s based on low usage. In either case, one archival copy is stored safe and sound for that someday when it might be needed.

Makes sense—until you play the counting game.

The problem with the counting game in the emerging electronic era is figuring out how to count electronic "holdings" so that they have the same weight as print holdings. This is make especially tricky by the fact that libraries do not own licensed electronic resources, only "rent" them. What’s held one year may not be held the next due to a wide variety of factors, making counting a bit more difficult than just adding this year’s new purchases to last year’s volume counts.

Like it or not, research libraries are unlikely to stop playing the counting game. ARL’s E-Metrics project is one attempt to define meaningful new measures. In the long run, the counting game will have new rules, because it appears that the substitution of electronic information for print information is gaining momentum, driven by a variety of budgetary and other factors.

Version 58, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 58 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
is now available. This selective bibliography presents over
2,420 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources
that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing
efforts on the Internet.

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.pdf

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly
Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, by the
same author, provides much more in-depth coverage of the
open access movement and related topics (e.g., disciplinary
archives, e-prints, institutional repositories, open access
journals, and the Open Archives Initiative) than
SEPB does.

http://www.arl.org/pubscat/pubs/openaccess/

Changes in This Version

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are
marked with an asterisk):

Table of Contents

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
5.3 Other Legal Issues
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*

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

Further Information about SEPB

The HTML version of SEPB is designed for interactive use. Each
major section is a separate file. There are links to sources
that are freely available on the Internet. It can be can be
searched using Boolean operators.

The HTML document includes three sections not found in
the Acrobat file:

(1) Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (biweekly list of
new resources; also available by mailing list—see second
URL)

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepw.htm
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepwlist.htm

(2) Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (directory of
over 270 related Web sites)

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepr.htm

(3) Archive (prior versions of the bibliography)

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/archive/sepa.htm

The Acrobat file is designed for printing. The printed
bibliography is about 200 pages long. The Acrobat file is
over 470 KB.

Related Article

An article about the bibliography has been published
in The Journal of Electronic Publishing:

http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/bailey.html

Something Wiki This Way Comes

Wikis are catching on in the library world. What’s a Wiki? "The simplest online database that could possibly work." (Quote from: "Making the Case for a Wiki.")

Here’s a few examples of how Wikis are being used:

If you want to dig in and learn more about Wikis, try Gerry McKiernan’s WikiBibliography.

Library Juice Online Ph.D. Issue

Library Juice has collected a subset of the JESSE messages about online Ph.D. programs and edited them together into an easy-to-read format for its volume 8, no. 10 (2005) issue.

Here is a complete list of the JESSE threads about online Ph.D.’s in the May archive (in the order they display in the topic sort):

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (6/6/05)

The biweekly update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides brief information on 20+ new journal issues and other resources. Especially interesting are: Jennifer A. De Beer’s master’s theses "Open Access Scholarly Communication in South Africa: Current Status, Significance, and the Role for National Information Policy in the National System of Innovation"; Debra Shapiro’s edited book, EScholarship: A LITA Guide; and a new issue of The Serials Librarian, with articles such as "Alternative Publishing—Revolution to Evolution," "Alternative Scholarly Publishing: A Commercial Publisher’s Perspective," and "The Economics of Scholarly Publishing: Through a Glass Darkly."

Online Ph.D. Programs: A UK View

As this excerpt from a recent JESSE message by Sheila Webber (Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield) shows, the view of issues surrounding online Ph.D. programs can be quite different accoss the big pond. (You’ll recall that the Robert Gordon University is about to offer an online Ph.D. in addition to its six online master’s degrees.)

Firstly, the information (or an advertisement ;-) Sheffield University Department of Information Studies, in the UK, has options for our PhD programme—”Joint location” (full time—expected to complete the degree in normal 3 years, one year must be spent at Sheffield) and—"Remote location" (part time—there must be at least one face-to-face meeting per year, and there are conditions laid down for communication). At the moment, for example I am supervising one remote location student (an Irish librarian investigating Continuing Professional Development needs of solo librarians).

See: http://www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/away (info on studying away from Sheffield)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/postgraduate/research (info on research degrees at Sheffield)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/research/resappn.html (info on my Dept.—n.b. the detailed menu for more applications info, on the right of this page, including the format of the research proposal)

Sheffield is a research-led university and the Department of Information Studies has obtained the top possible score in all three of the UK’s Research Assessment Exercises (one of an exclusive band of Departments in any subject area to have done this). (OK, ad almost over.)

I *think* that British PhD programmes differ from North American ones in that the instructional component of British PhDs is less, with focus on developing and investigating your own research question throughout the three years. For full-time PhDs (on campus or joint location) there is a Research Training programme of credit-bearing modules (which most students would take during year 1). Part-time students do not have to take this programme. . . .

Finding people (in addition to your supervisor) to discuss your research with will obviously help you on your personal research journey, particularly people using the same research approach. For, e.g., some types of IR research there is a thriving research community within LIS and sometimes within individual Departments. For others (given the broad spectrum of research approaches which are employed across the whole LIS spectrum) you ideally would want to seek out fellow researchers elsewhere, anyway. Being a distance learner might push/encourage you to get "out there" that bit earlier. From that perspective, if you are able to identify a research community for that research approach internationally and engage in virtual and preferably face to face discussion (at conferences and seminars), this may exteremely valuable.

My feelings are that a mature PhD student may actually have the confidence to engage in this dialogue at an earlier stage, and also have have more command of resources (possibly!) to fund (or get funding for) attending research seminars etc. Also, having to explain and justify your research to interested fellow-practitioners back home can be very valuable & motivating. . . .

The Journal of Electronic Publishing Is Reborn

Good news! The Journal of Electronic Publishing is coming back after a long hiatus (the last issue was published in August 2002). New issues will be announced on PACS-P and other lists. See the press release below for details.

Contact: Maria S. Bonn Director, Scholarly Publishing Office, 734-763-3343, mbonn@umich.edu

Journal of Electronic Publishing Re-Launched by Library’s Scholarly Publishing Office

Ann Arbor, May 31, 2005—The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan University Library will re-launch The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) in January, 2006.

"JEP is an excellent fit for us in several ways," says Maria Bonn, Director of the Scholarly Publishing Office. "It is another outstanding journal that we can make available free over the Internet, it fits with our commitment to library-based scholarly publishing, and it covers the very area we are involved in, electronic publishing." Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office currently publishes 10 journals and four scholarly monograph series online.

JEP was started by the University of Michigan Press in 1995. In 2003 the press agreed to transfer the journal to the Columbia University Press, but the transfer was never completed and the journal—still at http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/—has had no new issues since then.

"Since its first issue, JEP has been a source of innovative ideas, best practices, and leading-edge thinking about all aspects of publishing, authorship, and readership in the electronic environment," says Mark Sandler, Collection Development Officer for the University of Michigan University Library. Returning after a three-year hiatus, JEP will "continue to document the changes in publishing with the growth of the Internet, and to stimulate and shape the direction of those changes."

The Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO; http://spo.umdl.umich.edu) was founded in 2001 to support academic publishing through a library-based publishing platform. SPO is also teaming with SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition; http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.html) on the recently announced Publisher Assistance Program to provide business planning and digital publishing services to facilitate open-access publishing in the social sciences and humanities. Those services will be available to JEP as well, ensuring its future and keeping it at its original University of Michigan home.

SPO’s first issue of JEP will be in January, 2006. "JEP burst on the scene with a focus on experimentation, vision, and prediction," Sandler said. He said that now, ten years later, electronic publishing practices have stabilized for some formats and markets (for instance, scholarly journals have shown significant convergence of distribution and pricing models), but that many unresolved issues remain for newspapers, trade books, magazines, and newer forms of publishing like blogs and wikis. "All aspects of electronic publishing still face considerable change and sometimes upheaval, and a great deal of the creative turmoil that JEP captured in the mid-nineties still challenges publishers, authors, librarians, and readers. We still struggle to understand author and reader preferences, and still search for stable economic models that will allow publishing to flourish in an age of electronic communication," he said. "The new JEP will continue to look back over the past 20 or 30 years to see how we’ve come to this point in the history of publishing, and look forward to where publishing may be heading. It will look inward at key players and practices of publishing, and also look outward at movements on the margins that are challenging traditional publishing interests, and at readers worldwide affected by the interplay of technological and economic forces that have revolutionized social communication."

JEP‘s editor, Judith Axler Turner, will remain at the helm, with editorial input and publishing support from Mark Sandler and Maria Bonn. A new editorial board will be constituted, and JEP will solicit articles that present wide-ranging and diverse viewpoints on contemporary publishing practices, and encourage dialogue and understanding between key decision-makers in publishing and those who are affected by the decisions being made.

The first new issue will focus on the changes in electronic publishing in the past three years, exploring topics such as the rise of open access publishing, the increasingly complicated intellectual property landscape, the rise of new communication technologies, and the new economics of scholarly publishing. JEP is actively seeking feedback on its new direction and is also looking for high-quality submissions on these topics. Authors and others are invited to discuss JEP‘s future or submit articles by contacting the editorial team at JEP-info@umich.edu. Back issues of JEP may currently be found at http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/

Strategic Planning Efforts at ARL Libraries, Part 2

How do some of the largest libraries in North America see their near-term future? This is part two of an investigation of that question. (Also see: Strategic Planning Efforts at ARL Libraries, Part 1.)

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) currently has 123 member libraries in the US and Canada. Below is a partial list of strategic planning Web sites at ARL libraries. This list was complied by a quick look at ARL libraries’ home pages, supplemented by limited site-specific Google searching. Web sites were included if the library’s strategic plan included the years 2004 and/or 2005.

Google Print Controversy Heats Up

Lots of ink (real and virtual) on Google Print and the AAUP’s recent resistance (all from Open Access News):

"Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe," SearchEngineWatch

"From Gutenberg to Google: Five Views on the Search-Engine Company’s Project to Digitize Library Books," The Chronicle
of Higher Education (requires subscription)

"Google Books under Fire," The Register

"Google Library Project Hit by Copyright Challenge from University Presses," Information Today Newsbreaks

"Google Print Goes Live," InternetNews

"A Google Project Pains Publishers," Business Week

"Google This: ‘Copyright Law,’" Business Week

"Google’s Scan Plan Hits More Bumps," Forbes

"Publishers Lay into Google Print," ZDNet UK

"The University Press Assn.’s Objections," Business Week

"University-Press Group Raises Questions About Google’s Library-Scanning Project," The Chronicle of Higher Education