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dLIST sharing its patches for OA-infrastructure software
dLIST has announced that all its patches for Eprints and PKP software (three patches each) are now available for downloading.
More on Biochemical Journal's century of free content
A highlight of Biochemical Journal's centenary, as noted by Peter Suber, is the completion of the Wellcome Trust funded retrodigitization project. The complete backfiles are freely available through both PubMed Central and the journal's website.
Biochemical Journal - Fulltext v217+ (1984+) 6-month moving wall Portland Press [current 6 months requires subscription] | PubMed Central; Print ISSN: 0264-6021 | Online ISSN: 1470-8728. Biochemical Journal: Molecular Aspects - Fulltext v131-215 (1973-1983) [odd numbered volumes] Portland Press | PubMed Central; ISSN: 0306-3275. Biochemical Journal: Cellular Aspects - Fulltext v132-216 (1973-1983) [even numbered volumes] Portland Press | PubMed Central; ISSN: 0306-3283. Biochemical Journal - Fulltext v1-130 (1906-1972) Portland Press | PubMed Central; ISSN: 0006-2936. PubMed Central mirrors 9 more BMC-hosted titles
Nine new independent, Open Access journals hosted by BioMed Central are now mirrored by PubMed Central.
Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1747-597X. Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1745-6673. Implementation Science - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1748-5908. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1750-1172. Radiation Oncology - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1748-717X. Algorithms for Molecular Biology - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1748-7188. International Breastfeeding Journal - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1746-4358. Journal of Biomedical Discovery and Collaboration - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1747-5333. Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery - Fulltext v1+ (2006+) BioMed Central | PubMed Central; ISSN: 1749-8090. [Thanks to the PMC-News mailing list.]
Steven E. Eckert, �Open Access� to Scientific Literature, The International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Implants, March/April 2006. An editorial. Excerpt:
In an OA system the scientific literature is made available to any reader free of charge while the literature is maintained by the publisher. Although this sounds like a great idea on the surface, this business model has no obvious revenue stream to support the expenses of publication and literature maintenance. This issue of revenue is addressed in most OA proposals by having the author pay for manuscript management through the peer review system. The figure that is mentioned most often is US $3,000 per manuscript, and the assumption is that this charge will be made for every submitted manuscript. Since most peer-reviewed journals reject more articles than they accept, an �author pays� system could result in major up-front costs to authors who may never see their material published....The assumption is that the OA approach maintains the current method of peer review. Unfortunately, this may not be the case for all OA articles, and distinguishing peer-reviewed articles from non�peer-reviewed articles might be impossible. If peer review were eliminated, the system would change from open access to open forum.... Comment. This editorial is full of misunderstandings that would have been caught if it had been subject to peer review. (1) The majority of OA journals charge no author-side fees at all. (2) The majority of OA journals that do charge author-side fees charge substantially less than $3,000. (3) The majority of OA journals charging fees only charge for accepted papers. Authors of rejected work pay nothing. (4) It's no harder to tell when OA literature has been peer-reviewed than it is for non-OA literature. Moreover, all the major OA definitions and declarations call for OA to peer-reviewed literature, not for the bypassing of peer review. BTW, as of today the DOAJ lists 2,202 peer-reviewed OA journals. More on the Yashar Books OA project
Giving Away Books Online, PR News Now, April 19, 2006. An unsigned news story. Excerpt:
"Yashar Books is doing something bold" writes Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, director of ATID, in "Lamed" news blog on Jewish education. "They're giving books away for free online. Their 'Open Access' project just uploaded the entire text of a new biography, Rabbi Israel Salanter: Religious- Ethical Thinker. Check it out." Making good on its promise to offer full texts of books online, the Open Access Project...has made the full text of its $24.95 hardcover edition available for free download. More on the serials pricing crisis
Matthew Weinberger, Library Faces Shrinking Acquisitions Budget, Stony Brook Independent, April 20, 2006. Excerpt:
During the 2003-2004 fiscal year, approximately $600,000 was spent on around 16,000 books, according to Min-Huei Lu, the head of monographic acquisitions. However, for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, which ends on Apr. 1st, approximately $400,000 was allocated for new monographic acquisitions, all but $15,000 of which has been spent, Lu said. This reflects an approximate one-third drop in the actual acquisitions budget. This means simply that as E-journal costs go up, the budget for new materials goes down. The reason for this shrinking budget is the rise in cost of electronic resources, Lu said. While printed materials are still being acquired on behalf of the humanities and social sciences at Stony Brook University, the sciences prefer the electronic journals and databases that are becoming more prevalent in their fields, she said. The problem is that the subscription rates don�t always match the rate of inflation. E-journal prices rise an estimated 10 percent faster than budget adjustments, Nathan Baum, the assistant director for electronic resources and services, said...."Our first commitment is to the serials," said [Dean and Director of Libraries Christian Filstrup]. OA archiving for librarian-authors
Rachel Singer Gordon, How to Get Published: Publish, don't Perish! Emerald Library Link. Undated but March 2006 or later, judging by the citations. Excerpt:
Many librarian authors find that depositing work in online open-access (OA) LIS archives complements writing for LIS journals. While a number of academic institutions offer space for faculty to self-archive their work (and some even require it), librarian authors should also consider self-archiving their articles, presentations, and other work in a subject-specific cross-institutional archive. Archives generally take both published and unpublished work, as well as preprints, conference papers, theses, working papers and reports, and any other relevant material authors wish to contribute.... Why post your work in an OA repository? Individual advantages to participating in online open-access archives include: [1] Easy archiving....[2] Increased citation....[3] Increased exposure....[4] International representation....[5] Long-term preservation....[6] Participation in projects that complement the philosophy of librarianship....[7] Stimulation of �open peer review.�... Comment. Good advice. I have just one caution. Authors should deposit their work in OA repositories in addition to publishing it in peer-reviewed journals. If they deposit in repositories instead of publishing in journals, then they bypass peer review, which is neither a gain for research nor a goal of OA. (I'm not saying that Singer disagrees.) Interview with SPARC Director Heather Joseph
Matt Pasiewicz has a podcast interview with Heather Joseph from the 2006 CNI Spring Task Force Meeting. From his description:
In this 22 minute recording, we'll hear from Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). She'll be sharing some information about the activities of SPARC, The Alliance for Taxpayer Access, and we'll talk about open access. We'll also touch on their international efforts including the launch of SPARC Japan and SPARC's interest in the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Back in mid-March medinfo asked its readers to define "open access". Today it posted the results (in German), which are more about the benefits of OA than the definition. The most common answers were fairness to taxpayers (41%) and solving the serials pricing crisis (26%). Further down the tail, a few readers said profiting the cleverest publishers (6%), fulfilling an ethical obligation in clinical research (4%), and killing libraries (2%). Apparently no one mentioned increasing the audience and impact of authors.
Publishers group "welcomes" EC report
The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has issued a press release (April 19, 2006) on the EC report on open access. Excerpt:
STM will review the results of the Study in greater detail and looks forward to further discussions and collaboration with DG-Research. Jerry Cowhig, Managing Director of Institute of Physics Publishing and current Chair of STM said, 'STM welcomes unbiased research into STM publishing and is pleased that the DG-Research highlights the importance of STM publishing to the European Union and society in general. It has been estimated that STM's members produce over 70% of the total annual output of global research information, so we intend to contribute significantly to the debate concerning science publishing. Science is fundamental to improving the lives of EU citizens. Ensuring a viable basis for science publishing is fundamental to the dissemination and understanding of science.' PS: I think I'm missing the point of this press release. STM welcomes unbiased research into STM publishing, but doesn't say whether the EC report qualifies. It acknowledges the report, but doesn't respond to any of its recommendations for OA, positively or negatively. Will the EC report strengthen the RCUK draft policy?
Stephen Pincock, Will EU beat UK in open access? TheScientist, April 21, 2006. Excerpt:
A European Commission report this month urged science funders to guarantee open access to research outputs. Meanwhile, the umbrella group for Britain's research councils is still working on its own policy, 10 months after releasing a draft policy on open access. The EU report, published at the beginning of April, recommends that European funding agencies promote and support the archiving of publications in open repositories. "This archiving could become a condition for funding," its authors suggest. Defending OA to clinical trial data
Matthew James Cockerill and Melissa Norton, Assessing Clinical Trial Results, Science Magazine, April 21, 2006. A letter to the editor. Cockerill and Norton are both from BioMed Central. Excerpt:
In her policy forum "Clinical trials results databases: unanswered questions" (13 Jan., p. 180), C. B. Fisher warns of several undesirable effects that might result from open access to raw data from clinical trials. Referring to the editorial policy of a new journal, Fisher suggests that "lack of emphasis on the direction of results or size � risks diluting scientific standards for peer review." New OA database on drugs and lactation
The US National Library of Medicine has launched LactMed, an OA database on drugs that are safe and unsafe for lactating women and their breastfed infants. (Thanks to ResearchBuzz.)
Dejan Perkovic, Keeping up with recent research, Google Blog, April 20, 2006. Excerpt:
Update. For a few other new features at Google Scholar, see Anurag Acharya's posting to SOAF this morning. Excerpt: Google Scholar now has an additional mode to search for "recent articles". This is not a sort-by-date. Rather it tries to approximate how researchers select new papers to read by taking into account prominence of the authors' and the journals' previous papers, how long the paper has been published, the number of citations and so on. This mode can be selected by clicking on the "Recent Articles" link that appears on the top right of search result pages. You can read more about it and see some examples in Dejan's blog post.
Biointerphases - new OA journal
Biointerphases has published its first issue, March 2006. Biointerphases is published by AVS, formerly the American Vacuum Society, and hosted by the American Institute of Physics.
Topics Include� �Interface spectroscopy �In vivo mechanisms �In vitro mechanisms �Interface modeling �Adhesion phenomena �Protein-surface interactions �Biomembranes on a chip �Cell-surface interactions �Biosensors / biodiagnostics �Bio-surface modification �The nano-bio interface �Biotribology / Biorheology �Molecular recognition �Cell patterning for function �Polyelectrolyte surfaces �Ambient diagnostic methodsFrom the introductory editorial: So why did we start Biointerphases, which is placed amongst several competitors trying to publish the best science in the emerging field of "biological" surface science? If there would not be some very special and unique features to our new journal, we would not have taken over the responsibility to make this a successful and rewarding enterprise. Biointerphases - Fulltext v1+ (2006+); ISSN: 1559-4106. UNU supports open source and open standards
United Nations University has adopted a policy on open source and open standards. I'd call it exemplary but for the fact that it doesn't mention open access and takes no position on OA to publicly-funded research or even to research performed by UNU faculty. Maybe in Phase Two of its commitment to openness--
More OA resources in chemistry
The April issue of the ChemRefer Newsletter is now online. The newsletter describes and links to notable, and mostly new, OA resources in chemistry.
European Panel Endorses Broad Open-Access Policy for Research, News Blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education, April 19, 2006. Excerpt:
Richard Poynder interviews Cory Doctorow
Richard Poynder has posted his interview with Cory Doctorow. This is the latest installment of The Basement Interviews, Poynder's blog-based OA book of interviews with leaders of many related openness initiatives. Excerpt:
Unintended costs of selling public data rather than giving it away
Charles Arthur, Living on the street with no name, The Guardian, April 20, 2006. Excerpt:
Emlyn Williams is mystified: why doesn’t his house show up on satellite navigation systems? It was built in 1988, and he moved there in 1996, yet from time to time delivery drivers complain that they can’t find it....So what is going on?...The Williams house’s apparent invisibility is caused by the eagerness of the Post Office and Ordnance Survey (OS) to sell their postcode and geographic address data sets respectively. That wouldn’t happen if both provided their data free, as the Guardian Technology Free Our Data campaign argues they should....[W]hy don’t all in-car navigation systems use the data collected by the UK’s mapping agency? Because it’s expensive.... I've omitted most of the details from this long, depressing story, but only because Arthur has posted a short version to Free Our Data: the blog this morning. Excerpt: Why can�t [delivery services using satellite navigation systems] find [Williams' house]? Because although local councils create the address information, which they send to the Post Office, which sends it to the Ordnance Survey (which �puts it on the map�), satellite navigation companies can�t always afford the OS prices. And councils are barred from selling the location data to satnav companies - because they use OS products to record any changes. (We�ve got council minutes.) Which means that in order to save some small sums for the taxpayer, by making OS revenue-neutral, taxpayers have to bear the extra congestion and pollution caused by drivers trying to find locations, while satnav systems� prices are either kept artificially high, or are inadequate. The data�s all there, recorded by public bodies. Who are we �protecting� by charging so much for it? Data on the use of CC licenses
Creative Commons has launched a statistics page with fascinating data showing (among other things) that the least restrictive CC licenses are the most commonly used. A CC blog posting explains some of the findings.
Milestone for California's eScholarship Repository
Last night the University of California's eScholarship Repository logged its 3 millionth full-text download. As I type, the number is up to 3,006,465, which means 6,465 full-text downloads in less than one day. Quoting Catherine Candee, Director of Publishing and Strategic Initiatives at the California Digital Library:
It took a year and a half for the repository to register the first million downloads, about nine months to reach the second million, and 166 days to reach the 3 million mark!
Open J-Gate now allows users to limit searches to peer-reviewed journals. Of the 3,000+ OA journals included in Open J-Gate, nearly 2,000 are peer-reviewed.
PS: This is a most welcome enhancement. More on Wikipedia for serious research in chemistry
David Bradley, Interview with Martin Walker, Reactive Reports, April 2006. Excerpt:
PS: I first blogged Martin Walker's enthusiasm for putting serious chemical research on Wikipedia back in February. Jill Walker on OA repositories
Jill Walker has blogged some notes before and after her presentation on OA institutional repositories today at the dSpace User Group Meeting (Bergen, April 19-21, 2006). Excerpt:
I know they want me to talk quite specifically about my experiences putting my publications into BORA, but of course I want to talk about blogs and openness and the information scavenging we do online that doesn�t always fit with a database-model of publication. And I want to talk about the difference between my own, personalised publication archive, shaped completely by me and even with my face grinning out at you, and the impersonal results BORA give you if you search for publications by �Jill Walker�. If we find and use knowledge through our social networks, the individuality and the �face� of publication archives is probably as important an accessory to it as the body language and voice and style and dress of a presenter at a conference, or as the cover and quality of print and publisher of a book....I wish everything anyone at our university published was automatically routed to BORA, even if I suppose maybe books might have to have restricted access for a while if the publishers are to have any interest in actually publishing them. But I want a system where I can register stuff once and automatically fetch out info, links and contextual links for my own, personalised publication page. That�s the page I really care about. I wish everything anyone at our university published was automatically routed to BORA, even if I suppose maybe books might have to have restricted access for a while if hte publishers are to have any interest in actually publishing them.... Library student launches OA journal for library students
LIS student Jason Hammond has won the Spirit of Librarianship Award from his school for a raft of good deeds, one of which was helping to "initiate a new open-access online journal for LIS students, called Cantilever." I can't find a web site for Cantilever yet, but will blog it when I can. Meantime, congratulations to Jason and best wishes for the new journal.
(Apparently he's a student at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Information and Media Studies, but I'm not sure.) Update (5/1/06). Jason Hammond did not create Cantilever. That honor goes to David Jackson. Hammond works on it with Jackson, Linda Bussiere, and Sabina Jane Iseli-Otto, all students at U of Western Ontario. OA medical literature, lay readers, professional help
Jon Udell, Commons-based peer production and the medical information monopoly, InfoWorld, April 17, 2006. (Thanks to medinfo.) Excerpt:
The presentations from othe DLF Spring Forum (Austin, April 10-12, 2006) are now online. See especially the presentations on the Open Content Alliance by Rick Prelinger, Robin Chandler, and Merrilee Proffitt. (Thanks to William Walsh.)
More on the Iraqi Virtual Science Library
Iraqi Virtual Science Library: Rebuilding a National Dream, Education Commons, April 18, 2006. An unsigned feature story. Excerpt:
Recognizing the need to rebuild the science and engineering infrastructure in Iraq, a group of fellows from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) launched the IVSL project in 2005. Together, Cindi Warren Mentz as Director of Nonproliferation Programs at the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation and Dr. Susan Cumberledge an Associate Professor Dept of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Massachusetts in Amerst, are making a major contribution to information access in a critical part of our world. Comment. The IVSL is not OA. It's only accessible to those affiliated with the participating institutions, somewhat like a site-licensed commercial aggregation. On the one hand, I'm glad that the US is helping to restore the academic infrastructure destroyed by the invasion, and I understand that comparatively little of the literature Iraqi researchers need is yet OA. But at the same time, the sponsors could also build OA infrastructure in Iraq, such as OA repositories at the major research institutions, to share new Iraqi research with fellow Iraqis and the rest of the world. OA and data sharing in Southern Africa
Participants in the workshop, Strategies for Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Southern Africa: Focus on Health and Environmental Information for Sustainable Development (Pretoria, September 5-7, 2005), have produced a report of the same title. From the executive summary:
The following recommendations are not directed specifically at CODATA and ICSU, but rather to the broader S&T policy, funding, and research management communities. They arose from several of the plenary discussions and are more general than the discipline-specific suggestions. The report was prepared by the CODATA Task Group on Preservation of and Access to S&T Data in Developing Countries, the South African National Committee for CODATA, and the U.S. National Committee for CODATA. Though the report itself is undated, it was announced on April 17, 2006. More on the EC report and Elsevier
Dan Milmo, Publishers watch in fear as a new world comes into view, The Guardian, April 19, 2006. Excerpt:
The move by the European commission to free up access to scientific research is the latest challenge posed by the internet to the way Reed Elsevier does business. The Anglo-Dutch publisher of the Lancet and Variety magazine is one of the most internet-savvy media groups, but while it has harnessed the web to reduce its costs, it is also threatening the group's lucrative core business. Reed performs a vital service for research scientists, who need to share knowledge. It is the world's largest publisher of science journals, a $9bn (£5bn) market which involves verifying, editing and printing the work of those scientists to sell to universities and corporate research laboratories. Reed's scientific journals arm accounts for about a third of the group's underlying profits, according to analysts' estimates, so any threat to its market-leading position is eyed nervously by investors. The man in charge of Reed's science and medical business, Erik Engstrom, is confident that the journals unit will grow at a healthy pace - the target is 5% revenue growth over the next few years. But in recent years the threat of alternative models for circulating scientific papers has emerged from the internet. So far none has made a dent in Reed's profits, but that has not stopped debate over the long-term growth prospects of its cornerstone business. Google Scholar, which collates academic material, including scientific research, and publishes it on the web for free, is one of those nascent threats. Scholar trawls the web for scientific papers, and also makes available pre-publication work. Mr Engstrom recasts the perceived challenge as an opportunity. "We see Google as a very important business partner," he says. An experienced publisher, the former chief executive of Random House, he describes Google as a "pointing engine" that complements Reed's business rather than hijacking it.... Comment. Two corrections for Milmo: (1) Google Scholar doesn't "collate academic material...and publish it on the web for free." All free content indexed by Google Scholar is already free online, hosted by other institutions. (2) The open access movement is not a "fledgling movement"; it's just about exactly as old as networked computers. One correction for Engstrom: open access is a kind of access, not a kind of business model; it's compatible with many different business models. P2P Foundation podcasts and webcasts
The P2P Foundation has compiled a series of podcasts and webcasts on topics related to open source, open access, and other openness initiatives.
Richard Wray, Brussels delivers blow to Reed Elsevier, The Guardian, April 19, 2006. Excerpt:
Scientific research funded by the European taxpayer should be freely available to everyone over the internet, according to a European commission report - a blow to the lucrative scientific publishing operations of media groups such as Reed Elsevier and Germany's Springer. The report, produced by economists from Toulouse University and the Free University of Brussels for the EC, shows that in the 20 years to 1995 the price of scientific journals rose 300% more than the rate of inflation over the period. In the 10 years since then, price increases slowed but still significantly outpaced inflation. "While it is important to stress the societal value of the existing publication system, it is also important to acknowledge the societal cost linked to high journal prices, in financial terms for public budgets, but also in terms of limits on the dissemination of knowledge and therefore of further scientific progress," the report concludes.
Gene Glass and Sherman Dorn review John Willinsky's The Access Principle (MIT Press, 2005) in the TCRecord, February 27, 2006. (Thanks to A.G. Rud.) Excerpt:
Much of the rest of the review looks at specific OA journals and projects in the field of education. Herbert Van de Sompel named first SPARC Innovator
SPARC Recognizes Herbert Van De Sompel For Outstanding Contributions To Scholarly Communication, a press release from SPARC, April 18, 2006. Excerpt:
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has named Herbert Van de Sompel, who leads the Digital Library Research and Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), as the first SPARC Innovator. The SPARC Innovator program is a new initiative that recognizes an individual, institution, or group that exemplifies SPARC principles by working to challenge the status quo in scholarly communication for the benefit of researchers, libraries, universities, and the public. SPARC Innovators will be featured on the SPARC Web site each month. PS: An excellent choice. Congratulations, Herbert! New email list for OA archive managers
From today's announcement by Heather Morrison:
An open access archiving maillist has been set up, primarily for managers of open access archives who would like to discuss issues relating to OA archiving in the dual sense of providing access and preservation. Business leaders endorse OA to publicly-funded research
The Committee for Economic Development has issued a new report, Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness, April 2006. (Thanks to Ian Brown.) The report was prepared by the CED's Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development. From the executive summary:
�Open science� is making scientific information available well beyond the subscribers of traditional scientific journals. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are encouraging widespread publication within 12 months of the results of the research that they fund. Open courseware is providing self-directed students around the world with the syllabi and course readings of great university teachers. All of these efforts rest on the assumption that society benefits by increasing access to information and allowing more people to contribute their special skills and experiences. Advocates for more openness contend that openness will result in greater innovation than would be achieved by restricting access to information or allowing first creators to exert greater control over it. Such a belief in the value of tapping the collective wisdom is profoundly democratic. After an NIH mandate, fine-tuning the permissible embargo
Janet Coleman, NIH Public Access Embargo Period: Where is the "Sweet Spot"? Research Policy Alert, April 18, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
A majority of NIH's Public Access Working Group suggested during their Nov. 15, 2005 and April 10, 2006 meetings thata the policy should be shifted from voluntary to mandatory and that the embargo period should be moved up from 12 months to six months....For those publishers that oppose either move, keeping the embargo period at 12 months appears to be the more important element. The publishers may be successful in retaining the 12-month period, as NIH seems to believe the more vital change is a move to a mandatory program....At the April 10 working group meeting, NLM Director Donald Lindberg, MD, said that mandating the policy "is much more important" than whether the embargo is six months or 12 months. David Lipman, MD, director of NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information, also said he views moving to a mandatory policy as more important than the embargo time period. However, he also argued that a six-month embargo would not result in publishers losing subscriptions..."What scientist would write a grant or submit a paper and notn look at papers that are more recent than six months?" Lipman asked. "Nobody would do it." In the remainder of the piece, Coleman quotes publishers who speculate that six and even 12 month embargoes would cost them revenue. She also quotes one, the American Society for Cell Biology, whose experience is that a short, two month embargo can trigger growth in subscriptions and revenue. OA as the way out of monopoly STM publishing
Richard Seitmann, Riesengewinne mit wissenschaftlichen Publikationen, Heise Online, April 4, 2006. (In German.) Seitmann juxtaposes Elsevier's gains in fiscal year 2005 with the new EC report concluding that monopoly STM publishing is harmful and avoidable. His bottom line: as more scientists publish in OA journals and deposit their work in OA repositories, monopoly revenues will come to an end.
Barbara Quint on Microsoft Academic Search
Barbara Quint, Microsoft Offers Alternative to Google Scholar: Windows Live Academic Search, Information Today Newsbreaks, April 17, 2006. Excerpt:
Also see Barbara's second article in the same issue, Windows Live Academic Search: The Details. Excerpt:
Integrating digital collections from 150 libraries and museums
The U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has launched a registry of IMLS-funded Digital Collections and Content. All or most of the collections appear to be OA. Users may browse them by subject or search them by keyword.
Also see Brock Read's story about it in the April 21 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: At present the registry includes the contents of 150 collections, each of which was digitized through grants issued by the agency. The archives include an array of photographs, artwork, and printed material, along with less commonly digitized fare like fish specimens and other ephemera collected by natural-history museums. Some of the material is iconic, like Edward S. Curtis's early-20th-century portraits of American Indians, digitized by librarians at Northwestern University. But much of the content is of more parochial interest, like a collection of publishers' bindings, mostly from the 19th century, put online by librarians at the Universities of Alabama and Wisconsin at Madison. Officials at the institute conceived the project in 2001 as a way of tracking local digitization efforts that they had helped finance. All too often, those projects languished on the Web as unconnected "puddles of content," says Mamie Bittner, the institute's director of public and legislative affairs....Another goal of the registry project is to develop better ways to build Internet search tools that make use of the hidden tags, known as metadata, that archivists append to their digital materials.
Report Says Scientific Publishing Needs Reform, Greenhouse Associates, April 2006. Excerpt:
A recent report by the European Commission calling for reforms in the scientific publishing system joins a chorus of critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Interest in reforming scientific publishing is being driven by high journals prices and frustration that the internet has not significantly improved the dissemination of scientific knowledge. While the report is critical of scientific journal publishers, it really takes aim at the whole system of funding and research that tends to force researchers to publish in journals that are available only by subscription, many costing thousands of dollars a year. The report notes that more than just posing a financial burden, high journal prices inhibit the dissemination of knowledge and scientific progress. It recommends that funding agencies promote greater public access to research, as the National Institutes of Health have done in the US. Such moves could include requiring that articles resulting from public funding be deposited in open repositories, regardless of whether they are published in journals. The study notes that commercial publishers charge significantly higher prices than non-profit publishers and, further, that publishers with larger portfolios of journals tend to charge more. The study also recommends that education and research funding organizations foster new forms of scholarly dissemination, such as open access journals, and new business models, such as those in which publishers charge authors publication fees, rather than charging users for subscriptions.
Here's Ed Kohler making the point that online ads can stay current even while the accompanying content gets older and older (Technology Evangelist, April 16, 2006):
Newspapers sitting on decades of archived articles have been stuck with one viable option for monetizing their archives in the offline world: charging for reprints. However, the online world disconnects the delivery of ads from content making new business models viable such as free and open content since it can be monetized through current and relevant advertising. PS: The point is about newspapers, not scholarly journals. But how far does it carry over? New OA book from new OA book publisher
The new Medrounds subsidiary, Free Educational Publications International (no web site yet) has issued its first OA book, Protect Your Sight. For more details, see yesterday's announcement from Medrounds:
Drs. Folk and Wilkinson [the authors] are experts in the field of macular degeneration, and they are not being paid by anyone to recommend anything. They treat patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) almost every day, perform research that explores the causes of AMD, attend scientific meetings, participate in treatment trials, and promise to tell you the straight scoop. They will tell you what scientists and doctors all over the world know about this disease, and, just as importantly, what they don�t know....
Nigel Shadbolt, Tim Brody, Les Carr, and Stevan Harnad, The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable, forthcoming in Neil Jacobs (ed.), Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, Chapter 21, Chandos Publishing, 2006. Self-archived April 17, 2006.
Abstract: Further development of GNU EPrints and Citebase, together with the growing webwide database of Open Access (OA) articles, and the data we will collect and analyse from it, will allow us to do several things for which the unique historic moment has arrived with the Research Assessment Exercise's recent transition to metrics: (1) Motivate more researchers to provide OA by self-archiving; (2) map the growth of OA across disciplines, countries and languages; (3) navigate the OA literature using citation-linking and impact ranking; (4) measure, extrapolate and predict the research impact of individuals, groups, institutions, disciplines, languages and countries; (5) measure research performance and productivity, (6) assess candidates for research funding; (7) assess the outcome of research funding, (8) map the course of prior research lines, in terms of individuals, institutions, journals, fields, nations; (9) analyze and predict the direction of current and future research trajectories; (10) provide teaching and learning resources that guide students (via impact navigation) through the large and growing OA research literature in a way that navigating the web via google alone cannot come close to doing.
Bo-Christer Björk and Žiga Turk, The Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon): an open access journal using an un-paid, volunteer-based organization, Information Research, April 2006. The first in a series of "Case studies in open access publishing." Abstract:
Introduction. This case study is based on the experiences with the Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction (ITcon), founded in 1995. |