Open Access Week

Open Access Week (October 18 – 24, 2010) is an online coordination of activities that highlight the collaboration and collective action that have heightened the momentum behind Open Access. Lots of exciting things are happening.

The following is from the "Welcome" to the Open Access Week site:

“Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year. Open Access Week is a key opportunity for all members of the community to take action to keep this momentum moving forward.

Institutional policies and researchers' views on open access

A journal article Open access to research outputs--Institutional policies and researchers' views by Claire Creaser examines the results of two 2008 surveys investigating the effects and impact of open access on researchers. From the abstract:

... Researchers were largely unaware of their institutions' policies with regard to open access, or whether they had an institutional repository. ... The surveys found that any researchers maintained a suspicion of open access publications, both as authors and as users of scholarly material, together with a degree of ignorance about open access and the role of institutional repositories. ...

If you have dificulty accessing the article Auraria Library patrons may log in to read the fulltext.

Utah State University Press to become open access

A statement from Utah State University Press and Merrill-Cazier Library on Monday November 2, 2009 announced that USU will join Rice University and the University of Michigan where their university press has merged with the library and developed an online, open access model of publication.

From the announcement:

USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. The library’s position will be enhanced as well, as academic libraries nationally take on a stronger role in the evolution of scholarly publishing.

“This move directly serves the needs of the university,” Clement said. “Open access allows us to go back to where university presses began — to publish work by all faculty in every discipline.”

At the same time, USU Press remains a refereed scholarly press, with the standards of rigorous peer review appropriate to a university publisher.

In an article by Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Education today he notes that:

For the last nine months, the survival of the Utah State University Press has been in doubt, with fears that deep cuts being made to public higher education in Utah would end up killing off the publishing outlet.
This week comes news that the press will survive -- in part by embracing a new model of organization (becoming part of the university library) and a new business model (embracing open access, in which most publications would be available online and free).

Computers and Composition Digital Press is a USU Press imprint.

Open Access Week, October 19 - 23, 2009

October 19-23, 2009 is the first international Open Access Week.

Open Access Week is intended to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research within the international higher education community and the general public.

Last years Open Access Day organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the PLoS (The Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture are joined for 2009 by OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries).

Activities around the world are listed at Open Access Week.
Check out the week of talks at the University of Puerto Rico, the pre-week activities in Ireland, the PLoS competition for the best medical paper and the spirit of open access haiku contest from SHERPA.

Income models for supporting open access

A new guide "Income Models for Supporting Open Access" has been published by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or Sparc for publishers who want to support open access. From the guide:

Developing a sound business model is a critical concern of publishers considering open-access distribution. Selecting the model appropriate to a particular journal will depend not only on the expense hurdle that must be cleared, but also on the publisher’s mission objectives, size, business management resources, risk tolerance, tax status, and institutional or corporate affiliation.

This Web site and accompanying guide provide an overview of income models currently being used to support the open-access distribution of peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journals. These resources will be a useful tool both for publishers exploring new potential sources of income and for libraries weighing where to direct meager library funds.

Compact for open access publishing equity

Scott Jaschik reports in the September 15, 2009 edition of Inside Higher Ed that five major research universities, MIT, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, pledge to set up system of payments for work their professors publish in free, online journals -- aiming to shift economic model of scholarly communication, the "Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity".

Specifically, the universities have each committed to "the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in open access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds."

Here's the same story from the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog posted by Ben Terris on September 14, 2009.

Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Copyrights!

Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Copyrights! is an article by Steve Kolowich on the next deadline of the Google book settlement from Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2009.

[Judge Denny] Chin, the federal judge who is presiding over Author’s Guild et al. v. Google, Inc., has been inundated with letters and amicus briefs in advance of the September 7 deadline for participants in the class action to opt out of a settlement over the company's controversial Google Books project that has received preliminary approval from the court. A handful of the documents have come from professors, university libraries, and advocacy groups.

Auraria Library students and faculty search Lexis Nexis Federal and State case law or Lexis Nexis Law reviews using these links.

Open Humanities Press creates five new open-access monograph series

New Open-Access Monograph Series Is Announced

By Jennifer Howard
Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 07, 2009

Open Humanities Press (OHP) is joining the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) to create five new open-access monograph series with a focus on critical and cultural theory. "All of the books will be freely available in full-text, digital editions and as reasonably priced paperbacks," according to a statement released today, and they will be subject to "the highest standards of editorial vetting and peer review." .. more

Scholarly Communication Program Speaker Series Videos

Scholarly Communication Program Speaker Series Videos Now Available Online

Columbia University Libraries Scholarly Communication Program, Research without borders, held a speaker series on scholarly communication issues in 2008-09 and recently released all the videos from those events. See http://tinyurl.com/c4jrdc

Scholarly Communication video

From a talented group of librarians at UT Arlington here is a short video on scholarly communication. Their recommendation to speak with a subject librarian for further information applies to Auraria Library faculty and researchers as well. Make an appointment with a subject specialist for in depth assistance.

Study on rank of authors publishing in open access journals

Academic Rank of Authors Publishing in Open Access Journals by Elaine Nowick
Published in Agricultural Information Worldwide (2008) v. 1, no. 2, pp. 45-51.

Abstract: When deciding where to publish their research results, faculty take into consideration factors such as the prestige and readership of journals. The weight a journal article will carry is particularly a concern for pre-tenured faculty members. Previous research has indicated that some faculty members may have some concerns about publishing in Open Access journals because of a perceived lack of rigor and reputation of Open Access titles. In this study, the academic rank of authors publishing in Open Access and commercial scholarly journals was compared. Most authors in both Open Access and For-fee journals were full professors. There was no indication that pre-tenured faculty avoided Open Access titles. In fact, there was a slight but significant trend for pre-tenured faculty to publish in Open Access journals.

Note: Article available in the Digital Commons. See link on authors page [http://www.unl.edu/libr/liaison/facultysites/nowickElaine/]

Google, digitization & books

Of interest on Google, digitization & books

From the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281

Other resources:

"Impact of the Google Book Settlement on Libraries" by OCLC
http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2009-01.pdf

A set of links "Google Book Settlement Link Dump Awesomeness"
http://tinyurl.com/9zph4v

A blog Google Book Search Settlement: Reviewing the Notice of Settlement
http://dltj.org/article/gbs-settlement-2/

The full text of the settlement
www.googlebooksettlement.com/agreement.html

Author guide to open access published June 2008

The Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project of Australia has published an author guide to open access titled Understanding Open Access in the Academic Environment: A Guide for Authors.

Excerpt from summary:

This guide aims to provide practical guidance for academic authors interested in making their work more openly accessible to readers and other researchers. The guide provides authors with an overview of the concept of and rationale for open access to research outputs and how they may be involved in its implementation and with what effect. In doing so it considers the central role of copyright law and publishing agreements in structuring an open access framework as well as the increasing involvement of funders and academic institutions. The guide also explains different methods available to authors for making their outputs openly accessible, such as publishing in an open access journal or depositing work into an open access repository. Importantly, the guide addresses how open access goals can affect an author’s relationship with their commercial publisher and provides guidance on how to negotiate a proper allocation of copyright interests between an author and publisher. A Copyright Toolkit is provided to further assist authors in managing their copyright.

Academic Plagiarism - a detection tool for publishers

CrossRef, a non-profit membership association of publishers which includes open access publishers, has developed a search tool, CrossCheck, to check submissions against their members already published content. Launched June 19, 2008 CrossCheck is "already slated" to cover over 20 million journal articles and is in the process of enrolling CrossRef members to include their content in the CrossCheck database.

"CrossCheck powered by iThenticate" from CrossRef has been created to verify the
originality of submitted manuscripts. [A plagiarism dectection tool:] CrossCheck is two products, a database of scholarly publications and a web-based tool to check an authored work against that database. The web-based tool can be used in the editorial process to identify matching text but it can not, on its own, identify plagiarism. A human has to look at the matching text and use their best judgment to identify if plagiarism has occurred or not.

Harvard Law Faculty join their colleagues voting for "open access" to scholarly articles

As their Arts & Sciences colleagues did in February 2008 the faculty of Harvard Law School voted unanimously to mandate that their peer reviewed articles be deposited in a digital institutional repository and be open access.

From the May 7, 2008 announcement:

In a move that will disseminate faculty research and scholarship as broadly
as possible, the Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make
each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS
the first law school to commit to a mandatory open access policy.

"The Harvard Law School faculty produces some of the most exciting,
groundbreaking scholarship in the world," said Dean Elena Kagan '86. "Our
decision to embrace 'open access' means that people everywhere can benefit from
the ideas generated here at the Law School."

Under the new policy, HLS will make articles authored by faculty members
available in an online repository, whose contents would be searchable and
available to other services such as Google Scholar. Authors can also legally
distribute the articles on their own websites, and educators here and elsewhere
can freely provide the articles to students, so long as the materials are not
used for profit. "

This exciting development is something in which the whole Harvard Law
School community can take great pride," said John Palfrey '01, executive
director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and newly appointed
vice dean of library and information resources. "The acceptance of open access
ensures that our faculty's world-class scholarship is accessible today and into
the future. I look forward to the work of implementing this commitment."The vote
came after an open access proposal was made by a university-wide committee aimed
at encouraging wider dissemination of scholarly work. Earlier this semester, the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to adopt a policy similar to the Law School’s
new initiative.

NIH Requirements for Public Access to Journal Articles

The NIH open access requirement has been broadly advertised. Here is the NIH's FAQ on the topic and below is Springer's announcement of it. This is a description aimed at the authors/faculty and includes instructions for complying with the requirement.

Dear SpringerAlert Subscriber,

Do you receive research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)? If so, as from April 2008 you will be required to deposit the final manuscript of your journal articles in PubMed Central and ensure free availability (open access) within 12 months of publication.

You will be pleased to hear that Springer journals are fully geared up for that requirement. All you have to do is opt for open access publication of your article through Springer's Open Choice - you will be given that option as soon as your article has been accepted for publication after peer review - and we will handle the administrative process.

Springer will take care of the immediate deposit in PubMed Central and what's more, not of the manuscript, but of the final, published article. And it will also be available with open access right away, and not just after 12 months.

The cost of Open Choice is - as stated on the NIH web site - a permissible cost in your grant so please take care to budget for it.

Publishing with open access in Springer journals completely takes away any worries you might have about complying with the new NIH rules for grantees when it comes to publishing your research results. We look forward to the submission of your next paper.

Best regards,
Your Springer Open Choice Team

U.S. Govt. Plans to Close Internet site Consolidating Economic Indicator Reports

U.S. Govt. Plans to Close Internet site Consolidating Economic Indicator Reports

The website was awarded a best of web by Forbes magazine.
The web site can, for now, can still be located at: http://www.economicIndicators.gov/

If you wish to continue to receive this data, you will need to acquire a temporary subscription to STAT-USA.

This is the Disclaimer from the http://www.economicIndicators.gov web site

Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service (http://www.economicindicators.gov) will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008.

Economic Indicators.gov is brought to you by the Economics and Statistics Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Our mission is to provide timely access to the daily releases of key economic indicators from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau.

You may link to the most recent release by clicking on the report name in the table below. You may also subscribe to our *free Subscription Service to have these files emailed or faxed directly to you as soon as they are released.

comments on Harvard's OA / IR policy

A post by Noah Gray in the Nature Neuroscience blog on the Harvard policy critiques the all encompassing and vague nature of the policy. A comment from Steven Harnard of the American Scientist Open Access Forum on Gray's post proposes some alternate wording to optimize the effectiveness of the declaration.

Harvard Faculty Unanimously Agree To Establish Open Access Repository

An article in the February 13, 2008 Library Journal announces that

Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) yesterday unanimously approved a motion that would compel faculty to deposit their research in an open access (OA) repository managed by the library to be made freely available to anyone via the Internet.

Univ College Dublin Library & Enovation Solutions team up

Emmet Ryan of ENN reports that the UCD Library and Enovation Solutions have completed the development of an open access digital repository to collect, preserve and disseminate the full-text research outputs of researchers at University College Dublin for launch later in 2008.