Struggles of University presses

A special issue, v. 13, no. 2, of the Journal of Electronic Publishing focuses on Reimagining the University Press. And commentaries from the Chronicle of Higher Education,
Hot Type: Despite Broader Audiences, University Presses May Have to Scramble for Support and Inside Higher Ed, New Models for University Presses, discuss the issues.

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.

Developing scholarly encyclopedias

Open Access Encyclopedias is the title of an article by Steve Kolowich in Inside Higher Ed about efforts to create free online scholarly alternatives to Wikipedia.

He discusses the realities of creating such sites and refers to resources such as Scholarpedia, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Encyclopedia Virginia, the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, the New Georgia Encyclopedia, and Citizendium.

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.

Recent blog posts on institutional repositories

University Lectures By David(David) ... Research Showcase Dan Hood, Research Showcase Outreach Coordinator, will define "institutional repository" (IR), cover the history of IRs, and highlight notable advances in open access publishing relating to IRs. ... News from the "Real World" - http://cmuptm.blogspot.com/

A few thoughts on the heels of Berlin 6 By Cornelius Librarians tend to see themselves as guardians of physical objects (books) and of digital objects which can be treated like physical objects (papers, dissertations, stuff that can be put into an institutional repository). ... CorpBlawg - http://corpblawg.ynada.com/

Paper — Tune It Up: Creating and Maintaining the Institutional ... Tune It Up: Creating and Maintaining the Institutional Repository Revolution The explosion of recent open access repositories and the future desire for global open access to scholarly communication has prompted the need to have more ... ResourceShelf » Resources - http://www.resourceshelf.com/

Overview of the literature on IRs By admin Nicole Carpenter, Tune It Up: Creating and Maintaining the Institutional Repository Revolution, deposited November 11, 2008. Student paper for a class at the School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University. ... Edu Blog - http://blog.lider.tc/

Repository interoperability By dempsey In interviews with depositors and after conducting a case study of an Institutional Repository, we find different perceptions of the role of the repository, some seeing it mainly as an administrative tool for collecting and collating ... Lorcan Dempsey's weblog - http://orweblog.oclc.org/

Periodicals Price Survey 2008: Embracing Openness

An article in Library Journal, 4/15/2008 by Lee C. Van Orsdel & Kathleen Born reports:

Global initiatives and startling successes hint at the profound implications of open access on journal publishing.

Complete with 2004-2008 data and tracking the change this article discusses some of the effects and potential effects of the open access movement.

University College Dublin on the Institutional Repository project

UCD Today from the University College Dublin, includes publicity on the Institutional Repository project. See page 5.

Open Access Forum from the UCDHSC Libraries & Colorado Health Informatics Collaboration

Open Access Forum

Examine key issues surrounding Open Access, including its impact on faculty scholarship and publishing.

Learn more about:

• Legislative issues and current debates surrounding access to federally funded research;
• How researchers can retain their intellectual property and authorship rights;
• Various publishing models for distributing science research and data;
• Issues surrounding access to scientific discovery among the globally poor.

Schedule:

Presentation by
Larry Peiperl, MD, Senior Editor, PLoS Medicine titled
Open Access: Three Kinds of Impact
(Impact Factor, Societal Impact, Clinical Impact)

Reactor Panel

• Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH - Associate Professor, Department of Dermatology, UCDHSC School of Medicine
• Lawrence Hunter, PhD - Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, UCDHSC School of Medicine
• Lisa Schilling, MD - Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, UCDHSC School of Medicine

Q&A Session follows

Join us on
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
11:30AM – 1:30 PM
RC1 West Auditorium
Anschutz Medical Campus

Registration is not required
Pizza and sodas provided (First come, first served)

Sponsors:
UCDHSC Libraries - Health Science Library and Auraria Library
Colorado Health Informatics Collaboration

Questions? Contact Kevin.Cullen@uchsc.edu or Catherine.Reiter@uchsc.edu

Losing access to research

Article by pHd student Danney Kingsley on a system built to increase access to government funded research in Australia that is going awry. Losing Access to Research, ScienceAlert, Australia and New Zealand, June 29, 2007.

Support for open access publishing, a suggestion from BioMed Central

Some ideas from BioMed Central. Auraria Library is a member of BioMed Central and thus supports Auraria faculty publishing.

BioMed Central, which publishes over 170 peer-reviewed journals in biology, medicine and chemistry, has been a pioneer of the open access publishing model for academic research. Under the open access model, published articles are made universally available online with the cost being covered not by subscriptions but by article processing charges, payable on publication. Open access publishing has proven very popular with authors, and has grown dramatically since BioMed Central's launch in 2000. In order for that growth to continue, however, it is vital that sufficient funds are available to cover the cost of open access publication in a sustainable way.

There has been much discussion within the academic community about how best to pay the costs of open access publication, given that library budgets are already stretched. The Wellcome Trust examined this issue, and concluded that open access publication costs are best seen as part of the cost of doing research. Research institutions and funders recognize that research involves not only direct costs, but also indirect costs (for necessary infrastructure such as buildings/ laboratories/ maintenance/ library services etc.). We feel that it is very important that open access publishing costs should be recognized as such an infrastructure cost and budgeted for appropriately.

We would like to encourage all research institutions around the world to define an open access publishing budget for their institution, just as they currently have a library budget. A central 'open access publishing fund' could receive contributions from each of the funding organization that supports research at the institution. For example the National Institutes of Health and California Institute for Regulative Medicine both have open access policies, which enable researchers to apply for publication costs funding. For further information on all the funding agencies who have policies, please visit our website.

Having such a central fund for authors at your institution would reduce the barriers for those authors wishing to publish in an open access journal, and would thus deliver a more level playing field for open access journals to compete with traditional journals, which already receive extensive institutional support through library subscriptions.

If you would like help or ideas on how to set up a central fund or would like to discuss this further, please contact us at: institutions@biomedcentral.com.

We shall also be holding an open access consultation at the forthcoming Medical Library Association conference, on Monday, May 21st, 2007 from 7.00 - 9.00am, where we shall be discussing the issues of payment for open access publications, please do let us know if you would like to attend the event.