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.

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.

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/]

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

Impact of BioOne journals

BioOne (www.bioone.org) announced the cumulative increase of journal impact in its BioOne.1, BioOne.2, and Open Access Collections, according to the Thomas Scientific Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) 2006 Journal Citation Report (JCR), published last week.

An innovative full-text aggregator of essential bioscience research journals published by independent not-for-profit societies and institutions, BioOne now boasts 86 ISI ranked titles—a robust 68% of its total collection of 126 journals. This includes five titles that have gained an Impact Factor in the 2006 JCR including:

· Castanea, published by the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society

· URSUS, published by the International Association for Bear Research and Management

· Rangeland Ecology and Management, published by the Society for Range Management

· Haseltonia, published by the Cactus and Succulent Society of America

· Journal of Insect Science, published by the University of Wisconsin

Several other BioOne publications saw marked increases in their Impact Factor from the 2005 to 2006 Journal Citation Reports. BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, became BioOne’s most highly ranked participating publication with an Impact Factor of 5.424, up from 4.708 in the 2005 index. BioScience now is ranked 6^th of 64 titles in biology.

BioOne also increased its title presence in a number of ISI subject categories, including Ornithology. The Auk, published by the American Ornithologists’ Union, ranks 2^nd of 19 titles in Ornithology, with an Impact Factor of 2.056 (up from 1.838 in the 2005 index.) The Condor, published by the Cooper Ornithological Society, ranks 3^rd in Ornithology, with an Impact Factor of 1.604 (up from 1.337 in the 2005 index.)

Mindful that the ISI Impact Factor is most useful when combined with other metrics for assessing journal quality, we applaud the BioOne participating titles that have made such impressive strides in the 2006 ISI Journal Citation Report.

Comments on the Brussels Declaration

A post today on DigitalKoans by Chs W. Bailey discussing the publishers response to scholars' interest in open access.

The recent "Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing" by major scholarly publishers, such as Elsevier and Wiley, can be boiled down to: the scholarly publishing system ain’t broke, so don’t try to fix it. It provides an interesting contrast to the 2004 "Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science" by not-for-profit publishers, which outlined a variety of strategies for making content freely available.

It might also be interesting to read about an ongoing study of new scholars' attitudes and concerns led by Cathy Trower of Harvard. She recently spoke at Auraria and here is some text from the promo.

Trower leads Harvard’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE). The COACHE survey of 4,500 tenure-track faculty at 51 colleges and universities has revealed that, overall, climate, culture, and collegiality are more important to the success and satisfaction of early career faculty than compensation, tenure clarity, workload, and policy effectiveness.

COACHE discovered that the some of the key climate variables for junior faculty include: interest senior faculty take in their work, fairness with which they are evaluated, opportunities to collaborate with senior faculty, how well they seem to fit in their departments, sufficient professional and personal interaction with colleagues, and a sense of community in the department.