Thursday, August 31, 2006

OhioLINK Recommends Steps to Ensure That Ohio Remains Available to Ohio Scholars

OhioLINK Recommends Steps to Ensure That Ohio Research Remains Available to Ohio Scholars

Columbus, Ohio (August 30, 2006) – Ohio faculty, scholars and researchers publish thousands of scholarly articles each year, in the world's leading scholarly journals. Yet there is no guarantee that Ohio will have access to research produced by its own scholars as the costs and quantity of scholarly journals keep rising beyond the reach of Ohio higher education. OhioLINK, a consortium of 85 academic libraries and the State Library of Ohio, has released recommendations that will help authors and their institutions retain the right to disseminate their works electronically, thereby assuring access to Ohio research for the Ohio scholarly community and beyond. The recommendation document, including a sample author publication agreement, is available for downloading at www.ohiolink.edu/journalcrisis .

OhioLINK also recommends placing research articles and related material in freely accessible digital repositories, such as its own Digital Resource Commons. This will help ensure that research published by Ohio scholars will be openly accessible for research and scholarship.

“The OhioLINK library community believes that research and works produced by Ohio scholars should remain accessible to scholars in Ohio and beyond, regardless of whether that scholar’s institution can afford to buy the published research. These recommendations move Ohio another step closer to turning that belief into a reality,” Tom Sanville, OhioLINK’s executive director, said.

Some of OhioLINK’s recommendations to Ohio institutions, faculty and other researchers include:
1. Publish in journals that have responsible rights policies whenever possible.
2. Retain the non-exclusive right to make works openly accessible and usable for the author’s own non-commercial educational and research purposes.
3. Deposit works in a campus repository or the Ohio Digital Resource Commons so that those works are available to scholars in Ohio and beyond.

In making these recommendations, OhioLINK joins many organizations around the nation and the world who are seeking to protect authors’ rights to freely disseminate their own works, including the University of California, The Boston Library Consortium and the European Commission. While many journal publishers have changed their policies to embrace an author’s right to archive and share their own works for educational and research purposes, it remains the author’s responsibility to ensure they do not sign away their rights in publisher agreements.

Kudos to OhioLINK!

Peter Suber presents an excellent summary of the key points relating to open access, and useful comments on Open Access News.

University of California Libraries supports open access and other transformative publishing models

Dear Colleagues,

I’m pleased to inform readers of this list that an updated version of the University of California Libraries Principles for Acquiring and Licensing Information in Digital Formats is now available. Building upon principles originally established by the UC Libraries in 1996, the July 2006 revision jointly developed by UC collection development and scholarly communication officers includes new principles that highlight the University’s interest in fostering a more open and sustainable scholarly communication environment. Specific principles set forth in this version include support for open access and other transformative publishing models, the right of academic authors to retain copyright to their works, and the use of multiple indicators of value as a basis on which to evaluate pricing. Other principles articulated here for the first time include support for the digitization of out-of-copyright material as an alternative to licensing where appropriate and an affirmation of the important role of third-party trusted archival repositories in the long-term preservation of digital information.

The revised principles can be found at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/cdc/principlesforacquiring.html

Best wishes,

Ivy Anderson
Director of Collections
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President

Kudos, Ivy & the University of California Libraries!

Peter Suber has a very useful excerpt explaining the open access-related portions of this initiative on Open Access News.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

OUP reports on Oxford Open results (so far)

A press release today from Oxford University Press reports on the first year (since July 2005) of the OUP hybrid journal program, Oxford Open. Some highlights:
  • Almost 400 OA papers have been published, in 36 of the 49 journals that are participating in Oxford Open.
  • 10% of the authors publishing in OUP life sciences journals have taken the OA route, with 5% of the medicine and life sciences authors and 3% of the humanities and social sciences authors doing so.
  • The journal with the highest number of OA papers is Bioinformatics, which published over 50 OA papers.

As someone who pays a lot of attention to serial prices, I thought it was interesting to note that the 2007 online subscription costs for three journals, Bioinformatics, Carcinogenesis and Human Molecular Genetics, will be adjusted to reflect the number of freely available articles these publications contained in 2005-2006. This is good to see (presumably, the prices will be adjusted downward) but I wonder what the threshold is for setting a cost adjustment into motion? How many OA papers does it take to do this?

OUP is going to carry on with the Oxford Open program. The 49 journals that are presently involved will continue and it is expected that other Oxford titles will join.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

The Movement for Open Access Law

In an important recent paper, "The Movement for Open Access Law", Michael W. Carroll argues that the time is right for open access to legal scholarship. The paper offers a good summation of the overall argument for open access, as well as specific insights about the applicability of OA to legal writings. As a bonus, it is highly readable and engaging.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Cornell University's Open Access Press Within D-Space

Cornell University has an operational open access press within their D-Space Community. More information can be found in Charles Bailey's blogpost, Digital University / Library Presses, Part 5: Internet-First University Press. If you're interested in how libraries can directly support change in scholarly communications through new publishing opportunities, read the whole series! Thanks, Charles.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Research: acquisition of open access research articles

Arthur Sale, Professor of Computing Research at the University of Tasmania (Australia), has researched how authors upload their papers in universities with mandatory deposit policies.

Amongst the significant findings is that by six months after publication date, more than 80% of authors have already deposited. Also it seems to take 2-3 years for a university mandatory policy to become fully institutionalized, though the process is almost instant with departmental mandates. The data is drawn from three sources: [1] University of Tasmania, [2] Queensland University of Technology in Australia, and [3] the University of Southampton in the UK.

The preprint of this paper is available in the UTas ePrints repository:
The acquisition of open access research articles (2006)

(originally found on SERIALST-L)

Monday, August 21, 2006

Nearly 80% of ARL Libraries either have or are planning IRs!

According to the latest SPEC kit, Institutional Repositories, nearly 80% of ARL Libraries either have, or are in the process of planning, an institutional repository. The average expenditure is high, but ironically, the majority of implementers report managing without a dedicated budget.

To me, this reflects a common irony in the wired world; that is, one can spend a great deal on a project, while your neighbour sets up on a shoestring. Sometimes the big spender ends up with a better product - but not always!

The front page and executive summary of this, and other SPEC kits from Issue 200, is now freely available, in another example of an OA-hybrid. To me, this represents real progress towards OA in a format (monograph) which is not truly part of the OA target. The SPEC Survey program is highly regarded amongst academic libraries, encompassing timely, key management topics in academic libraries, with the high response rate of the Institutional Repository survey (71%) being typical.

Many thanks to Charles Bailey on Digital Koans.

Thanks as always to Peter Suber, and kudos to ARL!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

When you are at home in a library, you can learn anything

The title of this post is from an open access Library Reports assignment - written by none other than open access advocate Peter Suber! This is an assignment that I think many librarians will enjoy, which talks about using libraries throughout the semester, with aims like getting comfortable with the library.

For some other interesting ideas of Peter's, listen to the podcast interview of Peter Suber with John Udell - the basics of open access are covered by those who need them, but also topics like blogging and open access. Oh, and libraries and librarians are mentioned several times, too. Well worth listening to, even for those with some expertise on OA. Details and the links can be found on Open Access News.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Open Access Archives, Metadata, and Authority Control

It should come as no surprise that the quality of searching in those open access archives will be greatly enhanced through attention to key metadata, such as standardized entry of author names - what we librarians have done for years, in the guise of authority control.

This has come up recently on the American Scientist Open Access Forum under the topic about true names...searching and measuring (look after the end of the alphabet for this topic, as it begins with a non-capitalized letter). Thanks to Librarian and Professor Sheila Corrall at the University of Sheffield for making the connection with authority control.

Those interested in continuing this discussion are invited to do so, at an operationally-oriented open archives list, such as OAI-General - or, perhaps a library-oriented list?

In my opinion, the key values and skills of librarianship - preserving information, making it accessible, organizing it and helping users to find what they need, whether immediately (reference) or at any time (informaiton literacy) - will be every bit as necessary in the open access environment, if not moreso, than in the subscriptions / purchasing world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

OA Blogdiggity

Just for fun, or to get serious about it, check out Blogdigger Groups to combine the contents of two or more blogs on a topic (say, for example, open access). Here are the results for the group on "open access and open archive."

SHERPA Juliet, and the UK Natural Environment Research Council OA Mandate

The UK Natural Enviroment Research Council is the latest funding agency to announce an OA Mandate, NERC Guidance on Access to Research Outputs.

Details can be found on the new SHERPA Juliet site, which lists and summarizes research funders' open access policies.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, who comments that, this is wonderful news, and with one exception, this policy is all that one could ask.

From my point of view, this is wonderful news, period! The one exception that Peter refers to is reference to publishers' embargo periods. My reading of the policy is that it reflects a willingness to accept current publisher practices, but reserves the right to shift to a stronger policy in the event of publisher backsliding.

Many thanks to Bill Hubbard and the SHERPA crew for Juliet!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The hybrid OA announcements continue: APS FREE TO READ

Today's hybrid OA announcement is from the American Physical Society (APS). They are expanding their OA article program to "any article or group of articles published in the Journals of the American Physical Society back to 1893". The name of this project is FREE TO READ.

The submission fees in the FREE TO READ program will vary, ranging from $975 US in the Physical review journals (A-E) to $1300 US for Physical review letters. The cost for Reviews of modern physics will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

An interesting paragraph appears in the announcement:

"The FREE TO READ initiative represents a path by which APS could gradually transition to full Open Access. If the community (especially institutions and funding agencies) shows continued support for this initiative, a sustainable level may be reached in which the APS can recover its costs, offset its risks, and eliminate subscriptions for some or all of its journals."

Sounds like the folks at APS are thinking ahead a bit. Not a bad thing.

Unlike many of the other recent hybrid OA announcements, there is a webpage to reference. There's a FREE TO READ FAQ at http://publish.aps.org/FREETOREAD_FAQ.html.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Book review: "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access To Research and Scholarship"

In the most recent issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Marian Burright (Collection Management Librarian for Life Sciences, University of Maryland) reviews the book "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access To Research and Scholarship" written by John Willinsky.

In his book, John Willinsky explains the advent of open access and situates OA within the economics of scholarship by covering online journal publishing, copyright law issues, alternative publishing venues as well as the ten "flavors" of open access and their economic models.

As Marian Burright highly recommends this read to every academic librarian, follow this link for the complete book review: http://www.istl.org/06-summer/review2.html

The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. John Willinsky. MIT Press Cambridge: MA, 2006. List Price: $34.95.
ISBN: 0-262-23242-1

Monday, August 14, 2006

Still another hybrid OA journal option: BMJ Unlocked

I try to be a good serials librarian and blog journal-related OA announcements, Recently, I've paid particular attention to announcements about hybrid journal programs but I missed this one. I'll mention it in brief here.

On August 3, BMJ Journals announced that they now have an option by which authors with papers accepted for publication by a BMJ journal can pay to make their papers open access. This program is called Unlocked. Unlocked employs a two-tier pricing system, charging either £1,200/$2,220 US/€1,775 or £1,700/$3,145 US/€2,515, depending on the journal.

Unlike some of the other recently announced hybrid programs (e.g. Elsevier, Wiley, Cambridge), it looks like the Unlocked option applies to all of the titles in the BMJ suite of journals; no list of participating titles was given in the announcement.

And yes, the BMJ annoucement does use the words "open" and "access".

Another hybrid OA journal program: Cambridge Open Option

On the heels of the Wiley announcement about their New Funded Access Service (see my August 8 post) and a similar announcement from BMJ (see the separate post that follows about this), Cambridge UniversityPress has announced that they too are establishing a hybrid OA option. As with the offerings from other publishers, authors who have had articles accepted for publication in certain Cambridge journals can opt to make their articles openly accessible for a charge of $2700 US or 1500 pounds. The journals included in this program are:

Biofilms
Cardiology in the young
Development and psychopathology
Epidemiology and infection
Experimental agriculture
Expert reviews in molecular medicine
Genetical research
Geological magazine
Journal of agricultural science
Journal of plasma physics
Journal of tropical ecology
Laser and particle beams
Psychological medicine
Visual neuroscience
Zygote

A couple of interesting notes about the Cambridge Open Option:

1) Unlike the announcements from Elsevier and Wiley about their hybrid OA options, the Cambridge announcement actually uses the term "open access" a few times.

2) Unless I've missed something, this is the first announcement of this nature that has included mention of adjusting the subscription costs for hybrid OA journals. This is nice to see:

"It is anticipated that the subscription prices of the participating journals will be adjusted in the future to take into account the impact of the Open Access publishing model. The level of change will depend on the uptake of the Cambridge Open Option by authors. Any subscription price
changes will occur on a title by title basis."

I haven't been able to find a web page for the Cambridge Open Option but the press release is making the rounds on lists (I saw it on the American Scientist Open Access Forum) plus Peter Suber has blogged the news as well.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Aug. 15 deadline alert for ACRL / ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication

Apply now for the second ACRL/ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication December 6-8, 2006, at Duke University, Durham, NC. The deadline for application is August 15, 2006. Acceptance to the Scholarly Communication program is competitive and limited to 100 individuals.

This jointly sponsored institute offers tools and techniques to build a scholarly communication program or move an existing one to the next level. Participants will assess their campus environment before the institute and engage in 2½ intensive days of active learning. During the institute, participants will develop customized program plan components to implement at their home institutions. The Institute sponsors are seeking participation from a wide range of academic libraries from community colleges to research institutions. Larger institutions are encouraged to propose teams that reflect various institutional perspectives, such as librarians, library administrators, faculty, and campus administrators.

The Friends of the ACRL are supporting 4 scholarships to cover the $600 registration fee for the institute. Scholarships will be awarded to individuals from diverse backgrounds and those employed at smaller institutions or serving professionally underrepresented minorities.

Complete details about the program as well as the online application form and instructions can be found at www.ala.org/acrl/events (Click “ACRL/ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication”). Applicants can direct questions concerning the program or application process to Kara Malenfant at 312-280-2510; kmalenfant@ala.org.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Wiley's "New Funded Access Service"

Following on Elsevier's footsteps, John Wiley & Sons have announced a program that seems to be an author-fee OA option but, like Elsevier, doesn't use the words "open access". According to the announcement, "authors will have the option of paying a fee to ensure that their article
is available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience" (www.interscience.wiley.com). Interestingly, Wiley is aiming this service at authors with papers that have been accepted for publication who also have to deposit their papers in an archive. Even more interesting, "Wiley will deposit the final PDF of the article into the funder's archive". The cost of making a Wiley article accessible to "non-subscribers" is $3,000 US.

Again, as with the Elsevier "sponsored articles" service, Wiley's "New Funded Access Service" option is only applicable to a segment of journals on the Interscience platform, at least initially. These are:

American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A
American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B - Neuropsychiatric Genetics
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Anatomical Record
Arthritis and Rheumatism
Arthritis Care and Research
Bioessays
Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton
ChemBioChem
Developmental Dynamics
Electrophoresis
European Eating Disorders Review
European Journal of Immunology
genesis
Genetic Epidemiology
Glia
Hippocampus
Human Brain Mapping
Human Mutation
International Journal of Cancer
International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research
Journal of Basic Microbiology
Journal of Cellular Biochemistry
Journal of Cellular Physiology
Journal of Comparative Neurology
Journal of Gene Medicine
Journal of Medical Virology
Journal of Neurobiology
Journal of Neuroscience Research
Journal of Pathology
Journal of Separation Science
Macromolecular Bioscience
Microscopy Research and Technique
Molecular Nutrition and Food Research
Molecular Reproduction and Development
NMR in Biomedicine
Pediatric Pulmonology
Proteins
Proteomics
Proteomics - Clinical Applications
Signal Transduction
Statistics in Medicine
Synapse
Yeast

I couldn't find a web page giving more information but the announcement is making the rounds on lists. I saw the announcement on liblicense-l on the late afternoon (MST) of August 8.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Monday, August 07, 2006

E-LIS reaches 4,000 eprints milestone

Rome, 2006-08-01

E-LIS, the international archive for Library and Information Science (LIS) eprints at http://eprints.rclis.org, has reached the milestone of over 4000 eprints stored. The news was brought by the coordinator of E-LIS, Imma Subirats Coll. Speaking from Rome (Italy), Imma congratulated the international team of 63 national editors from 45 countries who work to fill the archive and maintains its metadata. "They continue to do a wonderful job." she said.

In Padua (Italy), E-LIS founder Antonella De Robbio added "We are very grateful to the CILEA consortium for maintaining the server for us. Their operations have been very reliable. I am sure that their pioneering work will be acknowledged by LIS history."

Speaking in Novosibirsk (Russia), Thomas Krichel, a volunteer for E-LIS, noted "There can be no doubt that E-LIS is becoming the subject-based archive of choice for the LIS community. Our operation is technically robust, and there is great deal of work going on to cater for the metadata associated with the papers. But E-LIS can not and will not rest on its laurels. It is our hope to be working more closely with the organizers of LIS conferences, such as we have done with the ASIS&T and Collnet meetings."

In Philadelphia, (USA), the national editor for the USA, Norm Medeiros, added "Before uploading the papers from last year's American Society for Information Science and Technology annual meeting, we solicited permission from each corresponding author. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Most authors gave enthusiastic approval at the prospect of having their papers on E-LIS. The ASIS&T papers represent an important and lasting collection that E-LIS is proud to host."

Speaking in Vancouver (Canada), Heather Morrison, the editor for Canada and a well-respected open access campaigner, said "This type of pro-active action sets the E-LIS team apart."

In Mumbai, (India), V. L. Kalyane, the editor for India and member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Information, Library & Society, simply said "Congradulations".

Thanks to Thomas Krichel for this press release.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.