Library Intelligencer » scholarly publishing

PEER – Final report on the provision of usage data and manuscript deposit procedures for publishers and repository managers

shirley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:45:36 +0000

nbsp;http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/medi…

The Draft report on the provision of usage data1 and manuscript deposit procedures for
publishers and repository managers, deliverable 2.1, set out to establish a workflow for
depositing stage-2 outputs in and harvesting log files from repositories to enable the
research envisaged in the PEER project. As that report preceded the tendering process
whereby the respective research teams were selected, a number of issues were flagged for
attention, particularly of the Usage research team, in WP5 and have since been referred for
consultation.
A significant outcome of the previous draft report was the recommendation to establish the
PEER Depot as a closed intermediary repository, to receive publisher deposit in the form of
both 50% of the full-text outputs, as well as 100% of the metadata outputs; and to serve as
a base line control for the research process. The PEER Depot has since been established,
and has come to play a significant role in the workflow developed. While the draft report set
out a preliminary deposit workflow from publishers to repositories, the central role of the
PEER Depot has since influenced further developments in the provision of usage data and
manuscript deposit procedures for both publishers and authors.
This report is the result of an ongoing negotiation between stakeholder groups comprising
publishers and the library/repository community to establish best practice in deposit procedures
that are least disruptive of existing publication workflows, while minimizing additional
effort in repository ingest activities.

Wellcome Trust calls for greater transparency from journals on open access publishing costs

shirley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:50:31 +0000

nbsp;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-off…

As Open Access Week 2009 gets underway, the Wellcome Trust has called for greater transparency among publishers to counter the argument that access fees are being paid twice – once through subscriptions and again through publication fees. …..

eScholarship Launches Enhanced Open Access Publishing Site

shirley — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:21:04 +0000

New Look, Enhanced Services for eScholarship

UC’s open access digital publishing service launches new site October 19

eScholarship www.escholarship.org) launches a redesigned website October 19, with a substantial array of digital publishing services for the University of California scholarly community and a dynamic research platform for scholars worldwide.

Previously known as UC’s eScholarship Repository, the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly publishing platform that enables departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

“Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the enormous value we see in recasting the institutional repository as an open access publisher,” says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. “There is significant need across the University of California campuses for a sustainable infrastructure to support the publication and dissemination of research. In our efforts to respond to this need, we have watched our institutional repository evolve into a dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work.”

eScholarship’s relaunch coincides with the first international Open Access Week (October 19 – 23), an event that marks the growing trend toward providing unfettered access to academic research and publications throughout the world.

eScholarship publication types

UC-affiliated scholars, editors, and research unit administrators can publish the following original works in eScholarship:

Journals
Books
Working Papers
Conference Proceedings
Seminar/Paper Series

eScholarship also continues to provide deposit and dissemination services for previously published articles or “postprints.”

New services, enhanced functionality

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new opportunities for digital publishing to the University of California and offers substantially improved services for previously supported publication types.

Books published in eScholarship are now eligible for a combined digital/print publication service, courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a joint program of UC Press and the California Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship now offers conference lifecycle support, including mechanisms for proposal submission, program display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.

Much of the site redesign has been focused on improving the quality of access to eScholarship publications. The site is optimized for Google searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety without download; and research can be shared easily through third party social networking sites and RSS feeds.

Likewise, the ability to locate relevant scholarship within the new site is greatly improved as a result of the implementation of:

a highly developed similar items finder
visual snippets of keywords within documents (KWIC Pics) accessible from the search results page
facets for narrowing search results by UC campus, discipline, and peer review–status
keyword search capability within documents

These new services and tools all add up to a vastly enhanced experience for authors, editors, and publishing program directors – and for the researchers who seek out their work.

What can UC authors expect from publishing with eScholarship?

Digital publication of original scholarship
Digital dissemination of previously published materials
Manuscript and peer-review management systems
Significant reduction in time to publication
Author retention of copyright
Clear institutional affiliation and context
Increased citation rates*
Perpetual access and preservation services
Full-text search and display
Comprehensive usage data
Free setup, training, and publishing support
Who is using eScholarship?

Among its many services, eScholarship supports the original publication of more than 20 peer-reviewed journals, including:

California Agriculture (UC Davis)
Journal of Transnational American Studies (UC Santa Barbara)
Nutrition Bytes (UCLA)
Places (UC Berkeley)
San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (UC Davis)
Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (UC Irvine)

“We have used eScholarship to manage, edit, and publish the online journal San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science,” says Dr. Samuel N. Luoma, SFEWS Editor-in-Chief. “As a source of peer-reviewed, credible, and objective information, SFEWS is recognized by all stakeholders as playing an important role in understanding California’s water issues. We simply could not have succeeded in bringing this information to scientists, the public, and policy makers without the open access and high degree of professionalism provided by eScholarship. eScholarship is a service of inestimable value to the UC scholarly community, Californians in general, and the world.”

eScholarship also provides access to publications from nearly 250 research units and publishing programs across UC, including:

Center for Conservation Biology (UC Riverside)
Center for the Study of Democracy (UC Irvine)
Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (UCSF)
Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities (UC Berkeley)
International and Area Studies Publications (UC Berkeley)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego)
Santa Cruz Center for International Economics (UC Santa Cruz)

“eScholarship is central to our publishing mission, offering a level of access, discoverability, and online permanence that traditional publishers cannot match,” says Nathan MacBrien, Publications Director, International and Area Studies Publications, UC Berkeley. “Anyone, anywhere in the world, with an Internet connection can read our books, and that is particularly important for scholars in developing countries where English-language books are difficult to come by.”

About eScholarship

Initiated in 2002 as a collaborative development effort between the Berkeley Electronic Press and the California Digital Library, eScholarship now houses over 30,000 publications with more than 9 million downloads to date. eScholarship offers the UC academic community a robust alternative to traditional scholarly publishing channels, supporting the dissemination of UC research at all stages of the scholarly lifecycle to all corners of the world. The rate of usage of these materials has grown dramatically in the past 7 years, now often exceeding 170,000 full-text downloads per month.

eScholarship is a project of the Publishing Group of the California Digital Library and a showcase for the group’s open source search and display technology development. eScholarship’s publication submission system was originally developed and is still maintained by the Berkeley Electronic Press.

*http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=560&Itemid=391

-END-

________________________________________

Elise Proulx

Outreach & Marketing Coordinator

Publishing Group

California Digital Library

University of California

ALPSP Survey on Scholarly Book Publishing Practice – ‘First Findings’ now available

shirley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:33:00 +0000

nbsp;http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article…

Scholarly Book Publishing Practice
Academic book publishers’ policies and practices in online publishing

An ALPSP survey conducted by Laura Cox (Frontline Global Marketing Services) and John Cox (John Cox Associates)

The First Findings summary (pdf) published on 13 October 2009 draws attention to:

the size and extent of the forthcoming survey;
the types of academic publishing currently being undertaken;
the reported effect on sales of the ‘Look Inside’ function provided by Amazon;
the number of publishers so far signed up to the Google Book Settlement;
the proportion of eBooks published by commercial as against non-profit publishers.

The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing

shirley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:01:11 +0000

nbsp;http://river-valley.tv/conferences/publi…

Table of Contents
How Common is Open Access?
The Economics of Open Access Scholarly Publishing
Open Access Publishing Strategies, Options and Issues for Scholar Publishers
The Directory of Open Access Journals – The Development of the Collection, Current Projects, and Plans for the Future
The Open Source Publishing Platform
Overview of CrossRef’s Publisher Initiatives
Opening Remarks from the Conference Chair
Ten Challenges for Open Access Journals
Knowledge Sharing and the Commons
Re-Engineering the Scientific Journal
Nano-publication and Open Access
Open Assessment and Open Citation Analysis – Experiences with the Journal “Economics”
Presentation of Reports from the Parallel Breakout Sessions
“Follow the Money”: The Political Economy of Open Access in the Humanities
Panel Discussion on Open Data
Open Access and the Wellcome Trust
SCOAP3 : Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics
Open Access Payment Mechanisms: One Publisher’s Perspective
Social Accounting and Open Access
The Price of Open Access? OA Funds, Institutions and Consortia
A University Library as Open Access Publisher: the Igitur Experience
Closing Remarks from the Conference Chair

PEER Annual report

shirley — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:38:27 +0000

nbsp;http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/medi…

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the EC eContentplus programme, is investigating the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research.

source: DigitalKoans

Survey Finds Publishers In Search of New Business Models

shirley — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:24:22 +0000

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6699117.html?nid=2286&rid=#CustomerId&source=link

By Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 9/28/2009 1:46:00 PM
Just over 72% of publishers taking part in a survey on the impact of digitization on book publishing said the development of new business models, new multimedia products and effective marketing strategies are the biggest challenges facing publishers as they make the transition from print to digital. The survey was conducted by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German trade magazine Buchreport in cooperation with PW, and received responses from 840 publishers across the globe. What forms the new business models should take and how publishers will charge for content generated no consensus…….

ENABLING OPEN SCHOLARSHIP

shirley — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:14:12 +0000

http://www.openscholarship.org/

ENABLING OPEN SCHOLARSHIP (EOS), a new organisation for senior management in universities and research institutions, has been launched today.

The context in which EOS has been established is that of increasing interest from governments, funders and the research community itself in opening up the way research is carried out and communicated. This interest is complemented by new research practices and processes that can work effectively only in an open, collaborative environment.

As we rapidly approach 100 formal, mandatory, policies on Open Access from universities, research institutes and research funders a group of senior directors of universities and research institutes have come together to launch a new forum for the promotion of the principles and practices of open scholarship.

The aim of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) is to further the opening up of scholarship and research that we are now seeing as a natural part of ‘big science’ and through the growing interest from the research community in open access, open education, open science and open innovation. These, and other, ‘open’ approaches to scholarship are changing the way research and learning are done and will be performed in the future.

Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) provides the higher education and research sectors around the world with information on developments and with advice and guidance on implementing policies and processes that encourage the opening up of scholarship. It also provides a forum for discussion and debate amongst its members and will be taking that discussion into the wider community.

EOS membership is for senior institutional managers who have an interest in — and wish to help develop thinking on — strategies for promoting open scholarship to the academy as a whole and to society at large.

The EOS website is a resource open to all. It provides background information, data and guidance material on open scholarship-related issues. In a limited access area, members can find announcements, news and discussions.

EOS offers an outreach service to universities and research institutes — whether members or not — that need help, advice, guidance or information on open scholarship issues. We do this through our website and also by providing information on an individual basis to institutions that need it.

The EOS board is composed of people who have personally designed or instigated the kinds of changes in their own institutions that herald the benefits of the open scholarly communication system of the future. Now this expertise is available for others to tap into.

The current EOS board comprises:
• Bernard RENTIER (Chairman), Rector of the University of Liege, Belgium
• Tom COCHRANE, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
• William DAR, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India
• Stevan HARNAD, Canada Research Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montreal, Quebec
• Keith JEFFERY, Director of IT and International Strategy at the Science & Technology Facilities Council, Swindon, UK
• Sijbolt NOORDA, President of VSNU, the Association of Dutch Research Universities
• Stuart SHIEBER, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at
Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Office of Scholarly Communication
• Ian SIMPSON, Deputy Principal for Research and Knowledge Transfer, and Professor of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, UK
• Peter SUBER, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
• John WILLINSKY, Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University and director of the Public Knowledge Project at the University of
British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, USA
• Alma SWAN (Convenor/Coordinateur), Director of Key Perspectives Ltd, Truro, UK

The world of research is changing and universities and other research-based institutions must drive the change, not sit back and let it happen. Having embarked upon implementing changes in thinking and practice at my own university, I want to encourage others in my position to join the discussion and help lead the way to a better future,” said Professor Bernard Rentier. “We will be reaching out to universities and research institutes across the world to invite them to play an active role in building better systems of scholarship for the future. EOS will provide the forum and the voice for the research community on open scholarship issues and represents a very valuable resource for those who want to join in this endeavour”.

The benefits of open access and open scholarship have been clearly demonstrated for individuals, institutions and the public,” said Professor Keith Jeffery. “EOS will be there to provide information and guidance from those who have already had experience of making the changes needed.”

Dr William Dar said, “Open scholarship benefits the whole world’s science, not just that of the western world. It enables the free flow of research information between north and south, east and west, helping research to progress much more effectively. EOS will be very valuable in advancing this process and improving the way science is carried out across the globe”.

For more information visit the Enabling Open Scholarship website at:
www.openscholarship.org

Costs and Benefits of Alternative Publishing Models: Denmark

shirley — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:10:48 +0000

http://www.deff.dk/content.aspx?itemguid…{EACA73FB-2EFE-44CA-92CD-91C4416C0370}

author: John Houghton

A knowledge economy has been defined as one in which the generation and exploitation of
knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. It is not simply
about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge; it is also about the more effective use and
exploitation of all types of knowledge in all manner of economic activities (DTI 1998).
Scholarly publishing plays a key role as it is central to the efficiency of research and to the
dissemination of research findings and diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge. But
advances in information and communication technologies are disrupting traditional publishing
models, radically changing our capacity to reproduce, distribute, control and publish
information. One key question is whether there are new opportunities and new models for
scholarly publishing that might better serve researchers and more effectively communicate and
disseminate research findings (OECD 2005, p14).
Building on previous work, this study looks at the costs and potential benefits of alternative
models for scientific and scholarly publishing. The work began in Australia in 2006 with a study
of Research Communication Costs, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits (Houghton et al.
2006). This was followed by a major study of the Economic Implications of Alternative
Scholarly Publishing Models for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK
(Houghton et al. and Oppenheim et al. 2009). The aim of this study is to apply the same basic
approach to exploring the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scholarly
publishing in Denmark.