Items tagged by petersuber in Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)

Tenure-Track Science Faculty and the 'Open Access Citation Effect'

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 06:08:00 -0500

"From the Abstract: The observation that open access (OA) articles receive more citations than subscription-based articles is known as the OA citation effect (OACE). Implicit in many OACE studies is the belief that authors are heavily invested in the number of citations their articles receive. This study seeks to determine what influence the OACE has on the decision-making process of tenure-track science faculty when they consider where to submit a manuscript for publication. METHODS Fifteen tenure-track faculty members in the Departments of Biology and Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill participated in semi-structured interviews employing a variation of the critical incident tecnique. RESULTS Seven of the fifteen faculty members said they would consider making a future article freely-available based on the OACE. Due to dramatically different expectations with respect to the size of the OACE, however, only one of them is likely to seriously consider the OACE when deciding where to submit their next manuscript for publication. DISCUSSION Journal reputation and audience, and the quality of the editorial and review process are the most important factors in deciding where to submit a manuscript for publication. Once a subset of journals has satisfied these criteria, financial and access issues compete with the OACE in making a final decision." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.advantage oa.impact oa.new on Mon Mar 04 2013

“Going green”: self-archiving as a means for dissemination of research output in ecology and evolution

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:44:00 -0500

"Abstract: There is a perception that is prevalent within the academic community that access to information is being restricted by the large publishing houses that dominate academic publishing. However, self-archiving policies that are promoted by publishers provide a method by which this restriction can be relaxed. In this paper I outline the motivation behind self-archiving publications in terms of increased impact (citations and downloads of articles), increased access for the developing world, and decreased library costs. I then describe the current state of self-archiving policies in 165 ecology and evolution journals. I demonstrate that the majority (52%) of papers published in 2011 could have been self-archived in a format close to their final form. Journals with higher impacts tend to have more restrictive policies on self-archiving, and publishers vary in the extent to which they impose these restrictions. Finally, I provide a guide to academics on how to take advantage of opportunities for self-archiving using either institutional repositories or freely-available online tools." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.advantage oa.impact oa.new on Sun Feb 24 2013

AlmaDL Journals: Quality Services for Open Access Scientific Publications at the University of Bologna

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:38:45 -0500

AlmaDL Journals: Quality Services for Open Access Scientific Publications at the University of Bologna

Marialaura Vignocchi et al.

Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage 12, (2012)

info:doi/10.6092/issn.1973-9494/3396

Abstract: The article illustrates AlmaDL Journals, the open access e-publishing service supporting scientific peer reviewed journals edited by Departments and research groups of the University of Bologna. Digital technologies and the Internet have deeply changed the way researchers and scholars access and share information. Moreover new technologies challenge professionals involved in the publishing value chain and publication life cycle at various levels. The traditional scholarly communication model fails to meet researchers’ needs and expectations. Initiatives such as the AlmaDL Journals seeks to provide alternative models that take full advantage of the digital environment and new media while ensuring quality requirements and the traditional functions of scientific serial publications.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Jan 28 2013 at 14:38 UTC | info | related

Where on earth to publish? A sample survey comparing traditional and open access publishing in the oncological field

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:39:00 -0500

"From the Abstract: Background The paper intends to help scientific authors to make the best choice of journals in which to publish, by describing and comparing journal features in the area of oncology. For this purpose, the authors identified impact factor (IF) ranking, cost options and copyright conditions offered to authors wishing to publish in full open access (OA), subscription-based or hybrid journals. Results Almost half (34) the journals surveyed were included in the first quartile, thus revealing authors' preference for journals with a high IF. The prevalent journal business model was the hybrid formula (based on subscriptions but also offering a paid OA option) with 51 journals, followed by subscription-based only journals accounting for 22, while just 5 full OA journals were identified. In general, no relationship was found between IF and article publication charges, in terms of correspondence between more expensive fees and higher IF." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Jan 28 2013

Academic Administrator Influence on Institutional Commitment to Open Access of Scholarly Research

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:35:34 -0500

Academic Administrator Influence on Institutional Commitment to Open Access of Scholarly Research

Thomas Reinsfelder

Indiana University of Pennsylvania DSpace, (18 Jan 2013)

Abstract: This quantitative study investigated the interrelationships among faculty researchers, publishers, librarians, and academic administrators when dealing with the open access of scholarly research. This study sought to identify the nature of any relationship between the perceived attitudes and actions of academic administrators and an institution's commitment to open access as reported by library directors. A survey research design was used to collect data based on perceptions of library directors at four year colleges and universities in the United States. Results of this study show that as academic administrator attention to open access increases so do the open access activities of faculty and librarians. Information presented may benefit members in each stakeholder group by allowing them to better position their organizations for future success in a complex environment. This study may also benefit advocates of open access who wish to expand services and other initiatives that encourage the greater accessibility of scholarly work.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Thu Jan 24 2013 at 10:35 UTC | info | related

Managing your assets in the publication economy

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:31:46 -0500

Managing your assets in the publication economy

Ulf Kronman

Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics, 1-35 (17 Jan 2013)

info:doi/10.3384/confero13v1130117

Abstract: The issue this article aims to address is the fact that publications may nowadays be used to assess impact and quality of research in ways academics may not be fully aware of. During recent years, scholarly publications have gained in importance, not primarily as the traditional vehicle for the dissemination of new scientific findings, but as a foundation for assessing the production and impact of organizations, research groups and individual researchers. This means that publications as artefacts per se are starting to play a new important role in the scientific community and that researchers need to be aware of how publication and citation counts are being used to assess their research and the outreach, impact and reputation of their mother organization. University rankings, for instance, often have some parameters based on the publishing of the ranked institution. This article is thus not about scientific writing as such; it focuses on what happens to your publication after the publishing has taken place and on aspects to take into account while planning the publishing of your article, report or book.

Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.advantage oa.impact oa.new on Thu Jan 24 2013 at 10:31 UTC | info | related

Serviços de difusão de políticas para o acesso aberto: Sherpa/Juliet, Melibea e ROARMAP

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 05:25:31 -0500

Serviços de difusão de políticas para o acesso aberto: Sherpa/Juliet, Melibea e ROARMAP

Michelli Costa, Bianca Amaro, and Taina Assis

Encontros Bibli: revista eletrônica de biblioteconomia e ciência da informação 17 (2), (12 Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.5007/1518-2924.2012v17nesp2p36

Dissemination Services of Open Access Policies: Sherpa/Juliet, Melibea and Roarmap. Abstract: This article discusses the diffusion of policies for promoting open access to scientific information. The creation of these policies is essential for institutions to ensure the implementation of strategies that aim to make scientific publications available. Research institutions are the major producers of information. The expansion of the processes of socialization of knowledge in these environments contributes to the optimization of scientific communication. The diffusion services of the policies for this purpose are intended to make their policies and initiatives known. Therefore, its analysis shows the importance to increase knowledge about these services by identifying its benefits and shortcomings, so that they can be improved and substantiate the creation of new services. We conducted a comparative study of the Sherpa/Juliet, Melibea ROARMAP services and generated a current overview of what is offered by each of them, highlighting their similarities and specificities. It was also observed, that those services meet their goals and provide subsidies for the creation of new policies in this context.

Posted by stevehit to pep.impact pep.biblio oa.new on Tue Jan 22 2013 at 10:25 UTC | info | related

Pay Big to Publish Fast: Academic Journal Rackets

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:42:34 -0500

Pay Big to Publish Fast: Academic Journal Rackets

Frank Truth

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 10 (2), (Oct 2012)

From the Abstract: In the context of open-access (OA) academic publishing, the mounting pressure cross global academe to publish or perish has spawned an exponentially growing number of dodgy academic e-journals charging high fees to authors, often US$300-650, and even triple that amount, promising super-fast processing and publication open-access (OA) online. Jeffrey Beall (Scholarly Open Access, http://scholarlyoa.com) has characterized this phenomenon as ‘predatory OA publishing,’ since it is oriented largely to extorting a high fee from authors. This exponential growth in start-up cyber-journals galore of questionable quality and dubious upstart origin is driven largely by the globalization of Euro- Atlantic research cultures into the Global South and lower-income economies everywhere, part of the now rapid internationalization of scientific research (Jha 2011) and ‘researching under the audit’ (Illner 2011: 70), and is potentially a form of ‘academic racketeering.’ It tends to attract and exploit lesser-privileged academics, often on ‘knowledge production peripheries.’ They are a segment of a hugely expanding global constellation of researchers, in some ways a ‘research proletariat’ (Harvie 2000), many of whom can can least afford the ‘cyber-services’ of these start-up, fee-gouging OA journals. ... A key aim of the present paper is to spotlight these ‘predatory’ journals and urge further empirical research. Despite the huge amount of largely bourgeois analysis of OA, there is very scant critical inquiry into such academic journals and their burgeoning conglomerates.

Posted by stevehit to pep.impact pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Jan 21 2013 at 21:42 UTC | info | related

Deep Impact: Unintended consequences of journal rank

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:18:00 -0500

"Abstract: Much has been said about the increasing bureaucracy in science, stifling innovation, hampering the creativity of researchers and incentivizing misconduct, even outright fraud. Many anecdotes have been recounted, observations described and conclusions drawn about the negative impact of impact assessment on scientists and science. However, few of these accounts have drawn their conclusions from data, and those that have typically relied on a few studies. In this review, we present the most recent and pertinent data on the consequences that our current scholarly communication system has had on various measures of scientific quality (such as utility/citations, methodological soundness, expert ratings and retractions). These data confirm previous suspicions: using journal rank as an assessment tool is bad scientific practice. Moreover, the data lead us to argue that any journal rank (not only the currently-favored Impact Factor) would have this negative impact. Therefore, we suggest that abandoning journals altogether, in favor of a library-based scholarly communication system, will ultimately be necessary. This new system will use modern information technology to vastly improve the filter, sort and discovery function of the current journal system." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Jan 21 2013

Open Access Versus Traditional Journal Pricing: Using a Simple 'Platform Market' Model to Understand Which Will Win (and Which Should)

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 03:59:00 -0500

"In The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol 39, No 1, January 2013, 11–19. Abstract: Economists have built a theory to understand markets in which, rather than selling directly to buyers, suppliers sell through a platform, which controls prices on both sides. The theory has been applied to understand markets ranging from telephony, to credit cards, to media. In this paper, we apply the theory to the market for scholarly journals, with the journal functioning as the platform between submitting authors and subscribing readers. Our goal is to understand the conditions under which a journal would prefer open access to traditional pricing and under which open access would be better for the scholarly community. Our new model captures much of the richness of the existing economic literature on journal pricing, and indeed adds some fresh insights, yet is simple enough to be accessible to a broad audience." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Jan 21 2013

ScienceDirect.com - The Journal of Academic Librarianship - Publishing in Discipline-Specific Open Access Journals: Opportunities and Outreach for Librarians

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:44:00 -0500

Publishing in Discipline-Specific Open Access Journals: Opportunities and Outreach for Librarians

Robert Tomaszewskia, Sonia Poulina, and Karen MacDonald

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, (10 Jan 2013)

info:doi/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.008

Abstract: Open access (OA) journals promote the opportunity for peer-reviewed journal articles to be freely accessible. In recent years, the number of OA journals has exploded in all disciplines. Previous studies have identified print-based pedagogical discipline-specific journals outside the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) for librarians to consider as vehicles for publishing articles related to subject-based Information Literacy (IL). The present study explores the presence of discipline-specific pedagogical journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and presents a table of OA journals with their acceptance rates and review times. Pedagogical OA journals are highlighted as a potential opportunity for librarians to pro-actively reach out to faculty within a discipline and contribute towards the OA movement.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Tue Jan 15 2013 at 09:53 UTC | info | related

The Study on Constructing Institutional Repository of University

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:40:18 -0500

The Study on Constructing Institutional Repository of University

Li Naiwen and Zhao Xin

Fourth International Conference on Multimedia Information Networking and Security (MINES), Nanjing, China, (02 Nov 2012)

info:doi/10.1109/MINES.2012.237

Abstract: By the study of the early development and actual situation of the institutional repository as while as the specific situation in our country's universities, the article comes up with the significances of constructing the institutional repository, including academic information can be stored for a long, expand the scope of the impact of university research and promotion of university research and teaching development. What's more, there have some problems which exist and need to be considered during the process of constructing. Aiming at these problems which include data collection, choice of the constructing platform, it provides some solutions, introduces several well-known software and the basic method of constructing the institutional repository from analysis to design and finally to achieve the system.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Tue Jan 15 2013 at 09:40 UTC | info | related

Design and Development of Institutional Repository at Annamalai University

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:36:39 -0500

Design and Development of Institutional Repository at Annamalai University

A Dhanabalan and R Ponnudurai

Journal of Advances in Library and Information Science 1 (4), 160-4 (2012)

Abstract: To describe how an Institutional repository (IR) has to be setup for the intellectual thought content and output of an institution. This is now recognized as essential infrastructure for the ICT era. Nowadays, Universities are producing more digital objects like research articles, reports, thesis, Audio/Video, clippings and datasets in ever increasing number. Many Libraries are building up their own Institutional repository centre using a variety of software packages for digital asset and content management to collect, preserve and provide access, to its users to these digital objects. This paper is the result of an effort to develop a model to create IR of Annamalai University by Using Dspace.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Tue Jan 15 2013 at 09:36 UTC | info | related

Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:43:28 -0500

Open Textbooks and Increased Student Access and Outcomes

Andrew Feldstein et al.

European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, (17 Dec 2012)

Abstract: This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative Commons license. This decision was based on the accessibility and flexibility in the delivery of course content provided by open textbooks. More students accessed digital open textbooks than had previously purchased hard copies of textbooks. Higher grades were correlated with courses that used open textbooks.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Jan 11 2013 at 11:43 UTC | info | related

The Growing Crisis: Scholarly Publishing Pressures Facing Health Sciences Libraries

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:34:22 -0500

The Growing Crisis: Scholarly Publishing Pressures Facing Health Sciences Libraries

Karen Butter et al.

Journal of Library Administration 52 (8), 672-98 (12 Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.1080/01930826.2012.746873

Abstract: Health sciences librarians work within a complex environment, one that quickly adopted access to electronic resources. The open access movement evolved as an alternative to traditional publishing as prices for STM e-journals steadily increased, but it also raised issues and concerns for authors within the more traditional biomedical culture. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access policy provided an opportunity to support researchers’ compliance with the policy, while advocating for open access and author rights. As an outgrowth of the NIH policy, health sciences libraries have promoted open access through a variety of activities within their academic health centers.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Fri Jan 11 2013 at 11:34 UTC | info | related

The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 03:30:00 -0500

"ABSTRACT: Proponents of open educational resources (OER) claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the college classroom. We investigated student and faculty perceptions of OER used in a community college context. Over 125 students and 11 faculty from seven colleges responded to an online questionnaire about the cost and quality of the open textbooks used in their classrooms. Results showed that the majority of students and faculty had a positive experience using the open textbooks, appreciated the lower costs, and perceived the texts as being of high quality. The potential implications for OER initiatives at the college level seem large. If primary instructional materials can in fact be made available to students at no or very low cost, without harming learning outcomes, there appears to be a significant opportunity for disruption and innovation in higher education." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Jan 11 2013

Neither digital or open. Just researchers. Views on digital/open scholarship practices in an Italian university

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 03:26:00 -0500

"Abstract: How do university researchers consider attributes such as ‘digital’ and ‘open’ as regards to their research practices? This article reports a small–scale interview project carried out at the University of Milan, aiming to probe whether and to what extent actual digital research practices are affecting cultures of sharing in different subject areas and are prompting emergent approaches such as open publishing, open data, open education and open boundary between academia and society. Most of the 14 interviewed researchers seem not to see any clear benefit to move to further technological means or new open practices and call for institutional support and rules. However, a few profiles of ‘digital, networked and open’ researchers stand out and show both a self–legitimating approach to new modes of knowledge production and distribution and a particular sensitiveness towards values and perspectives driven by ‘openness’ in digital networks." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Jan 11 2013

Cost-effectiveness of open access publications

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:05:00 -0500

"Abstract: Open access publishing has been proposed as one possible solution to the serials crisis — the rapidly growing subscription prices in schol- arly journal publishing. However, open access publishing can present economic pitfalls as well, such as excessive publication charges. We discuss the decision that an author faces when choosing to submit to an open access journal. We develop an interactive tool to help authors compare among alternative open access venues and thereby get the most for their publication fees." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Tue Jan 15 2013

ScienceDirect.com - The Journal of Academic Librarianship - The Principle and the Pragmatist: On Conflict and Coalescence for Librarian Engagement with Open Access Initiatives

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:19:00 -0500

Use the link to access pay-per-view options for the article published in The Journal of Academic Librarianship available from Elsevier. The abstract reads as follows: "This article considers Open Access (OA) training and the supports and structures in place in academic libraries in the United States from the perspective of a new librarian. OA programming is contextualized by the larger project of Scholarly Communication in academic libraries, and the two share a historical focus on journal literature and a continued emphasis on public access and the economics of scholarly publishing. Challenges in preparing academic librarians for involvement with OA efforts include the evolving and potentially divergent nature of the international OA movement and the inherent tensions of a role with both principled and pragmatic components that serves a particular university community as well as a larger movement."

Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:57:46 -0500

Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data

Timothy Vines et al.

The FASEB Journal, (03 Jan 2013)

info:pmid/23288929 | info:doi/10.1096/fj.12-218164

Abstract: The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition at acceptance. We control for differences between data types by trying to obtain data from papers that use a single, widespread population genetic analysis, STRUCTURE. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost 1000-fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. We also assessed the effectiveness of asking for data directly from authors and obtained over half of the requested datasets, albeit with ∼8 d delay and some disagreement with authors. Given the long-term benefits of data accessibility to the academic community, we believe that journal-based mandatory data archiving policies and mandatory data availability statements should be more widely adopted.

Posted by stevehit to pep.opendata oa.new on Tue Jan 08 2013 at 16:57 UTC | info | related

Rising Publication Delays Inflate Journal Impact Factors

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:31:28 -0500

Rising Publication Delays Inflate Journal Impact Factors

Adriano Tort, Ze Targino, and Olavo Amaral

PLoS ONE, (31 Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0053374

From the Abstract: We analyze 61 neuroscience journals and show that delays between online and print publication of articles increased steadily over the last decade. Importantly, such a practice varies widely among journals, as some of them have no delays, while for others this period is longer than a year. Using a modified impact factor based on online rather than print publication dates, we demonstrate that online-to-print delays can artificially raise a journal’s impact factor, and that this inflation is greater for longer publication lags. We also show that correcting the effect of publication delay on impact factors changes journal rankings based on this metric. We thus suggest that indexing of articles in citation databases and calculation of citation metrics should be based on the date of an article’s online appearance, rather than on that of its publication in print.

Posted by stevehit to oa.advantage oa.impact oa.new on Fri Jan 04 2013 at 14:31 UTC | info | related

Open Access Journal Content Found in Commercial Full-Text Aggregation Databases and Journal Citation Reports

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 08:07:46 -0500

Open Access Journal Content Found in Commercial Full-Text Aggregation Databases and Journal Citation Reports

OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL CONTENT FOUND IN COMMERCIAL FULLTEXT AGGREGATION DATABASES AND JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS

Joel Cummings

New Library World 114 (3/4), (20 Dec 2012)

From the Abstract: Using publicly available database title lists produced by the full-text aggregation database publishers, titles and title metadata were analyzed and compared to data from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) metrics file in order to investigate the availability of open access (OA) scholarly journals. Subject Category Impact Factor Ranking Quartiles and Percentiles (SCIFRQs and SCIFRPs) were used as part of this investigation as indicators of the research significance of these OA journals. Results showed that very small percentages of open access journals were indexed by in each of the full-text aggregators studied. 7.9% of titles included in journal citation reports were OA Journals. This study also reports the averaged SCIFRPs of OA journals for all subject areas with more than five journals included in JCR. The average SCIFRP for OA journals included in JCR was 34.49% and the averaged SCIFRP for all OA journals indexed by full-text aggregation databases being studied is 41.2%. This study points to large differences between differences in the rate of indexing OA journals by different databases.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Fri Jan 04 2013 at 13:07 UTC | info | related

A Study on the Open Source Digital Library Software's: Special Reference to DSpace, EPrints and Greenstone

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:56:34 -0500

A Study on the Open Source Digital Library Software's: Special Reference to DSpace, EPrints and Greenstone

Shahkar Tramboo et al.

arXiv.org > cs > arXiv:1212.4935, (20 Dec 2012)

In International Journal of Computer Applications 59(16):1-9, December 2012. From the Abstract: This paper presents a study of three open source digital library management software used to assimilate and disseminate information to world audience. The methodology followed involves online survey and study of related software documentation and associated technical manuals.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Fri Jan 04 2013 at 12:56 UTC | info | related

Status of Open Access Repositories in SAARC Countries: A Picture from OpenDOAR and ROAR

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:52:59 -0500

Status of Open Access Repositories in SAARC Countries: A Picture from OpenDOAR and ROAR

Tabasum Maqbool and Muzamil Mushtaq

International Journal of Professional Development 1 (2), (Dec 2012)

Abstract: The paper throws light on the growth and development of open repositories in SAARC countries. The study explores various facets of open repositories and tries to present a lucid picture of their overall development in the region. The study provides a detailed description of repositories in terms of country and content type, reuse policies, and language diversity etc. The repositories of the SAARC countries were thoroughly sifted from the two prominent open access repositories (OpenDOAR and ROAR) and analyzed for various parameters. The paper discuss various steps that need to be taken to elevate the number and quality of repositories in the region with special reference to the research output and potential of the region to become one of the front runners of open access movement.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Jan 04 2013 at 12:52 UTC | info | related

Bibliographic Metadata Harvesting to Support the Management of an Institutional Repository

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:41:44 -0500

Bibliographic Metadata Harvesting to Support the Management of an Institutional Repository

Ricardo Loureiro

Tecnico Lisboa, (Nov 2012)

Abstract: This thesis approaches the problem of automatic harvesting of bibliographic metadata records from several indexing services, in the context of the population of institutional repositories. Since the manual insertion of records is a tedious and error-prone task, the automa- tion of the process intends to facilitate the management of a repository. However, the automated harvesting of records has to deal with the problem of identifying authors and with the need to con- solidate duplicate records retrieved from different services. In an approach to the automation of the aforementioned task, we introduce a system that proposes to harvest bibliographic metadata records from different information sources publicly available, identify and consolidate the retrieved records that are considered duplicates and make available the results of such consolidation to external parties that are interested in the information, such as an institutional repository. The proposed system was tested with real bibliographic metadata corresponding to scientific publications of a subset of faculty members at Instituto Superior Te ́cnico. The results of the evaluation show that, despite the required time to identify and consolidate, the merged records contain a valid aggregation of all available information in the system and can be efficiently ac- cessed by external entities through a machine-to-machine interface.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Fri Jan 04 2013 at 12:41 UTC | info | related

ScienceDirect.com - The Journal of Academic Librarianship - Open Access in China and its Effect on Academic Libraries

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:59:00 -0500

Use the link to access the full text article from the Journal of Academic Librarianship available from Elsevier. The abstract reads as follows: "OA is to become the future of academic library exchanges in China. With the government's support and promotion of OA, more and more Chinese academic libraries have been committed to participating in OA. The rapid development of OA not only has changed the model of traditional scholarly communication and brought a free communication environment of scholarly information, but also continues to impact on all aspects of academic libraries, including their role, collections, technology and services."

ScienceDirect.com - The Journal of Academic Librarianship - PubMed Central Canada: Beyond an Open Access Repository?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:00:00 -0500

PubMed Central Canada: Beyond an Open Access Repository?

Rajiv Nariani

The Journal of Academic Librarianship, (08 Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.005

Not open access. Abstract: PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) represents a partnership between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), and the National Library of Medicine of the US. The present study was done to gauge faculty awareness about the CIHR Policy on Access to Research and about their familiarity with PubMed Central Canada, the federal open access repository. Researchers were asked to rank search and browse features that would be helpful while using PMC Canada. The study recommends academic librarians to play an active role in promoting open access repositories and informing faculty members about policies on access to research as stipulated by grant funding agencies.

Posted by stevehit to oa.repositories oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012 at 09:45 UTC | info | related

Gold Open Access: Counting the Costs | Ariadne

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 06:34:00 -0500

Use the link to access the full text article from Ariadne magazine. An excerpt reads as follows: "Research Councils UK (RCUK) have recently announced a significant amendment to their open access (OA) policy which requires all research papers that result from research partly or wholly funded by RCUK to be made open access ... A subsequent clarification from RCUK stated that Gold OA is the preferred mechanism of choice to realise open access for outputs that they have funded and have announced the award of block grants to eligible institutions to achieve this aim [2]. Where a Gold OA option is unavailable, Green OA is also acceptable; however, RCUK have indicated that the decision will be ultimately left up to institutions as to which route to take [3]. Since RCUK are the major funder of research in the United Kingdom, this new policy will not only have a major impact on how researchers publish their work, but also huge implications for their budgets. Many research institutions funded by RCUK are currently investigating how they will implement this policy and are looking at the costs for open access publication, and how they can support the adoption of open access within their organisation. The ball is very much in the court of institutions to decide how to play the open access game. One of the key factors that will affect institutions is the cost that publishers will set for their APCs. So far RCUK have steered clear of suggesting an appropriate fee, leaving individual publishers to determine the market level of the APCs as per the current situation. Meanwhile there seems to be a huge variability in costs. There is a general expectation that over time APCs will settle to a reasonable rate and similarly journal subscriptions will lower to reflect the gradual change in business model from subscription fees to APCs. Most publishers have not yet been upfront about what impact they will have on journal subscriptions, if any, and it is hard to access and assess real-life data. RSC Publishing is one notable exception since it has introduced a system of waiving a proportion of APC fees based on institutional subscription costs. Much of this transition period to full open access will have to be navigated through uncharted territory, where no one has a clear handle on the costs involved. The rationale of this article is to present data on article processing charges gathered over the past five years, report on trends seen within this data, to suggest some approaches and to generally contribute to and inform the policy discussion..."

Task-based navigation of a taxonomy interface to a digital repository

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:42:19 -0500

Task-based navigation of a taxonomy interface to a digital repository

Christopher Khoo, Zhonghong Wang, and Abdus Chaudhry

Information Research 14 (4), (16 Dec 2012)

From the Abstract: Introduction. This is a study of hierarchical navigation; how users browse a taxonomy-based interface to an organizational repository to locate information resources. The study is part of a project to develop a taxonomy for an library and information science department to organize resources and support user browsing in a digital repository. Results. Though users often use the topic concept in making navigation choices, they sometimes make use of context and resource-type concepts. Users infer a variety of relationships between a task concept and a taxonomy category, including the application area, associated tool, associated process/procedure/technique, associated institution and academic discipline. Conclusions. Users prefer to use common or generic associations in selecting categories to browse, rather than formal disciplinary relations. Some users prefer to search by people groups, contexts and institutions, rather than by subject categories. Users have difficulty distinguishing between various kinds of document and resource types.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012 at 09:42 UTC | info | related

Factors Influencing Acceptance of Open Access Publishing among Medical Researchers in Iran

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:39:19 -0500

Factors Influencing Acceptance of Open Access Publishing among Medical Researchers in Iran

Leila Khalili and Diljit Singh

Libri. International Journal of Libraries and Information Services 62 (4), 336-54 (Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.1515/libri-2012-0026

Not open access. Abstract: This paper reports the findings from a research project which focused on determining the factors influencing acceptance of open access journals (OAJs) among Iranian medical researchers. Low use of OAJs as a publishing media, especially in developing countries, could be a sign of low acceptance of it. However, it is still not clear what factors influence researchers to publish their scholarly outputs through this channel. This study used a survey design and a questionnaire as the data collection instrument. The sample comprised 367 clinical/basic science academic staff of medical schools at public medical universities in Iran. Results of hierarchical multiple regression indicate that out of the 14 predictors of intention to publish in OAJs, only experience, attitude, facilitating conditions and type of university were significant. Also, results of hierarchical multiple regression show that out of 14 predictors of self-reported publishing in OAJs, intention, social influence, attitude, academic rank, facilitating conditions, type of university and familiarity were significant key predictors. This study is significant in that it provided a description of the current status of OA among Iranian medical researchers. It also investigated the acceptance of OAJs among researchers based on a theoretical framework derived from the UTAUT model, as well as the inclusion of attitude and anxiety as dimensions influencing acceptance.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012 at 09:39 UTC | info | related

Examining Attributes of Open Standard File Formats for Long-term Preservation and Open Access

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:35:19 -0500

Examining Attributes of Open Standard File Formats for Long-term Preservation and Open Access

Eun Park and Sam Oh

Information Technology and Libraries 31 (4), (2012)

Abstract: This study examines the attributes that have been used to assess file formats in literature and compiles the most frequently used attributes of file formats in order to establish open standard file format selection criteria. A comprehensive review was undertaken to identify the current knowledge regarding file format selection criteria. The findings indicate that the most common criteria can be categorized into five major groups: functionality, metadata, openness, interoperability and independence. These attributes appear to be closely related. Additional attributes include presentation, authenticity, adoption, protection, preservation, reference and others.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa dp.preserv pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012 at 09:35 UTC | info | related

SW-MIS: A Semantic Web Based Model for Integration of Institutional Repositories Metadata Records

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:31:27 -0500

SW-MIS: A Semantic Web Based Model for Integration of Institutional Repositories Metadata Records

Hesamedin Hakimjavadi and Mohamad Masrek

ResearchGate, (08 Dec 2012)

Abstract: Despite providing a low level of interoperability, the method of Metadata Harvesting is very common within service providers for unifying access to the institutional repositories. On the other hand, the semantic web-based method of Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) has not been widely adopted by service providers due to its complexity as well as the small number of ORE compatible archives. The purpose of this study is to provide a new metadata integration model, through which resources harvested from repositories are aggregated and converted to Resource Description Format (RDF) so that can take advantage of integrating into the semantic web resources. For the purpose of this study a metadata integration model, namely SW-MIS (Semantic Web-based Metadata Integration System) has been developed, which involves four steps, including: metadata harvesting, exposing harvested metadata, creating Semantic Web compliance data sets, and providing the search and brows interface. For each step, a specific software tool was developed, so that together formed an information workflow system.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012 at 09:31 UTC | info | related

Relationships between users, resources and services in learning object repositories

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:02:19 -0500

Relationships between users, resources and services in learning object repositories

Jordi Conesa, Julia Minguillon, and Elena Rodriguez

6th Metadata and Semantics Research Conference, Cadiz, Spain, (30 Nov 2012)

Abstract. In this paper we describe a proposal for defining the relationships between resources, users and services in a digital repository. Nowadays, virtual learning environments are widely used but digital repositories are not fully integrated yet into the learning process. Our final goal is to provide final users with recommendation systems and reputation schemes that help them to build a true learning community around the institutional repository, taking into account their educational context (i.e. the courses they are enrolled into) and their activity (i.e. system usage by their classmates and teachers). In order to do so, we extend the basic resource concept in a traditional digital repository by adding all the educational context and other elements from end-users’ profiles, thus bridging users, resources and services, and shifting from a library-centered paradigm to a learning-centered one.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Dec 14 2012 at 16:02 UTC | info | related

Integrating Image-Based Research Datasets into an Existing Digital Repository Infrastructure

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:58:43 -0500

Integrating Image-Based Research Datasets into an Existing Digital Repository Infrastructure

Hannah Tarver and Mark Phillips

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, (04 Dec 2012)

info:doi/10.1080/01639374.2012.732203

Abstract: In 2011, the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries partnered with researchers in the university's academic departments to describe and provide access to items not traditionally included in the UNT Libraries’ systems. Including more than 1,400 items apiece, the two projects are considered active datasets by their respective users. Each collection provided new challenges in harmonizing partner, metadata, and end-user requirements. This article discusses the projects, workflow for defining requirements, and final implementation in the UNT Digital Library. These collections serve as a model for integrating other research projects easily and inexpensively into a repository infrastructure.

Posted by stevehit to oa.repositories oa.new on Fri Dec 14 2012 at 15:58 UTC | info | related

OPUS 4 | General cost analysis for scholarly communication in Germany : results of the "Houghton Report" for Germany

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:24:00 -0500

General cost analysis for scholarly communication in Germany : results of the "Houghton Report" for Germany

John Houghton et al.

Elektronische Dokumente Universitatsbibliothek, Goethe University Frankfurt, (27 Nov 2012)

From the Management Summary: Conducted within the project “Economic Implications of New Models for Information Supply for Science and Research in Germany”, the Houghton Report for Germany provides a general cost and benefit analysis for scientific communication in Germany comparing different scenarios according to their specific costs and explicitly including the German National License Program (NLP). Basing on the scholarly lifecycle process model outlined by Björk (2007), the study compared the following scenarios according to their accounted costs: - Traditional subscription publishing, - Open access publishing (Gold Open Access; refers primarily to journal publishing where access is free of charge to readers, while the authors or funding organisations pay for publication) - Open Access self-archiving (authors deposit their work in online open access institutional or subject-based repositories, making it freely available to anyone with Internet access; further divided into (i) CGreen Open Access’ self-archiving operating in parallel with subscription publishing; and (ii) the ‘overlay services’ model in which self-archiving provides the foundation for overlay services (e.g. peer review, branding and quality control services)) - the NLP. ... The results are comparable to those of previous studies from the UK and Netherlands. Green Open Access in parallel with the traditional model yields the best benefits/cost ratio. Beside its benefits/cost ratio, the meaningfulness of the NLP is given by its enforceability. The true costs of toll access publishing (beside the buyback” of information) is the prohibition of access to research and knowledge for society.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Dec 14 2012 at 15:55 UTC | info | related

Open Ethos Publishing at Code4Lib Journal and In the Library with the Lead Pipe

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:34:00 -0500

"In Brief: The library world is deeply entrenched in the open ethos, yet there are few examples of library publications that engage in open editorial and peer review processes. In this article we discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by the open editorial processes used at In the Library with the Lead Pipe and Code4Lib Journal. To end, we discuss the need to grow open review and editorial processes in library and information science publications." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Fri Dec 14 2012

The Potential Role for Intermediaries in Managing the Payment of Open Access Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:44:49 -0500

The Potential Role for Intermediaries in Managing the Payment of Open Access Article Processing Charges (APCs)

JISC Repository, (27 Nov 2012)

Abstract: This report examines the operational challenges that universities, funders and publishers face in the UK relating to the payment of article processing charges (APCs) – the charges levied by the publishers of open access and hybrid journals to meet the costs of the publication process. It then examines the feasibility of using intermediaries of various kinds to provide services to aggregate payments as between universities and publishers, along with other services relating to the processes involved in ensuring that an article is published on open access terms. The aim would be to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes involved for funders, universities and publishers.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Tue Dec 04 2012 at 20:44 UTC | info | related

Open Access and Development: Journals and beyond

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:42:33 -0500

Open Access and Development: Journals and beyond

OPEN ACCESS AND DEVELOPMENT Journals and beyond

Eve Gray et al.

The African Open Access Repository Initiative, (20 Nov 2012)

Also available from The Institute of Development Studies (IDS). From the Abstract: This following report sets out to explore what Open Access means, how it has evolved as a philosophical and practical tool for scholarly communication, and how these publishing modes are currently being used to redress some of the imbalances, which currently exist within the traditional models of scholarly communication. It then goes on to examine the current and potential uses of open access in the context of the developing world; questions if, within these contexts, a different open access-based approach is required, and makes recommendations for this.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Tue Dec 04 2012 at 20:42 UTC | info | related

Open Access to data for a new, open science

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 07:02:00 -0500

"Open data are the pillars of open science, which many scientists have long been campaigning for. This paper is aimed at presenting the benefits of open access to research data, for science itself, for researchers, for citizens, for enterprises, for society as a whole." Posted by stevehit to pep.opendata pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Dec 17 2012

On the impact of Gold Open Access journals

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 06:33:26 -0500

On the impact of Gold Open Access journals

Christian Gumpenberger, Maria-Antonia Ovalle-Perandones, and Juan Gorraiz

u:scholar, Universität Wien, (Nov 2012)

info:doi/10.1007/s11192-012-0902-7

In Scientometrics. Abstract: Gold Open Access (=Open Access publishing) is for many the preferred route to achieve unrestricted and immediate access to research output. However, true Gold Open Access journals are still outnumbered by traditional journals. Moreover availability of Gold OA journals differs from discipline to discipline and often leaves scientists concerned about the impact of these existent titles. This study identified the current set of Gold Open Access journals featuring a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) by means of Ulrichsweb, Directory of Open Access Journals and Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The results were analyzed regarding disciplines, countries, quartiles of the JIF distribution in JCR and publishers. Furthermore the temporal impact evolution was studied for a Top 50 titles list (according to JIF) by means of Journal Impact Factor, SJR and SNIP in the time interval 2000–2010. The identified top Gold Open Access journals proved to be well-established and their impact is generally increasing for all the analyzed indicators. The majority of JCR-indexed OA journals can be assigned to Life Sciences and Medicine. The success-rate for JCR inclusion differs from country to country and is often inversely proportional to the number of national OA journal titles. Compiling a list of JCR-indexed OA journals is a cumbersome task that can only be achieved with non-Thomson Reuters data sources. A corresponding automated feature to produce current lists ‘‘on the fly’’ would be desirable in JCR in order to conveniently track the impact evolution of Gold OA journals.

Posted by stevehit and 1 other to oa.advantage oa.impact oa.new on Mon Dec 03 2012 at 11:33 UTC | info | related

Implementing Open Access Mandates in Europe: OpenAIRE Study on the Development of Open Access Repository Communities in Europe

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:27:00 -0500

Implementing Open Access Mandates in Europe: OpenAIRE Study on the Development of Open Access Repository Communities in Europe

Birgit Schmidt and Iryna Kuchma

OpenAIRE: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, (Nov 2012)

From the Summary: This work highlights existing open access policies in Europe and provides an overview of publishers’ self-archiving policies. It also highlights the strategies needed to implement these policies. It provides a unique overview of national awareness of open access in 32 European countries involving all eu member states and in addition, Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Switzerland and Turkey. Moreover, it describes funder and institutional open access mandates in Europe and national strategies to introduce and implement them. An overview is provided of the repository infrastructure currently in place in European countries, including institutional and disciplinary repositories, national repository networks and national open access information portals and support networks.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 26 2012 at 14:40 UTC | info | related

Planting the green seeds for a golden harvest: Comments and clarifications on “Going for Gold”

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 11:20:00 -0500

Planting the green seeds for a golden harvest: Comments and clarifications on “Going for Gold”

John Houghton and Alma Swan

Centre for Strategic economic Studies, Victoria University, (22 Nov 2012)

From the Introduction: In the context of the Finch Report and subsequent policy responses in the UK, there has been renewed discussion of the costs and benefits of different models of Open Access (OA) and a re- examination of the evidence and analysis underlying the policies announced post-Finch. As we have contributed to that evidence and analysis, we thought it might be useful to try to clarify some of the issues, as there sometimes seems to be some misinterpretation of our work. The main focus of discussion post-Finch is the relative costs and benefits of Gold OA and Green OA. In this document, we: (i) present a short summary of our findings on the relative costs and benefits of Gold OA and Green OA for UK universities and for UK higher education in general: and (ii) provide some commentary on the numbers and their interpretation. We focus primarily on the analysis that was undertaken in the context of two reports: Economic Implication of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models (2009), and Going for Gold (2012).

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 26 2012 at 14:33 UTC | info | related

Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications by LIS Lecturers in Southern Nigeria

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:17:20 -0500

Awareness and Use of Open Access Scholarly Publications by LIS Lecturers in Southern Nigeria

Alex Obuh and Doris Bozimo

International Journal of Library Science 1 (4), (2012)

info:doi/10.5923/j.library.20120104.02

Abstract: The study examined the awareness and use of open access scholarly publications by Library and Information Science (LIS) lecturers in southern Nigeria. Based on this, three (3) objectives were set out for the study. The descriptive survey design was employed and the questionnaire entitled “Awareness and Use of Open Access to Scholarly Publications Questionnaire” (AUOASPQ) was administered on the entire population of 141 LIS lecturers from which 114 responses were successfully collected. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean and regression analysis. The study revealed a high level of usage of open access publications by both senior and junior LIS lecturers and that the awareness of open access concepts accounts for the tendency of LIS lecturers in southern Nigeria to use open access publications. The study recommends that efforts should be geared towards inculcating the awareness and use of open access especially through enabling infrastructure and enacting policies such as mandatory deposit of scholarly works in open access archives.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 26 2012 at 14:17 UTC | info | related

Open evaluation: a vision for entirely transparent post-publication peer review and rating for science

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:22:20 -0500

Open evaluation: a vision for entirely transparent post-publication peer review and rating for science

Nikolaus Kriegeskorte

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, (17 Oct 2012)

info:doi/10.3389/fncom.2012.00079

Extract: While open access (OA) is becoming a reality, open evaluation (OE), the other side of the coin, has received less attention. Evaluation steers the attention of the scientific community and thus the very course of science. It also influences the use of scientific findings in public policy. The current system of scientific publishing provides only journal prestige as an indication of the quality of new papers and relies on a non-transparent and noisy pre-publication peer-review process, which delays publication by many months on average. Here I propose an OE system, in which papers are evaluated post-publication in an ongoing fashion by means of open peer review and rating. Through signed ratings and reviews, scientists steer the attention of their field and build their reputation. Reviewers are motivated to be objective, because low-quality or self-serving signed evaluations will negatively impact their reputation. A core feature of this proposal is a division of powers between the accumulation of evaluative evidence and the analysis of this evidence by paper evaluation functions (PEFs). PEFs can be freely defined by individuals or groups (e.g., scientific societies) and provide a plurality of perspectives on the scientific literature. Simple PEFs will use averages of ratings, weighting reviewers (e.g., by H-index), and rating scales (e.g., by relevance to a decision process) in different ways. Complex PEFs will use advanced statistical techniques to infer the quality of a paper. Papers with initially promising ratings will be more deeply evaluated. The continual refinement of PEFs in response to attempts by individuals to influence evaluations in their own favor will make the system ungameable.

Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 19 2012 at 18:22 UTC | info | related

Designing next-generation platforms for evaluating scientific output: what scientists can learn from the social web

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:18:00 -0500

Designing next-generation platforms for evaluating scientific output: what scientists can learn from the social web

Tal Yarkoni

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, (01 Oct 2012)

info:doi/10.3389/fncom.2012.00072

Extract: I focus particular attention on three core elements that next-generation evaluation platforms should strive to emphasize, including (1) open and transparent access to accumulated evaluation data, (2) personalized and highly customizable performance metrics, and (3) appropriate short-term incentivization of the userbase. Because all of these elements have already been successfully implemented on a large scale in hundreds of existing social web applications, I argue that development of new scientific evaluation platforms should proceed largely by adapting existing techniques rather than engineering entirely new evaluation mechanisms.

Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 19 2012 at 18:18 UTC | info | related

Open access to scientific literature and research data: a window of opportunity for latin america

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:25:23 -0500

Open access to scientific literature and research data: a window of opportunity for latin america

Maria del Rosario and Claudia Gonzalez

SeDiCI, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, (Oct 2012)

In XVIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación. Abstract: The advance that the international open access movement has had in the last decade may seem to suggest that we are witnessing an important change in the model of scientific communication. This paper introduces the fundamental concepts of this movement, and in turn tries to measure the impact it has had in Latin America based on the development of different strategies.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 19 2012 at 17:25 UTC | info | related

An emerging consensus for open evaluation: 18 visions for the future of scientific publishing

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:22:00 -0500

"Extract: A grand challenge of our time, therefore, is to design the future system, by which we evaluate papers and decide which ones deserve broad attention and deep reading. However, it is unclear how exactly Open Evaluation and the future system for scientific publishing should work. This motivated us to edit the Research Topic “Beyond open access: visions for open evaluation of scientific papers by post-publication peer review” in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. The Research Topic includes 18 papers, each going beyond mere criticism of the status quo and laying out a detailed vision for the ideal future system. The authors are from a wide variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence, medicine, molecular biology, chemistry, and economics. The proposals could easily have turned out to contradict each other, with some authors favoring solutions that others advise against. However, our contributors' visions are largely compatible. While each paper elaborates on particular challenges, the solutions proposed have much overlap, and where distinct solutions are proposed, these are generally compatible. This puts us in a position to present our synopsis here as a coherent blueprint for the future system that reflects the consensus among the contributors." Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 19 2012

Brief of Amici Curiae Academic Authors in Support of Defendant-Appellant and Reversal by Pamela Samuelson, David Hansen :: SSRN

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:11:00 -0500

Use the link to access the complete brief available from SSRN. The abstract reads as follows: "Filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Support of Defendant-Appellant Google. Summary of argument: Class certification was improperly granted below because the District Court failed to conduct a rigorous analysis of the adequacy of representation factor, as Rule 23(a)(4) requires. The three individual plaintiffs who claim to be class representatives are not academics and do not share the commitment to broad access to knowledge that predominates among academics. Although the District Court, in rejecting the proposed Google Books settlement last year, recognized that the class representatives and their lawyers had not adequately represented the interests of academic authors when negotiating the proposed settlement, the court brushed aside concerns about adequacy of representation when the case went back into litigation, despite an academic author submission that challenged class certification because of inadequacies in the plaintiffs’ representation of academic author interests. These concerns should have been taken seriously because academic authors make up a substantial proportion of the class that the District Court certified; most of the books that Google scanned from major research library collections were written by academics. Academic authors overall greatly outnumber generalist authors such as the named plaintiffs. Academic authors desire broad public access to their works such as that which the Google Books project provides. Although the District Court held that the plaintiffs had inadequately represented the interests of academic authors in relation to the proposed settlement, it failed to recognize that pursuit of this litigation would be even more adverse to the interests of academic authors than the proposed settlement was. That settlement would at least have expanded public access to knowledge, whereas this litigation seeks to enjoin the Google Book Search operations and shut down access to works of class members even though academic authors would generally favor greater public access to their works. Because of this, the interests of academic authors cannot be adequately accommodated in this litigation by opting out of the class, as the District Court assumed. Indeed, the only way for the interests of academic authors to be vindicated in this litigation, given the positions that the plaintiffs have taken thus far, is for Google to prevail on its fair use defense and for the named plaintiffs to lose. For this reason, there is a fundamental conflict between the interests of the named class representatives and the interests of academic authors. Academic authors typically benefit from Google Books, both because it makes their books more accessible to the public than ever before and because they use Google Books in conducting their own research. Google’s fair use defense is more persuasive to academic authors than the plaintiffs’ theory of infringement. The plaintiffs’ request for an injunction to stop Google from making the Book Search corpus available would be harmful to academic author interests. In short, a 'win' in this case for the class representatives would be a 'loss' for academic authors. It is precisely this kind of conflict that courts have long recognized should prevent class certification due to inadequate representation. The District Court failed to adequately address this fundamental conflict in its certification order, though it was well aware of the conflict through submissions and objections received from the settlement fairness hearing through to the hearings on the most recent class certification motions. Because of that failure, the order certifying the class should be reversed."

Interview with the Scholarly Kitchen’s Kent Anderson

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:51:00 -0500

"When at the end of October, eLife announced that it had published its first few articles, critics were angered to see that the papers had been hosted not on the journal’s own website, but on PubMed Central. The most active critic of these latest developments is Kent Anderson, who has responded by penning a series of hard-hitting posts on the Scholarly Kitchen blog. Anderson is a former executive director of The New England Journal of Medicine, and currently CEO/Publisher of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Scholarly Kitchen blog and, as he puts it, “one of the more vocal sceptics of open access”. I publish an interview with Anderson that was conducted by email over the last few days." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Wed Nov 07 2012

Evaluation of Three Open Source Software in Terms of Managing Repositories of Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Comparison Study

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 07:47:34 -0500

Evaluation of Three Open Source Software in Terms of Managing Repositories of Electronic Theses and Dissertations: A Comparison Study

Mohamad Masrek and Hesamedin Hakimjavadi

Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research 2 (11), 10843-52 (Nov 2012)

Abstract: Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), as a new generation of scholarship resources, are gradually increasing in number and quality at higher academic institutions. Meanwhile, by introducing various types of software solutions for managing Institutional Repositories (IRs), selection of appropriate solutions has become a time- consuming process for institutions. The goal of this paper was to appraise 59 features of three widely utilized open source IR solutions (DSpace, EPrints, Fedora) from the perspective of managing ETDs, via an in-depth evaluation of their important functionalities in this regard. For this purpose, all applications were installed and the features were tested in a test-bed environment (a benchmark machine) with a predefined set of ETD collections and registered users. Findings related to assessment of each feature were presented in the tabular format. Our comparison indicated that, although all three solutions are capable of managing ETD systems, in most of the comparative areas that are vital for an ETD repository DSpace was ahead of EPrints and Fedora.

Posted by stevehit with 1 comment to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Wed Nov 07 2012 at 12:47 UTC | info | related

RCUK: Access to research

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 08:28:00 -0500

Access to research and Technical Information in Denmark

Alexandra Saxon

Materials Today 15 (10), (Oct 2012)

Research Councils UK recently announced a new access policy for the science they fund. Alexandra Saxon explains the new policy and what it means for researchers. In 2005 individual Research Councils launched their Open Access policies. But the Open Access agenda has moved on rapidly in the intervening years which is why, in July, we launched a new Research Councils UK (RCUK) policy on Access to Research Inputs. Gone are the seven individual Council policies as the new RCUK policy harmonizes and makes significant changes to the existing Research Councils' Open Access policies. The new policy, which has been informed by the recommendations of the National Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (the Finch Group), has at its heart the drive to make the research that we fund immediately open to access and to reuse as soon as it is published. However, because we recognize that this option, the pay to publish “Gold” model of Open Access, is not always available we have retained a mixed model within our policy. This means that if there is not an option to pay to publish, researchers can opt for the “Green” model of open access where the paper would be available after an embargo period.

Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Tue Nov 06 2012 at 09:39 UTC | info | related

Assumptions and challenges of open scholarship | Veletsianos | The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 06:09:00 -0500

Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship

George Veletsianos and Royce Kimmons

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 13 (4), (Oct 2012)

Abstract: Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices, educators and scholars are finding themselves in a position in which they can shape and/or be shaped by openness. The intention of this paper is (a) to identify the assumptions of the open scholarship movement and (b) to highlight challenges associated with the movement’s aspirations of broadening access to education and knowledge. Through a critique of technology use in education, an understanding of educational technology narratives and their unfulfilled potential, and an appreciation of the negotiated implementation of technology use, we hope that this paper helps spark a conversation for a more critical, equitable, and effective future for education and open scholarship.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 05 2012 at 12:23 UTC | info | related

UNT Libraries: Open Access Fund Research Report

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:54:00 -0400

"Abstract: This report discusses Open Access (OA) funds created at universities in order to assist faculty authors with Article Processing Charges (APCs). Building on the research initiatives of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), thirty North American universities' OA fund initiatives were reviewed on their sponsors, eligibility, reimbursement criteria, and stipulations related to the fund. In addition, fifteen OA journal funding models and twelve hybrid journal funding models were reviewed on their average APCs and their licensing policies. This report serves as a framework for building upon emerging best practices and outlining possible approaches and considerations for the University of North Texas." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Thu Nov 01 2012

Sustainability: Scholarly Repository as an Enterprise

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:02:57 -0400

Sustainability: Scholarly Repository as an Enterprise

Oya Rieger

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39 (1), 27-31 (Oct 2012)

Editor's summary: The expanding need for an open information sharing infrastructure to promote scholarly communication led to the pioneering establishment of arXiv.org, now maintained by the Cornell University Library. To be sustainable, the repository requires careful, long term planning for services, management and funding. The library is developing a sustainability model for arXiv, based on voluntary contributions and the ongoing participation and support of 200 libraries and research laboratories around the world. The sustainability initiative is based on a membership model and builds on arXiv’s technical, service, financial and policy infrastructure. Five principles for sustainability drive development, starting with deep integration into the scholarly community. Also key are a clearly defined mandate and governance structure, a stable yet innovative technology platform, systematic creation of content policies and strong business planning strategies. Repositories like arXiv must consider usability and lifecycle alongside values and trends in scholarly communication. To endure, they must also support and enhance their service by securing and managing resources and demonstrating responsible stewardship.

Posted by stevehit to pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Wed Oct 31 2012 at 21:02 UTC | info | related

Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories - D-Scholarship@Pitt

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:47:00 -0400

Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories

Karen Calhoun

D-Scholarship@Pitt, (29 Sep 2012)

Submitted to: Catalogue 2.0, Facet Publishing, London. Abstract: Research libraries have entered an era of discontinuous change—a time when the cumulated assets of the past do not guarantee future success. Bibliographic control, cooperative cataloguing systems and library catalogues have been key assets in the research library service framework for supporting scholarship. This chapter examines these assets in the context of changing library collections, new metadata sources and methods, open access repositories, digital scholarship and the purposes of research libraries. Advocating a fundamental rethinking of the research library service framework, the chapter concludes with a call for research libraries to collectively consider new approaches that could strengthen their roles as essential contributors to emergent, network-level scholarly research infrastructures.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 11:23 UTC | info | related

The Current State of Open Access Repository Interoperability (2012)

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:35:23 -0400

The Current State of Open Access Repository Interoperability (2012)

Eloy Rodrigues and Abby Clobridge

Confederation of Open Access Repositories, (26 Oct 2012)

From the Executive Summary: The real value of repositories is their potential to be connected in order to develop a network of repositories which enables unified access to an open, aggregated mass of scholarship and related materials that machines and researchers can work with in new ways. However, this potential to create a unified body of scholarly materials is entirely reliant on interoperability – specifically, that repositories follow consistent guidelines, protocols, and standards for interoperability which allow them to communicate with each other; connect with other systems; and transfer information, metadata, and digital objects between each other. The repository infrastructure is still relatively new, leading to an evolving interoperability landscape that at first sight may appear chaotic, confusing, and complex. Section 1 of this report provides an overview of the current interoperability landscape and the services where progress has been made in recent years as a result of research and development efforts. Section 2 of this report provides further details on specific initiatives that are designed to support these services or address common challenges. Initiatives addressed include: AuthorClaim, CRIS-OAR, DataCite, DINI Certificate for Document and Publication Services, DOI, DRIVER, Handle System, KE Usage Statistics Guidelines, OAI-ORE, OAI-PMH, OA-Statistik, OA Repository Junction, OpenAIRE, ORCID, PersID, PIRUS, SURE, SWORD, and UK RepositoryNet+.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 15:35 UTC | info | related

Open Access in Biomedical Research

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:21:27 -0400

Open Access in Biomedical Research

European Science Foundation, Science Policy Briefing No. 47, (Sep 2012)

From the Executive summary: This Science Policy Briefing aims to accelerate the adoption of open access to research articles in the biomedical sciences. We consider open access to be crucial for the free flow of information between researchers and within society as a whole, and the digital revolution of recent years provides an opportunity that has not yet been fully realised to transform access to scholarly publications. To achieve this goal this briefing makes a number of recommendations: 1 There is a moral imperative for open access 2 Individual agencies must work together to raise awareness of the moral imperative for open access 3 All research stakeholders should work together to support the extension of Europe PubMed Central into a Europe-wide PubMed Central

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 15:21 UTC | info | related

Greenstone Open Source Digital Library Software in the Context of Arabic Content

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:33:43 -0400

Greenstone Open Source Digital Library Software in the Context of Arabic Content

Ramadan Elaiess

International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 2 (2), 181-96 (Dec 2012)

From the Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore Greenstone open source digital library software which considered to be one of most essential open-source Content Management Systems (CMSs) that are available for use in creating, organizing, and managing Arabic content on the Internet. It focuses on the appropriateness of the system for Arabic content from different perspectives, such as its ability to support the Arabic language and to sustain and maintain different file formats. It also aims to examine Greenstone software and discuss its weaknesses and strengths in terms of managing Arabic digital content. Greenstone search facilities were tested and evaluated in this study using a quasi-experimental approach. The National Oil Cooperation standalone CDS/ISIS database in Libya (NOC) was converted into web interface using Greenstone software to explore the system’s functionality and to test its search and browse facilities. This database consists of 3400 Arabic bibliographic records.

Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 11:33 UTC | info | related

Digitization of Cultural Heritage – Standards, Institutions, Initiatives

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:29:19 -0400

Digitization of Cultural Heritage – Standards, Institutions, Initiatives

Access to Digital Cultural Heritage Innovative Applications of Automated Metadata Generation Chapter 1 Digitization of Cultural Heritage Standards Institutions Initiatives

Juliana Peneva et al.

Scholar Electronic Repository, New Bulgarian University, (22 Oct 2012)

In Access to Digital Cultural Heritage: Innovative Applications of Automated Metadata Generation, chapter 1. Abstract: Provides an introduction to the area of digitisation. The main pillars of process of creating, preserving and accessing of cultural heritage in digital space are observed. The importance of metadata in the process of accessing to information is outlined. The metadata schemas and standards used in cultural heritage are discussed. In order to reach digital objects in virtual space they are organized in digital libraries. Contemporary digital libraries are trying to deliver richer and better functionality, which usually is user oriented and depending on current IT trend. Additionally, the chapter is focused on some initiatives on world and European level that during the years enforce the process of digitization and organizing digital objects in the cultural heritage domain. In recent years, the main focus in the creation of digital resources shifts from "system-centred" to "user-centred" since most of the issues around this content are related to making it accessible and usable for the real users. So, the user studies and involving the users on early stages of design and planning the functionality of the product which is being developed stands on leading position.

Posted by stevehit to pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 11:29 UTC | info | related

Open access: are we there yet? - the case of Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:20:37 -0400

Open access: are we there yet? - the case of Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Reggie Raju et al.

South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science 80 (2), (2012)

info:doi/10.7553/80-2-29

From the Abstract: This case study focuses on the contribution of Stellenbosch University (SU) to the African research agenda through making its research output available via two different publishing models. The first model is the hosting and preservation of its research output via an institutional repository (the green route to open access). The second model is hosting and publishing open access journals, following one of two ‘streams’ in the gold route. In this paper, the authors contextualize open access. The two publishing models in support of the Strategic Plan for the Environment of the Vice Rector (Research) are discussed as it applies to SU. The Library’s adoption of the role of ‘publisher’ is also examined. In the case of SU, Open Journal Systems (OJS) is the software of choice for hosting open access online journals. The paper provides background on OJS, and also discusses the significance of OJS publishing for the University and its researchers. It concludes with the view that despite the perceived success of the Library and Information Service in making available research output in open access format, there are still many challenges that need to be overcome, and that this process is a continuous one and should remain so in order to continuously take advantage of opportunities offered by evolving technology.

Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.repositories oa.new on Mon Oct 29 2012 at 11:20 UTC | info | related

Beyond open access: an examination of Australian academic publication behaviour

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 05:12:00 -0400

"From the Abstract: The survey participants represented a cross section of the Australian university community, whilst the focus groups and interviews represented academics from two universities, one from the Group of Eight and the other from the Australian Technology Network. The outcome of this study was a number of theoretical models that suggested that the changing policies associated with research recognition have narrowed the publication behaviour of the Australian academic community and that this could be to the detriment of the adoption of alternative models of scholarly publishing. The publication behaviour, which had a focus on tiered journal listings, resulted in a dissemination pattern that was primarily directed to the academy. This was of concern for disciplines that had a practitioner-based research focus. Such disciplines would benefit from open access dissemination. The study also examined engagement with institutional repositories and highlighted the importance of mediation in populating the content of repositories. The process of permission-based mandates was supported as a means to develop repository content. Permission-based mandates allow academics to enter a non-exclusive agreement with their university or institution so that the university can manage copyright and repository submission processes on behalf of the academic. Academics can then focus on the process of publication, while mediators can manage copyright and the repository submission processes." Posted by stevehit to pep.oa pep.repositories pep.biblio oa.new on Mon Nov 19 2012