Scholarly Publishing News

James Donovan and Carol Watson (2012) tackle this question by looking at whether placing an article in an institutional repository hurts its ranking in a disciplinary repository. The authors argue that readers are not a zero-sum game, and so more readers for an article in one repository does not necessitate fewer readers for the same article in another repository.

Instead, different kinds of readers go to different kinds of repositories for different reasons. For example, a small but very interested group of readers will receive table of content alerts from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Other readers may have less interest in the subject area as a whole, and so will not have subscribed to alerts from a traditional repository. Instead, they want information from the article at a point of need, and arrive through a keyword search from Google. (Organ (2006) found that 95.8% of the downloads in their institutional repository came through Google). Donovan and Watson point out that institutional repositories are often listed in the first few Google results, while SSRN pages are listed later. This can be a crucial difference when readers may not go beyond the first page or two of search results. In addition, in two case studies, Donovan and Watson found that institutional repository readers tended to arrive in a steadier stream than the first group of readers, who peaked shortly after the article was announced in SSRN.

Thus, the argument is made that having an article in one repository does not hurt its ranking in another: more copies and more access points means more readers for the article.

For more information on institutional repositories, and other forms of self-archiving, look at eprints FAQs: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/

Donovan, J. M., & Watson, C. A. (2012). Will an institutional repository hurt my SSRN ranking?: Calming the faculty fear. AALL Spectrum, 16(6), 12-13.

Organ, M. K. (2006). Download statistics-what do they tell us? The example of research online, the open access institutional repository at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Academic Services Division-Papers, 44.

In a memorandum on journal pricing, the Harvard Faculty Advisory Council communicated to faculty that the Harvard Library can no longer afford the subscription rates for scientific journals from major publishing houses, such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley.

Harvard’s annual cost for journals from several key providers approaches $3.75 million.  The price for online content from two providers has increased by about 145% over the past 6 years.  The Council has concluded that major periodical subscriptions to electronic journals published by several key providers have become untenable and are encouraging faculty to submit their articles to open access journals and DASH, Harvard’s central open access repository.

In an interview with the Guardian, Robert Darnton, the director of the Harvard Library, called the current system of scholarly communication absurd.  Faculty carry out research, write papers, referee papers for other researchers, sit on editorial boards – all for free – and then pay publishers extravagant prices for their research.

The World Bank announced that it will implement a new Open Access Policy to improve access to its research outputs and knowledge products, effective July 1, 2012.

As part of the OA policy, the World Bank launched a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.

The repository contains more than 2,100 annual reports, journals, working papers, books, economic and sector work studies and multilingual content dating from 2009 to 2012.

British Columbia became the first province in Canada to release its provincial budget data. The provincial government released 62 machine-readable datasets.

The datasets consist of the main budget document, the budget and fiscal plan, which lay out the Province’s three-year fiscal plan, and include the economic outlook, revenues, spending and tax measures, as well as forecasting risks and assumptions.

In addition, DataBC has published Supplements to the Estimates from this year’s budget as open data. The supplements show a detailed, ministry-by-ministry breakdown of proposed spending organized into standard categories, including government transfers, salaries, benefits and others.

By providing the data in machine-readable formats via DataBC and under the open government licence, the Province has made it easier for citizens, media, students and businesses to repurpose this valuable data and do their own analyses.

B.C. is the first provincial government to create a site like DataBC – www.data.gov.bc.ca – a catalogue of over 2,800 datasets. Over time, as new datasets become available, the site will grow.

This data is free, searchable and available for anyone to use and repurpose.

VS Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California San Diego is the first author to take part in PLoS Biology’s new podcast series.

PLoS author[s will] discuss their research in more depth and to describe the relevance of their work to the general public. The podcasts will cover the entire range of biological sciences, from neuroscience to evolution to molecular biology.

A press release from the Berlin9 Conference yesterday announced new signatories to the 2003 Berlin Declaration, a document that builds on the Budapest Open Access Initiative, promoting free online access to research in all academic fields.

“Washington, DC – Thirty-three research institutions, associations, and foundations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have made a commitment to Open Access to research by signing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. These top private, public, and non-profit organizations join nearly 300 more from around the world in another clear sign of the growing demand for change in the way scientific and scholarly research results are communicated and maximized. The announcement is made in conjunction with the ninth Berlin conference, at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which opened today.”

After launching its first completely open access journal (Open Biology) earlier this year, the Royal Society has just upped the open access ante by making its important journal archive permanently open access. The Royal Society holds an important place in the history of science, having created the first peer-reviewed scientific journal in 1665 (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society) and published many foundational articles.

The announcement appeared this week to coincide with Open Access Week (Oct. 24-30), which is currently being celebrated around the world. There are still a number of free Open Access events being offered at SFU this week, including two sessions related to open data. You can find out more about these events (and register for them) at SFU Library’s Open Access Week 2011 page.

The Simon Fraser University Library is pleased to present the following events as part of Open Access Week 2011, October 24 – 30.  This week is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research. All events are FREE, but registration is required.

Keynote Presentation – David Eaves discusses Open Data, Open Government and the University
Governments around the world are increasingly making their data freely available to anyone with an internet connection. What are the implications – for citizens, policy makers, governments and scholars? In this talk, open innovation expert David Eaves will discuss the expansion and significance of the rise of the open data and open government movement, outline what has taken place in Canada and explore the coming challenges and opportunities.

David Eaves is a public policy entrepreneur, open government activist and open innovation expert who advises many governments (including the City of Vancouver) on open data and open government strategies, as well as helping them draft and execute implementation plans. He is regularly invited to speak internationally on these and other issues to executives, policymakers, and students.

Co-sponsored by SFU Library and SFU School of Public Policy

Thursday October 27, 4:00pm to 5:00pm (followed by a reception at the Teck Gallery, SFU Vancouver)
SFU Vancouver, Labatt Hall Room 1700 | 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC
Please register using SFU’s websurvey tool

Recycle, reuse, research: Using open data in scholarly research
A growing number of scholars are choosing to leverage open data for research. This session addresses the why and how behind this trend.

Speakers:

• Dr. Alex Clapp (SFU, Department of Geography) will describe his work on the significance of open data in environmental science, with reference to the global temperature record and the BP oil spill.
• Dr. Meghan Winters (SFU, Faculty of Health Sciences) will detail the development of the Cycling Route Planner, an openly-available web tool to support public health.
• Dr. Heather Piwowar, a postdoctoral research associate with the NSF DataONE project, will provide an overview of the costs and – more importantly – benefits of open data use, and highlight current research on the subject.

Date / Time: Wednesday October 26, 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: WAC Bennett Library, Room 2020, Burnaby Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

What’s scholarly publishing got to do with you? A discussion for grad students
Deciding where and how to publish your work can be a significant decision for new scholars, one with practical, ethical, and sometimes financial implications. Join us for a roundtable discussion among graduate students exploring these questions, including consideration of open access publishing options. Complimentary lunch for those who register in advance.

Co-sponsored by the Graduate Student Society

Date / Time: Tuesday October 25, 11:30am-1pm
Location: Graduate Lounge, Maggie Benston 2212, Burnaby Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

Author rights
Your article has been accepted for publication and as a final step you must sign and submit the publisher’s copyright transfer agreement. By signing this agreement, publishers can obtain exclusive rights to the article preventing you from legally repurposing it, using it in teaching, archiving the article on a personal website or in SFU’s institutional repository.

Join us to explore ways to retain your copyright, including methods you can use to amend license agreements to retain key rights to your work.

Speakers: Nicole Gjertsen and Shane Plante, Liaison Librarians (SFU Library)

Two identical sessions offered:

Date / Time: Monday October 24, 12:00pm – 12:50pm
Location: WAC Bennett Library, Room 3101, Burnaby Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

Date / Time:  Tuesday October 25, 12:00pm – 12:50pm
Location: Fraser Library, Room 3695, Surrey Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

Summit: The SFU Institutional Repository
Learn about Summit, the SFU institutional repository, a place that brings together selected scholarship and research of SFU and promotes this work to the wider world while also providing a long term, stable home for this scholarship.
Learn about how you can contribute your own works to Summit and make them available in a stable environment for the long term. Summit – it’s more than just a place for your thesis.

Speaker: Don Taylor, Assistant Head, IR Coordinator (SFU Library)

Date / Time: Wednesday October 26, 11:30am to 12:20pm
Location: WAC Bennett Library, Lab 2105, Burnaby Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

Publishing services at SFU
Learn how SFU Library’s publishing services can assist you with launching a journal, hosting a conference, or publishing a book.

This session will provide an overview of the Public Knowledge Project’s suite of:

• Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free journal management and publishing system;
• Open Conference Systems (OCS); a free web publishing tool that will create a complete web presence for your scholarly conference and
• Open Monograph Press (OMP); a free online workspace for publishing monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions, while keeping an archival record of the process.

Speaker: Nicole Gjertsen, Liaison Librarian (SFU Library)

Two identical sessions offered:

Date / Time: Thursday October 27, 11:30am – 12:20pm
Location: WAC Bennett Library, Lab 4009, Burnaby Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

Date / Time: Wednesday November 9, 12:00pm – 12:50pm
Location: Fraser Library, Room 3695, Surrey Campus
Please register using the SFU Student Learning Commons Workshop tool

And look for our display and handouts on Open Access in the lobby of the WAC Bennett Library (SFU Burnaby Campus), October 24 – 30.

For more information, please contact: Todd Mundle, Associate University Librarian tmundle@sfu.ca 778.782.3263

Earlier this month, Princeton University faculty voted unanimously to adopt an open access policy. A report written by Princeton’s Ad-hoc Committee to Study Open Access stated the following:

Much of the faculty’s scholarly output is in the form of articles published in refereed journals and conferences; the faculty generally publish these scholarly articles without expectation of direct monetary compensation. Some journals (though by no means all) then restrict access via expensive subscriptions prices and other restrictive practices. An “open-access” policy is intended to make the faculty’s scholarly articles, published in journals and conference proceedings, available as well to a wider public than can afford to pay for journal subscriptions. In addition, an open-access policy permits the University to run an “open-access repository” where the faculty can conveniently make those articles available.

Several of our peer Universities have adopted open-access policies with these goals in mind; we studied some of these policies before coming to consensus on the policy we recommend below.

We recommend a revision to the Rules and Procedures of the Faculty that will give the University a nonexclusive right to make available copies of scholarly articles written by its faculty, unless a professor specifically requests a waiver for particular articles. The University authorizes professors to post copies of their articles on their own web sites or on University web sites, or in other not-for-a-fee venues. Of course, the faculty already had exclusive rights in the scholarly articles they write; the main effect of this new policy is to prevent them from giving away all their rights when they publish in a journal.

The ‘peer universities’ that have already adopted open access policies include Harvard and MIT.  It will be interesting to see how publishers respond as an increasing number of universities adopt open access mandates.

Summit is SFU’s institutional repository. Managed by the SFU Library, Summit has been developed to showcase and preserve the research, scholarship and artistic works of SFU faculty and graduate students. It’s a place to bring together the scholarship of SFU researchers and was developed as part of a broader open access strategy, recognizing that many faculty and researchers wish to share their work with the largest possible audience.

Benefits of Summit:

• A long term, stable home for your materials. The SFU Library manages Summit and does the job of maintaining and preserving the work for you, and is committed to maintaining access to your work.
• It’s easy to put your work in Summit. Send the Library your work or opt to add your work yourself. Contact summit@sfu.ca to find out how.
• Summit is structured so that the information can easily be harvested by search engines such as Google and Google Scholar in a way that is not possible on a personal or departmental website.
• Summit accommodates many formats including text, images, data, audio and video.
• Open Access. Adding your work to Summit removes barriers for scholars, students and policy makers around the world wanting access to your research.
• You keep all the rights to your work.