Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Populating Repositories:

« There is an active, thriving community of open access repositories worldwide and their visibility is rising as funding agencies and governments implement open access policies. Still, repositories must continue to adopt strategies that demonstrate their value to the wider research community. Therefore COAR has now published the report, “Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Population Repositories”. It profiles a variety of successful practices for populating repositories from around the world. Aim of thie report is to assist the global repository community in implementing sustainable methods for recruiting content. The profiles were gathered from organizations across the globe, and represent a mixture of approaches involving the introduction of incentives; integration of the repository with other institutional services; and/or mediation of the deposit process. The practices reflect a tradition of innovation and openness in the repository community, and are characterized by creative approaches to staffing, imaginative software developments, and adoption of novel policies. »

URL : http://www.coar-repositories.org/activities/repository-content/sustainable-practices-for-populating-repositories-report/

Open Access :

« The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue. In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers. »

URL : http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access

arXiv e-prints and the journal of record: An analysis of roles and relationships :

« Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version. It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository. Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers. The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers. »

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3261

‘Héloïse’: towards a co-ordinated ecosystem approach for the archiving of scientific publications? :

« With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus-building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse. This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self-archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders. This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success. »

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00834411

Facilitating access to free online resources: challenges and opportunities for the library community :

« The volume of online content continues to grow exponentially, and much of it is freely available. Some of this content is of potentially significant value for teaching, learning and research purposes. However, ‘free to access’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘easy to find’. Taylor & Francis have conducted a research programme to help explore the issues relating to free online content discoverability from the perspective of librarians. Our research included several focus groups, teledepth interviews and an online survey ; which together have helped build a picture of the challenges associated with surfacing free online content within an institution for educational and research purposes »

URL : http://www.tandf.co.uk/libsite/pdf/TF-whitepaper-free-resources.pdf
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Where on earth to publish? A sample survey comparing traditional and open access publishing in the oncological field :

« 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.

Methods : Data referring to articles published in 2010 by three Italian research institutions (National Institute of Health – Rome (ISS), Regina Elena National Cancer Institute – Rome (IRE), National Cancer Institute – Milan (INT) in journals (78) managed according to different business models, all listed in the Journal Citation Reports, subject category Oncology, were collected and analysed. The journals surveyed were ranked according to IF, position in quartiles, publication charges, usage rights in published articles, self-archiving conditions in OAI-compliant repositories digital archives.

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.

Conclusions : The issue of OA journals as compared with traditional subscription-based journals is highly debated among stakeholders: library administrators facing financial restrictions, authors seeking to locate the best outlet for their research, publishers wishing to increase their revenues by offering journals with wider appeal. Against this background, factors such as the quest for alternatives to high-cost business models, investments in setting up institutional repositories hosting the published versions of articles and efforts to overcome copyright barriers and gain free access to scientific literature are all crucial. »

URL : http://www.jeccr.com/content/32/1/4

Advancing the Business of Information Open Access: Market Size, Share, Forecast, and Trends :

« No debate has shaken scientific publishing in the past 20 years quite like the open access movement. Awareness has risen in the popular press, in the UK’s House of Commons, in funding bodies, and in places of research. Underlying the debate is the decades-long concern about the publishing model of peer-review processes, their fairness and their impact on the flow of research, knowledge, and discovery in society. The open access movement continues to morph as it challenges traditional modes of scholarly publishing and changes the way most major players in the space approach their futures. In this report, which is an update to Outsell’s An Open Access Primer – Market Size and Trends (published September 21, 2009), we analyze the market’s size in terms of revenue, examine both gold and hybrid journals, consider the future of green OA, and present a revenue forecast for open access-sourced journal revenue for 2013 to 2015. To underpin our projections, we provide analysis of which competitors control significant shares of the market — and which new entrants are particularly on trend and worth watching. Open access publishing is here to stay, but its evolution and ability to overtake existing subscription models remains an open question. Outsell’s goal is to cut through the noise and provide insights that support healthy and forward-looking business strategies for all stakeholders in this space — including publishers, policymakers, funders, authors and researchers, technology providers, and investors. »

URL : http://img.en25.com/Web/CopyrightClearanceCenterInc/%7B1eced16c-2f3a-47de-9ffd-f6a659abdb2a%7D_Outsell_Open_Access_Report_01312013.pdf

Implementing Open Access in the United Kingdom :

« Since July 2012, the UK has been undergoing an organized transition to open access. As of 01 April 2013, revised open access policies are coming into effect. Open access implementation requires new infrastructures for funding publishing. Universities as institutions increasingly will be central to managing article-processing charges, monitoring compliance and organizing deposit. This article reviews the implementation praxis between July 2012 and April 2013, including ongoing controversy and review, which has mainly focussed on embargo length. »

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/b449803863j2p826/?id=B449803863J2P826

The future of scholarly communication: US efforts to bring warring factions to common purpose in support of scholarship :

« Key stakeholders in scholarly communication have been at odds over the purpose, mission and business models of publishing. This piece reviews developments in the United States but with a particular focus on efforts at reestablishing common purpose, such as (1) the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable created in June 2009 by the Chairman of Science and Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives; (2) the Task force of the Association of American Universities and Association of Research Libraries established in 2012 to focus on university presses, scholarly journals and institutional repositories; and (3) the Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum of February 22, 2013 on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. »

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/u727847272r65681/?id=U727847272R65681

Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus :

« This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications. »

URL : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/1/1/16