Scholarly Communication – Page 19

Heading for the open road costs and benefits…

Posté le 7 avril 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications :

“This new report investigates the drivers, costs and beneﬁts of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identiﬁes ﬁve different routes for achieving that end over the next ﬁve years, and compares and evaluates the beneﬁts as well as the costs and risks for the UK.

The report suggests that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to open access publishing (Gold open access) while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed c.£2000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.

At a time of ﬁnancial stringency for universities, research funders and publishers, it is important that all the stakeholders in the scholarly communications system work together to ﬁnd the most cost-effective ways of fulﬁlling their joint goal of increasing access to the outputs of research. This report provides the ﬁrst detailed and authoritative analysis of how this might be achieved over the next ﬁve years. We hope that it will stimulate new dialogue and new approaches to policy and practice across all stakeholders.”

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/heading-open-road-costs-and-benefits-transitions-s

The costs and potential benefits of alternative scholarly…

Posté le 15 mars 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

The costs and potential benefits of alternative scholarly publishing models :

“Introduction. This paper reports on a study undertaken for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which explored the economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models. Rather than simply summarising the study’s findings, this paper focuses on the approach and presents a step-by-step account of the research process, highlighting the combination of process mapping, activity costing and macro modelling.

Method. The analysis relies primarily on existing sources, collating activity cost information from the wide-ranging literature on scholarly communication. Where necessary, these sources were supplemented by targeted informal consultation with experts.

Analysis. We examine the costs and potential benefits of the major alternative models for scholarly publishing, including subscription publishing, open access publishing and self-archiving. Adopting a formal approach to modelling the scholarly communication process and identifying activity costs, this paper presents activity and system-wide costs for each of the alternative publishing models. It then explores the potential impacts of enhanced access on returns to R&D.

Results. We find that different scholarly publishing models could make a material difference to the costs faced by various parties and to the returns on investment in R&D that might be realised.

Conclusion. It seems likely that more open access could have substantial benefits in the longer term. While the benefits may be lower during a transitional period they would be likely to be positive for both open access publishing and self-archiving alternatives.”

URL : http://informationr.net/ir/16-1/paper469.html

Survey of University of Toronto Faculty Awareness Attitudes…

Posté le 14 mars 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

Survey of University of Toronto Faculty Awareness, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding Scholarly Communication: A Preliminary Report :

“This report presents the results from a 2010 online survey of the University of Toronto faculty on their awareness, attitudes and practices regarding scholarly communication. The objectives were to collect evidence regarding the current practices of faculty with regard to scholarly communication – primarily scholarly publishing and dissemination; to obtain evidence of their awareness and attitudes toward the changes in practices and forms that are occurring in publishing and dissemination with the turn to the digital, and to stimulate conversation on these topics among faculty within departments, faculties and academic units across the university, as well as with other members of the scholarly communication ecosystem. The survey has five sections that ask about i) current practices ii) scholarly publishing, including copyright and peer review iii) newer practices relating to open access, subject or institutional repositories, policies and mandates iv) costs associated with scholarly communication and iv) local services. Detailed findings, including faculty comments, and a summary of findings organized around a number of broad themes that emerged out of the detailed findings are included. The summary includes comparisons with the results from a 2006 survey of faculty at the University of California.

URL : https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/26446

It’s not filter failure it’s a discovery deficit…

Posté le 10 mars 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

It’s not filter failure, it’s a discovery deficit :

“The web has changed our information-seeking behaviour radically, yet scholarly communication remains firmly embedded in the traditions of the print world. Here, I argue that the dropping costs of publication and distribution mean that effort and resource expended on preventing publication is wasted and that developing the tools and culture for post-publication annotation, curation and ranking is more productive. Rather than see this as information overload, or in Clay Shirky’s words, a ‘filter failure’, I propose that it is more useful to see the problem as a ‘discovery deficit’. This flood of content, instead of being a problem, is an opportunity to build technical and cultural frameworks that will enable us to extract more value from the outputs of research by exploiting the efficiencies that web-based systems can provide.”

URL : http://uksg.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,7,25;journal,1,71;linkingpublicationresults,1:107730,1

Open Access monographic publishing in th…

Posté le 22 février 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

Open Access monographic publishing in the humanities :

“In recent years, it has become widely recognized that in the case of monographs, the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Academic publishers have been forced to become more selective in the books they publish, and authors, in particular young researchers and first time authors, have found it harder to find a press willing to publish their work. In response to the economic restraints of printed monographs, many publishers and academic institutes, in particular research libraries, have started to experiment with digital and Open Access publication of monographs.

OAPEN is the first international project to develop an Open Access model for publishers and stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN stands for Open Access Publishing in European Networks. It is a 30 month project co-funded by the European Union, to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).”

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/l6wg61l0mg6426w8/

Open access to scholarly communications:…

Posté le 17 janvier 2011 par Hans Dillaerts

Open access to scholarly communications: advantages, policy and advocacy :

“The Open Access (OA) movement regards OA modes of disseminating research as the unequivocal future of scholarly communication. Proponents of the open access movement itself have, over the last ten years, carried out systematic research to show how OA can tangibly benefit researchers, institutions and society at large. Even so, the number of research papers being uploaded to OA institutional repositories remains relatively low, frequently based on concerns which often contradict the facts. Policies for OA have been introduced to encourage author uptake, and these are also discussed here. Briefly delineating aspects of these phenomena, this paper will then move on to outline and discuss advocacy for OA in organisations, and whether this should be “downstream”, in the form of informational campaigns, or “upstream”, in the form of top-down change management. This paper seeks to make a contribution to these issues in the OA sphere, by brining into the debate strands from the literature of the sociology of science and management science that will hopefully elucidate aspects of author reactions to OA, and the perceived changes that its adoption gives rise to.”

URL : http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1419/