Confronting the Crisis in Scientific Publishing: Latency, Licensing and Access

The serials crisis in scientific publishing can be traced to the long duration of copyright protection and the assignment of copyright by researchers to publishers. Over-protection of scientific literature has enabled commercial publishers to increase subscription rates to a point at which access to scientific information has been curtailed with negative social welfare consequences. The uniformity costs imposed by such over-protection can be addressed by tailoring intellectual property rights, either through legal change or private ordering.

Current open access channels of distribution offer alternative approaches to scientific publishing, but neither the Green OA self-archiving nor the Gold OA author-pays models has yet achieved widespread acceptance. Moreover, recent proposals to abolish copyright protection for academic works, while theoretically attractive, may be difficult to implement in view of current legislative and judicial dispositions.

Likewise, funder open access mandates such as the NIH OA Policy, which are already responsible for the public release of millions of scientific articles, are susceptible to various risks and political uncertainty.

In this article, I propose an alternative private ordering solution based on latency values observed in open access stakeholder negotiation settings. Under this proposal, research institutions would collectively develop and adopt publication agreements that do not transfer copyright ownership to publishers, but instead grant publishers a one-year exclusive period in which to publish a work.

This limited period of exclusivity should enable the publisher to recoup its costs and a reasonable profit through subscription revenues, while restoring control of the article copyright to the author at the end of the exclusivity period. This balanced approach addresses the needs of both publishers and the scientific community, and would, I believe, avoid many of the challenges faced by existing open access models.

URL : http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/research/33/

Repositories in Google Scholar Metrics or what is…

Repositories in Google Scholar Metrics or what is this document type doing in a place as such? :

« The present paper analyzes GS Metrics, Google’s newest product aiming at ranking journals according to their H-Index. Specifically, we analyze GS Metrics’ decision of considering journals and repositories as equal and therefore, including them in the product. In this sense, the authors position themselves against this decision and provide several arguments of different nature warning against the shortcomings this product has. The first one is of a conceptual nature and is related to the definition of journal and repository. Secondly, they refer at the methodological issues mixing repositories and journals can bring out. Then, they deepen on many other flaws GS Metrics presents. Finally, GS Metrics and its possible use as an evaluation tool are discussed and possible solutions to its shortcomings are provided. »

URL : http://cybermetrics.cindoc.csic.es/articles/v16i1p4.html

Sustainability of Open Access Services

« Although some services that support Open Access have developed a sustainable business model, many started as projects and continue to run on recurrent project funding or goodwill. If these are critical components of the evolving scholarly communication system the foundation of Open Access is vulnerable. Knowledge Exchange has commissioned this study as part of a larger programme of work to look at the issue of sustaining key services into the long term.

This report focuses on phases one and two of the programme. Phase one was a scoping exercise, carried out mainly through a literature review and an extensive stakeholder interview exercise, to describe the services that are currently available or would be valuable in the future. It also investigated what roles stakeholders could play in this future scenario.

Phase two was a stakeholder consultation and engagement exercise. The aim was to engage stakeholders with the work programme so that they could contribute their views, get involved with the work and have a voice in the thinking about future scenarios.

The key services are presented for three future scenarios: ‘Gold’ Open Access, fully ‘Green’ Open Access and Green’ Open Access supplementing subscription access as ‘Gold’ OA grows.

Three strategic areas are identified as having particular potential for future work. These are embedding business development expertise into service development; consideration of how to move money around the system to enable Open Access to be achieved optimally; and governance and coordination of the infrastructural foundation of Open Access. The report concludes with seven recommendations, both high-level and practical, for further work around these strategic areas. »

URL : http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/event/sustainability-oa-services

Jarrow Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Software Collecting…

Jarrow, Electronic Thesis, and Dissertation Software :

« Collecting and disseminating theses and dissertations electronically is not a new concept. Tools and platforms have emerged to handle various components of the submission and distribution process. However, there is not a tool that handles the entirety of the process from the moment the student begins work on their thesis to the dissemination of the final thesis. The authors have created such a tool which they have called Jarrow. After reviewing available open-source software for theses submission and open-source institutional repository software this paper discusses why and how Jarrow was created and how it works. Jarrow can be downloaded and the project followed at http://code.library.unbc.ca . »

URL : http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/7486

Publication numérique dans l’édition scientifique Le cas des…

Publication numérique dans l’édition scientifique. Le cas des Presses universitaires du Septentrion :

« Le marché du livre numérique a été lancé fin 2007 aux États‐Unis. Peu à peu, la production puis la vente de tels fichiers se sont également développées en France où, en 2012, de nombreux éditeurs privés proposent un important catalogue de livres numériques. L’édition scientifique est également en train d’intégrer cette publication numérique déjà bien avancée dans le domaine des revues. Ce sont désormais les presses universitaires qui se mettent à l’édition électronique des ouvrages. En 2012, les Presses universitaires du Septentrion ont accueilli une nouvelle chaîne d’édition intégrant la production de livres numériques. Les techniques de production ainsi que l’environnement de cet éditeur sont donc amenés à changer, notamment au niveau des relations avec ses différents acteurs traditionnels : les auteurs, distributeurs, diffuseurs mais également les lecteurs. Grâce à un partenariat entre institutions, le livre numérique dans l’édition scientifique française est basé sur la normalisation et l’interopérabilité. »

« The digital book market was launched in late 2007 in the United States. Gradually, production and selling of such files also developed in France where, in 2012, many private publishers offer an extensive catalog of digital books. Scientific publishing is also in the process of integrating this digital publication already well advanced in the field of journals. University presses are nowadays starting to publish electronic books. In 2012, the Septentrion University Press has welcomed a new publishing chain integrating digital books production. This editor’s production techniques and environment are likely to change, especially in terms of relations with its traditional actors: authors, distributors, broadcasters but also the readers. Through a partnership between institutions, the digital book in French scientific publishing is based on standardization and interoperability. »

URL : http://memsic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/mem_00736979

Refurbishing the Camelot of Scholarship How to Improve…

Refurbishing the Camelot of Scholarship: How to Improve the Digital Contribution of the PDF Research Article :

« The Portable Document Format (PDF) has become the standard and preferred form for the digital edition of scholarly journal articles. Originally created as a solution to the need to “view and print anywhere,” this technology has steadily evolved since the 1990s. However, its current use among scholarly publishers has been largely restricted to making research articles print-ready, and this greatly limits the potential capacity of the PDF research article to form a greater part of a digital knowledge ecology. While this article considers historical issues of design and format in scholarly publishing, it also takes a very practical approach, providing demonstrations and examples to assist publishers and scholars in finding greater scholarly value in the way the PDF is used for journal articles. This involves but is not limited to graphic design and bibliographic linking, the deployment of metadata and research data, and the ability to combine elements of improved machine and human readability. »

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0015.102

Open Access Repositories in Asia From SAARC to…

Open Access Repositories in Asia: From SAARC to Asian Tigers :

« This paper provides an overview of Open Access Repository (OAR) initiatives taken in Asian Countries with special reference to SAARC Countries. The purpose of this study is to take a broad look at the current state of deployment of OARs in the Asian countries. It also compares selected OARs against a set of carefully crafted criteria. Key findings have been highlighted along with suggestions for further development of OARs in global context. »

URL : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/808/