This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences.
Étiquette : open access
A comparison of subscription and open access journals in construction management and related fields :
« The Internet has profoundly changed the technical infrastructure for the publishing of scientific peer reviewed journals. The traditional business model of selling the content to subscribers is increasingly being challenged by Open Access journals, which are either run at low cost by voluntary academics or which sell dissemination services to authors. In addition authors in many fields are taking advantage of the legal possibilities of uploading free manuscript versions to institutional or subject-based repositories, in order to increase readership and impact. Construction Management is lagging behind many other fields in utilising the potential of the web for efficient dissemination results, in particular to academics outside the leading universities in industrialised countries. This study looks closer at the current publishing situation in construction management and related fields and compares empirical data about 16 OA journals and 16 traditional subscription journals. Of the articles published in 2011 in the subscription journals only 9 % could be found as OA copies. The overall OA availability (including article in OA journals) was 14 % for Construction Management and Economics and 29 for construction IT scholarship. »
URL : http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/AJCEB/article/view/27
The Hybrid Model for Open Access Publication of Scholarly Articles – a Failed Experiment? :
« Mainstream scholarly publishers have since 2004 started to offer authors in subscription journals the possibility to free their individual articles from access barriers against a payment (hybrid OA). This has been marketed as a possible gradual transition path between subscription and open access to the scholarly journal literature, and the publishers have pledged to decrease their subscription prices in proportion to the uptake of the hybrid option. The number of hybrid journals has doubled in the past couple of years and is now over 4,300, and the number of such articles was around 12,000 in 2011. On average only 1-2 % of eligible authors utilize the OA option, due mainly to the generally high price level of typically 3,000 USD. There are, however, a few publishers and individual journals with a much higher uptake. This article takes a closer look at the development of hybrid OA and discusses, from an author-centric viewpoint, the possible reasons for the lack of success of this business model. »
URL : http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/hybrid/hybrid.pdf
The potential effect of making journals free after a six month embargo :
« This report was commissioned by the Association of Learned, Professional and Society Publishers [ALPSP] and The Publishers Association. It follows a straw-poll survey commissioned from Gold Leaf by ALPSP inMarch 2012 in order to obtain sample information on how the acquisition policies of academic libraries might be affected by an across-theboard mandate to make journals articles available free of charge six months after publication. The ALPSP survey obtained responses from thirty-four libraries worldwide. The results from this small sample suggested that such a mandate would have a significant impact on publishers’ revenues, especially in the fields of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences [AHSS] publishing. ALPSP and The Publishers Association therefore commissioned Gold Leaf to conduct a larger, more statistically significant survey, to include corporate and specialist libraries as well as academic ones, in order to obtain more robust results on what the likely impact of a six months’ embargo might be. »
URL : http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/ALPSPPApotentialresultsofsixmonthembargofv.pdf
Establishment of Institutional Mechanism for Building National Repository in Health Sciences :
« National consolidation of published and unpublished literature in the field of biomedical sciences can playa major role in scholarly communication to help the end users in providing research published in the country.Institutional repositories are a good approach for a cost-effective publishing with a cooperation and participationof each institution for capturing, preserving, managing, and nurturing the discussion. In turn, metadata can be harvested centrally to access the digital information of common interest whereas individual libraries shouldable to preserve digital assets. Institutionalisation mode has been recommended for building national digitalrepository system for the country. The public funding should be provided to apex body so as to formulatethe requisite policies for the spread of open access movement in the country and also formulate a long termsustainable model for building national level system in the country. »
URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/2386
Open Access to Scientific Information: A Review of Initiatives :
« Open access journals are the one’s which are available online to the reader without financial, legal, ortechnical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet. Some of the scholarlyjournals are subsidised, and some require payment. However, a number of challenges remain, such as highand rising subscription prices to scientific publications, an ever-growing volume of scientific data, and theneed to select, curate, and preserve research outputs. Open access benefits researchers, innovators, teachers,students, media professionals, and the general public. It promotes global knowledge flow for the benefit ofscientific discovery, innovation, and socio-economic development. »
URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/2386