The role of the research library in an e…

The role of the research library in an emerging global public sphere :
“Presents a vision of a potential future global public sphere, why it is needed and signs of emergence, and the role of the research library in this global public sphere, as provider of a distributed knowledge commons, preserver of scholarly information, and source of specialized expertise. Key short-term transitional steps are covered, particularly transition to a fully open access scholarly publishing system”
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18830/

Faculty self-archiving: Motivations and barriers

This study investigated factors that motivate or impede faculty participation in self-archiving practices – the placement of research work in various open access (OA) venues, ranging from personal Web pages to OA archives.

The author’s research design involves triangulation of survey and interview data from 17 Carnegie doctorate universities with DSpace institutional repositories.

The analysis of survey responses from 684 professors and 41 telephone interviews identified seven significant factors: (a) altruism – the idea of providing OA benefits for users; (b) perceived self-archiving culture; (c) copyright concerns; (d) technical skills; (e) age; (f) perception of no harmful impact of self-archiving on tenure and promotion; and (g) concerns about additional time and effort.

The factors are listed in descending order of their effect size. Age, copyright concerns, and additional time and effort are negatively associated with self-archiving, whereas remaining factors are positively related to it.

Faculty are motivated by OA advantages to users, disciplinary norms, and no negative influence on academic reward. However, barriers to self-archiving – concerns about copyright, extra time and effort, technical ability, and age – imply that the provision of services to assist faculty with copyright management, and with technical and logistical issues, could encourage higher rates of self-archiving.

URL : http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123585469/abstract

The Durham Statement on Open Access One …

The Durham Statement on Open Access One Year Later: Preservation and Access to Legal Scholarship :
“The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship calls for US law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in “stable, open, digital formats.” The Statement asks for two things: 1) open access publication of law school-published journals; and 2) an end to print publication of law journals. This paper was written as background for a July 2010 American Association of Law Libraries conference program on the preservation implications of the call to end print publication.”
URL : http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2145/

A Foundational Proposal for Making the D…

A Foundational Proposal for Making the Durham Statement Real :
“This outline is an attempt to synthesize the issues surrounding the ambitious project of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship into a coherent, though still quite preliminary solution. At the heart is the conviction that the problems of digital publishing are best solved by a stable and open organization of and by the stakeholders.”
URL : http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/working_papers/29/

MELIBEA : “MELIBEA (http://www.accesoab…

MELIBEA :
“MELIBEA (http://www.accesoabierto.net/politicas/) is a directory and a validator of institutional open-access (OA) policies regarding scientific and academic work. As a directory, it describes the existing policies. As a validator, it subjects them to qualitative and quantitative analysis based on fulfilment of a set of indicators ( http://www.accesoabierto.net/politicas/politicas_estructura.php) that reflect the bases of an institutional policy. ”
URL : https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5529.html

Scientific journal publishing: yearly vo…

Scientific journal publishing: yearly volume and open access availability :
Introduction. We estimate the total yearly volume of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles published world-wide as well as the share of these articles available openly on the Web either directly or as copies in e-print repositories.
Method. We rely on data from two commercial databases (ISI and Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory) supplemented by sampling and Google searches.
Analysis. A central issue is the finding that ISI-indexed journals publish far more articles per year (111) than non ISI-indexed journals (26), which means that the total figure we obtain is much lower than many earlier estimates. Our method of analysing the number of repository copies (green open access) differs from several earlier studies which have studied the number of copies in identified repositories, since we start from a random sample of articles and then test if copies can be found by a Web search engine.
Results. We estimate that in 2006 the total number of articles published was approximately 1,350,000. Of this number 4.6% became immediately openly available and an additional 3.5% after an embargo period of, typically, one year. Furthermore, usable copies of 11.3% could be found in subject-specific or institutional repositories or on the home pages of the authors.
Conclusions. We believe our results are the most reliable so far published and, therefore, should be useful in the on-going debate about Open Access among both academics and science policy makers. The method is replicable and also lends itself to longitudinal studies in the future.”
URL : http://informationr.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html