Owning the Right to Open Up Access to…

Owning the Right to Open Up Access to Scientific Publications :

“Whether the researchers themselves, rather than the institution they work for, are at all in a position to implement OA principles actually depends on the initial allocation of rights on their works. Whereas most European Union Member States have legislation that provides that the copyright owner is the natural person who created the work, the copyright laws of a number European countries, including those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, establish a presumption, according to which the copyright of works made in the course of employment belongs initially to the employer, which in this case would be the university. In France, a similar presumption applies to works created by employees of the State. Even if researchers are in a position to exercise the rights on their works, they may, nevertheless, be required to transfer these to a publisher in order to get their article or book published. This paper, therefore, analyses the legal position of researchers, research institutions and publishers respectively, and considers what the consequences are for the promotion of OA publishing in light of the principles laid down in the Berlin Declaration and the use of Creative Commons licenses.”

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1829889

Positioning Open Access Journals in a LIS Journal…

Positioning Open Access Journals in a LIS Journal Ranking :

“Academic journal ranking serves as an important criterion for the scholarly community to assess research quality and for librarians to select the best publications for collection development. Because of the complexity of publication behaviors, various approaches have been developed to assist in journal ranking, of which comparing the rates of citation using citation indexes to rate journals has been popularly practiced and recognized in most academic disciplines. ISI’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is among the most used rankings, which “offers a systematic, objective means to critically evaluate the world’s leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data.” Yet, citation-based journal rankings, such as JCR, have included few open access journals on their lists. Of these limited OA journals, many were either recently converted into open access or are publicly available with conditions. The relative exclusion of OA journals creates two deficiencies for scholarly communication.First, these rankings may not accurately portray the full picture of journal publications to reflect an on-going advancement in scholarship. Second, they may discourage the open access movement by marginalizing the majority of OA journals. In fact, some OA journals have successfully built reputations, attracting high-quality articles and sizable numbers of citations.

This research is an attempt to add selected OA journals to the journal quality rankings using library and information science (LIS) as an example. It is helpful to detect the position of OA journals in journal rankings so that scholars can recognize the progresses of OA publishing and make active contributions to support the OA movement. Such rankings will also encourage librarians and information professionals to improve the existing library publishing enterprise and make continuous efforts for journal practices.”

URL : http://infodocket.com/2011/05/19/preprint-positioning-open-access-journals-in-a-lis-journal-ranking/

Use made of open access journals by Indian…

Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings :

“Most of the papers published in the more than 360 Indian open access journals are by Indian researchers. But how many papers do they publish in high impact international open access journals? We have looked at India’s contribution to all seven Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals, 10 BioMed Central (BMC) journals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. Indian crystallographers have published more than 2,000 structure reports in Acta Crystallographica, second only to China in number of papers, but have a much better citations per paper average than USA, Britain, Germany and France, China and South Korea. India’s contribution to BMC and PLoS journals, on the other hand, is modest at best. We suggest that the better option for India is institutional self-archiving.”

URL : http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10may2011/1297.pdf

Sciences com libre accès et science ouverte Introduction…

Sciences.com — libre accès et science ouverte. Introduction :

“Confrontée au développement des réseaux électroniques, l’édition scientifique mue, mute, résiste ; nourris au lait d’Internet, les chercheurs tergiversent au moment d’y diffuser leurs productions; garantes du bien public, les institutions normalisent, s’interrogent, expérimentent. La mutation est profonde, et trouve des répercussions non seulement dans la circulation des connaissances, mais aussi dans la propriété intellectuelle et la notion d’auteur ou les conditions de publication… En quelques années, la diffusion des savoirs sur Internet et en particulier l'”open access” a changé les termes du débat. L’édition scientifique était un petit monde policé et local; aujourd’hui, c’est un marché global et un théâtre de guerre économique. Le nombre de scientifiques a explosé, les revues scientifiques se sont multipliées, les budgets explosent, et l’idéologie du “Publish or perish” domine. En parallèle, des intermédiaires du savoir, tels les sites commerciaux Cairn ou Science Direct, prennent une assise nouvelle et cherchent le meilleur modèle économique et cognitif. Les chercheurs sont placés face à une injonction paradoxale : d’une part publier, publier de plus en plus, dans des revues cotées, des revues de plus en plus mesurées, étalonnées, hiérarchisées, mais payantes et privées ; d’autre part, rendre public, diffuser au plus grand nombre, mettre en ligne le plus vite possible, librement et sans droit d’accès. Dans cette introduction au numéro spécial intitulé “Sciences.com”, les auteurs s’intéressent, dans une perspective résolument pluridisciplinaire, aux différents questions que pose cette ” science ouverte ” avec toutes ses formes de mises à disposition des connaissances produites par des scientifiques : revues gratuites, mises en ligne des publications par les institutions, modèle auteur-payeur, archives en libre accès, bibliothèques numériques ouvertes…”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00586590/fr/

Digital repositories and the future of preservation and use of scientific knowledge

Information and communication technology has a great influence on scientific communication and work of scientists. Ways in which research is conducted have changed; science has become more highly collaborative; network-based, and data-intensive. The existing system of scientific publishing is experiencing pressure for change under the influence of the exponential growth of information production, the dramatic increase in subscription fees, the increasing storage cost of printed documents, and the increasing power and availability of digital technology.

To conduct their research more effectively scientists need modern resources of digital information which would support their endeavor. Digital repository is one such type of information resources. Digital repository is an institutional digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty, research staff, and students of an institution and accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution.

Digital repositories carry a great potential for the advancement of scientific research. Digital repositories can store different file formats and types of content. An institutional digital repository can contain e-prints of scientific papers, research data, but also e-learning materials and other forms of institutional intellectual outputs. As the number of open access digital repositories grows, it has become evident that institutional repositories are now clearly and broadly being recognized as essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital world.

URL : http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=99976

DINI Certificate Document and Publication Services 2010…

DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services” 2010 :

“In summer 2010 the DINI working group for Electronic Publishing released the third edition of the DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services” and by this adapted the well-established criteria catalogue for scholarly repository services to current developments. Now, the English version of the DINI Certificate 2010 has been made available to the public.

The global scientific communication system is subject to a fundamental transition process. Due to new opportunities arising from the internet and other information and communication technologies and also to the changing requirements of scholars and scientists, new means and channels for scientific communication develop. A leading development is the global Open Access movement committed to the idea of freely available scientific and scholarly publications.

To support the numerous developments in Germany and to set common standards for publication infrastructures DINI’s Electronic Publishing working group embraced this topic early on and in 2002 published its first recommendations for “Electronic Publishing in Higher Education”. Based on these documents, the working group formulated criteria and formalized them in the DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services”. Following the 2004 and 2007 editions, 2010 is the third version of the document. The certificate describes technical, organisational and legal aspects that should be considered in the process of setting up and operating a scholarly repository service and puts considerable interest in Open Access. The aim of DINI is to move forward towards a standardised and interoperable repository landscape to improve the visibility and linkages of scientific publications. During the years the DINI certificate has gained reputation as standard-setting authority for repositories.

The latest edition of the DINI certificate addresses particularly the following aspects:
– The growing importance of the “golden road” to Open Access.
– The increased demand for interoperability with comprehensive services.
– The growing technical virtualization of Document and Publication Services (hosting of services).
– A comprehensive view of the scientific and scholarly research processes.”

URL : https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5803.html

Journal tendering for societies: a brief guide

Hundreds of societies publish journals in collaboration with publishers. Some may be considering how and whether to renegotiate or go out to tender. Some may be considering whether they can/should/wish to change the business model of the journal (e.g. by a move to Open Access). Other societies may be considering using an external publisher for the first time.

This guide, based on our experience, is written for all of these. In their negotiations with publishers learned societies – especially smaller ones – may have difficulty articulating their requirements and assessing the publishers’ offerings. This is true where they wish to compare the newer models with typical “conventional” models, or simply compare different conventional offerings.

The reasons are complex and include:

  • lack of knowledge of the publishing industry on the part of the society’s executive staff (who cannot always find the time to acquire the knowledge);
  • the “author/research funder pays” models, which, whilst becoming more prevalent in the domains of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), appear (but may not actually be) rather less feasible in other domains.

This guide draws on the experience of one learned society, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), in reviewing the publishing arrangements for its journal Research in Learning Technology, between September and December 2010.

URL : http://repository.alt.ac.uk/887/