Copyright and Open Access for Academic Works :
“In a recent paper, Prof. Steven Shavell (see Shavell, 2009) has argued strongly in favor of eliminating copyright from academic works. Based upon solid economic arguments, Shavell analyses the pros and cons of removal of copyright and in its place to have a pure open access system, in which authors (or more likely their employers) would provide the funds that keep journals in business. In this paper we explore some of the arguments in Shavell’s paper, above all the way in which the distribution of the sources of journal revenue would be altered, and the feasible effects upon the quality of journal content. We propose a slight modification to a pure open access system which may provide for the best of both the copyright and open access worlds.”
URL : http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24095/
Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication
Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provided support for a feasibility study, to outline one possible approach to measuring the impacts of the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on returns to public investment in R&D. The aim is to define and scope the data collection requirements and further model developments necessary for a more robust estimate of the likely impacts of the proposed FRPAA open archiving mandate.
Preliminary modeling suggests that over a transitional period of 30 years from implementation, the potential incremental benefits of the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate might be worth between 4 and 24 times the costs. Perhaps two-thirds of these benefits would accrue within the US, with the remainder spilling over to other countries. Hence, the US national benefits arising from the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate might be of the order of 16 times the costs.
Exploring sensitivities in the model we find that the benefits exceed the costs over a wide range of values. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any plausible values for the input data and model parameters that would lead to a fundamentally different answer.
These preliminary estimates are based on the information available to us at the time of writing. They are released in conjunction with an online model, which enables others to explore their own preferred values for the various parameters.
Who owns our work? : “Much turmoil in t…
Who owns our work? :
“Much turmoil in the scholarly-communication ecosystem appears to revolve around simple ownership of intellectual property. Unpacking that notion, however, produces a fascinating tangle of stakeholders, desires, products and struggles. Some products of the research process, especially novel ones, are difficult to fit into legal concepts of ownership. As collaborative research burgeons, traditional ownership and authorship criteria are stretched to their limits and beyond, with many contributors still feeling short of due credit. The desire for access and impact brings institutions and grant funders into the formerly exclusive relationship between authors and publishers. Librarians, stripped of first-sale rights by electronic licensing, wonder about both access and long-term preservation. Emerging solutions to many of these difficulties threaten to cut publishers out of the picture altogether, perhaps a welcome change to those stakeholders who find publishers’ behavior to block progress.”
URL : http://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/45742/SaloSerials.pdf?sequence=1
Open Access Week: Library Strategies for…
Open Access Week: Library Strategies for Advancing Change :
“Over the past several years, libraries have strategically brought to bear the power of a global awareness event we call “Open Access Week” to advance real, policy-driven scholarly communication change on campus. Initiated by students and marked by just a few dozen campuses in 2007, Open Access Week has evolved into a truly global phenomenon thanks to the ongoing leadership of the library community. Not simply an awareness-raising exercise, librarians have made Open Access Week a platform for advancing specific policy changes on researchsharing and dissemination, including institution-wide commitments to open access. In anticipation of Open Access Week 2010 (October 18–24) and beginning to formulate local strategies, SPARC has invited two leading participants from 2009 to share in the following two articles how the event helped them to advance open access to research.”
URL : http://arl.tizrapublisher.com/rli270/22
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/