Scholarly Communication » open access

Libraries host panel, author rights session, and displays to celebrate International Open Access Week

Kayla Gregory — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:34:54 +0000

Purdue will be participating in the first annual international Open Access Week from October 19-23, 2009. An expansion of Open Access Day, which Purdue hosted along with 120 other campuses in October 2008, Open Access Week will feature speakers, displays, and programs on a variety of open access issues relevant to the Purdue research community.

The following events are planned:

“Scholarship and Open Access: Purdue Perspectives”
Panel Discussion, Tuesday, October 20, 1-2:30 p.m., STEW 206

Moderated by Donna Ferullo, director of the University Copyright Office, this panel presentation brings together four speakers representing unique Purdue perspectives on Open Access. Speakers are Peter Dunn, Associate Vice President for Research and director of the University Research Administration and Compliance Office, presenting on the University intellectual property policy and implications for open access; Brian Dilkes, assistant professor in the department of horticulture and landscape architecture and a PLoS editor, presenting on the impacts of open access publication on faculty scholarship; Mark Newton, Digital Collections Librarian, who will discuss open access initiatives of the Purdue Libraries; and Charles Watkinson, director of the Purdue University Press, who will present on the university press perspective. This panel session is open to all interested members of the campus community.

“Authors’ Rights: Reminders for Purdue Faculty and Researchers”
Presentation, Thursday, October 22, 1-2 p.m., STEW 310
Donna Ferullo, director of the University Copyright Office, will offer a session on authors’ rights for any interested faculty, staff, and students.

Open Access Week Displays
Displays with general information about open access and Open Access Week will be shown in a Stewart Center main hallway display case. Libraries faculty and staff will also be available to answer questions about open access at a table in front of the Stewart Center mural from 10:00 a.m-2:00 p.m. on 10/19, and from 10:00 a.m.-noon on 10/20.

International Open Access Week is presented by the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), Students for FreeCulture, eIFL.net, OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook), and the Open Access Directory (OAD).

For more information on the international effort, visit http://www.openaccessweek.org.

The Cost of Journals — and Their Future (via Inside Higher Ed)

Kayla Gregory — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:48:43 +0000

Read the original post here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/02/qt/the_cost_of_journals_and_their_future

A new report from the National Humanities Alliance finds that the average cost per page of a sample of eight humanities and social sciences journals is $526, almost twice the costs for science and technology journals. The analysis of the eight journals was conducted to help disciplinary associations get a better understanding of the economics of their publishing ventures, at a time of increasing pressure to embrace the open access movement, in which research is available online and free. The humanities alliance’s report finds that open access would not be a “sustainable option” for the journals studied. At the same time, the report suggests that a more complete study — going well beyond the eight journals — is needed. Such a study might better examine differences among journals in the humanities and social sciences disciplines, the current report says. The new report may be found here. Analysis of it from the American Historical Association may be found here.

Free Web Session on Journal Pricing Initiative

Mark Newton — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:00:16 +0000

On June 10 at noon Eastern time, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) will cosponsor a free Webcast entitled “SCOAP³—An Opportunity to Create Change.” Dr. Salvatore Mele of CERN will lead a 90-minute presentation of the SCOAP³ initiative, which is poised to introduce significant changes to the accessibility and affordability of scholarly journals in high energy physics. The SCOAP³ initiative has already been endorsed by dozens of institutions, including the Purdue University Libraries. Faculty and students of the Purdue University community with an interest in learning more about this library initiative to manage journal expenditures and maximize access to scholarship are invited to register by June 9 (http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/event_registration.shtml).

Additional Information:

Article on Open Access Citation Advantage Receives High Commendation

Mark Newton — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:43:17 +0000

An article entitled “The citation advantage of open access articles” has received recognition as Highly Commended in the Information Science category of the 2008 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards. The article, coauthored by recent Loughborough University doctoral degree recipient Michael Norris, examines the citation of articles from high-impact subscription journals in four subjects. Addressing several well-known caveats in assessing citation advantage (such as self-citation), Norris et al conclude that articles from these journals that have been made freely available on the Web (such as through open access archives) are more likely overall to be cited elsewhere.

Purdue e-Pubs (http://docs.lib.purdue.edu) is the open access archive of Purdue University, and members of the Purdue University faculty who would like to bring the value of open access to their journal publications and other scholarly material should contact either the subject-specialist librarian for their department or Mark Newton, the digital collections librarian (newton@purdue.edu), for additional information on getting started with the e-Pubs service.

“The citation advantage of open access articles” was published in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. An open access version of this article is available through the open access archive of Loughborough University.

Open Access Day at Purdue University

Mark Newton — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:43:06 +0000

On October 14, Purdue University Libraries will host a gathering as a part of the first Open Access Day, a special event prepared by SPARC, PLoS, and Students for Free Culture to highlight the importance and impact of open access to research publications.

Purdue’s event begins at 6:45 p.m. on October 14 in the iLab (room G-959) in the Hicks Undergraduate Library, and all Purdue University faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend. At 7:00 p.m., the event moderators will broadcast a live video stream presentation by Richard Roberts, a Nobel Prize winner and notable advocate for open access to scientific research. The presentation will discuss the significance of Open Access to scholarly research, and it will be followed by a question and answer session with attendees at more than 50 sites nationwide by teleconference. After the presentation, the Libraries will showcase work that has been done at Purdue to support open access research, and attendees will have the opportunity to engage the session moderators in additional discussion.

Open Access Day sponsors at Purdue University include the Purdue University Libraries; the Purdue University Press; and PUGWASH, the Purdue University student organization for Social Responsibility in Science and Technology.

Refreshments will be served. For more information, please check the Open Access Day Web page.

Harvard mandates open access to Arts and Sciences faculty research publications

Beth McNeil — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:20:45 +0000

Late yesterday, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted on a measure to permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online. This will likely have major implications for the open access movement.

Links to articles about this in the New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Harvard Crimson: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin

http://chronicle.com/news/article/?id=3943&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521835>

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521861

–Beth McNeil

High-energy physics and SCOAP: proposing a new model for publishing

Beth McNeil — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:20:51 +0000

An interesting development in alternative business models has been put forward by the high-energy physics community, through their SCOAP3 initiative (www.scoap3.org), Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing. In short, they are attempting to turn the entire field of high-energy physics open access. By creating a super-consortium, they would make a tender offer to the current publishers of HEP physics. The publishers would be guaranteed operating money to cover the cost of editorial work, and in return, they offer up the content freely to the entire world. National Labs, funding agencies, and libraries all might be part of this consortium, and one of the hopes is that the costs to the scholarly community overall would drop significantly, since we would be switching from the relatively inelastic subscription model, where libraries have to buy in or their community loses out, to an author/payer focused model where publishers will lose out if they don’t keep costs at a level that is supported by the consortium.

With something this bold and ambitious, obviously there are a lot of details to be settled…but the idea is getting a lot of traction in Europe, and enthusiasm is building in the US, where HEPAP (the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel) “strongly supports this initiative”…contingent on the resolution of financial concerns (always a big if!).

A good summary of the project was published in Symmetry: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000551

And the HEPAP presentations: one by a SCOAP3 representative, Salvatore Mele: (http://www.science.doe.gov/hep/HEPAP/November2007/HEPAP-301107.pdf)

Another, cautionary one, by the Editor in Chief of the American Physical Society, Gene Sprouse: http://www.science.doe.gov/hep/HEPAP/November2007/hepap2-1.pdf)

–Michael Fosmire

Bill mandates open access for NIH-funded research

Kayla Gregory — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:46:36 +0000

On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed the omnibus appropriations bill, including the NIH research access provision requiring the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate open access for NIH-funded research. This is major news, as it’s the first OA mandate for a major public funding agency in the US, and sets a precedent for other US agencies wanting to move in this way.

The NIH is the world’s largest funding provider for scientific research, with a budget last year of $28 million. This open access mandate will mean an unprecedented quantity of research will be available.

For more information, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/release07-1226.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002115_pf.html.