Transitions

The University of Michigan has reached the 1 million book milestone in its digitization program. That figure represents around 13% of the 7.5 million books in the library’s collections. The books are available via the library’s catalog or via Google Book Search, as part of the Michigan Digitization Project.

Most of the scanning has been done as part of the library’s controversial deal with Google. The search giant is working with dozens of major libraries around the world to scan the full text of books to add to its index. But Michigan is one of the only institutions to agree to scan every one of its holdings — even those that are still covered by copyright. Some publishers have sued Google for copyright infringement over the scanning effort, though officials from Google say their effort is legal because they are not making the full text of copyrighted books available to the public.

The Wired Campus News Blog, Feb. 4, 2008
and Open Access News, Feb. 4, 2008

Bioinformatics Advance Access published online on January 28, 2008
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn006

Martijn J. Schuemie and Jan A. Kors

Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Summary: With an exponentially growing number of articles being published every year, scientists can use some help in determining which journal is most appropriate for publishing their results, and which other scientists can be called upon to review their work.

Jane (Journal/Author Name Estimator) is a freely available web-based application that, on the basis of a sample text (e.g., the title and abstract of a manuscript), can suggest journals and experts who have published similar articles.

Availability: http://biosemantics.org/jane.

First Monday, Volume 12 Number 12 - 3 December 2007

By Roger Clarke

Abstract

The digital era is having substantial impacts on journal publishing. In order to assist in analysing these impacts, a model is developed of the costs incurred in operating a refereed journal. Published information and estimates are used to apply the model to a computation of the total costs and per-article costs of various forms of journal-publishing. Particular attention is paid to the differences between print and electronic forms of journals, to the various forms of open access, and to the differences between not-for-profit and for-profit publishing undertakings.

Insight is provided into why for-profit publishing is considerably more expensive than equivalent activities undertaken by unincorporated mutuals and not-for-profit associations. Conclusions are drawn concerning the current debates among conventional approaches and the various open alternatives.

Excerpts from the Conclusion:

For–profit publishers have higher cost–profiles than not–for–profit associations, because of the additional functions that they perform, in particular their much greater investment in branding, customer relationship management and content protection. The difference is particularly marked in the case of eJournals — a computed per–article cost of US$3,400 compared with US$730. This point is sufficiently significant that further examination is warranted.

…..The distinctive differences that remain in for–profit publishing are:

* higher–quality branding;
* more active marketing;
* more aggressive customer management; and,
* content protection.

But the primary beneficiaries of these features are the publisher and its owners. Only in the case of for–profit business units within not–for–profit associations are the owners closely associated with an academic community. Academic communities have little incentive to contribute to the funding of sophisticated technical features that are designed to support organistions’ strategic and marketing objectives rather than community service. In short, the ‘value–add’ that for–profit publishers offer appears to be of little or no benefit to academic communities.

For–profit publishers have long been successful intermediaries between the authors and accreditors, on the one hand, and the consumers of refereed articles and their support services, on the other. Since the advent of the public Internet, however, much has been written about the way in which it converts marketplaces to marketspaces, extends the reach of market participants, and creates the scope for disintermediation (e.g., Malone, et al., 1987; Brown, 2001; Howard, 2001). In the new context, are for–profit publishers still needed?

Five university presses have announced a collaboration that seeks to find a way to reduce costs of scholarly publishing and to allow more books to be released. The collaboration, created with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will set up a joint operation for copy editing, design, layout and typesetting for the work in American literatures. The presses will retain complete control over book selection and distribution.

The new system is expected to yield enough savings to allow each of the presses to increase output by five books a year, meaning that over the course of the five-year project, 125 books that might not have otherwise reached readers will be released.

The collaboration is being formally announced at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, which opened in Chicago Thursday. NYU Press will manage the grant, which will also involve Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press and the University of Virginia Press.

Read more:
Insider Higher Ed, Dec. 28, 2007

John Markoff, Documents of Library in Boston to Go on Web, New York Times, December 27, 2007. Excerpt:

The historical record of the United States government will soon be more accessible.

A digital library partnership, including two nonprofit organizations and the Boston Public Library, is preparing to begin making digital copies of the library’s paper-based government documents collection, which will then be made available on the Internet.

The project, which will take two years and require the hand scanning of millions of pages of government hearings and related publications, will cost an estimated $6 million, according to the project’s sponsors.

Boston Public Library librarians said they planned to begin by digitizing the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings from the 1950s, which is regularly sought after by its patrons.

The project is being undertaken by Public.Resource.Org, a nonprofit group seeking to open public access to government records, and the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library.

The project is the brainchild of founders of the two organizations, Carl Malamud and Brewster Kahle, and it is initially being financed by a $250,000 grant from a foundation established by Mr. Kahle and his wife, Mary Austin, and a matching grant from the Omidyar Network, a support organization created by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

Mr. Malamud said his goal is to digitize the entire United States government documents collection, which has been estimated to include up to 100 million pages of publications ranging from the Congressional Record to the Federal Register….

Public.Resource.Org’s online collection [from other projects] includes 21 million copyright records, 5 million G.P.O. pages as well as information from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Patent Office and other federal agencies.