Scholarly Publishing News for the UI Community
For a very different approach to scholarly publishing, take a look at the inaugural articles in PeerJ: https://peerj.com/
As reported by the New York Times and other news outlets, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) and associated plaintiffs have reached a legal settlement with Google regarding its digitization effort, which makes books available in Google Books and HathiTrust.
The New York Times account is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/technology/google-and-publishers-settle-over-digital-books.html
PeerJ is a peer-reviewed journal-and-preprint service with a new publishing model: researchers pay a modest membership fee to publish in the journal, while retaining copyright to their work. Lifetime memberships begin at $99.
For more details, see this entry on the Wired Campus blog: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-publishing-venture-gives-researchers-control-over-access/36651
Steve Kolowich, writing for Inside Higher Ed, reports on the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), or SOPA, due to be taken up next week by the House Judiciary Committee. The Library Copyright Alliance, a group made up of the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries, has written to committee members expressing concern that the measure would leave university libraries open to prosecution for current practices considered legal under the fair use provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law.
To read the complete article, see: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/09/library-associations-say-legislation-could-expose-them-copyright-prosecution.
