Alternative Publishing Models Category

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Humanities Scholars Discuss Their ‘Shared Mental Map’ for a New Age of Digital Communication

A report on the Scholarly Communications Institute just held at UVa talks about the future of “digital humanities,” the academic reward system and new models for communicating scholarly work.

See http://chronicle.com/article/Humanities-Scholars-Discuss/128282/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For views into t he future by some of the participants, see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NiQSR-e-Yu88-IsVmezcE1QHPBKRNmbXpScdMhBmzC8/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1#

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Top Research Funders found top-tier open access bioscience journal

Three research organizations who are major funders of biomedical research have announced their intention to create a top-tier open access e-journal. Yesterday the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust proclaimed their plan for a new journal to publish the best research in the biomedical and life sciences. The journal, as yet unnamed, will exist only online and employ an “open and transparent” peer review system. As an open access journal it will be free to readers anywhere. The first issue is expected in 2012. The announcement makes no such claims, but reads as if this new journal is intended to compete in terms of impact and prestige with Nature and Science.

From the announcement: 

“The three research organizations developed their plans following a workshop in 2010 at HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus attended by a number of leading scientists. The participants concluded that there was a need for a model of academic publishing that better suits the needs of the research community.” [Emphasis added]

See http://www.hhmi.org/news/20110627.html

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National Academies Press Puts All 4,000 Books Online at No Charge

On June 2 National Academies Press announced it would offer its entire PDF catalog of books for free, as PDF files  that can be downloaded by anyone. While many of their books had been previously available online at no charge, this announcement applies to their entire published corpus. See the whole story here.

 

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Transitions: scholarly communication news for the UI Community (May 2010)

May 2010
Issue 2.10

Welcome to the spring issue of Transitions.

The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers’ attention some of the many new projects and developments informing the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new products and programs, the open access movement, and other alternative publishing models. Scholarly communication refers to the full range of formal and informal means by which scholars and researchers communicate, from email discussion lists to peer-reviewed publication. In general, authors are seeking to document and share new discoveries with their colleagues, while readers–researchers, students, librarians and others–want access to all the literature relevant to their work.

While the system of scholarly communication exists for the benefit of the world’s research and educational community and the public at large, it faces a multitude of challenges and is undergoing rapid change brought on by technology. To help interested members of the UI community keep up on these challenges and changes we plan to put out 4 issues per year of this newsletter.  Please visit our web site, Transforming Scholarly Communication, to find out more about this topic.

This newsletter is designed to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu.

Read these articles in our May newsletter:

Federal Research Public Access Act: Updates and Commentaries

Open Access to Scientific Publications: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Opening the Doors to Research: Open Access is changing the way we learn about research

NYTimes OpEd on copyright: The End of History (Books)

Wikipedia Lets You Order Printed Books

Lessig: “For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future”

Google Starts Grant Program for Scholars of Digitized Books

Peer review: What is it good for?

Publisher seeks patent related online peer review and publishing process

Commercial Publisher Financial Results

Open Science: some new developments

Harvard Business School approves open access policy

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: report on faculty values and needs

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Open Access to Scientific Publications: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Open Access to Scientific Publications: The good, the bad, and the ugly, Communications of the ACM , by Michel Beaudouin-Lafon:

The opening:

In his July 2009 Communications editor’s letter “Open, Closed, or Clopen Access?”, editor-in-chief Moshe Vardi addressed the question of open access to this magazine and to ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) publications in general. Scientific publishing, like all areas of publishing, is undergoing major changes. One reason is the advent of the Internet, which fosters new types of publishing models. Another less-known factor is the exponential increase in the number of scientific publications (see the figure here), which has turned this area into a serious business. In this column, I take a look at commercial and Open Access publishing, and at the role that professional societies such as ACM can play in this evolving world.

Excerpt from the conclusion:

Open Access is a valuable goal, but the scientific community is overly naive about the whole business of scientific publishing. Societies and nonprofit organizations need to continue to lead the way to improve the dissemination of research results, but the scientific community at large must support them against the business-centric views of commercial publishers.

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Wikipedia Lets You Order Printed Books

Wikipedia’s launching a new feature for English readers: The ability to create custom books from Wikipedia’s huge bank of free content. Because of the way Wikipedia’s images and copy are licensed, they’re free for anyone to access, use and share in this way.

PediaPress is a book publisher for wiki content; it’s in a long-term business relationship with Wikipedia (Wikipedia) to print these books. PediaPress now offers paperbacks and will soon add hardcover books to its catalog, as well.

The price of each book varies, depending on the number of pages; paperbacks start at $8.90. Users can also simply download a PDF of the “books” they create.

Read the article on Mashable and view an explanatory video at: http://mashable.com/2010/05/06/wikipedia-books/

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Transitions: scholarly communication news for the UI Community – January 2010

January 2010
Issue 1.10

Welcome to the winter issue of Transitions.

The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers’ attention some of the many new projects and developments informnig the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new products and programs, the open access movement, and other alternative publishing models. Scholarly communication refers to the full range of formal and informal means by which scholars and researchers communicate, from email discussion lists to peer-reviewed publication. In general, authors are seeking to document and share new discoveries with their colleagues, while readers–researchers, students, librarians and others–want access to all the literature relevant to their work.

While the system of scholarly communication exists for the benefit of the world’s research and educational community and the public at large, it faces a multitude of challenges and is undergoing rapid change brought on by technology. To help interested members of the UI community keep up on these challenges and changes we plan to put out 4 issues per year of this newsletter.  Please visit our web site, Transforming Scholarly Communication, to find out more about this topic.

This newsletter is designed to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu.

Read these articles in our January newsletter:

Public Access to Federally Funded Research – Public input
University Press survival… through open access
Compact for Open Access Publication Equity (COPE)
PLoS One to be indexed by Web of Science
Optical Society of America – a pioneer in scholarly publishing innovation
Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act
Open Access Encyclopedias
Who will pay for Arxiv?
Studies on Access – a review
Medical Schools Quizzed on Ghostwriting
Scholarly and Research Communication, a new OA journal
Wellcome Trust calls for greater transparency

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Open Access Encyclopedias

Inside HigherEd
December 14, 2009

Excerpts:

Can an information source that is free also be reliable? Or does the price of content always reflect its value? In higher education, this debate usually takes place in the context of academic publishing, where open access journals have emerged to challenge their pricey print predecessors. This mirrors a wider trend in media, where lean, Web-based, free-content outlets have begun supplanting newspapers, magazines, and other publications that depend on subscription revenue.

The same narrative is playing out in the world of scholarly reference works. Encyclopedia Britannica, the genre’s sturdiest brand, has been marginalized in the Internet age by Wikipedia and Google — tools it dismisses as untrustworthy. Quality, Britannica says, comes at a price: $69.95 per year for Web access, to be exact ($1,349 if you want the bound volumes). Professors, tending to agree, have debated whether and how their students should be allowed to use Wikipedia while lamenting the lazy research habits Google has enabled.

Meanwhile, a number of academic institutions are quietly trying to do what Britannica and others say can’t be done: build online encyclopedias that are rigorous, scholarly, and free to access.

Read on….

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Studies on Access – a review

Philip M. Davis has written a “review of the empirical literature on access to scholarly information. This review focuses on surveys of authors, article download and citation analysis.”  The pre-print is available in Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3953v1

Excerpts:

In reviewing the literature, there is surprising consistency in the conclusions of these studies: access to the published literature is improving, and those who generate knowledge view access issues as largely unimportant. We should emphasize the phrase “those who generate knowledge,” since there has been very little work on the dissemination of scientific information to those who use – but do not contribute to – the literature (i.e. teachers, medical practitioners, industrial researchers, and the lay public).

Moreover, most studies have focused on access to the formal, published literature and assume that access is provided either directly from the publisher or through a library intermediary. We should not ignore the many informal ways academics share documents among informal networks of peers. Lastly, we should understand that most of the surveys and interviews cited below were conducted prior to the recent economic downturn, which have resulted in significant material reductions in major academic libraries.

from the Conclusion:

In conclusion, the literature on the access indicates that access to the scientific literature is improving, and that compared to other research-related concerns, access is a low-priority concern. There is a dearth of research on whether free access to the scientific literature is making a difference in non-research contexts, such as in teaching, medical practice, industry and government policy making. Moreover, more work needs to be done on the dissemination of scientific papers through non-formal models such as peer-to-peer sharing networks.

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Medical Schools Quizzed on Ghostwriting

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is a leading critic of conflicts of interest in biomedical research, is focusing on the issue of journal ghostwriting. The New York Times reported that he has written to 10 medical schools, asking about whether they have policies that deal with issues raised by pharmaceutical companies ghostwriting articles that appear under the names of university researchers.

NYT excerpt:

Mr. Grassley, of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent the letters as part of his continuing investigation of so-called medical ghostwriting. The term refers to publication of medical journal articles in which an outside writer — sometimes paid by a drug or medical devices company whose product is being studied — has done extensive work on the article without being named on the publication. Instead, one or more academic researchers may receive author credit.

Mr. Grassley said ghostwriting had hurt patients and raised costs for taxpayers because it used prestigious academic names to promote medical products and treatments that might be expensive or less effective than viable alternatives.