Archiving Category

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Google Book Settlement Information

By
Karen Fischer
– September 19, 2011Posted in: Archiving, Digital Publishing, Google, Repositories

Google has been in the news a lot, particularly regarding the Authors Guild anti-trust suit against the HathiTrust and several affiliated universities who have worked with Google to scan books.  Below is a list of articles (compiled by Nicki Saylor), lending background information on the Google Book Settlement, and some insights into the developments of the Authors Guild suit.  Continuing developments on this topic will be address in our blog.

As a service to faculty, other campus authors, and interested members of the UI community we have gathered some information related to the Google book settlement.

Recent Developments

Judge Rejects Settlement in Google Book Case, Saying It Goes Too Far (March 2011)
The proposed settlement in the long-standing class-action lawsuit over Google’s vast book-scanning project is dead, at least in its current form. In a ruling on Tuesday, the federal judge overseeing the case rejected the settlement, saying that it “would simply go too far,” even though “the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many.” But he also urged the parties to consider revising the settlement, and suggested an approach that would deal with his major concerns.

Federal judge indicates he won’t rule today, as speakers argue for and against the revised settlement agreement (Feb. 18, 2010)
Eighteen parties spoke out against the revised Google Settlement before the lunch break today in a fairness hearing before U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Five spoke in favor. The speakers were limited to five minutes each, and generally either boiled down points made in previous submissions or responded to recently filed documents.

Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved? (Feb. 16, 2010)
Late last week, Google and the plaintiffs filed their final briefs in defense of the Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) that is before the New York Southern Federal District Court. As the rhetoric around the Settlement heats up to white-hot intensity in the final days before the Fairness Hearing on February 18th, I’d like to offer a few personal thoughts from my vantage point at the California Digital Library.

The Google Book Settlement: Second Round Comments (Feb. 10, 2010)
Late last year, Google, the Author’s Guild, the American Association of Publishers, and the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit over Google’s massive book digitization program negotiated several revisions to their original Proposed Settlement Agreement (original agreement). The revisions were designed to address concerns raised by the Department of Justice and other critics who advised the court to reject the original agreement.1 The deadline to file comments on the new Proposed Amended Settlement Agreement (amended agreement) was January 28, 2010. The Department of Justice filed its comments on Thursday, February 4, 2010. This document describes the second round of comments.

Justice Dept. Criticizes Latest Google Book Deal (Feb. 5, 2010)
In another blow to Google’s plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Thursday said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions.

Open access and the Google book settlement (Dec. 2, 2009)
Google and the groups suing it –the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers–released a revised version of their settlement agreement on November 13. Judge Denny Chin gave it preliminary approval six days later. …Many sharp eyes and sharp minds are looking at what the revised agreement says, how it differs from the original agreement of October 2008, how well it answers objections levelled against the original, and whether the preliminary approval ought to become final approval. I won’t do any of that here. I want to focus on the settlement’s implications for OA.

Judge Grants Preliminary Approval to Revised Google Book Settlement (Nov. 20, 2009)
The federal judge overseeing the Google Book Search case has given preliminary approval to the revised settlement submitted late last Friday by the parties to the lawsuit. The new version is “within the range of possible approval,” according to a court order issued yesterday.

Parties Submit New Proposal to Settle Google Book Search Litigation (Nov. 15, 2009)
Though they kept the world waiting until the last legal minute, the parties to the proposed Google Book Search settlement managed to meet their new November 13 deadline to file a revamped version with the federal judge overseeing the case. Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers submitted Settlement 2.0 close to midnight Eastern time on Friday. (Read more about the settlement on the Google Public Policy Blog.)

November 9 Is New Deadline for Revised Google Book Search Settlement (Oct. 7, 2009)
The parties to the Google Book Search settlement have agreed to deliver an amended agreement to the judge in the case by November 9, according to reports in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and other media outlets.

Justice Department Wants Changes in Google Books Settlement (Sept. 21, 2009)
The U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on the proposed Google Book Search settlement with authors and publishers, advising the federal court overseeing the case that the deal in its current form “does not meet the legal standards this court must apply.”

At Congressional Hearing, Register of Copyrights Slams Google Settlement (Sep. 11, 2009)
At a Congressional hearing, Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights, U.S. Copyright Office, testified forcefully, warning that key parts of the settlement “are fundamentally at odds with the law,” creating a compulsory license for Google that should be the domain of Congress, not the courts.

CIC Provosts File Letter With Court in Google Settlement (Sep. 8, 2009)
The CIC has been a Google digitization partner since 2007. Under the terms of the partnership, Google will digitize up to ten million volumes across the CIC universities. The CIC has filed a letter with the federal court of New York overseeing the proposed Google Book Search settlement.

Library Associations Submit Supplemental Filing, Call for Increased Oversight of Google Agreement (Sep. 2, 2009)
The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) today submitted a supplemental filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York overseeing the proposed Google Book Search settlement to address developments that have occurred since the groups submitted their filing on May 4.

UC Academics Raise Major Concerns About Google Settlement (Aug. 20, 2009)
More than twenty University of California faculty members have written a letter to the court speaking on behalf of academic authors more interested in the public interest than in supporting themselves from their book revenues.

University of Michigan amends its agreement with Google (May 20, 2009)
The University of Michigan, one of the original participating libraries in the Google Book project, recently entered into an amended agreement that will govern the relationship between Google and Michigan if the proposed Google Book Search settlement is approved by the judge.

A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement (Nov. 30, 2009)
The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released a series of guides to help librarians better understand the revised terms of the Google Book Search Settlement. The first release was A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement. As a follow up, a second document, “A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement,” provides a concise description of the Google-Michigan amended terms. The third outlines the amended settlement agreement

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Harvard Business School approves open access policy

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Archiving, Open Access, Repositories

Two years to the day after the Faculty of Arts and Sciences became the first school at Harvard to vote an open-access policy, the Harvard Business School enacted their own policy on February 12, 2010, becoming the fifth Harvard school with a similar policy. Under the HBS policy (see below), like the previous policies, faculty agree to provide copies of their scholarly articles for distribution from the university’s DASH repository and grant the university a waivable license to distribute the articles.   [posted on the Occasional Pamphlet, Feb 28, 2010]

Harvard Business School Open-Access Policy

The Faculty of the Harvard Business School is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available articles that he or she has prepared for journal peer review and to exercise the copyright in those articles. More specifically, each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of these articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. The policy will apply to all such articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.

Since the policy will apply only to articles prepared for peer review, it thus does not apply to Harvard Business School Cases and Notes, or to articles written for the Harvard Business Review or other publications that are not peer-reviewed. The Dean or the Dean’s designate will waive application of the license for a particular article upon express direction by a Faculty member.

Each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the author’s final version of each article to the Division of Research and Faculty Development (DRFD) no later than the date of its publication. DRFD will submit the article to the Harvard University open access repository; the Provost’s Office may make it available to the public.

The Office of the Dean will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to time. Effects of the policy will be continuously monitored, and after three years it will be reviewed and a report presented to the Faculty.

To view all of Harvard’s OA policies, go to: http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/OpenAccess/policytexts.php

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Who will pay for Arxiv?

By
Karen Fischer
– January 15, 2010Posted in: Archiving, Repositories

Excerpt:

The e-print arXiv (pronounced “archive”) is a central repository of research articles in physics, mathematics, computer science, and quantitative biology. Since its inception in 1991 by theoretical physicist Paul Ginsparg, it has had a huge impact on the way science is done by providing free access to “pre-prints” of research papers. This meant that scientists from anywhere in the world with any background could access the latest research even if their university libraries didn’t have a copy of the particular journal in which it was published. This is a big deal since the cost of many of these journals created a gap between those institutions which could afford to pay for many journals and those which could not. In many ways arXiv “brought science into the 21st century” by allowing scientists to draw upon the collective scientific community more efficiently. Many credit it for pioneering the open access movement in scientific publishing.

But with increasing costs and the state of university budgets, the Cornell University Library (which operates the arXiv) is looking to find more cost-effective ways to support the arXiv and the much-needed overhauls in the software architecture (”arXiteXture”?). [Earlier this year Cornell closed its Physical Sciences library to help trim operational costs.]  Currently the Cornell library pays the $400,000/year operating cost to make the arXiv available free-of-charge to the rest of the world.

Read the entire blog post at US/LHC’s website: http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=3468

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MacArthur Foundation Adopts a Research Access Policy

By
Karen Fischer
– March 3, 2009Posted in: Archiving, Humanities, Open Access

The MacArthur Foundation adopted a research access policy, which took effect on September 18, 2008.  (Thanks to Open Access News). Excerpt:

…The Foundation’s policy is to ensure that the Grant Work Product furthers charitable purposes and benefits the public. To that end, the Foundation seeks prompt and broad dissemination of the Grant Work Product at minimal cost or, when justified, at a reasonable cost.

The Foundation encourages openness in research and freedom of access to underlying data by persons with a serious interest in the research. Grantees are also encouraged to explore opportunities to use existing and emerging internet distribution models and, when appropriate, open access journals, Creative Commons license or similar mechanisms that result in broad access for the interested field and public.

The Foundation recognizes there may be circumstances where limited or delayed dissemination of Grant Work Product or limited access to data may be appropriate to protect legitimate interests of the grantee, other funders, principal investigators or participants in research studies. Such circumstances will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Intellectual property rights (including copyright and patent rights) should not be used to limit or deny access to the Grant Work Product, to result in exclusive use of such Grant Work Product, or to create revenue that is not used for charitable purposes. While copyright to the Grant Work Product will ordinarily remain with the grantee, the Foundation will require that it be granted a no-cost assignable license to use or publish the Grant Work Product. The Foundation will exercise the license only if the grantee does not or cannot provide for broad and prompt dissemination consistent with this Policy. The Foundation may forego a license if the Foundation is reasonably satisfied that other appropriate arrangements will be implemented that will assure prompt public dissemination of the Grant Work Product.

View MacArthur’s entry in the SHERPA Juliet site, which outlines their publication policies regarding archiving.

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Read publisher policies on copyright, and more…

By
Karen Fischer
– November 14, 2008Posted in: Archiving, Copyright, Publishers

SHERPA, a consortium of UK libraries, investigates issues in the future of scholarly communication. It is developing open-access institutional repositories in universities to facilitate the rapid and efficient worldwide dissemination of research.

SHERPA has several resources for authors to use:

RoMEO: Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher’s copyright transfer agreement.  Additionally, you will find many sample publication agreements on this site.

Publishers allowing the deposition of their published version/PDF in Institutional Repositories. There is often a question about the use of the publishers own PDF version of research articles and whether these can be archived. It is often believed that all publishers prohibit the use of their own PDF: in fact the situation is very different. Use this site to find out what you can do with your article post-publication.

Publishers’ paid open access options often allow authors to immediately deposit their articles in open access repositories upon payment of a fee. The same publishers may also allow authors to deposit after an embargo period without payment of a fee. Use this site to find out if a publisher has an OA option, and the cost.

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Government Documents of Library in Boston to Go on Web

By
Karen Fischer
– February 5, 2008Posted in: Archiving

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.

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Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access

By
Karen Fischer
– November 16, 2007Posted in: Archiving, Digital Publishing

Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and Brian Lavoie, a research scientist at OCLC, have been named co-chairs of a Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and JISC will also be involved in the task force.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Berman and co-chair Brian Lavoie . . . will convene an international group of prominent leaders to develop actionable recommendations on economic sustainability of digital information for the science and engineering, cultural heritage, academic, public, and private sectors. The Task Force is expected to meet over the next two years and gather testimony from a broad set of thought leaders in preparation for the Task Force’s Final Report. . . .

The Task Force will bring together a group of national and international leaders who will focus attention on this critical grand challenge of the Information Age. Task Force members will represent a cross-section of fields and disciplines including information and computer sciences, economics, entertainment, library and archival sciences, government, and business. Over the next two years, the Task Force will convene a broad set of international experts from the academic, public and private sectors who will participate in quarterly panels and discussions. . . .

In its final report, the Task Force is charged with developing a comprehensive analysis of current issues, and actionable recommendations for the future to catalyze the development of sustainable resource strategies for the reliable preservation of digital information. During its tenure, the Task Force also will produce a series of articles about the challenges and opportunities of digital information preservation, for both the scholarly community and the public.

from DigitalKoans, September 25, 2007

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U of Iowa Participates in Permanent Electronic Journal Archiving Service

By
Karen Fischer
– May 1, 2007Posted in: Archiving, Publishers

In late 2006, The University of Iowa Libraries became a charter member of Portico (http://www.portico.org/). Portico offers a service which provides a permanent archive of electronic scholarly journals.

Background:
The scale and complexity of the infrastructure and operation necessary to preserve core electronic scholarly literature exceeds that which can be supported by any individual library or institutional budget. After extensive, iterative discussion in the library and publisher communities, the Portico electronic archiving service has been shaped in response to this need. Initial support for Portico is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ithaka, The Library of Congress, and JSTOR.

Portico provides all libraries supporting the archive with campus-wide access to archived content when specific trigger events occur, and when titles are no longer available from the publisher or other source. Trigger events include:

* A publisher stops operations; or
* A publisher ceases to publish a title; or
* A publisher no longer offers back issues; or
* Upon catastrophic and sustained failure of a publisher’s delivery platform.

Portico also provides a reliable means to secure perpetual access, if participating publishers choose to designate Portico as a provider of post-cancellation access. In addition, select librarians at participating libraries are granted password-controlled access for verification and audit purposes only.

View current list of participating publishers (more join every month):
http://www.portico.org/about/part_publishers.html

View a list of committed journal titles:
http://www.portico.org/about/committed_titles_alpha.html

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Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?

By
Karen Fischer
– May 1, 2007Posted in: Archiving, Publishers

To help the scholarly community better understand and evaluate how open archiving might impact journal subscriptions, the Publishing Research Consortium has released the summary paper ‘Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?’.

This paper is a condensed version of the earlier analysis released in November 2006. It looks at librarian purchasing preferences, and concludes that mandating self-archiving within six months or less of publication will undermine the subscription-based peer review journal. The summary paper, together with the original report, is freely available at http://www.publishingresearch.org.uk/.

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American Mathematical Society Journals to be Preserved in Portico

By
Karen Fischer
– February 13, 2007Posted in: Archiving

American Mathematical Society journals to be preserved in Portico

[ed. note: University of Iowa Libraries has licensed Portico and is a participant]

Non-profit electronic archiving service provider Portico, US, has announced that all the electronic content from one of its publisher participants – the American Mathematical Society (AMS) – has now been preserved in the Portico archive. AMS has chosen Portico as the archive for the current e-content of 11 journals (including the entirety of its three e-only titles). With this inclusion, more than 375,000 articles have been preserved within Portico.

The archive has fully preserved all the bibliographic data, PDF page content and supplemental files of over 10,000 articles published between 1995 and the present. It will now preserve new content from each of these 11 journals as it is published. In addition, AMS has designated Portico as an official delivery platform for post-cancellation access claims. Also, it will make an annual financial contribution to support Portico’s ongoing operations.

AMS is focused on pure and applied mathematical research and scholarship. It publishes the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and Mathematics of Computation among other titles. Since 1996, AMS has been archiving its four flagship print publications with JSTOR. By archiving its e-current content with Portico, it seeks to assure the future availability of the complete publication run of these four titles for future scholars, practitioners, researchers and students.

Click here to read the original press release.

KnowledgeSpeak, 26 Jan 2007, http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=3475&pickUpBatch=560#3475