About Author: Karen Fischer

Posts by Karen Fischer

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

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Copyright, Google

Lawrence Lessig published “For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future” in The New Republic (Jan 26, 2010).

Excerpt:

There is much to praise in this settlement [Google Books Settlement]. Lawsuits are expensive and uncertain. They take years to resolve. The deal Google struck guaranteed the public more free access to free content than “fair use” would have done. Twenty percent is better than snippets, and a system that channels money to authors is going to be liked much more than a system that does not. (Not to mention that the deal is elegant and clever in ways that a contracts professor can only envy.)

Yet a wide range of companies, and a band of good souls, have now joined together to attack the Google settlement. Some charge antitrust violations. Some fear that Google will collect information about who reads what—violating reader privacy. And some just love the chance to battle this decade’s digital giant (including last decade’s digital giant, Microsoft). The main thrust in almost all of these attacks, however, misses the real reason to be concerned about the future that this settlement will build. For the problem here is not just antitrust; it is not just privacy; it is not even the power that this (enormously burdensome) free library will give this already dominant Internet company. Indeed, the problem with the Google settlement is not the settlement. It is the environment for culture that the settlement will cement.

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Google Starts Grant Program for Scholars of Digitized Books

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Digital Publishing, Google

From the Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education), March 31, 2010

Even as a lawsuit over Google’s book-digitization project remains up in the air, the search giant has quietly started reaching out to universities in search of humanities scholars who are ready to roll up their sleeves and hit the virtual stacks.

The company is creating a “collaborative research program to explore the digital humanities using the Google Books corpus,” according to a call for proposals obtained by The Chronicle. Some of Google’s academic partners say the grant program marks the company’s first formal foray into supporting humanities text-mining research.

The call went out to a select group of scholars, offering up to $50,000 for one year. Google says it may choose to renew the grants for a second year. It is not clear whether anybody can apply for the money, or just the group that got the solicitation.

The effort seems largely focused on building tools to comb and improve Google’s digital library, whose book-search metadata—dates and other search-assisting information—one academic researcher calls a “train wreck.” These are some of the sample projects that Google lists in its call for proposals:

• Building software for tracking changes in language over time.

• Creating utilities to discover books and passages of interest to a particular discipline.

• Developing systems for crowd-sourced corrections to book data and metadata.

• The testing of a literary or historical hypothesis through innovative analysis of a book.

For more details of the program, read the full Chronicle story.

http://chronicle.com/article/Google-Starts-Grant-Program/64891/

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Peer review: What is it good for?

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Peer Review

Peer review: What is it good for?, Science in the Open, 5 Feb 2010, posted by Cameron Neylon:

Excerpts:

There remains much reverence of the traditional process of peer review. I may be over interpreting the tenor of Andrew Morrison’s editorial in BioEssays but it seems to me that he is saying, as many others have over the years “if we could just have the rigour of traditional peer review with the ease of publication of the web then all our problems would be solved”.  Scientists worship at the altar of peer review, and I use that metaphor deliberately because it is rarely if ever questioned. Somehow the process of peer review is supposed to sprinkle some sort of magical dust over a text which makes it “scientific” or “worthy”, yet while we quibble over details of managing the process, or complain that we don’t get paid for it, rarely is the fundamental basis on which we decide whether science is formally published examined in detail.

. . .Whatever value [peer review] might have we largely throw away. Few journals make referee’s reports available, virtually none track the changes made in response to referee’s comments enabling a reader to make their own judgement as to whether a paper was improved or made worse. Referees get no public credit for good work, and no public opprobrium for poor or even malicious work. And in most cases a paper rejected from one journal starts completely afresh when submitted to a new journal, the work of the previous referees simply thrown out of the window.

. . .Journals need to acknowledge the papers they’ve rejected, along with dates of submission. Ideally all referees reports should be made public, or at least re-usable by the authors. If full publication, of either the submitted form of the paper or the referees report is not acceptable then journals could publish a hash of the submitted document and reports against a local key enabling the authors to demonstrate submission date and the provenance of referees reports as they take them to another journal.

In my view referees need to be held accountable for the quality of their work. If we value this work we should also value and publicly laud good examples. And conversely poor work should be criticised.

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Publisher seeks patent related online peer review and publishing process

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Open Access, Peer Review, Publishers

Nature News, 7 May 2010, by Declan Butler:

Excerpt:

A scientist in Switzerland is seeking to patent a system for peer reviewing and publishing scientific papers online, Nature  has learned.

Henry Markram, a neuroscientist and publishing entrepreneur who works at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, last year filed internationally for a broad patent on systems for interactive online peer review and publishing open-access journals.

The application, says Markram, was filed mainly to protect a fleet of author-pays, open-access journals published by the Lausanne-based Frontiers Media, a company he created in 2008 with his wife Kamila Markram, another neuroscientist at the EPFL.

…The main innovative features of both the journals and the patent, says Markram, are real-time evaluation of papers and a high degree of automation. Software matches articles to potential reviewers, and authors and referees discuss comments and revisions in an online forum, for example.

The result is just like an Internet discussion group, with editors and authors able to follow comment threads in real time, says Robert Harvey, a molecular neuroscientist at the School of Pharmacy, University of London, who has experience of Frontiers journals as both an editor and an author.

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Commercial Publisher Financial Results

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Economics of Publishing, Publishers

Read about the  financial results of two large commercial publishers.  Even in a global financial crisis, they are doing quite well for themselves.

Reed Elsevier announced it’s 2009 financial results.  Here’s an excerpt from the press release (thanks to DigitalKoans for the links and synposis)

Elsevier (44% of adjusted operating profits)

  • Revenue growth +4%, adjusted operating profit +9%, at constant currency
  • Strong growth in electronic clinical reference, clinical decision support and nursing and health professional education; continued weakness in pharma promotion
  • Solid science journal subscription renewals from 2008 supported 2009 revenue growth

Read more about it at “Robust Year for Reed Elsevier” (Booksellers.com)

excerpt:

The legal wing LexisNexis, which makes up 42% of adjusted operating profits for the group, saw sales grow 14%, and adjusted operating profit rise 13%, at constant currency. Reed said its core law firm markets were flat in US and marginally lower internationally reflecting a downturn in legal services industry.

The publishing arm of Reed Elsevier has had a “relatively robust year” in light of the economic downturn, thanks to good subscription renewal rates among its journals and strong e-book sales, the company has claimed.

The company saw revenue growth climb 14%, as did adjusted operating profit, and cashflow grew 11%. However reported operating profit declined 13%.

Elsevier, which contains the science publishing divisions and accounts for 44% of adjusted profits for the entire group, saw sales grow 4%, while profit increased 9%.

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. annouced it’s 2009 results (which are now no longer on Wiley’s website), but DigitalKoans sums it up well in his blog post, where he provides excerpts from a press release.

SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL, MEDICAL, AND SCHOLARLY (STMS)

  • Full year revenue +9% and fourth quarter revenue +17% on currency neutral basis (a nonrecurring acquisition accounting adjustment reported in fiscal year 2008 contributed 2% to the full year growth rate)
  • Full year contribution to profit +14% and fourth quarter contribution to profit +22% on a currency neutral basis
  • New contracts in fiscal year 2009 to publish 32 society journals; renewed or extended contracts for 87 journals; did not renew agreements to publish 9 journals

Global STMS revenue for fiscal year 2009 declined 1% to $969 million due to unfavorable foreign exchange of $97 million. Revenue advanced 9% on a currency neutral basis and including a $17 million acquisition accounting adjustment, which reduced revenue in fiscal year 2008. Increased revenue from journal subscription renewals, new business, global rights, and STMS books was partially offset by lower sales of backfiles, reprints, and custom publishing.

Direct contribution to profit for the fiscal year grew 4% from prior year to $399 million. On a currency neutral basis, contribution to profit advanced 14%. The year-over-year increase reflects top-line results and a $17 million accounting adjustment related to the Blackwell acquisition that reduced revenue in the comparable prior year period, partially offset by higher editorial fees due to the addition of more society journals and performance-related compensation.

For the fourth quarter, global STMS revenue was down 2% with a negative foreign exchange effect of $54 million. On a currency neutral basis, revenue advanced 17% due to the resolution of the third quarter journal billing delays, which shifted some revenue into the fourth quarter. Revenue also advanced due to new business. Higher global rights income was offset by lower backfile sales and advertising revenue. Direct contribution to profit for the quarter increased 3%, or 22% excluding the unfavorable impact of foreign exchange, mainly due to top line results.

STMS Journals
All regions exhibited journal sales growth, excluding unfavorable foreign exchange. The performance is mainly attributed to renewals, new business, and the acquisition accounting adjustment in fiscal year 2008. Subscription and pay-per-view revenue was up year-over-year, while backfile revenue fell due to the economic climate, particularly in the US. . . .

Journal Licenses
Journal licenses, which represent approximately 60% of our journal subscription revenue, provide academic, government, and corporate customers with online access to multiple journals. In the fourth quarter, agreements were signed or renewed with universities, library consortia, and government agencies in the US, Norway, Japan, China, Brazil, Canada, Greece, Chile, Denmark, and India.

STMS Books and References
Book sales and other related income, which account for approximately 17% of STMS revenue, were up 5% over fiscal year 2008 on a currency neutral basis. The total number of books published was up slightly. Online book sales rose approximately 20% to $10 million.

And Wiley’s 3rd quarter fiscal year 2010 results show that Wiley STM profit rates are up 18% to $89 million (for one quarter!), for a profit rate of 39%. Wiley is outsourcing – so these profits are accompanied by job losses in the U.S (from Heather Morrison).

excerpts:

“Global STMS revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 rose 13% to $228 million”

“Direct contribution to profit for the third quarter increased 18% to $89 million”

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Open Science: some new developments

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Open Data

There have been several interesting articles of late on open science.

Scientists Embrace Openness, by Chelsea Wald, Science, April 9, 2010

Excerpt:

History is replete with stories of scientists who hid their ideas from their competition; consider Leonardo da Vinci, whose odd backward writing may have been partly motivated by fear of thieves, or Isaac Newton, who concealed one idea by writing it in the form of an anagram. Science has long been a dog-eat-dog world.

So it may seem odd that a handful of scientists are going to similar lengths to share not just their results but also, sometimes, their raw data — even their lab notebooks — often in real time. They’re part of a movement called Open Science, or, more specifically, Open Notebook Science, whose motto is “no insider information.”

At first glance, going “open” would seem like a serious career risk — years of work could be for nothing if a competitor uses your work to beat you to publication — but many practitioners of openness say the benefits outweigh those risks. The benefits include increased opportunities for collaboration, more feedback from colleagues, and a greater likelihood that the research will get to the people who can use it. Counterintuitively, practitioners say that being open supports their claims of priority and relieves their anxiety about getting ripped off.

Open science: policy implications for the evolving phenomenon of user-led scientific innovation, by Victoria Stodden,  Journal of Science Communication, volume 09, 2010,  Issue 01, March 2010.

Abstract:

From contributions of astronomy data and DNA sequences to disease treatment research, scientific activity by non-scientists is a real and emergent phenomenon, and raising policy questions. This involvement in science can be understood as an issue of access to publications, code, and data that facilitates public engagement in the research process, thus appropriate policy to support the associated welfare enhancing benefits is essential. Current legal barriers to citizen participation can be alleviated by scientists’ use of the “Reproducible Research Standard,” thus making the literature, data, and code associated with scientific results accessible. The enterprise of science is undergoing deep and fundamental changes, particularly in how scientists obtain results and share their work: the promise of open research dissemination held by the Internet is gradually being fulfilled by scientists. Contributions to science from beyond the ivory tower are forcing a rethinking of traditional models of knowledge generation, evaluation, and communication. The notion of a scientific “peer” is blurred with the advent of lay contributions to science raising questions regarding the concepts of peer-review and recognition. New collaborative models are emerging around both open scientific software and the generation of scientific discoveries that bear a similarity to open innovation models in other settings. Public engagement in science can be understood as an issue of access to knowledge for public involvement in the research process, facilitated by appropriate policy to support the welfare enhancing benefits deriving from citizen-science.

My Data, Your Data, Our Data, by Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010

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

By
Karen Fischer
– May 10, 2010Posted in: Other

The Center for Studies in Higher Education has released (in January) Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines.

From the document at CSHE:

Since 2005, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been conducting research to understand the needs and practices of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. The complete results of our work can be found at the Future of Scholarly Communication’s project website. This report brings together the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions to closely examine scholarly needs and values in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

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

By
Karen Fischer
– January 15, 2010Posted in: Alternative Publishing Models

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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Public Access to Federally Funded Research – Public input

By
Karen Fischer
– January 15, 2010Posted in: Open Access, Publicly Funded Research

The Obama administration has launched a study of the open access model of publishing in which materials are made available free online.  The Office of Science and Technology Policy is in the process of collecting comments in a online public forum concerning public access to federally funded research.  While the comment period was supposed to end January 7th, it has been extended to January 21st.

OSTP has many blog entries describing the process.  Scroll down to the bottom to view comments.

Excerpt from the introductory posting explains the Administration’s intentions:

 The Administration is seeking public input on access to publicly-funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles. Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. The Administration is seeking views as to whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and the White House Open Government Initiative is launching a “Public Access Policy Forum” to invite public participation in thinking through what the Federal government’s policy should be with regard to public access to published federally-funded research results.

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