About Author: Karen Fischer

Posts by Karen Fischer

Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act

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

SPARC
For immediate release
November 10, 2009

Washington, DC – “For America to obtain an optimal return on our investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as broadly as possible,” is the message that forty one Nobel Prize-winning scientists in medicine, physics, and chemistry gave to Congress in an open letter delivered yesterday. The letter marks the fourth time in five years that leading scientists have called on Congress to ensure free, timely access to the results of federally funded research – this time asking leaders to support the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S.1373).

The Nobel Prize-winners write:

As the pursuit of science is increasingly conducted in a digital world, we need policies that ensure that the opportunities the Internet presents for new research tools and techniques to be employed can be fully exploited. The removal of access barriers and the enabling of expanded use of research findings has the potential to dramatically transform how we approach issues of vital importance to the public, such as biomedicine, climate change, and energy research. As scientists and as taxpayers too, we support FRPAA and urge its passage.

Transitions: scholarly communication news for the UI Community – July 2009

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Alternative Publishing Models

July 2009
Issue 2.09

Welcome to the Summer issue of Transitions.

The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers’ attention some of the many new projects and developments affecting 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 aims to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu.

Table of Contents:

University of Kansas Adopts Open Access Policy

10 University-Press Directors Back Free Access to Scholarly Articles

Taxpayer Alliance Applauds Bill to Broaden Access to Federal Research Results

Researchers Urged to Think Harder About Compiling and Sharing Data

Elsevier News: Published Fake Journals and Pays for Good Book Reviews?

Open Access and Global Participation in Science

Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research

Case Studies of Three No-fee OA Humanities Journals

Impact of Economic Downturn on Professional and Scholarly Societies

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” Rights Retention for Scholarly Articles

AAUP Report: Among Calls for Collaboration, a Plea to Reinvent University Presses

Open Access: The Sooner the Better

Medical Students, Other Student Groups Endorse Open Access

University of Kansas Adopts Open Access Policy

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Open Access, Repositories

KU News Release:

June 26, 2009
Contact: Rebecca Smith, KU Libraries, (785) 864-1761.

LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas has become the nation’s first public university to adopt an “open access” policy that makes its faculty’s scholarly journal articles available for free online.

The move aligns KU with Harvard and Stanford universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which have similar policies in place.

Scholarly articles — the method by which a professor presents original research results — normally are published in peer-reviewed journals and available only through paid subscriptions.

Under the new faculty-initiated policy approved by Chancellor Robert Hemenway, digital copies of all articles produced by the university’s professors will be housed in KU ScholarWorks, an existing digital repository for scholarly work created by KU faculty and staff in 2005. KU ScholarWorks houses more than 4,400 articles submitted in digital formats that assure their long-term preservation.

Professors will be allowed to seek a waiver but otherwise will be asked to provide electronic forms of all articles to the repository. KU’s Faculty Senate overwhelmingly endorsed the policy at a meeting earlier this year, but additional policy details, including the waiver process, will be developed by a senate task force in the coming academic year, said Faculty Senate President Lisa Wolf-Wendel, professor of education leadership and policy studies. The task force will be led by Ada Emmett, associate librarian for scholarly communications.

“Academic publishing has become increasingly commercial and unavailable to other scholars, or to the general public, in recent years,” said A. Townsend Peterson, distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at KU. “This new policy offers a voluntary means of opening doors to much of KU’s journal-based scholarship. This policy represents a first step towards a new means of scholarly communication, in which the entire global academic community has access to the totality of scholarship. We all can participate in the scholarly exchange that leads to new knowledge creation.”

Peterson said open access policies such as KU’s will bring greater visibility to the authors’ work and will showcase the breadth and depth of the faculty’s contributions to academic research and to the university’s mission.

“Granting the university the right to deposit a copy of scholarly journal articles in an open digital repository extends the reach of the scholarship, providing the widest possible audience and increasing its possible impact,” said Lorraine J. Haricombe, dean of libraries.

Read more about this on Peter Suber’s Open Access Blog.

10 University-Press Directors Back Free Access to Scholarly Articles

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Open Access, Publishers

In a move that puts them at odds with the official stance of the Association of American University Presses, a group of university-press directors yesterday issued a position statement that endorses “the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication.”

The statement was signed by the directors of a group of small and medium-size presses, including Penn State University, Rockefeller University Press, the University of Michigan Press, and the University Press of New England. It was posted on Peter Suber’s Open Access News blog.

“The signatories think that it is important to publicly align ourselves with the stance taken by many university faculties and administrators on scholarly communication,” Mike Rossner, the Rockefeller press’s director, told The Chronicle by e-mail on Wednesday. His press makes its content publicly available six months after publication, he said, “and our revenues have increased every year since then.” That experience has led his press to conclude that “providing public access to scholarly-journal articles after a short delay is compatible with our subscription-based business model.”

from The Chronicle: Daily News Blog, 4 June 2009, by Jennifer Howard

Text from the Position Statement:

Position Statement From University Press Directors on Free Access to Scholarly Journal Articles:

The undersigned university press directors support the dissemination of scholarly research as broadly as possible.

We support the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication. We understand that the length of time before free release of journal articles will by necessity vary for other disciplines.

We support the principle that scholarly research fully funded by governmental entities is a public good and should be treated as such. We support legislation that strengthens this principle and oppose legislation designed to weaken it.

We support the archiving and free release of the final, published version of scholarly journal articles to ensure accuracy and citation reliability.

We will work directly with academic libraries, governmental entities, scholarly societies, and faculty to determine appropriate strategies concerning dissemination options, including institutional repositories and national scholarly archives.

The statement is signed by the directors of the University Press of Florida, University of Akron Press, University Press of New England, Athabasca University Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Calgary Press, University of Michigan Press, Rockefeller University Press, Penn State University Press, and University of Massachusetts Press.

Taxpayer Alliance Applauds Bill to Broaden Access to Federal Research Results

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Open Access, Publicly Funded Research

For immediate release
June 25, 2009

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org
(202) 296-2296 ext 121

Taxpayer Alliance applauds bill to broaden access to federal research results Federal Research Public Access Act introduced today

Washington, DC – Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-
TX) today introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill to ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies. The proposed bill is welcomed by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a coalition of research institutions, consumers, patients, and others formed to support open public access to publicly funded research.

FRPAA would require those agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from such funding no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The bill gives individual agencies flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for interoperability and public accessibility, and have provisions for long-term archiving.

“Ready access to published research will advance the frontiers of knowledge more rapidly, bringing the fruits of federal expenditure for research to citizens more quickly,” said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Association of Public and Land- grant Universities. “FRPAA guarantees that access to all – scientists and citizens alike. This bill balances the public’s right to access what it has paid for, while preserving the time-tested institutions on which vetting and distribution of scholarly research has long relied.”

The bill covers unclassified research funded by agencies including:
Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

Sir Richard Roberts, Nobel Laureate and Chief Scientific Officer for New England Biolabs, welcomed the bill, saying, “I support any measure that will help disseminate the findings of scientific research in an unimpeded fashion. This bill will provide an important new resource for scientists in all disciplines to use in innovative ways.
It acknowledges the new reality of how science is conducted, and provides critical support to help accelerate research, discovery and innovation. This is good for science, and ultimately good for the public.”

“FRPAA will pay especially generous dividends to students by opening access to publically funded research – a significant portion of which has been unavailable to undergraduate and graduate students alike,”
noted Nick Shockey, Student Outreach Fellow for SPARC and recent graduate of Trinity University, San Antonio. “This legislation will help ensure that a student’s education is limited only by curiosity rather than by the access each campus is able to afford.”

“We welcome the introduction of this landmark legislation,” added Heather Joseph, spokesperson for the Alliance and Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
This bill reflects the recognition that expanded access to research results will benefit all citizens. Every member of the public has a stake in this research. Whether it is understanding climate change, developing renewable energy resources, or helping to halt a flu pandemic, these research results are of critical value to every American taxpayer. We look forward to working with the wide coalition of supporters of public access to see this legislation come to fruition.”

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access calls on organizations and individuals to write in support of the bill through the Web site at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org .

For more information about the Federal Research Public Access Act, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

###

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

————————————-
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
jennifer@arl.org
(202) 296-2296 x121
Fax: (202) 872-0884

Read another article about FRPAA from Library Journal: Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) Reintroduced in Senate

Excerpt:

It looks like there’s a new copyright battle brewing in Congress after U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman, (I-CT) reintroduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill that would require every federal department and agency with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make their research available to the public within six months of publication.

The bill sets up a direct showdown—or perhaps a stalemate—with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), who in February of this year, introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 801) an opposing bill supported by publishers that would prohibit the federal government from requiring copyright transfer in connection with receiving federal funding.

Elsevier News: Published Fake Journals and Pays for Good Book Reviews?

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Publishers

Elsevier has gotten some bad press of late for practices that undermine the quality of the scholarship they publish. Read on:

From the Scholarly Kitchen, by Phil Davis, May 7, 2009:

According to the magazine The Scientist, the publishing giant Elseiver admitted to publishing six fake medical journals between 2000 and 2005.

These “journals” were all sponsored by pharmaceutical companies but lacked proper disclosure of sponsorship. The initial finding, released on April 30 in The Scientist, involved the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a publication which was paid for by Merck. The publication, complete with an honorary editorial board of academics, was largely a compendium of reprinted articles and reviews from other Elsevier journals that presented data favorable to Merck’s products. All six publications were released in Australia.

Read on….

And Peter Suber has collected comments about Elsevier’s antics on his blog entry “More comments about Elsevier’s fake journal.”

Elsevier Won’t Pay for Praise, Inside HigherEd, June 23, 2009

Excerpt:

As if the textbook industry didn’t have an image problem already…

Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. While those popular Web sites’ customer reviews have long been known to be something less than scientific, and prone to manipulation if an author has friends write on behalf of a new work, the idea that a major academic publisher would attempt to pay for good reviews angered some professors who received the e-mail pitch.

Here’s what the e-mail — sent to contributors to the textbook — said:

“Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels.”

Read on…

Open Access and Global Participation in Science

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Open Access

James A. Evans and Jacob Reimer, Science, 20 February 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5917, p. 1025

Abstract: Previous investigations into the impact of open-access journals on subsequent citations confounded open and electronic access and failed to track availability over time. With new data, we separated these effects. We demonstrate that a journal receives a modest increase in citations when it comes online freely, but the jump is larger when it first comes online through commercial sources. This effect reverses for poor countries where free-access articles are much more likely to be cited. Together, findings suggest that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists’ investigations.

Read the full article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;323/5917/1025

Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Humanities

by Mark Bauerlein, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2009.

Excerpts from his opinion article:

It was sometime in the 1980s, I think, that a basic transformation of the aims of literary criticism was complete. Not the spread of political themes and identity preoccupations, which struck outsiders and off-campus critics like William Bennett, a former secretary of education turned radio host, as the obvious change, but a deeper adjustment in the basic conception of what criticism does. It was, namely, the shift from criticism-as-explanation to criticism-as-performance. Instead of thinking of scholarship as the explication of the object—what a poem means or a painting represents—humanists cast criticism as an interpretative act, an analytical eye in process.

…In a working paper I wrote recently for the American Enterprise Institute, “Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own,” I reported that over the past five decades, the “productivity” of scholars in the fields of languages and literature had increased hugely: from approximately 13,000 publications to 72,000 a year. Consider the output in literary studies. From 1950 to 1985, 2,195 items of criticism and scholarship devoted to William Wordsworth appeared. Virginia Woolf garnered 1,307, Walt Whitman 1,986, Faulkner 3,487, Milton 4,274, and Shakespeare at the top, with 16,771. Type any major author into the MLA International Bibliography database and more daunting tallies pop up. In each pile lies everything from plot summaries to existentialist reflections. But for all practical purposes, such as teaching an undergraduate class, they impart the meanings and representations to the full.

The accomplishment of the enterprise, however, was a curse for young aspirants, the graduate student in search of a dissertation (like I was in 1985) and the assistant professor in need of a book. They had to write something new and different. Theories and valuations that displaced the meaning of the work and prized the unique angle of the interpreter didn’t just flatter the field. They empowered novices to carry on. The long shadow of precursors dissipated in the light of creative, personal critique. The authors studied might remain, but there were new theories to rehearse upon them and topics to expound through them, controversies in which to “situate” oneself, and readerly dexterities to display.

…Foundations, university humanities research centers, and other organizations that subsidize humanities research also should recognize the audience decline. When they financed research in 1960 on, say, American literature, they helped scholars fill gaps and fissures in literary history and understanding. But in 2009, after the publication of 225,749 more items of scholarship and criticism on American literature, the same support means … what?

Unless institutions adjust criteria, the incentives will continue, and so will labor-intensive but audience-indifferent publishing in saturated areas.

Two policy changes would go a long way to remedying the problem.

One, departments should limit the materials they examine at promotion time. If aspirants may submit only 100 pages to reviewers, they will publish less and ensure that those 100 pages are superb.

Two, subsidizers should shift their support away from saturated areas and toward unsaturated areas, in particular toward research into teaching and even more toward classroom and curricular initiatives.

…Read the complete article at: http://chronicle.com/article/Diminishing-Returns-in/47107/

The article is generating quite a few comments from readers as well, so check those out as well.

Case Studies of Three No-fee OA Humanities Journals

Karen Fischer

– July 23, 2009Posted in: Humanities, Open Access

Sigi A. Jottkandt, No-fee OA Journals in the Humanities, Three Case Studies: A Presentation by Open Humanities Press, a presentation at Berlin 5 Open Access: From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination, (Padua, Italy, 19-21 September, 2008).

Abstract: Open Humanities Press (OHP) is the first open access publisher devoted to contemporary critical theory. OHP was created as a grassroots movement of academics, librarians, journal editors and technology specialists to address the growing inequality of readers’ access to critical materials necessary for our research. In this presentation, I offer case studies of journals edited by the founders of the new OA academic journal consortium, Open Humanities Press, as a starting point for a discussion of how professional open access publishing may be achieved without author-side fees (a ‘business model’ that for both practical and cultural reasons is inappropriate in the context of humanities publishing). While reputable open access publishing in the humanities confronts significant challenges, the problem of how to finance it – the problem that is frequently raised as the Gold path’s chief obstacle in the sciences – appears far and away the least pressing.

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