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Cornell gets major grant to support arXiv

By
Edward Shreeves
– August 29, 2012Posted in: Alternative Publishing Models, Digital Publishing, Economics of Publishing, Open Access, Repositories

Cornell University Library has announced a major grant from the Simons Foundation to support the costs of operating arXiv. The grant will provide up to $300,000 per year to match contributions from institutions which have supported arXiv since 2010.  From the announcement:

arXiv, the free repository that has revolutionized the way scientists share information, is adopting a new governance and business model that will allow it to grow and succeed in the future….As an open-access service, [arXiv] allows scientists to share “preprint” research before publication and boasts hundreds of thousands of contributors. In 2011 alone, arXiv saw close to 50 million downloads from all over the world and received more than 76,000 new submissions.

Iowa–through the University Libraries–has committed to providing annual support for arXiv since a call for support went out from Cornell. It is an especially important resource for researchers in physics, mathematics, and computer science, among others. It has been hosted at Cornell since 2001, when its founder, Paul Ginsparg, joined the faculty. See also the article by Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle.

 

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Journals’ Ranking System Roils Research

By
Karen Fischer
– August 28, 2012Posted in: Impact Factor

An article in the Wall Street Journal reports on the increasing practice of journals and authors to find ways to play the system that ranks scholarly publications.  At issue, this time, were two papers published by The Scientific World Journal which excessively cited the journal Cell Transplantation.  The Scientific World Journal retracted both articles, however Thomson Reuters, which publishes the impact factors, suspended both journals for two years, which is a serious “blow to the researchers who publish” in them. “The disapproval isn’t about the metric itself but about its misuse,” says Jim Testa, a vice president of editorial development and publisher relations at Thomson Reuters.

Phil Davis, a publishing consultant, who is quoted in the WSJ article and who researches citation gaming, has studied Cell Transplantation’s citation patterns and noted in an April blog entry that “a review article published in another journal, Medical Science Monitor, had cited a total of 490 articles in the field, of which 445 were articles that had appeared in Cell Transplantation alone, in 2008 and 2009. Both those years were used to compute the 2010 impact factor for Cell Transplantation, and those citations apparently had an effect: the journal’s IF rose from 5.126 in 2009 to 6.204 in 2010, a jump of 21%.”

article by Naik, Gautam. Wall Street Journal (Online) [New York, N.Y] 24 Aug 2012

 

 

 

 

 

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US District Court judge again rules against publishers suing Georgia State

By
Edward Shreeves
– August 13, 2012Posted in: Copyright, Publishers, University Presses

On Friday US District Court judge Orinda Evans ruled against publishers seeking an injunction that would have imposed restrictions on faculty wanting to use copyrighted material in courses. She also required the publishers to pay Georgia State’s attorney fees.  In a story from Inside Higher Ed Steve Kolowich reports “In the course of explaining her decision to make the publishers foot the bill for the university’s legal defense, the judge declared what observers have been opining for months: “On balance,” she wrote, “the court finds that the defendants are the prevailing party in this case.” For the opinion itself see http://chronicle.com/items/biz/pdf/pdflawsuit.pdf

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The Global University Press

By
Wendy Robertson
– July 31, 2012Posted in: University Presses

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education provides another perspective on University Presses. “The Global University Press” (July 23, 2012) by Peter J. Dougherty, director of Princeton University Press, looks at the global market and how University Presses can benefit from increased international focus. Dougherty discusses several trends in global scholarship and lists innovations that can aid University presses:

  1. University Press Content Consortium’s Books on Project MUSE and Books at JSTOR
  2. Transnational advance of online book merchants
  3. Print on demand, or POD
  4. Digitally driven publicity
  5. Use of social and other digital media to communicate with local sales representatives in foreign countries

He adds, “The most crucial work in creating the global university press lies with acquisitions editors, who will be building the lists of the future.”

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“Library of the Future” Nets Large NEH Grant

By
Mike Wright
– July 30, 2012Posted in: Uncategorized

As reported by Jennifer Howard the The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus, the proposed Digital Public Library for the Humanities netted a $1-million grant from the National Endowment.  DPLA hopes to become an open-access national digital library.  Read the full story here.

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Altmetrics: Trying to Fill the Gap

By
Steve Ostem
– July 25, 2012Posted in: Uncategorized

Judy Luther’s recent post on Scholarly Kitchen highlights developments in Altmetrics, the movement to extend the measurement of the impact of scholarly research beyond the traditional metric of journal impact. Among other efforts, she mentions the article-level metrics (ALM) in development at PLoS.

Read more: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/07/25/altmetrics-trying-to-fill-the-gap/

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US News & World Report takes on academic journal publishing

By
Edward Shreeves
– July 24, 2012Posted in: Copyright, Economics of Publishing, Journal Pricing, Open Access, Peer Review, Publicly Funded Research, Publishers

In a long piece online at its web site, Simon Owens of US News and World Report offers an overview of academic (chiefly scientific) journal publishing and the rise of open access. See “Is the Academic Publishing Industry on the Verge of Disruption?” Starting with the recent Harvard letter on journal prices (see Transitions for April 23, 2012), the article reports on moves toward open access publishing, and resistance from commercial “closed access” publishers.

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High Energy Physics Journals Move toward Open Access

By
Edward Shreeves
– July 23, 2012Posted in: Alternative Publishing Models, Economics of Publishing, Open Access, Publishers

Through an international effort known as SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consrotium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) a number of key journals in high energy/particle physics are moving towards open access. Journals in this group include Physical Review C and D, Physics Letters B, Nuclear Physics B, and several others. CERN, which is overseeing the process, announced on July 17th that the tendering process was complete. The University of Iowa Libraries has supported SCOAP3 since its earliest days.

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Interview with Gita Manaktala from MIT Press

By
Wendy Robertson
– July 18, 2012Posted in: University Presses

The fourth post in Adeline Koh’s series Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing in The Chronicle of Higher Education  is “What is the Future of Academic Publishing? An Interview with Gita Manaktala from MIT Press”. Koh asks about open access publishing of monographs, alternative peer review, libraries as publishers and the future of University Presses. Makaktala states:

There are many possible futures for the scholarly monograph. Ultimately its fate is not in the hands of university presses, which have struggled to keep it alive in spite of declining readership. (Academic libraries have likewise struggled to support the monograph despite falling circulation.) The future depends on whether scholars themselves value the monograph enough to keep reading it. If so, funding models for monographs can and will be found.

The full interview can be read at http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/what-is-the-future-of-academic-publishing-an-interview-with-gita-manaktala-from-mit-press/41335.

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UK announces open access requirement for articles based on gov’t funded research

By
Edward Shreeves
– July 17, 2012Posted in: Economics of Publishing, Open Access, Publicly Funded Research

On July 16th the British government announced that it would require articles published on the basis of publicly funded research to be published in open access form. Portions of the announcement follow. An article in the Guardian describes the plan in more detail and reports some reactions.

“The government has announced that it will make publicly funded scientific research available for anyone to read for free, accepting recommendations in a report on open access by Dame Janet Finch.

This will likely see a major increase in the number of taxpayer-funded research papers freely available to the public.

Science Minister David Willetts said:

“Removing paywalls that surround taxpayer funded research will have real economic and social benefits. It will allow academics and businesses to develop and commercialise their research more easily and herald a new era of academic discovery.”

Among the recommendations that have been accepted by the Government are:

  • Moving to deliver open access through a ‘gold’ model, where article processing-charges are paid upfront to cover the cost of publication.
  • Walk-in rights for the general public, so they can have free access to global research publications owned by members of the UK Publishers’ Association, via public libraries.
  • Extending the licensing of access enjoyed by universities to high technology businesses for a modest charge.”
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