Academic publisher Taylor & Francis has released the sixth in a series of press releases on the themes and findings of the Open Access (OA) Survey. In this survey, Taylor & Francis investigated authors' preferred methods of peer review suitable for their research.

Taylor & Francis / Routledge journals, including those that are part of the Open programme, reportedly benefit from editor-led rigorous peer review and wanted to understand the value and importance of this service to its author base.

Respondents were asked about the kind of peer review they find the most suitable for their research when publishing an OA article. Findings from the survey show that 45 percent of all respondents would 'always' value a 'rigorous assessment of the merit and novelty of their article with constructive comments for its improvement'. Adding those who would 'often' prefer this more traditional style of peer review takes this figure up to 78 percent.

Moving down the scale of rigour, to peer review that 'reviews the technical soundness of my research without any judgement on its novelty or interest', there is a huge fall in support; only 11 percent of authors would 'always' find this suitable for their OA articles. Similarly the number of supporters for an 'accelerated peer review [process] with fewer rounds of revision' shrinks, with only 9 percent of respondents 'always' accepting this method. And lastly, only 7 percent of respondents would 'always' find 'post-publication peer review after a basic check by invited reviewers' appropriate. In fact, more than a quarter of authors would 'never' value 'post-publication peer review'; contrastingly, the number of those who answered 'never' to traditional peer review was too small to plot on the chart.

Across all subjects and regions, the majority of authors felt that rigorous peer review would be the most suitable refereeing style for the bulk of their OA research papers (selecting 'always' or 'often'). Authors from Library and Information Science seem least wedded to the traditional style of peer review but even here 72 percent of authors said they would 'always' or 'often' find this rigorous peer review suitable for their OA articles.

Peer review in the style of PLoS One, which 'reviews the technical soundness of my research without any judgement on its novelty or interest', is the second most popular type of review for most subject areas, finding the largest level of support from Library and Information Scientists (50 percent choosing 'always' or 'often').

'Accelerated peer review [process] with fewer rounds of revision in (the style of eLIfe)' was the second most popular form of peer review in seven subject areas, most notably Business and Economics where 41percent of respondents chose 'always' or 'often' for this option. 'Post-publication peer review' in the style of f1000 Research found most favour from authors in Chemistry and Materials Science, where it saw a similar level of support as the other two types of alternative peer review models.

Authors from Asia, the Middle East and Africa were slightly more supportive of all the alternative forms of peer review but only those from the Middle East and Asia showed a corresponding decrease in support for rigorous peer review. However, this still came out as the most popular type of review in both of these regions.

Academic publisher Taylor & Francis has released the fifth in a series of press releases on the themes and findings of the Open Access Survey. In this survey, Taylor & Francis investigated authors' attitudes and values relating to the communication of research when publishing in open access journals.

According to the survey, authors agree that publication should not be limited by the ability to pay, but all research outputs should be free to read online. Respondents were asked about their level of agreement with statements concerning the communication of their research. Findings from the survey confirmed agreement that, ‘the publication of research should not be limited by the ability to pay', as affirmed by 86 percent of authors surveyed.

However, 66 percent of respondents agree that 'all research outputs should be free for everyone to read online'. This is considered to be evidence of the 'Open Access Dichotomy' - a tension between aspirations and reality. Publication of research does incur costs, it is noted. Seventy-seven percent of respondents agree that publishers are an essential part of the research communication process and significantly contribute to the dissemination of research.

Taylor & Francis charges article publishing charges (APCs) for those authors wishing to take the gold OA route to publication, which cover the costs of OA publication. It, however, offers waivers for authors in developing countries and is also an active participant in a number of development initiatives offering free or reduced price access to research for those in the developing world. Of the publisher's journals, 94.5 percent now comply with the author mandates for those funded by Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.

Biological Sciences, Public Health and Social Care are said to appear consistently in the top three subjects most committed to the ideals surrounding the freedom of data, namely that 'all research outputs should be free for everyone to read online', 'the dissemination of research is a common good that should not be monetised in any way' and 'there should be no restrictions on research outputs'. Additional, Biological Science authors also show the highest level of agreement that 'publication of research should not be limited by ability pay'.

Business and Economics stands out as the subject with the highest level of agreement for the statements 'researchers have access to most of the articles they need' and 'free access to data matters more to me than free access to research articles'. In the case of free access to data - the level of agreement in Business and Economics (39 percent) is 50 percent higher than the next most supportive subjects, Politics, International Relations and Geography (26 percent).

Worldwide, as many authors agree (37 percent) as disagree (38 percent) that they have access to the articles they need. One could be forgiven for thinking those at either end of the spectrum were likely to be from very different regions of the globe. However, examining the level of agreement for each region reveals a surprising degree of homogeneity, according to the survey.

Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has announced the Spring 2014 launch of Scientific Data. Open for submissions this autumn, Scientific Data is a new open-access, online-only platform for the publication of descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets. Scientific Data will initially focus on experimental datasets from the life, biomedical and environmental science communities with future plans to expand to other fields in the natural sciences.

Scientific Data will introduce and publish a new type of content called Data Descriptors: peer-reviewed, scientific publications that provide detailed descriptions of experimental and observational datasets. Data Descriptors will be a combination of traditional scientific publication content and structured information curated in-house, and are designed to maximize reuse and enable searching, linking and data mining. Data Descriptors may be associated with articles from a broad range of journals.

Scientific Data gives credit through a citable publication, for depositing and sharing research data. Data Description will be accessible and searchable via the Scientific Data online data platform, under a Creative Commons license. The actual data files will be stored in one or more public, community-recognised systems. The full release of Data Description and associated data will be verified as part of the peer-review process. Where a community recognized repository does not exist, Scientific Data supports the deposit of the data into a more general repository such as Dryad and Figshare. All accepted data descriptors will be published on payment of an article-processing charge (APC) that will also cover the Data Description curation process.

Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Associate Director and Principal Investigator at the University of Oxford e-Research Centre, has worked with the NPG team for the past months to define the Data Description's concept. She has now been appointed Honorary Academic Editor of Scientific Data. She will work closely with the Advisory Panel which comprises senior scientists, data repository representatives, bio-curators, librarians, and funders who guide the policies, standards, and editorial scope.

Academic publisher Taylor & Francis has released the third in a series of press releases on the themes and findings of the Open Access Survey. In this survey, Taylor & Francis investigates authors' attitudes and values relating to the dissemination of their research when publishing in open access journals.

Respondents were asked how acceptable it was for their work to be re-used in a variety of ways without their prior knowledge or permission, provided they received credit as the original author. Findings from the survey demonstrate that the opinion from authors on overall re-use was fairly evenly distributed. Forty percent agreed with the statement that it was acceptable to have their work re-used in any way, 41 percent did not support this – 18 percent did not have a strong opinion either way.

However, asking specifically about commercial re-use versus non-commercial re-use brought up an interesting anomaly. When asked about how acceptable it was for their work to be reused for non-commercial gain, 68 percent of respondents agreed that it was acceptable, with 18 percent deeming unacceptable. When asked their opinion about having their work used specifically for commercial gain, however, only 18 percent found this acceptable with 67 percent deeming this unacceptable.

Authors were asked also about their attitudes and values relating to various specific types of re-use of their work. Support was strongest for use in text or data mining, with 48 percent agreeing this is acceptable, and weakest for the adaption of their work, with 50 percent deeming this unacceptable without their prior knowledge or permission.

Translation or inclusion in an anthology elicited more evenly split responses. While 45 percent of authors were happy for others to translate their work, 39 percent were not. While 45 percent of authors found it acceptable for their work to be re-used in an anthology, 40 percent considered this unacceptable.

The finding that almost half of the authors surveyed would find text or data mining of their work acceptable is in line with the objectives and aims of policy makers such as Research Councils UK and the Welcome Trust who are strong advocates of the openness of research via these methods.

Licensing solutions provider Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), US, hosted a forum in London, named 'A Copyright Clearance Center Roundtable: Open Access Publishing and the Role of Intermediaries.' The day consisted of facilitated discussions preceded by a keynote address from Ellen Collins, co-author of the Research Information Network (RIN) report 'The Potential Role for Intermediaries in Managing the Payment of Open Access Article Processing Charges.'

Collins' talk was followed by an open access (OA) panel made up of experts from publishing and academia. Among the highlights, the roundtable dwelt on how, although OA publishing is not new, recent mandates by funding agencies have created confusion and a sense of urgency to comply among publishers, institutions and authors.

It was also observed that all parties face many challenges related to administering APCs. These include how to define new business models and workflows, the need for education for authors and publishers, visibility to an article's publication status, uniquely identifying authors and articles with standard metadata, tracking and reporting OA compliance, and finding and implementing a scalable process.

CCC was recently named as one of the '10 to Watch' in Outsell's first Open Access Market Report. CCC's Open Access Solutions include secure tools for managing APCs, as well as colour charges, page charges and reprint orders. CCC's Open Access solutions also address downstream licensing options. CCC reportedly makes it easier for publishers to charge different OA fees pre-publication based on variables such as author affiliation or membership, funding source and journal type.

CCC also seeks to communicate publisher-specific reuse rights post-publication to users seeking permissions for all content, including OA articles, and capture valuable data about user interest in and reuse of publishers' OA publications.

Open access (OA) publisher BioMed Central had organised the third Open Access Africa conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) last week. This was followed by the Berlin10 open access meeting at the University of Stellenbosch. Jonathan Harle of the Association of Commonwealth Universities has provided commentary on the events.

Open Access Africa was seen to have offered a refreshing chance to take a detailed look at the implications of OA for African research. UCT offered representation from projects such as the OpenUCT Initiative and the Scholarly Communications in Africa Programme. Complex issues were explored through the presentations and discussion amongst the speakers and delegates.

The event kicked off with an explanation of OA through a video. Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director, BioMed Central, pointed out that OA journals employ different business models but the same editorial quality standards as other journals.

The use of the Impact Factor to assess individual researchers was condemned a number of times, with Eve Gray describing it as a 'car crash' for African researchers, partly due to the lack of developing country research in the database that is used to make the calculation.

Michelle Willmers spoke about incentive and reward systems for achieving impact through research, and the current focus on prestige instead of relevance. There was also encouragement to think beyond the journal in terms of how research is communicated.

The importance of African journals is said to have come through strongly. Susan Murray of African Journals Online (AJOL) pointed out that development of publishing capacity was often overlooked in work to strengthen research capacity in African higher education. Marcel Hommel, Editor-in-Chief of Malaria Journal, showed that 90 percent of malaria mortality was in Africa but less than 2 percent of malaria articles were published in African journals. Conrad Ononhinmin, co-ordinator of the Nigerian open access group, questioned the effect on African journals of policies employed by OA publishers based in the North to waive article-processing charges for authors from developing countries.

The power of students as advocates for OA was demonstrated by Daniel Mutonga from the Medical Students Association of Kenya (MSAKE). That was backed up by Laura Czerniewicz, pointing out that students are often the most ardent advocates as they realise that when they leave university they will lose access to subscription content.

The Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, and the Department for International Development (UK) reportedly demonstrated the progressive thinking of their organisations in realizing the value of making their research and data openly available. It is expected that more organisations will take this approach in the future.

Open access (OA) publisher BioMed Central has announced that, as the official sponsor of Open Access Week 2012, it is participating in various activities around the globe for the event. Open Access Week, organised by SPARC, is now entering its sixth year. It is projected as a global opportunity for the academic and research community to enhance their knowledge of the benefits of OA, to share what they've learned with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in making OA the norm in scholarship and research.

BioMed's OA journal BMC Medicine has published a research that reports the growing volume of scientific articles published in full immediate OA journals during the period 2000-2011. Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk from Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, found that OA journal publishing is disrupting the dominant subscription-based model of scientific publishing, and the annual share of published journal articles published in immediate OA journals has grown rapidly during the last decade.

BioMed Central went mobile last week in a move that seeks to promote OA to scientific research on the move. All BioMed journal websites now offer users on mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablet computers, an enhanced experience when viewing full text articles, making better use of small screen sizes and touch-screen functionality. Using a 'responsive' web design, article pages now automatically respond to the capabilities of the device that is being used, providing a mobile-optimized appearance.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the World Bank have announced the speakers for their co-sponsored kick-off event for Open Access Week 2012. The event will be held October 22, from 4pm - 5:30pm, at the World Bank in Washington, DC.

The distinguished panel of speakers comprises experts from the broad range of stakeholders in the Open Access movement - researchers, students, policy makers, publishers and academics. Speakers include Michael Carroll, Professor of Law, American University and founding Board Member, Creative Commons; Matt Cooper, President, The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students; Maricel Kann, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland and member, PubMed Central National Advisory Committee, NIH; Carlos Rossel, Publisher, The World Bank; and Neil Thakur, Special Assistant to the Deputy Director, Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health (NIH). They will discuss why Open Access is an imperative to them, and to their work.

The 90-minute panel will be moderated by Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC, with ample time for questions from audience members. Registration is only required for in-person attendance and can be done by emailing Andrea Higginbotham at SPARC. To view the webcast and participate in the live blog, interested parties may go to the World Bank's live portal.

Open Access Week is now in its sixth year, and offers an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. Last year's Open Access Week featured events in more than 130 countries. This year's theme, 'Set the Default to Open Access,' will continue to advance the global conversation, and showcase the many steps taken all over the world towards Open Access initiatives.

The Association of American Publishers has joined stakeholders across the worldwide scientific community in commending ideas set forth by the Finch Group report, the British government-funded project to identify sustainable strategies that could effectively expand access to published scientific research. The report, ‘Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications’ is the result of a year-long initiative that brought together disparate stakeholders from academia, funding groups, libraries, learned societies and publishing.

While the final report is focused on the UK research community, many recommendations have implications for driving policy worldwide. Among them, it calls for government to support the publication of research in open access or hybrid journals, fully funded by article processing charges. Where total funding is not available, it recognizes that publishers must have an appropriate embargo period to avoid undue impact on recouping costs.

AAP agrees with the report’s conclusion that a mixed economy of subscriptions, licensing, open access, repositories and pay-per-view will exist for the foreseeable future and all stakeholders need to work toward an environment for the best public good.

Tom Allen, President and Chief Executive Officer, AAP, noted numerous similarities between the Finch Report, tenets of the America COMPETES Reauthorization and collaborative practices already underway between US publishers, funding agencies and research institutions to broaden access to information. These include publishers’ engagement with such federal agencies as the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, with the recently-announced FundRef as one of several projects in development. In addition, publishers have launched Research4Life in collaboration with the United Nations, Emergency Access Initiative with the National Library of Medicine and patientINFORM with voluntary health organisations.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has announced that the next SPARC-ACRL Forum, ‘Campus Open Access Funds: The State of Play’ will be held at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA, on June 23, 2012, from 4:00-5:30 pm in the Grand Ballroom South at the Disneyland Hotel.

Co-sponsored by SPARC and ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries), the popular semi-annual forum focuses on emerging issues in scholarly communication. This Forum will explore the current status of campus-based funds designed to support publication in Open Access Journals.

Speakers will examine the latest developments in creating, implementing and administering this crucial resource. Presenters will include Sue Kriegsman, Program Manager for the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University Library; Chuck Eckman, Librarian and Dean of Library Services at Simon Fraser University, and Andrew Waller, Librarian at University of Calgary.

The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) has released two reports that say open access (OA) to published scholarly research offers significant benefits to the UK.

The UK public sector already saves £28.6 million by using OA. The reports make it clear that both the public sector and the voluntary sector would see further direct and indirect benefits from increased access to UK higher education research publications.

The reports note that more Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations already use OA than pay for subscriptions, despite the fact that subscription journals make up the vast majority of journals on offer. The UK public sector spends £135 million a year, made up of subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles, accessing the journal papers it needs to perform effectively. Each extra 5 percent of journal papers accessed via OA on the web would save the public purse £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved, say the reports.

The UK's voluntary and charitable sectors are also seen to benefit from OA to academic research. For survey respondents, the two most frequently mentioned barriers to accessing research were cost (80 percent) and lack of time (46 percent).

Making more research free at the point of access, and easier to search across, could produce significant savings, but could also lead to better decisions based on all the available evidence. This, in turn, offers benefits back to researchers, boosting the impact of their research by increasing its reach outside the academy, according to the reports.

These findings are borne out across all three reports in this series. This body of new, quantitative work is said to provide compelling evidence that increasing OA to research articles will have direct financial and practical benefits for the UK as a whole, benefits that are especially valuable in a time of austerity.

The reports make a number of recommendations around increasing awareness of OA in the public and private sectors. These include promoting the value of the information produced as a result of public research funding and exploring ways of improving relationships between academic researchers and workers in other sectors who rely on their research to do their jobs well.

The UK OAIG is working to add value to the work of the member organisations to increase the rate at which the outputs from UK research are available on OA terms, and these reports show how important that work is to the UK.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) recently wrapped up a first-ever Open Access (OA) Meeting in Kansas City, Montana. The meeting built on the foundation established by the SPARC Digital Repositories meeting, and its expanded focus included information on institutional OA policies, author rights and OA publishing. The 250 participants represented librarians, researchers, publishers and technologists from around the globe. The meeting programme was designed to inspire the community and foster opportunities for collaborative action on all issues relating to open access.

Keynote speaker, John Wilbanks, Fellow of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, kicked off the meeting with a presentation constructed in triads: he highlighted three stories, three “uncomfortable truths� and three eventual scenarios relating to the future of OA. His talk touched on topics from decentralised networks to data publishing to do-it-yourself alternative metrics. Throughout the presentation, Wilbanks emphasised the need for the community to insist on clarity of the definition of OA, especially with regards to end user rights. Underscoring the notion that the true power of Open Access is to enable innovation by encouraging collaboration, he noted ‘there is no together without rights,’ and ended with a proposal for a new kind of ‘SWOT’ analysis for the 21st scholarly publishing landscape.

The meeting included panels with expert speakers discussing OA policies (on a local, national and international level), new developments in the world of open digital repositories, an examination of author rights, and a look into the state of play in OA journal publishing. All of the available presenter slideshows and recordings will be available shortly.

The Innovation Fair reportedly provided a significant showcase for the creative work being done by institutions and businesses around OA. In rapid-fire two-minute presentations (including some in rhyme), participants described their projects and key outcomes. This year’s topics included information from specialised repositories to the possibility of new metrics challenging the impact factor for primacy in the tenure and promotion process.

Throughout the meeting, Twitter activity was extremely high and presented a variety of questions and comments from those in the room, as well as from those just following along at home.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has announced that measuring the once-hidden impact of Open Access on clinical practice and public awareness, embedding digital repositories into the research cycle, encouraging student publishing, and engaging elusive faculty are just some of the top innovations to be showcased at the SPARC Innovation Fair next month. The Innovation Fair is a favoured highlight of the biennial SPARC Open Access Meeting, set for the Kansas City Intercontinental Hotel, March 12 and 13.

In rapid-fire presentations that breathe energy and personality into scholarly communications issues, Innovation Fair participants will share their creative approaches to a diverse set of challenges. This year, a suite of librarians, technologists, research producers, and publishers will take on the task of presenting, in no more than two minutes, innovative or creative approaches to: the use of open content, content discovery, value-added services, impact assessment, commercial innovation, and Open Access advocacy.

The SPARC Open Access meeting expands on the popular SPARC Digital Repositories meetings, hosted biennially since 2004, and will provide a North American-based complement to the 'Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI)' workshop held in Geneva, Switzerland in alternating years. The SPARC meeting will be a regular forum for a full discussion of Open Access as an emerging norm in research and scholarship and will emphasise collaborative strategies for advancing scholarship for all stakeholders to help effect positive change.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

InTech, a Croatia-based open access (OA) publisher, has published the results of a survey appraising attitudes and awareness of the research community towards the OA business model in scholarly publishing.

The InTech white paper, titled 'Open Access: Awareness and Attitudes amongst the Author Community', is based on a review of current research and a survey sent to 20,000 STM researchers worldwide. The survey attracted an overall response rate of 1.3 percent, with 275 participants taking part and 253 (92 percent) completing it. The majority of respondents were researchers (75 seventy) based at a university (70 seventy).

Key findings from the report reveal that of 258 participants who responded when asked, 51 percent said they understood OA publishing, and 36 percent said they had some knowledge of it. The report notes that the OA publishing experience is lower but still strong. Twenty six percent of the respondents said that they had published with an OA publisher for a journal article and 10 percent for a book.

It was found that researchers in biological sciences had greater awareness and experience, particularly in journals, while participants from the earth sciences and technology had lower awareness and less OA publishing experience. Over 25 percent of researchers are aware of OA publishers such as PLoS, InTech, BioMedCentral and Hindawi.

For OA journal publications, it is the image and reputation of the journal itself that is the most important factor for authors when considering where to submit their work; but for books it is the image and reputation of the publisher. The survey highlighted that authors want more support from publishers in getting their work noticed - services provided by publishers where the level of satisfaction scored lowest centred on PR and media support; post-publication information on usage / citations / peer feedback; and promoting the author effectively alongside their work.

The survey also explored the most common concerns surrounding OA publishing; among these were author fees. Over 65% (of the 256 participants who responded) said they were willing to pay author fees, 30% said they would be willing to pay if it helped ensure the widest possible audience for their work, while 38% would only pay in exceptional circumstances. The full results can be downloaded from: http://www.intechweb.org/js/ckeditor/kcfinder/upload/files/InTech_WhitePaper_FutureofOA_Dec11.pdf.

Search for more Industry study reports

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The European Research Area Committee (ERAC) on National Open Access and Preservation Policies has published a report called 'Analysis of a Questionnaire to the European Research Area Committee'. The report reveals that open access is backed by a growing number of universities, research centres and funding agencies across Europe.

The results of the 2010-11 questionnaire on Open Access and Preservation Policies in Europe gives an overview of how policies and strategies on open access and preservation have been developing in the European Research Area.

The questionnaire was sent to all ERAC members and observers on November 25, 2010. The Commission received 29 responses between December 21, 2010 and March 11, 2011. These include 25 from EU Member States (Bulgaria and Hungary did not respond) and four from ERAC Observers (Iceland, Montenegro, Norway and Switzerland).

A preliminary analysis of the results was conducted in April-May 2011. A first impression of answers received was presented to Member State representatives on May 31, 2011 in a special Member States session that followed a public hearing on access to and preservation of scientific information on May 30, 2011. The preliminary analysis was sent for feedback to all respondents in July-August 2011. The final report, which incorporates some corrections and additional information, was prepared in September-October 2011.

The report finds that Open Access is much more prominent in Europe than previous surveys indicated, but that issues around long-term digital preservation are seriously in need of further consideration. The information contained in the report is a milestone that serves as valuable input for the development of a Commission policy on access and dissemination of scientific outputs in the European Research Area and in Horizon 2020.

Search for more Industry study reports

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is inviting proposals for the SPARC 2012 Open Access Meeting Innovation Fair, where new technologies and strategies will be showcased in engaging, informative, rapid-fire presentations. The Innovation Fair is a highlight to the regular SPARC meeting, now set for the Kansas City Intercontinental Hotel, March 11 through 13, 2012.

The SPARC Open Access meeting expands on the popular SPARC Digital Repositories meetings, hosted biennially since 2004, and will provide a North American-based complement to the popular ‘Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI)' workshop held in Geneva in alternating years. The SPARC meeting will be a regular forum for a full discussion of Open Access as an emerging norm in research and scholarship, and will emphasise collaborative actions that stakeholders can take to effect positive change.

The Innovation Fair invites participants – librarians, technologists, research producers, research funders, publishers, and others – to present, in no more than two minutes, innovative or creative approaches to: use of open content, content discovery, value-added services, impact assessment, commercial and other innovation using open resources, and Open Access advocacy.

For details and to submit a proposal, interested parties may visit http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/oa12. Submissions must be received on or before January 18, 2012.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The recently concluded Berlin 9 Open Access Conference at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was reportedly attended by 260 high-level researchers, fund providers and open access (OA) advocates. Impact, not ideology, was the watchword at the conference, it has been observed.

The attendees focused on the benefits of putting research - in the humanities and social sciences as well as in the sciences - quickly and freely into the hands of scholars, students, innovators and the general public.

Cameron Neylon, a senior scientist at Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council, spoke at a session on how OA can create new opportunities for business as well as for scholarship. Harold E. Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute, argued the case for redesigning the system of scholarly publishing and rewards.

The need to rethink the scholarly reward system came up time and again at the meeting. Other speakers called on researchers to be stronger advocates for change. Michael Carroll, director of the programme on information justice and intellectual property at American University's law school, told the audience he got involved in OA because 'I want copyright law to do its job in society, and I don't think it's doing its job.' Researchers need to take responsibility for making sure their publishing contracts permit OA, he said. Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was time to talk frankly about costs and business models.

Unlike many discussions of OA, which have focused on the sciences, the Berlin 9 meeting made the humanities and social sciences squarely part of the agenda. The National Endowment for the Humanities contributed some financial support to the meeting.

One session picked up the theme of open education and how OA can contribute to it. Laura Czerniewicz, director of the University of Cape Town's OpenUCT program, spoke about how difficult it is for many South African students to get textbooks and other resources they need to pursue education.

OA publisher InTech sponsored the meeting, which was organised by the Hughes Institute; the Association of Research Libraries; the Marine Biological Laboratory, in Woods Hole, Mass.; the Planck Institute; and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or Sparc, which promotes OA. The Institute of Museum and Library Services as well as the NEH also provided support.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open Access Africa 2011, a BioMed Central and Computer Aid International event, was hosted at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, during Open Access Week 2011.

All presentations are now available online, together with conference images and poster abstracts. These include presentations delivered by representatives from Google, British Medical Journal (BMJ), Department for International Development (DFID), Pan African Medical Journal and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Videos of all presentations will follow shortly.

The conference, now in its second year, discussed open access publishing in an African context. The diverse programme offered insights from library, funding and technology perspectives as part of Open Access Africa, a collection of initiatives designed to increase the output and visibility of scientific research published by African learning institutes.

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that it will be celebrating the Open Access Week with a strong 'global' focus spanning four continents. Open Access Week, which runs from October 24-30, is a global event which promotes the benefits of open access (OA) publishing.

Commencing just before Open Access Week is OA Publishing in Africa: free online workshop, a webinar held in association with EIFL. BioMed Central's Head of Sales, Calum Land, will review the development of OA publishing in Africa and outline the objectives of Open Access Africa, a set of initiatives launched by the publisher earlier this year to increase the visibility of research from African institutes.

Open Access Africa 2011, a free conference hosted by BioMed Central in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), will run from October 25-26, 2011. The conference is expected to raise awareness of OA among African researchers and foster discussion about how to ensure African research receives the international recognition it deserves. Representatives from Google, British Medical Journal, African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), Pan African Medical Journal, Development for International Development (DFID) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa will review OA publishing in Africa from library, funding and technology perspectives.

BioMed Central has been invited to speak at the Internet Librarian International 2011 conference in London. Also, 'An institution's response to open access,' will be presented at OA events in Sweden including the University of Stockholm and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

A historical overview of OA publishing in the context of 'open' movements and implications for future scholarly publishing will be given during the week at University of Manitoba, George Mason University, University of Virginia and City University of New York. BioMed Central will also be delivering presentations in Shanghai at BioMed Central Member Institution Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Open Access Korea conference.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Dan Ream of VCU Libraries is conducting a workshop titled 'Open Access Scholarly Publishing for Faculty' on October 27, 2011, from 1pm to 2pm.

As journal subscription costs have increased dramatically, fewer and fewer libraries can afford every journal that is needed, including some that are considered prestigious and essential. Faculty worldwide have responded by creating and publishing their research in open access (OA), peer-reviewed journals that charge no fee to their readers. Faculty Senates from Harvard to Berkeley to the University of Virginia have endorsed OA publishing for their faculty, with a few even mandating that their faculty share their research with the world via OA publishing.

VCU's Faculty Senate last year passed a resolution urging the VCU promotion and tenure committees to reconsider the value of peer-reviewed OA publishing in promotion and tenure deliberations.

Next week's one-hour session, open to all, will introduce faculty to this revolution in publishing of open-access, peer-reviewed journals and demonstrate how to locate them in almost any discipline. It will also discuss the potential benefits of worldwide free access to faculty research. Options for faculty retention of copyright will also be discussed.

The workshop will be held in library classroom/lab 319 in James Branch Cabell Library. No advance registration is necessary. A repeat session will also be offered on November 7 at 1 pm at the same location.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The ninth installment in the Berlin Open Access Conference Series, which convenes leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, will take place at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on November 9 and 10, 2011. Registration is now open for the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference and also for pre-conference sessions scheduled for November 8 in downtown Washington, DC.

The event will focus on the impact of Open Access in research and scholarship. It will explore how open, online access has the potential to transform the process of discovery and the translation of knowledge into benefits to society, as well as to enhance public engagement and create new opportunities for scholarship and business.

Berlin 9 is being organised by representatives from the science, humanities, research, funding and policy communities, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Marine Biological Laboratory, the Max Planck Society, Association of Research Libraries, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition).

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visitwww.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that the company will be exhibiting at the 17th WONCA Europe Conference in Warsaw, Poland, scheduled for September 8-11, 2011.

The theme of this year's conference is 'Family Medicine - Practice, Science and Art'. The programme includes high-level speakers and experts from across Europe and participants can learn about the latest innovations in family practice.

BioMed Central representatives will be available at booth #10 to answer any questions on the publisher's established titles - Journal of Medical Case Reports, a journal devoted to case reports from all medical disciplines; Asia Pacific Family Medicine, the official journal of WONCA Asia Pacific; and BMC Family Practice.

Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Medical Case Reports and president-elect of WONCA, Professor Michael Kidd, will run a workshop at the conference on writing case reports about patients seen in family medicine, on September 9 in Room F (Freud). The workshop will highlight the importance of case reporting in family medicine and will also seek to provide an opportunity for anyone wanting to improve their case reporting skills.

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, recently launched 'Open Access Africa', a collection of initiatives designed to increase the output and visibility of scientific research published by African learning institutes. Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, has been announced as the first African Foundation Member to participate in the free scheme.

KNUST ranks 13th amongst African universities on the Webometrics World University Ranking and claims to be the only university in Ghana with an open access institutional repository and fully supports open access research. In addition, BioMed Central and KNUST have partnered to host the Open Access Africa 2011 conference, in conjunction with Computer Aid International, from October 25-26 during International Open Access Week.

Following the success of Open Access Africa 2010, the conference, now in its second year, will discuss the benefits of open access publishing in an African context and explore the possibilities provided to researchers through the facilitation of scientific and medical information flow. The conference is free to attend but registration is necessary.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The programme for the international Berlin 9 Open Access meeting has been announced by the organising coalition. Focusing on the impact of Open Access in research and scholarship, the event will explore how open, online access has the potential to transform the process of discovery and the translation of knowledge into benefits to society, as well as to enhance public engagement and create new opportunities for scholarship and business.

This 9th instalment in the Berlin Open Access conference series, which convenes leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, will take place at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, MD, on November 9 and 10, 2011. Pre-conference meetings have been planned for November 8th, in Washington, DC.

The programme committee for the meeting has been examining the role that Open Access can play in accelerating the conduct and communication of scholarship, and the opportunities this presents to the funders, creators, and end users of this information. They have identified five key topics to explore. These include transforming research through open online access to discovery inputs and outputs; creation of innovative new opportunities for scholarship and business; the impact of open access and open repositories on research in the humanities; open education: linking learning and research through Open Access; and public interaction: the range and power of OA for citizen science, patients, and large-scale collaboration.

Speakers for each topic area are being invited and will be announced this fall. The committee has also invited keynote remarks from top US and international policymakers, including a high-level exploration on redefining measures of impact.

Berlin 9 is being organised by representatives from the science, humanities, research, funding and policy communities, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Marine Biological Laboratory, the Max Planck Society, Association of Research Libraries, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition). Registration will open in September.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that new initiatives being launched in 2011 look to increase the visibility and output of scientific research from across Africa and the wider developing world.

The publisher has announced that its Open Access Africa 2011 conference will discuss the benefits of open access (OA) publishing in an African context. Hosted by BioMed in association with Computer Aid International, the event is scheduled for October 25 -26, 2011, at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Discussions at this event will be led from the perspective of researchers seeking access to information, and authors seeking to communicate the results of their work globally, in an effort to increase visibility and output of African research.

BioMed believes that the facilitation of scientific and medical information flow plays an important role in future international social and scientific development. Removing restrictive journal subscription fees challenges inequalities regarding the access to and use of high-quality scientific resources and increases the visibility and impact of research published from low-income countries.

To meet the cost of publishing, authors who publish in BioMed's OA journals are required to pay an article-processing charge (APC) per published paper. However, the waiver scheme, operated by BioMed, supports researchers in the listed developing countries, enabling authors from these areas to publish their research without incurring the usual APC.

Foundation Membership is projected as a free service from BioMed that enables institutions in developing countries to demonstrate their commitment and support for OA publishing and offers a range of wider benefits for participating Members. In addition, the company's Open Access Package has been designed to provide a complete and affordable OA solution for institutions in developing countries. The package enables institutions to show their commitment for OA and provides them with the tools to support both open access publishing and self-archiving.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Washington University in St. Louis Faculty Senate has adopted an Open Access Resolution that encourages faculty members to make their scholarly and creative works freely available online. The resolution also includes a recommendation for University Libraries and the Bernard Becker Medical Library to develop the capacity to capture faculty scholarship, make it publicly accessible and preserve it over time. It also calls for a three-year review to determine the best way to implement the resolution.

WUSTL faculty members conduct research in a range of disciplines and seek to share their findings. Typically, faculty members publish their research in print or online publications that often require costly subscription fees to access. The Open Access Resolution passed by the WUSTL Faculty Senate encourages faculty to publish their research results in open access journals, such as titles in the Directory of Open Access Journals at doaj.org.

Regardless of where faculty members publish, the resolution asks them to retain the right to include a version of their publication in an institutional or other open access repository. Works, such as journal articles, in open access repositories can be viewed, free of charge, by anyone with Internet access.

The Bernard Becker Medical Library has an open access repository, Digital Commons@Becker at digitalcommons.wustl.edu, in place for School of Medicine faculty. Work on a repository for Danforth Campus faculty is under way.

The text of the resolution can be found at news.wustl.edu/Documents/Record/OpenAccessResolution.pdf.

Search for more open access related information

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Proposals are now being invited for the Berlin 9 Open Access meeting poster display, which will showcase open access (OA) initiatives from all corners of the globe.

Posters will be displayed through the duration of the meeting and on the conference website at http://www.berlin9.org, where policy makers, research funders, scholars, publishers and advocates will learn about initiatives to enhance research, teaching, learning and innovation through OA worldwide. Poster proposals will be reviewed by the conference programme committee and evaluated according to their contribution to the meeting theme - the impact of OA in research and scholarship.

Successful proposals will highlight the role that open online access can play in accelerating the conduct and communication of scholarship and the opportunities this presents to the funders, creators and end users of information.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words in length are invited for review by the Program Committee. Submissions must be received no later than July 27. Acceptance notifications will be issued by September 30, 2011. To submit a proposal, visit http://sparc.arl.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=84.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, and Edanz recently hosted two complimentary workshops for authors in China. Zhejiang University School of Medicine (ZUSM), a BioMed Central member, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (SJTU-SM), hosted more than 140 scientists at seminars, led by Diane Wang, Publishing Manager China for BioMed Central, and Dr Warren Raye, Senior Life Sciences Editor for Edanz.

The workshops comprised two lectures, 'BioMed Central: Making Scientific Findings More Open' and 'How to Write and Publish Scientific Articles'. Attendees learnt about the open access publishing landscape and BioMed Central's open access journal portfolio, as well as hearing key points on manuscript preparation and submission, including study design, journal selection, manuscript structure and common language mistakes.

East Asia is reportedly the fastest growing source of papers for all STM publishers. The number of peer-reviewed articles published by Chinese researchers alone has risen 64-fold over the past 30 years. In addition, BioMed Central has witnessed a 168 percent rise in the number of papers submitted from authors based in mainland China in the last two years. Services such as Edanz, for which BioMed Central authors receive a discount, provide scientists from this region with cost-effective and comprehensive English language support throughout the peer review process.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

A study published in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online publication of open access (OA) publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS), reports on the rapid growth of OA publishing since the start of the World Wide Web. The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the Hanken School of Economics.

The results show a very rapid growth of OA publishing during the period of 1993-2009. In 2009 an estimated 191,000 articles were published in 4,769 OA journals. Since the year 2000, the average annual growth rate has been 18 percent for the number of OA journals and 30 percent for the number of OA articles. This can be contrasted to the reported 3.5 percent yearly increase in the total number of peer reviewed journals. It was estimated that in 2009, articles in OA journals reached 7.7 percent of all peer reviewed journal articles.

Since the web emerged in the mid 1990s, scientists have dreamed of having the whole body of scientific peer reviewed literature freely accessible on it, openly available without any hindrance. Slowly but steadily OA to peer reviewed journal articles has increased. This could be due to the emergence of over 6,000 OA journals; pressure from research funders such as the NIH; and a growing awareness among scholars of the advantages of publishing in OA journals. A number of specialised OA publishers such as the PLoS, BioMed Central and Hindawi have entered the market and more traditional publishers have also begun to offer OA alternatives.

The full article, "The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009", is available online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0020961

Search for more Industry study reports

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central is working to increase the visibility of scientific research from Africa with a set of initiatives designed to encourage African researchers to publish their work in open access journals.

The publisher has announced that its 2nd Open Access Africa conference will take place from October 25 -26, 2011, at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The free conference, organised in association with Computer Aid International, will provide a focal point to bring researchers, librarians and funders together to examine the opportunities and challenges for open access publishing in an African context. The conference is free to attend but registration is necessary. Interested parties may contact oaafrica@biomedcentral.com to register their details.

Alongside the announcement of Open Access Africa 2011, BioMed Central has also launched a new free membership scheme for qualifying universities and research institutions in low-income countries. Foundation Membership will enable institutions to demonstrate their support for open access publishing and offers a range of benefits which will enhance the visibility of the institution's research output. Institutions are eligible to become Foundation Members if they are located in a country covered by BioMed Central's Open Access Waiver Fund , have an official institutional policy in support of open access, and have published at least five papers in BioMed Central open access journals within the last three years.

In addition to the new Foundation Membership programme, BioMed Central is also introducing a new cost-effective open access publishing and institutional repository solution targeted at low-income countries, the 'Open Access Package'. The Open Access Package provides a comprehensive and affordable open access solution that offers Foundation members the tools to support both open access publishing and self-archiving of scientific articles within their libraries.

Search for more open acess related information

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

SPARC Europe, an alliance of European research libraries, library organisations and research institutions, has announced a free SPARC Europe online event. The event is scheduled for June 7, 2011, from 12:00 - 1:00 PM GMT. Registration is free, but required, and limited to SPARC worldwide members.

Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (OpenAIRE) is a three-year project funded by the European Commission that seeks to create an opportunity for countries and academic institutions throughout Europe to collectively make the case for open access and support its realisation. OpenAIRE supports the implementation of the EC's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) - Open Access Pilot and the European Research Council Guidelines on Open Access - by focusing on digital repositories, and developing an infrastructure for open access along with a support network across Europe. Specifically, researchers are supported in depositing their peer-reviewed research articles in institutional or disciplinary repositories, if available, or into the OpenAIRE Orphan Repository hosted by CERN.

The initiative is seen as an important development in the open access movement in Europe, providing a key collaborative opportunity for libraries. SPARC Europe will host Inge van Nieuwerburgh, a regional coordinator for OpenAIRE, on June 7, to explore project features, approaches, risks, challenges, and future directions for the projects, as well as to explore ways libraries can be actively involved in the project. This SPARC Europe webcast is open to all SPARC members (SPARC North America, SPARC Japan and SPARC Europe).

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have announced that the upcoming SPARC-ACRL forum on emerging issues in scholarly communication will focus on expanding support for the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The SPARC-ACRL forum will be held at the American Library Association (ALA) meeting in New Orleans, LA.

The Declaration, issued in 2003, outlines concrete steps to promote the Internet as a medium for disseminating global knowledge, including encouraging researchers and cultural heritage custodians to make materials openly available. The goals of the declaration are advanced in part by an annual conference of international leaders. In 2011, this meeting will take place in North America for the first time, offering a unique opportunity for the library community to continue its leadership role in advancing Open Access.

The Berlin Declaration has garnered signatures from nearly 300 research institutions, libraries, archives, museums, funding agencies, and governments from around the world – including the leaders of organisations ranging from the Max Plank Society to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to Academia Europaea. Most recently, both Harvard University and the International Federation of Library Associations added their names to the roster.

The next SPARC-ACRL forum will explore the motivations behind the Berlin Declaration and its impact on the global research community. It will also present the opportunity for North American libraries to encourage their institutions to sign onto the document and become engaged in further advancing Open Access by promoting the statement's call to action.

The forum will be held June 25, 2011, at the Morial Convention Center, Room 383. The ACRL Scholarly Communications Discussion Group, which offers a more intimate setting to explore topics in greater depth, will explore how we can bring a global action like the Berlin Open Access Declaration to our own institutions through our education and outreach programmes. The Discussion Group will be held June 26, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM at the New Orleans Marriott, Mardi Gras H Room.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has welcomed the 'Heading for the open road: costs and benefits for transitions in scholarly communications report', which adds to the growing knowledge into the different publishing models for UK research.

JISC co-funded the report with the Research Information Network, the Publishing Research Consortium, Research Libraries UK and the Wellcome Trust, to look at the UK scholarly communications system; particularly the five possible routes for academics and researchers to disseminate their work. The report suggests that encouraging open access appears to be a good way forward for the UK's scholarly communications community and in particular via gold or green routes. It is consistent with previous research in coming to this conclusion.

JISC will be broadcasting a pre-recorded roundtable discussion on why it is important for universities and researchers to be aware of the UK's scholarly communications publishing models on May 26, 2011.

Search for more Industry study reports

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has published a new research paper in the FASEB Journal that reportedly shows that free access to scientific journal articles leads to increases in downloads, but not to increases in citations. The number of citations is said to be a key factor used in scientific publishing to assess a research article's relative importance and value.

The study, by Philip M. Davis from Cornell University, is expected to help scientists make informed decisions about where they publish their work. It is also seen to assist governments, granting institutions and universities with evaluating whether or not their open access policies are leading to greater dissemination of useful scientific knowledge.

To reach his conclusions, Davis ran several parallel randomised controlled trials. Upon publication, articles, including those from the FASEB Journal, were randomly assigned to either the open access or the subscription-access group. He then observed how these articles performed in terms of downloads and citations over three years. He found that free access did not affect the number of citations a paper received, rejecting a widely-held belief that open access articles are cited more frequently because of their free access status. The results are consistent over time across 36 journals covering the sciences, social sciences and humanities, according to the report.

Search for more Industry study reports

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The ninth installment in the Berlin Open Access Conference Series, which convenes leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, will take place at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on November 9 and 10, 2011. The conference, called 'Berlin 9 Open Access Conference: The impact of Open Access in research and scholarship,' will focus on the role that open online access can play in accelerating the conduct and communication of scholarship, and the opportunities this presents to the funders, creators, and end users of this information.

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, issued in 2003 by international research, scientific, and cultural institutions, promotes the Internet as a medium for disseminating global knowledge. It has been signed by the leaders of nearly 300 research institutions, libraries, archives, museums, funding agencies, and governments from around the world. Signatories include the Max Planck Society (co-initiator and custodian of the declaration), CERN, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academia Europea, Harvard University, and the International Federation of Library Associations.

The Berlin Open Access Conference Series supports the continued adoption and realisation of the principles of the declaration and has been hosted in Germany, Switzerland, England, Italy, France, and most recently in China. Berlin 9 will mark the first such meeting to take place in North America. The programme will feature concrete steps taken by a variety of stakeholders to support Open Access and invite participants to consider added actions that might be taken - including encouraging signatures to the Berlin Declaration.

Berlin 9 is being organised by representatives from the science, humanities, research, funding and policy communities, including the Marine Biological Laboratory, and will be held on the campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Chevy Chase, MD. Conference planning is being coordinated by the Max Planck Society and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition).

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is conducting an online event titled 'The (OA)Week ahead: Getting started on Open Access Week 2011.' The event is scheduled for February 22, 2011, 1:00 - 2:00PM Eastern. Interested parties are invited to join in for a conversation on how to deepen faculty engagement at their institutions.

According to SPARC, the 2010 Open Access Week (OAW) was the largest and most successful yet. With just under 900 participants in 94 countries, the event was three times larger than it was just a year before. Hundreds of videos, photos, blog posts, and more were released to promote and highlight the benefits of Open Access to research and take the conversation even more deeply into the research community. Participants from the academy - including humanists, climate change scientists, provosts, research funders, Nobelists, and lawyers -took advantage of the occasion to share their insights on how Open Access has had an impact on their work and lives.

On February 22, 2011, Heather Joseph and Jennifer McLennan, representing the Open Access Week organizing coalition (SPARC), will present participant feedback from last year and invite suggestions on how to take the Week to yet another level in 2011. Registration for the event is free, but required. RSVP by February 21 at http://sparc.arl.org/civicrm/event/register?id=68&reset=1.

The online event is held in conjunction with Open Access Week 2011 (October 24 - 30). Now entering its fifth year, Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to share ideas with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in establishing Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced that registrations for the 7th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI7) is now open. This event will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from June 22 - 24, 2011. Interested parties may register with the online form available on the conference website at http://indico.cern.ch/event/oai7.

The workshop will follow the successful format of previous editions mixing practical tutorials, presentations from cutting-edge projects and research, discussion groups, posters, and an intense social programme to maximise interaction and communication. It will be possible to register for a part or all of the programme.

The workshop is aimed at those involved in the development of open access (OA) repositories and who can influence the direction of developments either within their institution, their country or at an international level. This includes technical developers of OA bibliographic databases and connected services, research information policy developers at university or library level, funding bodies concerned with access to the results of their research, OA publishers, and influential researchers keen to lead OA developments in their own field.

The event is projected as a unique opportunity to exchange ideas and contact details with a large public connected to the OA movement. The OAI workshops are a series of important international meetings in this field and take place roughly every two years.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that videos, slideshows and photos from the Open Access Africa 2010 conference are now available online. The conference, held late last year in Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, was hosted by BioMed Central, in conjunction with Computer Aid International. The event brought together a diverse panel of speakers to discuss open access publishing in an African context.

It has been observed that despite the vast population, just 0.7 percent of all research findings come from Sub-Saharan Africa. As a whole, the continent's domestic scientific research is under-represented in the International Indexes of Scientific Output. Some of the main barriers Africa faces are the limited number of local high-impact journals and the minimal resources available to cover the article processing charges (APC) for authors looking to publish their work. This is an issue that BioMed Central will addresses with its waiver fund, a policy that allows over 90 low-income countries to publish high-quality research for free.

Open access journals allow free, unrestricted, online access to scientific research and hold many benefits for the developing world. The Open Access Africa 2010 conference looked to address the implementation of access to academic research resources and to promote and discuss the benefits and implications of open access research in this context. The success of Open Access Africa 2010 will lead to a follow up event which will be organised for the latter part of this year.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project presented the results of its two-year European Commission (EU) funded examination of open access publishing at an open symposium on January 13, 2011, in Berlin, Germany. Over the two-year study duration, the SOAP project performed a comprehensive study of open access journals, publishers and business models, including analysis of publishing houses, learned societies and licensing along with the overall supply and demand for open access.

The study surveyed over 50,000 researchers for their opinions on open-access journals, which make all their papers freely available online and usually charge authors a fee for each published paper. According to the study, while scientists like open-access papers as readers, as authors, they are still skeptical. The study found overwhelming support for the concept, with 89 percent of respondents stating that open access is beneficial to their field. However, this support did not always translate into action, the study noted. While 53 percent of respondents said they had published at least one open-access article, overall only about 10 percent of papers are published in open access journals.

The study found two main reasons as to why researchers do not submit their work to open-access journals. About 40 percent said that a lack of funding for author fees was a deterrent, while 30 percent cited a lack of high-quality open-access journals in their field.

Requiring authors to make sure the results of their work are freely available has reportedly had only partial success. Robert Kiley, head of digital services at the Wellcome Trust’s Wellcome Library in London, said at the symposium that open-access rates had risen from 12 percent to 50 percent since the funder began requiring its grantees to publish in open-access journals or deposit their papers in a freely available repository. However, Kiley acknowledged that Wellcome Trust had not imposed sanctions on researchers who failed to comply.

The study also makes it clear that open-access journals are proliferating, especially among small publishers. It was observed that one-third of open-access papers were published by the more than 1600 open-access publishers that publish only a single journal. The study also identified 14 ‘large publishers’ that publish either more than 50 journals or more than 1000 articles per year. The group accounts for roughly one-third of open-access publications, the study noted.

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project is set to present the results of its two-year European Commission funded examination of open access publishing at an open symposium on January 13, 2011, in Berlin, Germany.

Over the two-year study duration, the SOAP project performed a comprehensive study of open access journals, publishers and business models, including analysis of publishing houses, learned societies and licensing along with the overall supply and demand for open access. The study garnered over 50,000 responses including over 38,000 from published academic researchers worldwide. Early results have indicated that open access is not just now an accepted model for academic publishing, but that it is also growing rapidly in both popularity and uptake.

At the open symposium, to be held at Harnack House in Berlin, publishers, funding agencies and policy makers will gather to hear the final results of the study along with in-depth analysis of the changing publishing landscape and to discuss what actions need to be taken to ensure that the supply of open access outlets meets the ever growing demand.

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Representatives of the American Physiological Society and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) have written a letter opposing legislation to expand a policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The legislation seeks to expand the NIH policy requiring that private-sector scientific journal articles reporting on government-funded research be made freely available on the Internet. The letter is signed by over 70 scientific and medical societies, university presses and commercial publishers.

On behalf of the many STM journal publishers and tens of thousands of their US employees, these organisations have expressed their strong opposition to a provision that is included in the omnibus appropriations bill: SEC. 524. The policy regarding public access to research results established for the NIH by section 217 of division F of Public Law 111-8 shall apply to all departments funded in this Act having more than $100,000,000 in annual expenditures for extramural research.

This provision would impose a new government mandate requiring that private-sector scientific journal articles reporting on government-funded research be made freely available on the Internet. This is expected to expand the so-called 'negative' policy in place at the NIH to other major federal agencies. Implementation of the provision will undermine private sector investments, jobs, intellectual property and US leadership in scientific research, it has been pointed out.

While government funds scientific research, non-profit and commercial journal publishers invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in the peer review, editing and publishing of these articles. Government mandates that require these private sector publishers to make their peer-reviewed, value-added journal articles freely available on the Internet would fundamentally undermine a significant segment of the US publishing industry that employs 50,000 in the US and contributes over $10 billion annually to the nation's economy, it has been observed. For many US journal publishers, more than 50 percent of their revenue comes from overseas subscriptions, contributing to a positive balance of trade.

Publishers welcome the opportunity to work with the federal government to address public access in a meaningful way that does not jeopardise the current peer-review publishing system with all the benefits it provides to the US, the letter noted. They believe that the public access provision in the America competes legislation which received thoughtful input from many Congressional, Administrative and non-governmental entities is a better approach.

Further, the letter notes that this is a critical issue for scholarly societies and companies, and urged for the removal of the provision expanding the NIH public access policy to other federal agencies from the omnibus appropriations legislation.

Search for more Regulations, guidelines and other institutional frameworks

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have announced the speakers for a panel discussion on 'Marketplace: Open Access and the changing state of scholarly publishing'. The event is being held in conjunction with the upcoming meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in San Diego, CA, on January 8, 2011, at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 29A.

This forum will discuss the rapidly changing - and maturing - open-access publishing sphere, illustrate the growing range of options and approaches that are emerging, and help the library community to make sense of what it all means for you and your campus.

Guest presenters will include Caroline Sutton, President of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA); Wim van der Stelt, Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy for Springer; and Catriona McCallum, Chief Editor of PLoS Biology for the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

Search for more Conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) will co-host a panel discussion on 'Marketplace: Open Access and the changing state of scholarly publishing' at the upcoming meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in San Diego. The forum will be held on January 8, 2011 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 29A.

As awareness of the potential of open access (OA) - the free, immediate availability of scholarly articles on the public Internet, coupled with the rights needed to use them fully in the digital environment - has spread, there have been significant changes in the journal publishing options open to scholars. Widespread experimentation with business models has resulted in OA journals supported by mechanisms ranging from article processing fees to institutional membership to sponsorships. Even commercial journal publishers - like Springer - are reportedly joining the trend, providing new opportunities for scholars in all disciplines.

While many of the early OA journals essentially replicated traditional publications - albeit with very different access parameters - new types of venues are seen to be emerging. These are expected to provide a multitude of choices for scholars in terms of journal structure and peer review models. The Public Library of Science, for example, now operates 'currents', 'hubs', and PLoS One in addition to its flagship journals, showcasing an array of new services and features for authors to consider when selecting a publishing outlet.

The forum is expected to paint a picture of the rapidly changing - and maturing - OA publishing sphere, and illustrate the growing range of options and approaches that are emerging.

The ACRL Scholarly Communications discussion group, which seeks to offer a more intimate setting to explore topics in greater depth, will be held January 9, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM at the San Diego Convention Center, Room 31B.

Search for more conferences

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.