Open access (OA) journals promote the opportunity for peer-reviewed journal articles to be freely accessible. In recent years, the number of OA journals has exploded in all disciplines. Previous studies have identified print-based pedagogical discipline-specific journals outside the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) for librarians to consider as vehicles for publishing articles related to subject-based Information Literacy (IL). The present study explores the presence of discipline-specific pedagogical journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and presents a table of OA journals with their acceptance rates and review times. Pedagogical OA journals are highlighted as a potential opportunity for librarians to pro-actively reach out to faculty within a discipline and contribute towards the OA movement.
Over the last few years, Techdirt has been reporting on a steady stream of victories for open access. Along the way publishers have tried various counter-attacks, which all proved dismal failures. But there are signs that they have changed tack, and have come up with a more subtle and increasingly successful approach. An analysis by Mike Taylor of what he calls "The progressive erosion of the RCUK open access policy" has been given. The distinction between "Gold" open access, which takes place through journals, and "Green" open access, which uses online repositories is a crucial issue. The publishers' new strategy against open access is not to fight it directly, but to use constant lobbying to inflict a kind of death by a thousand cuts.
For well over a decade, research libraries have been spending millions of dollars per year licensing collections of journals published by just a handful of publishers. Ten years ago ARL surveyed its membership about their licensed collections of journal titles. In 2002, ARL asked for information regarding members' expenditures for 60 journal publishers, ultimately reporting findings for the 7 most commonly subscribed publishers. In 2003, a second survey added further information about some licensing terms. ARL surveyed its members again in 2005 about their 2006 licenses with the 6 largest publishers at that time. Early in the summer of 2012, ARL again surveyed its member libraries about their subscriptions to journal collections from large publishers. The data collected in this most recent survey show that a great deal has changed in the last decade, and yet several issues remain concerns within the library community.Pricing models and license terms, consortial arrangements, and the conversion from print to electronic subscriptions remain issues across the surveys.
Public outreach and access are becoming more and more important across institutions of higher education. Sustainable information technology approaches are necessary to communicate and preserve public education materials generated as part of this new era of "outreach and engagement." This paper describes the partnership between Oregon State University's Extension Service publishing arm and the Oregon State University Libraries to make Oregon State University the first land-grant institution to systematically publish outreach materials using the university's institutional repository.
Wharton operations and information management professors Joseph Simmons and Uri Simonsohn and UC Berkeley colleague Leif Nelson point out in a recent research paper, too much emphasis is placed on getting research results published in respectable journals, without worrying enough about whether the evidence backs up those findings. Indeed, the authors write, "it is unacceptably easy to publish 'statistically significant' evidence consistent with any hypothesis."
When e-journals first launched, there was confusion due to formatting, platforms, delivery methods, etc. Publishers and academic librarians are finding that the introduction of e-books to the marketplace has not been as seamless as initially expected. The same issues that had plagued journals are now evident in the e-book market. This paper examines current perceptions and understandings among libraries regarding e-book and humanities collection offerings.
This white paper by Deborah Lenares of the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley College, and Steven Smith, formerly of Wellesley College and now Head of Collection Management at Boston University Libraries, draws on past studies and a new survey of users at Wellesley College to uncover some interesting insights for undergraduate librarians and institutions. The white paper is available both online, and will be distributed at this year's Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) Conference in Austin, TX.
Over the past several years, policy makers and private actors have developed an evolving set of approaches for addressing the orphan works problem - a problem that arises when "the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires permission of the copyright owner,"preventing follow-on uses of works. These approaches usually attempt to address the orphan works problem by employing some threshold mechanism to differentiate true orphan works, to which the proposed solutions would apply, from non-orphaned copyrighted works. This paper examines in detail the core schemes for identifying rightsholders among the leading orphan works regimes and proposals.
When used appropriately, educational technology is a tool to assist with implementation of the Common Core Standards, help raise graduation rates, and prepare students for life beyond K-12 education. Technology employed in isolation, without direct instruction, or highly qualified guidance, fails to address these concerns. It is the intent of this AASL white paper to provide a review of technology-related topics that can contribute to success and might serve to generate interest in further research on filtering practices, Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), apps, social media, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and related subjects.
This report tackles the important question of how to achieve better, faster access to research publications for anyone who wants to read or use them. It has been produced by an independent working group made up of representatives of universities, research funders, learned societies, publishers, and libraries. The group's remit has been to examine how to expand access to the peer-reviewed publications that arise from research undertaken both in the UK and in the rest of the world; and to propose a programme of action to that end.
Implementation of a thoughtful smart content strategy is seen to be critical for content providers today. During his presentation at the Hot Spot Professional&Scientific Information (Hall 4.2) at the recently concluded Frankfurt Book Fair, Rich Kobel, Assistant Vice President of Business Development at Scope e-Knowledge Center, argued that academic books have not enjoyed much visibility online, indicating that books are largely still packaged as a whole with little or no visibility for chapter level content. This lack of discoverability results in poor citations, lack of recognition and frustrated authors.
(arl.org): As the skills and infrastructure needed to sustain scholarly communication change in the electronic age, many organizations are reevaluating their publishing strategies. Smaller societies and institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of their authors to link research data with publications, repurpose content in new ways online, or push the boundaries of intellectual property to mix and mash-up. Librarians, meanwhile, are extending their skills to organize and preserve data, support XML workflows, and build deep understandings of digital rights and permissions. .
(youtube.com): This presentation describes a project at the University of Oregon which helps students to understand the uses of primary source materials, and also to think about their own roles as creators of such materials, and as prospective contributors to the collective social record. Technology comes into play, of course, but is very much in the background in some sense. It seems the ideas here can be readily adapted and used by a wide range of institutions. If you are not familiar with this project, the video of this presentation is worth watching.
(oclc.org): Preliminary results from a new study into researcher dissemination behaviors were reported at this session. This builds on work done in Scotland funded by JISC in which we have participated, and provides evidence of faculty preferences for "disseminating" their research outputs in ways other than via traditional journal or monograph publication. Discussion included the effectiveness of the institutional or subject repository, and other venues, for dissemination purposes, and the differences that emerge across scholarly disciplines.
(eprints.rclis.org): Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want summarizes findings from research conducted by OCLC on what constitutes quality in library online catalogs from both end users and librarians' points of view. In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org - OCLC's freely available end user interface on the Web - and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog's delivery-related information is just as important to end users.
