1. Dismantling the Stumbling Blocks that Impede Researcher Access to E-Resources
The user experience of working with e-journals and ebooks in an academic setting has failed to keep up with changing practices and preferences for how researchers now expect to access the scholarly literature. Roger C. Schonfeld called attention to some of these limitations in a presentation at the STM Association annual conference in October. The video of his talk is now available.
The blog post says (quote): I called attention to some of these limitations in an Ithaka S+R issue brief earlier this year, and the STM Association invited me to present on this topic at their annual conference in October. The publisher community there expressed a real commitment to addressing these stumbling blocks. Several of the organizations spotlighted in my presentation have already begun to take steps to address some of the issues I highlighted, but as I emphasized in my talk the issues are community-wide and affect essentially all publishers, platforms, and intermediaries to one degree or another......... (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
2. Applied Altmetrics: How university presses, academic publishing services and institutional repositories benefit.
Academic institutions are increasingly looking for ways to demonstrate the value and breadth of their publishing activity. Danielle Padula and Catherine Williams, in their post in The Impact Blog, look at how one university, the University of Michigan, have incorporated altmetrics data as an author service to help academic colleagues articulate institutional-wide successes.
The blog post says (quote): Michigan saw that incorporating altmetrics data across their platforms could provide valuable feedback for their authors, as well as data that could be used to report on the reach and influence of their publishing activity internally. Starting with their journals, with the intention of expanding coverage to other outputs later on, Michigan has begun to use the Altmetric badges to track and report on the online attention their publications receive.......... (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
3. Academic print books are dying. What’s the future?
The print-format scholarly book, a bulwark of academia’s publish-or-perish culture, is an endangered species. The market that has sustained it over the years is collapsing. Sales of scholarly books in print format have hit record lows. Per-copy prices are at record highs. In purely economic terms, the current situation is unsustainable. In his post in The Conversation Blog, Donald Barclay discusses how the future of academic books looks like.
The blog post says (quote): Open-access initiatives such as these are positioning themselves to disrupt the scholarly book market by shifting to a model in which the cost of publication is recouped by upfront underwriting rather than via sales of copies. Besides rescuing the scholarly book from oblivion, open-access digital books offer many advantages over their print forebearers: The number of potential readers dwarfs what is possible for a run of a few hundred printed copies. Open-access scholarly books can be used, wholly or in part, as course texts at no costs to students.......... (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
4. Op-Ed vs. Scholarly Journals
Obtaining success and recognition in the halls of academia rests largely upon one’s ability to publish rigorous scholarship in scholarly journals. As graduate students, this concept is shoved down our throats almost daily. We are told that publications are what get you hired, promoted, and tenured. Those that publish the most in the highest regarded journals are usually considered leaders in their field and the top thinkers of their time, notes DeWitt Scott, in the Inside Higher ED post.
The blog post says (quote): While scholarly publications are very valuable and necessary, the impact they have outside of the academy is questionable. These journals tend to sit on library shelves or in the digital repositories of America’s academic institutions, rarely read by the average citizen, or even the average academic for that matter. Much of the research housed in these journals examines the ways in which life can be enhanced through the acceptance of new knowledge. The only problem is that this new knowledge is rarely accessed, read, or understood by those who need it most. If a person does not have access to an academic library, they may never come across this scholarship. Even worse, those outside of the academy that may happen upon a journal or scholarly article may have difficulty comprehending the material because of the technical jargon that normally makes complex ideas and thoughts even more complicated and indigestible. As graduate students and thinkers-in-training, we owe it to society to find ways for our work to reach broader publics. One way to do this is to engage in op-ed writing.......... (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
5. What Open-Access Publishing Actually Costs
In academe, ideas cost money. But how much? Advocates for open-access journals say that academic research should be free for everyone to read. But even those proponents acknowledge that publishing costs money - the disagreement is over the amount. In her post in The Chronicle Blog, Ellen Wexler discusses the actual cost essential for open access publishing.
The blog post says (quote): Unlike commercial publishers, nonprofit open-access journals don’t have a traditional profit margin - but they also don’t break even. At the Open Library of the Humanities, surplus money goes toward a safety net, to be used for unforeseen costs. At PLOS, surplus money goes back into the organisation. "PLOS has margins on our journals," Mr. Eisen said. "The difference is we don’t return money to stockholders." The nonprofit’s funding comes from two places: grants and article-processing fees. Instead of charging institutions money for access to the journals, it charges authors money to publish in them.......... (Unquote)
The full entry can be read Here.
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