EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Electronic Journals

Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education

ckeller — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:51:48 -0500

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects. This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:14:53 -0500

A study of publishing services offered by ARL member libraries that provides valuable context for librarians and campus leaders considering the opportunities offered by this rapidly emerging research library role.

Institutional Repositories and E-Journal Archiving: What Are We Learning?

elilly — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:21:43 -0600

The growing need for institutions to capture and maintain access to their administrative and academic information is driving the exploration of organizational models for digital preservation. Among the approaches being developed are institutional repositories and e-journal archives.

When Is Open Access Not Open Access?

ckeller — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:34:34 -0600

"Since 2003, when PLoS Biology was launched, there has been a spectacular growth in “open-access” journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access journals as this article goes to press (and probably more by the time you read this). Authors also have various “open-access” options within existing subscription journals offered by traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, Springer, Oxford University Press, and many others). In return for a fee to the publisher, an author's individual article is made freely available and (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). But, as open access grows in prominence, so too has confusion about what open access means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion is being promulgated by journal publishers at the expense of authors and funding agencies wanting to support open access."

The E-only Tipping Point for Journals: What's Ahead in the Print-to-Electronic Transition Zone

ckeller — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:29:15 -0600

This report examines the issues associated with moves toward electronic-only publication of journals. It is based in large part on interviews with two-dozen academic librarians and journal publishers. Interviews were conducted with collection officers and others at a dozen ARL member libraries; the rest of the interviews were with publishing staff of societies and university presses, publishing platform hosts, and publishing production consultants.

Open Access & Science Publishing: Results of a Study on Researchers’ Acceptance and Use of Open Access Publishing

drupal — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:10:36 -0500

According to this Open Access & Science Publishing study researchers' overall attitude toward Open Access publishing is very positive. Open Access publishing means providing access to scientific publications at no charge and exempt from most copyright and licensing restrictions to everyone. Up to 91% of the 688 participants in a study conducted jointly between researchers at the University of Munich and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock describe their attitude toward Open Access publishing to be positive or very positive. However many show reluctance to use these new means of distributing their research work. While about two-thirds of the respondents indicate to have accessed Open Access literature before, only one third has published work in Open Access outlets. Advantages like increased speed, range and potentially higher citation rates of Open Access publications are seen alongside insufficient impact factors, lacking long-term availability and the inferior ability to reach the specific target audience of scientists within one's own discipline. Moreover the low level of use among close colleagues seems to be a barrier towards Open Access publishing. 73% of the interviewees believe that their close colleagues do not use Open Access media for publishing their research findings.

These are results of a study recently conducted by the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, and the Department of Information Science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The research was in part supported by the Maulden-Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Strategies and Frameworks for Institutional Repositories and the New Support Infrastructure for Scholarly Communications

drupal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:06:20 -0600

"Institutional repositories (IRs) are proliferating as they become an indispensable component for information and knowledge sharing in the scholarly world [1]. As their numbers increase worldwide, a new phase of IR development is emerging. Moving beyond their initial functions, IRs no longer serve solely as a place to store, organize, and access content. With rapidly changing technologies, users now desire and expect transportable content that can be utilized within various digital environments and reused in multiple formats, and they need forums for the rapid exchange of ideas with both on-campus and external communities. In response, universities and the libraries hosting IRs are looking for ways to weave their repositories into the "information fabric" of their campuses' academic and business processes and catalyze changes in scholarly communications more broadly."

Strategies for Developing Sustainable Open Access Scholarly Journals

drupal — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:52:59 -0500

This paper discusses different forms of open access publishing and argues that small independent journals that are funded though subsidies provide an important niche in scholarly publishing. One such journal, Medical Education Online (MEO) is used as a case study characterizing the dilemma these journals can face in maintaining their operations as they become successful and their need for resources grows. The paper discusses several strategies for addressing this problem and how they have been implemented for MEO.

A Social Model for Archiving Digital Serials: LOCKSS

drupal — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:53:42 -0500

Digital archiving inherited a vocabulary from the archiving of physical objects, but the social organization needed for effective digital archiving does not mirror the trusted-institution model used for physical archiving. A social model along the lines of the open source software community makes more sense for works whose authenticity and integrity can best be ensured through bit-level comparisons of multiple originals residing with multiple trusted collaborators. Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) is building a community base and has over seven years of experience with archiving electronic journals. LOCKSS works and has been tested. Few other digital archiving systems can claim equivalent practical experience.

The State of the Large Publisher Bundle: Findings from an ARL Member Survey

drupal — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:23:26 -0600

The bundling of scholarly journals and the marketing practices of the largest commercial publishers are a source of concern within the library community for a variety of reasons. These publishers receive substantial proportions of research libraries' overall spending on serials and they are often seen as trendsetters by smaller publishers. One of the earliest and most public expressions of concern about journal bundling was made in 2001 by Kenneth Frazier, the Director of Libraries at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. As Frazier noted, a key feature of journal bundling is strict limits on a library's ability to cancel titles. This restriction of cancellations creates challenges for budget management, for collection management, and for the marketplace of scholarly journals. As library budgets are locked into large bundles, cancellation pressure on unbundled titles increases and funds to acquire new journals outside of bundles are squeezed out.