Open Access and Electronic Publishing

"Scholarly publishers are well aware that more and more readers and libraries want to get hold of monographs in electronic form. The trick has been how to deliver content digitally without going out of business. Two new models—one with an open-access component, one without—should help publishers test out ways to adapt and, maybe, thrive."

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;

Peter Suber shares his annual review of the open access movement. The article highlights 15 categories of open access activity in 2007.

In <b>Open Access Publishing and the
Emerging Infrastructure for 21st-Century Scholarship</b>, Donald Waters asks,
ìopen access for what and for whom and how can we ensure that there is
sufficient capital for continued innovation in scholarly publishing?

"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 dream of ubiquitous information environments may be at hand, but how well do they support
scholarly and scientific research?"

EDUCAUSE joined a broad coalition in filing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief on behalf of the National Geographic Society which seeks permission to reproduce a print collective work in electronic format. At issue is ensuring the availability, preservation and dissemination of prior research which is essential for scholarly advancement. Oral arguments are expected to take place in the Eleventh Circuit Court during the week of February 25th, 2008, with a decision rendered at some point thereafter.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and ACRL (the Association of College and Research Libraries) today announced that the topic of the upcoming SPARC-ACRL Forum on emerging issues in scholarly communication, to be held during the ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, will be “Course check: A conversation with three open access publishers about the challenges of sustainability.

System-wide innovations that increase access to the results of research and scholarship are a key interest for the library community. Library support for these innovations, which ranges from being deeply engaged to dedicating scarce resources, is built upon the principle of open access – on evidence that open access accelerates the production, dissemination, and benefits of new knowledge, and on an understanding of the paths and business models that can deliver it. It is with this last point in mind that three of the most important and innovative leaders in scholarly publishing have been asked to speak at the next SPARC-ACRL Forum.

"Last year, a proposal in Congress to require all federally supported research to be placed online, freely available, attracted considerable attention and debate — and ultimately stalled.

This year, a measure that is narrower — it would apply only to research supported by the National Institutes of Health — appears within reach of passage. "