Open Access and Scholarly Communication

In February 2008, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants—Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnée Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia—were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation. This report contains these background essays as well as a summary of the meeting.

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?

"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.

This is a special issue of the CODATA Data Science Journal which focuses on open access for science data research that has been supported by public funds.

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.

The author discusses the dissemination and use of scholarly research in the era of open access development.

"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. "