Open Access : LANL intro to OA. Carol Hoover, Open access publishing - an idea whose time has come, Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library Newsletter, May 2004. A brief, helpful primer that Hoover promises is only the first in a series on OA from the LANL Research Library Newsletter. Excerpt: "The current system of scholarly publishing is not sustainable. Today the LANL Research Library has a world-class journal collection in science and technology which is under siege and will not last without changes in scholarly publishing. So, why should you consider publishing in an open access publication? [1] Increased dissemination, [2] Articles can be cited sooner, [3] Articles potentially cited more frequently, [4] Institutional costs for scholarly publishing are decreased." [Open Access News]  9:59:10 AM   [Feedback ]  

Scholarly Publishing : On crisis in scholarly book publishing. Jennifer L. Holberg and Marcy Taylor, Getting the Profession We Want, or A Few Thoughts on the Crisis in Scholarly Publishing, Pedagogy 4(1), 1-7 (2004). (Access restricted to subscribers.) The editors of Pedagogy explore the economics of the scholarly monograph, a condition of tenure for many academic departments. As library book budgets are increasingly constrained by the rising costs of books and especially journals, university presses and would-be authors have suffered. Holberg and Taylor review much of the discussion around this issue, highlighting suggestions that academics focus on the scholarly article rather than the monograph. One of the problems, they point out, is "it is naive to see the journals market as more secure than the book market....Electronic publication is not, as many seem to believe, free or even cheaper than traditional publication. In fact, it is just as expensive as print publication ...since by far the largest costs in producing a journal are editorial." They remark also that institutions are cancelling journals at a rapid rate, or purchasing them through aggregators who pay less to the university presses. The authors do not mention open access publishing; rather, they speculate on potential solutions such as changing the standards for tenure, more emphasis on teaching and development of educational materials and increased valuation of scholarly editing and reviewing. (Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Update) [Open Access News]  8:18:09 AM   [Feedback ]  

Portals : Google : More on the CrossRef-Google collaboration. Barbara Quint, CrossRef Search Uses Google to Provide Full-Text Access, Information Today, May 3, 2004. Excerpt: "CrossRef, a 300-member publisher trade association, has announced a pilot project called CrossRef Search that will enable users to search the full text of scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings, and other sources from nine leading publishers. Google will supply the search technologies and CrossRef the reference links to publisher Web sites....[The nine] initial publishers produce some 1,100 journals, according to [CrossRef executive director Ed] Pentz....The initial pilot will last throughout 2004. CrossRef plans to gather feedback from scientists, scholars, and librarians through e-mail forms and formal evaluations using external consultants....There are only two rules for joining the pilot program, according to Pentz. 'The publisher has to have all their content indexed through the way Google indexes and make the search box available to everyone at no charge.'...CrossRef has put no requirements on access issues. Each publisher can apply its own economic model, even if it does not include a pay-per-view option. Nor, during the initial phase, were there any mechanisms for guiding users to library holdings to which they might have ?appropriate copy? access. End-users, therefore, might find themselves reading abstracts for material they can find no way to access. Pentz believes that most of the nine initial participants offer some form of pay-per-view as do two-thirds of CrossRef?s members." [Open Access News]  8:16:38 AM   [Feedback ]  

Portals : Google : CrossRef-Google offer free searching of full-text research articles. CrossRef and Google have announced a partnership that allows Google to search the full texts of peer-reviewed research articles. The service is free of charge and includes current and back issues from participating publishers. From today's press release: "CrossRef Search is available to all users, free of charge, on the websites of participating publishers, and encompasses current journal issues as well as back files. The results are delivered from the regular Google index but filter out everything except the participating publishers' content, and will link to the content on publishers' websites via DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) or regular URLs. CrossRef itself doesn't host any content or perform searches - CrossRef works behind the scenes with Google to facilitate the crawling of content on publishers' sites and sets the policies and guidelines governing publisher participation in the initiative. As well as enabling CrossRef Search, the partnership with Google also means that full-text content from the publishers is also referenced by the main Google.com index in its more general searches." Participating publishers so far include the American Physical Society, the ACM, Blackwell, Institute of Physics, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford, and Wiley. [Open Access News]  8:16:19 AM   [Feedback ]