Papers from First Monday Conference
Some papers presented at the First Monday Conference (FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content) are now available in the June issue of First Monday. More papers will be published in the July issue.
Access to Raw Research Data
The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers have jointly issued a statement regarding their views on the access to raw research data:
Science is best advanced by allowing as many scientists as possible to have access to as much prior data as possible; this avoids costly repetition of work, and allows creative new integration and reworking of existing data.
We believe that, as a general principle, data sets, the raw data outputs of research, and sets or sub-sets of that data which are submitted with a paper to a journal, should wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars. We believe that the best practice for scholarly journal publishers is to separate supporting data from the article itself, and not to require any transfer of or ownership in such data or data sets as a condition of publication of the article in question. Further, we believe that when articles are published that have associated data files, it would be highly desirable, whenever feasible, to provide free access to that data, immediately or shortly after publication, whether the data is hosted on the publisher’s own site or elsewhere (even when the article itself is published under a business model which does not make it immediately free to all).
Hopefully, the movement of open data will pick up and researchers will share their raw research data legitimately for the sake of advancing scholarship.
Create Change Re-Launched
The Create Change Web site has been re-launched! From its press release:
The Create Change Web site includes sections on digital scholarship and new modes of communication; examples of change in diverse fields; and ways to stay informed on new developments. It offers tailored guidance for researchers who play many roles in their professional lives – as researcher, author, reviewer, editor, editorial board member, society member, faculty member, or teacher. The site features selected news items; an ongoing series of interviews with scholars from different disciplines; and scores of links to other Web sites and resources.
Sustainability of Open Access Journals
This article (Open-access journal hits rocky times) from Nature reports that an open access journal publisher, the Public Library of Science, will raise the author publication fee in order to help cover the publishing costs. Such move inevitably stirs up concern over the sustainability of open access journals. Is the "author pays" business model viable in the long run? How independent is the model from the financial support of philanthropy?
Fair Use Network
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has launched the Fair Use Network to support "fair use and other free expression safeguards within the law." The Web site provides resources for understanding copyright, free expression, and trademarks. It also offers a directory of legal guides, a glossary & index of legal terms, and a directory of major U.S. Supreme Court cases on intellectual property. It is a very informative resource for creators of all kinds.
Peer Review Debate
The past few years witnessed an increase in the discussion of peer review practices. Nature recently has started hosting a Web debate on this topic. The site features open access articles on the methods of peer review, ethical concerns, and technological innovations for the peer review process.
Scholar’s Copyright Project
Science Commons provides three author addenda to help scholarly authors retain enough rights so that they can use their articles in teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities. That will enhance the visibility and accessibility of the authors’ publications. The addenda differ in these ways:
- The OpenAccess-CreativeCommons 1.0 Addendum reserves the right for the author to post the published version (for example, as a .pdf file) immediately and to grant others a Creative Commons "Attribution NonCommercial" license to use the article.
- The OpenAccess-Publish 1.0 Addendum reserves the right for the author to post the published version immediately upon publication.
- The OpenAccess-Delay 1.0 Addendum reserves the right for the author to post the author’s final manuscript version immediately and the published version six months after publication.
There is also a Scholar’s Copyright Project - Frequently Asked Questions document that explains how to use the addenda.
Article on Public Access to Federally Funded Research
Ray English and Peter Suber have co-authored an article, Public access to federally funded research, which was published in the June issue of College & Research Libraries News. It discusses the rationale and provisions of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 and the American Center for CURES Act of 2005. It also provides a comparison of the two acts to the public access policy announced by the National Institutes of Health last year.
Issues about Scholarly Journal Publishing
This article (Academic journals’ futures up in air) from Contra Costa Times reports concerns over the pricing of scholarly journals:
The pressure to provide the latest research to instructors and students has led institutions to continue to pay for the expensive publications, but not without a fight. When it came time for the UC [University of California] system to renew its approximately $6 million contract for a wide range of Elsevier titles, university officials bargained aggressively until the company lowered its asking price.
The Netherlands-based company does the best it can to limit annual price increases, said Karen Hunter, an Elsevier senior vice president who will speak at the Berkeley seminar. But the priciest journals can produce more than 300 new pages per week, she said.
"That’s a lot of material," Hunter said. "You might be getting 15,000 articles (per year). It’s real easy to pick a number and say, ‘How can a journal cost that much?’"
But critics remain steadfastly opposed to such business practices. Publicly traded publishers such as Elsevier charge four or five times as much for their journals as nonprofit publishers, said Ted Bergstrom, a UC Santa Barbara economics professor who has studied journal prices since 2000.
Another article (Science journals artfully try to boost their rankings), from The Wall Street Journal, discusses the consequences of some journals’ manipulation of the impact factor:
Scientists and publishers worry that the cult of the impact factor is skewing the direction of research. One concern, says Mary Ann Liebert, president and chief executive of her publishing company, is that scientists may jump on research bandwagons, because journals prefer popular, mainstream topics, and eschew less-popular approaches for fear that only a lesser-tier journal will take their papers. When scientists are discouraged from pursuing unpopular ideas, finding the correct explanation of a phenomenon or a disease takes longer.
Another concern is that impact factors, since they measure only how many times other scientists cite a paper, say nothing about whether journals publish studies that lead to something useful. As a result, there is pressure to publish studies that appeal to an academic audience oriented toward basic research.
These two issues regarding journal publishing may generate profound impacts on research and scholarly communication. I wondered what academics and researchers think of them. What action would they take to tackle them?
Debate on Open Access
Research Information has published a series of interviews of researchers that address "questions about who research is for, how the results should be disseminated and how the whole process should be funded." There is also an online poll of your thoughts on open access.
