Digital Partnership for Advancing Knowledge
There is another grant opportunity for individuals who wish to advance Humanities scholarship by means of digitization. It is the Advancing Knowledge Program:
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) invite proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation’s cultural institutions. These grants will support collaborations among libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources.
The deadline for application is March 27, 2007.
Grants for Digital Humanities
The following grant opportunity may be of interest to Humanities researchers who wish to advance scholarly communication through digitization:
NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities] invites proposals for the planning or initial stages of digital initiatives in all areas of the humanities. Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants may involve:
- research that brings new digital approaches to the study of the humanities or that examines the implications of the use of emerging technologies for humanities scholarship;
- new digital modes of publication facilitating the dissemination of humanities scholarship in advanced academic as well as informal or formal educational settings at all academic levels;
- exploration of digital methods or approaches to preserve, archive, and make accessible traditional (i.e., analogue) and "new media" resources in the humanities;
- planning new digital tools for preserving, analyzing, and making accessible humanities data; and
- programs addressing the innovative use of emerging digital technologies in formal and informal educational settings, including public forums such as museums, libraries, historic sites, and broadcast media, and K-12 schools and post-secondary institutions.
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants should result in plans, prototypes, or proofs of concept for long-term digital humanities projects prior to implementation.
Click here for details. The application receipt deadline is April 3, 2007.
Interviews about Scholarly Communication
EDUCAUSE CONNECT now features a series of interviews of pioneers in different areas of scholarly communication. Conducted by Matt Pasiewicz, the most recent interviews include:
- One with Brett Bobley on cybersecurity and tenure and promotion
- One with Chris Greer on cyberinfrastructure and digital preservation
- One with Cliff Lynch on cyberinfrastructure and patents
- One with David Rosenthal on LOCKSS and commercial licenses
- One with MacKenzie Smith on D-space and institutional repositories
Much more are available from Matt Pasiewicz’s blog.
Over 2,500 Titles in Directory of Open Access Journals
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) now indexes over 2,500 "quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web." It is indeed a useful tool for researchers to find open access scholarly electronic journals in their disciplines.
Authors who wish to publish their research outcomes through open access, can use the "For authors" service on DOAJ. It helps authors ‘find information about the "pure" OA journals from DOAJ and about the "hybrid" journals that for a fee allow the authors to publish their research as OA in an otherwise subscription based journal.’ It also offers an FAQ section that explains open access publishing.
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 66
Version 66 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now online. It presents "printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet." To stay up-to-date, visit the accompanying Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.
Repository for Latin American Studies
Taking advantage of open access and the technologies for institutional repositories and metadata harvesting, the University of New Mexico has created a Web-based service, LAKH DSpace, that helps researchers search, access, and retrieve digitized scholarly contents about Latin America. The service is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
To learn more about how open access and institutional repositories can expedite scholarly communication, visit the Transforming Scholarly Communication Web site.
Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) will hold the PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference in Vancouver, Canada from July 11-13, 2007:
The conference will provide opportunities for those involved in the organization, promotion, and study of scholarly communication to share and discuss innovative work in scholarly publishing, with a focus on the contribution that open source publishing technologies (such as, but not restricted to, PKP’s OJS, OCS, and OA Harvester) can make to improving access to research and scholarship on a global and public scale.
The Conference will be of interest to those involved in journal publishing, library collection management, and open source software development. There is a call for papers and the deadline for submission is Jan. 15, 2007.
Access to Scholarly Materials
Dr. John Willinsky shared his views on access to scholarly materials at ECAR Symposium 2006. Below are some notes of Dr. Willinsky’s presentation on Oren Sreebny’s Weblog:
What does it mean when a journal goes corporate? 45% of journal titles are in corporate hands. When an association’s journals go corporate, the price goes up. The scholarly societies don’t see a choice - they need support for the electronic distribution of knowledge, and the publishers have very sophisticated mechanisms for that. Ted Bergstrom at UCSB has done work on comparing prices for non-profit vs. commercial journals. He has measured price per citation - in non-profit sector it’s $15, in commercial it’s $90. The commercialization is increasing cost, and unless budgets are rising that means a reduction in the access to knowledge. But this is in an era where the cost to disseminate knowledge is decreasing.
The alternative is the metaphor of openness. The metaphor is important because information technology can be used to restrict access as well as to increase dissemination. The principle is to increase access - anything that increases access to knowledge adds to the public good. The possibility of open data is exciting and a great example. In the humanities, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is open - struggling, but open.
Thanks to Dr. Peter Suber for reporting this blog post on Open Access News.
Open Access: Background and Controversies
Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress has published a report, Open Access Publishing and Citation Archives: Background and Controversy, that provides an overview of open access:
This report begins with an inventory of basic information: definitions and guides to histories of the growth of open access publishing and citation archives and descriptions of selected major open access activities. It moves on to summarize major points of difference between proponents and opponents of nongovernmental open access publishing and databases, and then highlights federal, including National Institutes of Health (NIH), open access activities and contentious issues surrounding these developments. The report also briefly describes open access developments in the United Kingdom (where a number of governmental and nongovernmental initiatives have occurred) and in the international arena. Finally, controversial issues which could receive attention in the 109th Congress are summarized.
It will be of interest to anyone who wishes to find out what open access is and why it matters. Other good sources for understanding it include Dr. Peter Suber’s "What is Open Access?" video and A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access.
Access to Federally Funded Research
Colorado State University Libraries have published an article, Who should have access to federally funded research: Inside the 2006 Federal Research Public Access Act, that addresses what hampers scholarly communication:
The Internet should enable instantaneous, immediate communication between researchers and scholars. Just imagine if Fleming could have sat down at a computer and told colleagues in England and beyond about the miracle mold that could knock out staph bacteria. In fact, the number of visitors to digital content on Web sites so far outnumbers traditional journal circulations that the potential to broadly, widely, and immediately impact the scientific community via publishing online is nearly limitless. Take, for example, the journal Science. Science is one of the most commonly cited journals and boasts 130,000 print subscriptions. Yet its Web site, which contains a mix of free and subscription-required portions, receives 1.8 million weekly visits.
While many publishers are choosing to offer their materials electronically, the need for costly subscriptions, even for materials available online, continues to limit access. Such barriers to the exchange of information between scholars and researchers ultimately threaten to stifle research worldwide.
The article also discusses the Federal Research Public Access Act and analyzes the arguments raised by its proponents and opponents. It will be of interest to faculty and graduate students who wish to learn about the current landscape of scholarly publishing and communication.
