Online Tutorial on Author Rights
The University of Minnesota Libraries have created a six-minute online tutorial on author rights in scholarly publishing. Kudos to them!
Other resources about author rights are available online from the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). They include:
Right to Research for Students
The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has launched a new Web site, The Right to Research, to inform students of scholarly communication issues:
You’ve probably used journal articles in your coursework. You’ve probably also encountered journal articles that you wanted to read — potentially important articles — but couldn’t get access to.It doesn’t have to be this way.
OPEN ACCESS — the principle that research should be accessible online, for free, immediately after publication — is improving the way scholarly information is shared.
The site features sections that describe what student organizations and student governments can do to support open access. There is also an informative brochure for download. Last but not least, the site is complemented by the Open Students blog.
Scholars’ Views of Peer Review
The Publishing Research Consortium, which is composed of associations and publishers that collaborate "to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching," has released a research report: Peer Review in Scholarly Journals: Perspective of the Scholarly Community–An International Study:
This report takes a look at peer review: what it is, and how it works in practice; the benefits of peer review; some critiques; and some alternative approaches. It is largely based on a new international survey of 3040 academics, looking at their behaviour and attitudes and perceptions of peer review. …
Some of the findings listed in the summary paper (Peer Review: Benefits, Perceptions and Alternatives) are:
- Peer review is widely supported by academics
- Peer review improves the quality of the published paper
- There is a desire for improvement
- Double-blind review was preferred
- Double-blind review was seen as the most effective
- Double-blind review faces some fundamental objections
- Post-publication review was seen as a useful supplement to formal peer review
- Limited support for payment for reviewers
- Mixed support for review of authors’ data
Online Videos for Scholarly Communication
An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (YouTube professors: Scholars as online video stars by Jeffrey R. Young) reports that more academics have utilized online videos as a channel for teaching and scholarly communication:
Two professors at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities created a 3-D animation explaining a mathematical concept, and attracted more than one million views on YouTube. And Michael L. Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, made a video about Web 2.0 that drew more than 400,000 views. Web video offers a new way for scholars to communicate, he says, noting that he wrote a scholarly article about the same ideas he put in his video, but that the article might be read by only a small number of scholars.
"It’s easier than people think," Mr. Wesch says of making online videos. "The thought process is very different, which I actually think can be very valuable. I mean, we think a lot about how to present our work in writing, and I think when you shift into thinking about how to present this work visually, it actually forces you to think through things in new ways."
Indeed, researchers have been posting their videos on SciVee, a site that "moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice."
International Conference on Electronic Publishing 2008
The 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB) will be held at the University of Toronto in Canada on June 25-27, 2008. Its theme will be "Open Scholarship: Authority, Community and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0":
Scholarly communications, in particular scholarly publications, are undergoing tremendous changes. Researchers, universities, funding bodies, research libraries and publishers are responding in different ways, from active experimentation, adaptation, to strong resistance. The ELPUB 2008 conference will focus on key issues on the future of scholarly communications resulting from the intersection of semantic web technologies, the development of cyberinfrastructure for humanities and the sciences , and new dissemination channels and business models. …
There is a call for papers. The submission deadline is Jan. 31, 2008.
Peer Review with Blog
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an article (Blog comments and peer review go head to head to see which makes a book better by Jeffrey R. Young) that discusses an experiment of conducting the peer review with a blog:
The idea was to tap the wisdom of his [Dr. Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s] crowd. Visitors to the blog might not read the whole manuscript, as traditional reviewers do, but they might weigh in on a section in which they have some expertise.
…
So the experiment will provide a side-by-side comparison of reviewing-old school versus new blog. Mr. Wardrip-Fruin calls the new method "blog-based peer review."
SPARKY Awards Winners Announced
The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has announced the winners of the first Annual SPARKY Awards, which encourages people to "imaginatively illustrate in a short video the value of sharing ideas and information." From the press release:
The three winning entries offer a glimpse of student views on the importance of access to information, and feature an animated look at the most basic benefits of sharing, a film noir-style crime investigation using the Internet, and a tongue-in-cheek documentary on Open Access. The winners are:
First Place
"Share"
http://blip.tv/file/488550
Written and directed by Habib Yazdi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
First Runner Up
"Pri Vetai: Private Eye"
http://www.blip.tv/file/512440
Directed by Tommy McCauley and Max Silver, Carleton College
Second Runner Up
"An Open Access Manifesto"
http://blip.tv/file/517300
Written and directed by Romel Espinel and Josh Hadro, Pratt Institute
"I decided to participate in the contest because I strongly believe in the value of sharing - especially with regard to information," said Habib Yazdi, who is a senior communication studies major. "Through sharing what we have learned we can improve the lives of those who are less privileged. Being on a college campus, I have really come to appreciate how many students are willing to share knowledge with others."
Copyright and Creative Commons
The January 2008 issue of First Monday publishes an article, Creative Commons and contemporary copyright: A fitting shoe or "a load of old cobblers"?, by Maureen O’Sullivan. Here is the abstract:
This article examines copyright’s historic trajectory from a common law to a statutory privilege, turning almost full circle in recent years, in the current age of high technology. It simultaneously probes theories of intellectual property rights which are grounded in somewhat skewed ideas related to tangible property, and contextual parallels and contrasts are drawn between physical and ephemeral resources throughout. The founding and fomenting of various civil society organisations in response to the expansions in the term and scope of copyright law, such as Creative Commons, is then charted. This leads on to complex questions about what constitutes the public domain, and whether and how it should be facilitated. The aims of grassroots movements such as Creative Commons to persuade and assist authors, through voluntary means, to relax their legislative rights and its impact on copyright law and practice, are also critically evaluated.
You can learn more about Creative Commons by visiting its About page.
Podcasts on Higher Education and Scholarly Communication
EDUCAUSE CONNECT has made available podcasts of interviews with leaders in higher education and scholarly communication. They include:
- An Interview with Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC)
- An Interview with Jim Neal, VP for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University
- An Interview with Roger C. Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka
- An Interview with Timo Hannay, Publishing Director for Nature.com
- An Interview with Mara Hancock, ETS Associate Director of Learning Systems at UC Berkeley
What Do You Think about Science 2.0?
Scientific American has published an online article (Science 2.0: Great new tool, or great risk? by M. Mitchell Waldrop) that invites readers to "collaborate with the author to give a story its final form" by providing comments on the article. The author states that Science 2.0 "describes how researchers are beginning to harness wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies as a potentially transformative way of doing science." There are these questions to guide readers to share their thoughts:
- What do you think of the notion of "Science 2.0?" Will Web 2.0 tools really make science much more productive? Will wikis, blogs and the like be transformative, or will they be just a minor convenience?
- Science 2.0 is one aspect of a broader Open Science movement, which also includes Open-Access scientific publishing and Open Data practices. How do you think this bigger movement will evolve?
- Looking at your own scientific field, how real is the suspicion and mistrust mentioned in the article? How much do you and your colleagues worry about getting "scooped"? Do you have first-hand knowledge of a case in which that has actually happened?
- When young scientists speak out on an open blog or wiki, do they risk hurting their careers?
- Is "open notebook" science always a good idea? Are there certain aspects of a project that researchers should keep quite, at least until the paper is published?
Thanks to Joyce Ogburn for pointing out the article.
