Transforming Scholarly Communication: A Blog

Invitation to provide feedback on Research Support Services for Scholars

From the September 13 press release by Ithaka:

Ithaka S+R is pleased to announce Research Support Services for Scholars (RSS4S). This series of discipline-specific projects aims to provide critically needed research about the evolving behavior of scholars to the information support service providers who work with them. Through this work, Ithaka S+R will provide a scholar-centric foundation of understanding about scholarly practices intended to facilitate the development of new support services, policies, infrastructures and institutions which will facilitate innovative, effective, and efficient research practices.

We are launching with projects in the disciplines of history and chemistry. We are looking for feedback throughout this research process from scholars in the fields we are studying as well as the information service providers -- librarians, scholarly societies, computing support centers, and publishers-who support those fields.

Contribute Your Thoughts

We're interested in your thoughts on scholarly communication issues. You can post your message in the comments section to this entry.

University of California, San Francisco adopts open access policy

From the University of California, San Francisco press release of May 23, 2012:

The UCSF Academic Senate has voted to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public, helping to reverse decades of practice on the part of medical and scientific journal publishers to restrict access to research results.

The unanimous vote of the faculty senate makes UCSF the largest scientific institution in the nation to adopt an open-access policy and among the first public universities to do so.

"Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals," said Richard A. Schneider, PhD, chair of the UCSF Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, who spearheaded the initiative at UCSF. "The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research," he said. "By opening the currently closed system, this policy will fuel innovation and discovery, and give the taxpaying public free access to oversee their investments in research."

UCSF is the nation's largest public recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), receiving 1,056 grants last year, valued at $532.8 million. Research from those and other grants leads to more than 4,500 scientific papers each year in highly regarded, peer-reviewed scientific journals, but the majority of those papers are only available to subscribers who pay ever-increasing fees to the journals. The 10-campus University of California (UC) system spends close to $40 million each year to buy access to journals.

Such restrictions and costs have been cited among the obstacles in translating scientific advances from laboratory research into improved clinical care.

The policy, an FAQ, and letters of support from campus schools and committees, are available at:

http://senate.ucsf.edu/2011-2012/j-lib-openaccess.html

Federal judge rules on fair use lawsuit brought by publishers against Georgia State University

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13 edition:

A federal judge in Atlanta has handed down a long-awaited ruling in a lawsuit brought by three scholarly publishers against Georgia State University over its use of copyrighted material in electronic reserves. The ruling, delivered on Friday, looks mostly like a victory for the university, finding that only five of 99 alleged copyright infringements did in fact violate the plaintiffs' copyrights.

"My initial reaction is, honestly, what a crushing defeat for the publishers," said Brandon C. Butler, the director of public-policy initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries. Given how few claims the publishers won, "there's a 95 percent success rate for the GSU fair-use policy." The ruling suggests that Georgia State is "getting it almost entirely right" with its current copyright policy, he said.

[...]

Judge Evans rejected many of the individual claims brought by the three plaintiffs--Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications--concluding that the publishers had not adequately proved their copyright stake in the material. She dismissed the plaintiffs' argument that Georgia State had exceeded the guidelines for classroom copying set out by Congress in 1976, long before e-reserves. And she examined publishers' balance sheets and concluded that they had not lost significant amounts of revenue because of the alleged infringements.

[...]

[Nancy Sims, copyright program librarian at the University of Minnesota] said that the judge took the educational purpose of each use seriously and did not focus just on market considerations. "That was one of the contentions here--that if you can pay for it, you should be," she said. "And that's clearly not what the court is saying."

One part of the ruling could be problematic for librarians and others trying to work out fair-use policies in academe. Judge Evans proposed a 10-percent rule to guide decisions about what constitutes fair use in an educational setting. For books without chapters or with fewer than 10 chapters, "unpaid copying of no more than 10 percent of the pages in the book is permissible under factor three," she wrote in her ruling. For books with 10 or more chapters, "permissible fair use" would be copying up to one chapter or its equivalent.

The publishers may well appeal the decision.

Further commentary is available from the Association of College & Research Libraries at:

http://acrlog.org/2012/05/14/georgia-state-e-reserves-case-roundup

College of Education and Human Development launches open online textbook catalog

From the April 30 Minnesota Daily:

The University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development released an open online textbook catalog, allowing faculty from around the world to discuss and showcase online textbooks to help manage textbook costs for students.

[...]

The catalog launched a week ago and already has 84 texts available. Dave Ernst, who started the catalog, has been receiving emails from around the world about open textbooks that are available.

An open textbook allows free digital access and low-cost print options, as well as the ability for instructors to customize content. These are quality textbooks with an "open" copyright license, allowing anyone to freely access the text.

The catalog is intended to help faculty members find open textbooks and adapt them to their classroom, said Ernst, the director of Academic Technology Services in CEHD.

[...]

Each text accepted into the catalog has to meet four criteria: It must be under an open copyright clause allowing faculty to reuse and rework content, the textbook needs to be complete, it must be available for use outside of the University and it needs to be offered in print.

The catalog was also featured in a University news release. An excerpt:

"The University of Minnesota should be a leader in enabling faculty and students to benefit from open content and electronic textbook options," said Provost Karen Hanson. "This CEHD initiative is one of a number of our initiatives in e-learning that will help students obtain a high-quality education that is also affordable."

[...]

CEHD will support faculty who choose to review and adopt open textbooks with $500-$1,000 stipends.

"Faculty share student concerns about high textbook costs and are willing to consider high-quality, affordable alternatives like open textbooks," said CEHD associate professor Irene Duranczyk. "The Open Academics textbook catalog makes it easier by collecting the best peer-reviewed open textbooks in one place."

Nine CEHD faculty members are already exploring open textbooks through the catalog. Replacing their current course materials with open textbooks will potentially save over $100,000 in textbook costs next year.

Harvard Faculty Advisory Council issues letter warning that costly subscriptions 'cannot be sustained'

On April 17, Harvard's Faculty Advisory Council issued a Memorandum on Journal Pricing to faculty members in all schools, faculties, and units. It warns of an "untenable situation facing the Harvard Library," citing a publishing environment where:

• "Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands"
• "Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices"
• The same publishers enjoy "profit margins of 35% and more"

The faculty council concludes that continuing to subscribe to journals under current pricing models "would seriously erode collection efforts in many other areas, already compromised." It offers these recommendations to Harvard faculty colleagues:

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies.
2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access.
3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning.
4. Contact professional organizations to raise these issues.
5. Encourage professional associations to take control of scholarly literature in their field or shift the management of their e-journals to library-friendly organizations.
6. Encourage colleagues to consider and to discuss these or other options.

The letter has been covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, and the Atlantic.

U-MN letter in support of Federal Research Public Access Act

April 16, 2012

To: Minnesota Legislators

The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012 (S. 2096/H.R. 4004) was introduced to the House and the Senate on February 9, 2012 with robust bipartisan sponsorship. FRPAA would require that any federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets greater than $100 million provide public access to the published results of funded research within six months after publication. The University of Minnesota Senate Library Committee and Senate Research Committee members write in support of FRPAA; we believe increasing access to research stimulates progress and innovation within the academic enterprise, in industry, and in broader social contexts.

Research and scholarship thrive in environments of open sharing and collaboration, and peer review and critique. Tightly-restricted access to publications that result from federally sponsored research introduces barriers for researchers, industry innovators, and interested members of the public. When such research publications are openly available:

• Researchers in the United States and around the world are able to more effectively and efficiently learn from, review, and collaborate with one another.


• Published research reaches a wider audience:


• Authors often find increased citations to their works, as well as interest from unexpected quarters.


• Research errors or controversies can be more quickly detected and addressed.


• Industry researchers, entrepreneurs, and innovators are better able to keep abreast of relevant research advances.


• Funding agencies can read published results, enabling better review of the quality and productivity of funded research.


• Members of the public have access to cutting-edge information relevant to their lives.


• Intellectual property interests of authors, funders, research institutions, and industry research partners are largely unaffected by open access.


• Copyrights can still be transferred to publishers, retained by authors, or shared among multiple parties via traditional contracts and licenses.


• Copyright holders retain most of their rights even over publicly accessible works, although they may choose to make the works more broadly usable under the terms of existing open licensing schemes.


• Entrepreneurs may be more able to learn of innovative research, but existing requirements for licensing of patents and other intellectual property rights will not change.

A recent competing bill, the Research Works Act (RWA), would have rolled back the existing successful NIH public access programs, as well as preventing the passage of FRPAA. In removing their support for RWA, its sponsors acknowledged that open access "appears to be the wave of the future." FRPAA provides a clear path towards that future of open access for federally sponsored research. While opinions vary on the optimal embargo period across all types of publications and publishers, the current NIH policy that provides public access to the published results of funded research within 12 months after publication appears to be working well. That said, a shorter embargo term could provide enhanced public access, and for many publications and publishers, will have little impact on finances.

On behalf of our two committees, representing 51 faculty, staff, students, we urge your support for FRPAA to facilitate the advancement of research and public access to the results of federally supported research.

Sincerely,

Neil Olszewski, Chair Senate Library Committee
Linda Bearinger, Chair Senate Research Committee
Questions can be directed to Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian & McKnight Presidential Professor:
wlougee@umn.edu or 612-624-1807.

Mathematicians take a stand

Douglas Arnold, McKnight Presidential Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, and Henry Cohn, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at MIT, have co-authored an article entitled "Mathematicians Take a Stand." It discusses the philosophy behind the Elsevier boycott. It is now available on arXiv and will appear
in the June issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, alongside an article by David Clark and Laura Hassink of Elsevier.

April 30 event: Open Research and Learning: Collaboration, Connections & Communities

The University of Minnesota Libraries and the Department of Anthropology present

Open Research and Learning:
Collaboration, Connections & Communities
Monday, April 30, 2012 • 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Light refreshments will be served.

The "open" movement provides fertile ground for innovation and collaborations that advance research and enrich the learning environment. Through open-source tools and initiatives, students and faculty are reaping the benefits of free-flowing knowledge and data.

The presentations include:

• Dr. Jason Baird Jackson, folklore professor from Indiana University, will give the introductory talk on "Open Access 2.0", which includes virtual research spaces and the "collaborator practices" of the human social connections that allow a distributed human community to link together and work together in the digital humanities and beyond.
• David J. Ernst, Director of Academic Technology, College of Education and Human Development, will talk about the open textbooks project at the U of M.
• Dr. Lucy Fortson, Associate Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy, will talk about open data/Galaxy Zoo, citizen science.
• Doug Armato, Director, University of Minnesota Press, will talk about open publishing initiatives at the University of Minnesota Press.

The panel moderated by copyright librarian Nancy Sims. Among the questions they will address are:

• What social dynamics or institutional cultural shifts lead to successful open research partnerships?
• In what ways are open textbooks a potential solution to the issues facing the traditional textbook publishing model?
• What predictions can you make about monographic publishing practices?
• What issues surround the concept of open data?

Attendees may ask questions and contribute to the discussion with their fellow colleagues. All perspectives and experiences are welcome.

This event has been designated by the Office of the Vice President for Research to satisfy the Awareness/Discussion component of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) continuing education requirement.

Reserve your seat now!
(registration requested by Friday, April 27)

24 new co-sponsors sign on to Federal Research Public Access Act

According to the March 28 issue of Library Journal:

On March 20 some 24 new co-sponsors signed on to H.R. 4004, The Federal Research Public Access Act. Joining the bill's original sponsors, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) are 14 Democrats and ten Republicans from 18 states and the District of Columbia.

[...]

The bill is backed by the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of College & Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Creative Commons, Greater Western Library Alliance, Public Knowledge, Public Library of Science and the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), as well as leaders of many research universities.

It has been opposed by the Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (AAP/PSP) and the DC Principles Coalition in letters signed by 81 U.S. scholarly journal publishers, including Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Springer Publishing Company, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer, as well as a large number of professional societies.

Video available for Columbia U's "Research Without Borders" speaker series

Columbia University has made available the video recordings of its February 28 event Protests, Petitions and Publishing: Widening Access to Research in 2012:

How can access to important research and scholarship be available to all, not just "the one percent"? "Protests, Petitions and Publishing: Widening Access to Research in 2012" looks at how Occupy Wall Street, the Research Works Act (RWA), the boycott of Elsevier journals by a growing number of academics, and other recent developments are informing the debate over access to research and scholarship.

The Occupy movement resonated widely on college campuses in America and around the world when it began in Fall 2011 and reinvigorated discussion of socioeconomic inequality and increasing costs associated with higher education. Current debates about scholarly publishing have further echoed these themes. Two bills--the RWA, which seeks to end public-access policies to federally funded research, and the Federal Research Public Access Act, which seeks to expand the reach of these policies--are currently under consideration in Congress. In response, over 6,000 scholars have signed an online petition boycotting the scholarly journals published by the commercial publisher Elsevier, one of the major financial supporters of the sponsors of the RWA. Meanwhile, several societies have begun to address their membership's concerns about publishing practices that may be seen to exclude scholars at all but the most wealthy institutions. Are scholars and publishers finally ready to change the process by which scholarship is distributed?

The speakers bring a variety of perspectives to the issue of access to research.

Allan Adler is Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), where he deals with intellectual property, freedom of speech, new technology, and other industry-related issues.

Gail Drakes is a doctoral candidate in the Program in American Studies at New York University and Associate Faculty at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her current teaching and research interests explore the ways in which copyright (and other forms of private ownership of information) serve to regulate access to the stories, sounds, and images that shape collective scholarly and public understandings of the past.

Alex Golub is assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research interests include kinship and identity, resource development, and political anthropology. He is a founder of the popular cultural anthropology blog "Savage Minds."

Oona Schmid is the Director of Publishing at the American Anthropological Association. She is responsible for the daily oversight and long-term planning around a complex publishing program that includes more than 20 specialized anthropological journals.

Peter Woit is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University and author of the blog "Not Even Wrong."

Research Works Act is dead in U.S. House

The sponsors of the Research Works Act, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) issued a joint statement declaring that bill was dead in Congress:

The introduction of HR 3699 has spurred a robust, expansive debate on the topics of scientific and scholarly publishing, intellectual property protection, and public access to federally funded research. Since its introduction, we have heard from numerous stakeholders and interested parties on both sides of this important issue.

As the costs of publishing continue to be driven down by new technology, we will continue to see a growth in open access publishers. This new and innovative model appears to be the wave of the future. The transition must be collaborative, and must respect copyright law and the principles of open access. The American people deserve to have access to research for which they have paid. This conversation needs to continue and we have come to the conclusion that the Research Works Act has exhausted the useful role it can play in the debate. As such, we want Americans concerned about access to research and other participants in this debate to know we will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act. We do intend to remain involved in efforts to examine and study the protection of intellectual property rights and open access to publicly funded research.

Right before this statement, Elsevier withdrew its support of the bill. That led Peter Suber to declare:

This is a victory for what The Economist called Academic Spring. It shows that academic discontent -- expressed in blogs, social media, conventional media, boycotts, and open letters to Congress -- can defeat legislation supported by a determined and well-funded lobby. Let's remember that, and let's prove that this political force can go beyond defeating bad legislation, like #RWA , to enacting good legislation, like #FRPAA.