The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics

Scholarly Communication for Librarians: catalogued and in circulation!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:41:00 +0000

My book Scholarly Communication for Librarians is now catalogued at SFU Library - and, even better, on loan!

Research Brief: Library savings from full flip to open access via article processing fees: about two-thirds savings

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:02:00 +0000

Based on data supplied by Mark Ware in the recently released report for the Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers Association (STM) An overview of scientific and scholarly journals publishing, I calculate that library savings from a full flip from subscriptions to open access via article processing fees, at the PLoS One rate of $1,350 would be at least 64%. For the avoidance of doubt, that's about a two-thirds discount. This is presented as an illustration that open access is a wise choice economically, and not just from an access perspective; it is not meant as an endorsement of PLoS One or the article processing fee approach. The majority of OA journals do not charge article processing fees.

In brief, Ware estimates annual STM revenue at $8 billion per year, and quotes Bjork et al on an estimated total peer-reviewed journal article production of 1.5 million articles per year. This is an average of $5,333 revenue for STM for each scholarly article produced in a year. Compare this with the PLoS One article processing fee of $1,350 per article. Factoring in about 70% of STM revenues coming from library sources, the resulting global savings for libraries are 64%. See here for figures.

Other ways of expressing this: PLoS One costs about a fourth of the average revenue per article for STM, or PLoS One is four times as efficient as the average traditional STM journal.

There are many limitations to this brief study. Most of these limitations are reasons why library savings would be greater than 64%. Examples of variables not taken into account:

STM revenue does not take into account non-STM revenue, for journals in the humanities and social sciences and smaller publishers that are not part of STM. The article count, however, is for all disciplines. A higher total revenue would result in a higher average per-article revenue with the current subscription system, which in turn would mean higher library savings with a flip to open access via article processing fees.

This scenario does not take into account non-library revenue for article processing fees, such as authors who can tap into research grant funds for this purpose.

This scenario assumes an average article processing fee of about $1,350 U.S. With an average of $1,535 (BMC standard article processing charge), library savings are still at least 60%. See here for figures.

These figures do not take into account publishers who would like to receive more revenue than standard PLoS One or BMC rates on a routine basis. While libraries would still see savings at article processing fee rates of $3,000 as some publishers are charging - the two-thirds savings scenario comes from supporting high-quality but affordable open access publishers - not just any article processing fee that any publisher might like to charge.

This post is an early sharing of data to be developed for a fuller study in the near future, and part of the Transitioning to Open Access series. Thanks to Andrew Waller for checking some of the math.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: September 30, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:40:00 +0000

This issue of The Dramatic Growth of Open Access features a few key quotable numbers to illustrate the growth and current extent of open access: more than 4,000 fully open access, peer reviewed journals in DOAJ, growing by 2 titles per day; close to 1,500 open access repositories listed in OpenDOAR, adding a new repository every business day; over 30 million free publications through Scientific Commons, growing by more than 20 thousands items per day; more than 20% of the world's medical literature is freely available 2 years after publication, and close to 10% is freely available immediately on publication; 1 more journal decides to submit all or most content to PMC every business day, and growth of open access journals in PMC is one new journal every other business day. The number of open access mandate policies is well over a hundred, and growing rapidly - but also likely understated. If you have a policy, please be sure to register with ROARMAP. This quarter saw some minor setbacks. Most notable (but still small) is a decrease in free content through Highwire Press.

Dramatic Growth quotables

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Over 4,000 fully open access, peer reviewed scholarly journals

Adding 2 titles per day

OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)

About 1,500 open access repositories worldwide

Adding 1 new repository every business day

Scientific Commons

30 million scientific publications free online

Added 8 million publications in the last year

Growing by more than 20,000 publications per day

PubMedCentral

20% of world's medical literature freely available 2 years after publication

Close to 10% of world's medical literature freely available immediately on publication

1 new journal chooses to submit all or most content to PMC every business day

1 more medical journal becomes fully open access in PMC every other business day

PLoS ONE may soon become the world's largest scholarly journal. As reported this quarter on IJPE, based on Peter Binfield's presentation at ELPUB 2009, PLoS ONE is already among the very largest of the world's academic journals, and, if current trends continue, will become THE world's largest journal sometime in 2010. PLoS ONE is one of the journals published by the high prestige, not-for-profit publisherPublic Library of Science.

Milestones this quarter

Scientific Commons exceeds 30 million publications

PubMedCentral internal researchers' self-archiving rates now exceed 50% (for publications within past 3 years, and overall)

Thanks, PMC Staff! Also thanks for the neat "Free full text" tab, no doubt very handy for searchers, which also makes it much easier to collect data for the dramatic growth of open access.

Selected Details

Directory of Open Access Journals

4,361 journals

Strong year (added 693 journals), slow quarter (109 titles). Note that additions to DOAJ are not the same as the total number of open access journals, but rather likely to reflect staffing / workflow issues. For example, this quarter covers summer months and the first OASPA conference, which Lund University, home of DOAJ, helped to host. Slow growth this quarterly is very likely to reflect such variables as vacation schedules and possibly staff secondments to help with the conference.

Strong growth in number of journals searchable at article level (32% annual increase, now 1,664 titles)

Strong growth in articles searchable at article level (59% increase, now at 315,407)

PubMedCentral

# journals actively participating in PMC 671

# journals in PMC with immediate free access 517

# journals in PMC with all articles open access 396

Open Access Mandate Policies (from ROARMAP)

Departmental 14

Funder 41

Institutional 43

Thesis 33

Total 131

Proposed Mandates 15

IF YOU HAVE AN OPEN ACCESS POLICY, please register with ROARMAP. The ROARMAP numbers are likely understated, for example many people have pointed out that the number of thesis deposit policies is likely much higher than what is reported in ROARMAP. Registering helps with the numbers, but more importantly, a link to your policy can be most helpful for others still developing their own policies.

Minor setbacks this quarter
PubMedCentral fully open access journals: despite strong annual growth, the number of fully OA journals participating in PMC dropped by 2 this quarter.
Highwire Free: the number of free articles has dropped since last year by over 4,000.
CARL Metadata Harvester: strong annual growth is offset by a loss of about 600 items this quarter (weeding project, perhaps?).

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access Dataverse (spreadsheets for download - thanks to Harvard)

Google docs for viewing (full)
Google docs for viewing (show growth)

Definitions:
Day = calendar day (total / 365 days per year)
Business day = calendar days - 104 (weekends), total / 261

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.

PLoS article-level metrics: substantial value add for authors

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Public Library of Science (PLoS) recently introduced article-level metrics.

The PLoS article-level metrics are a substantial value-add for authors, including a range of download statistics, citations and social bookmarking data, and more. As an author, I would love to see this kind of service!

It is interesting that a publisher with top-ranking journals on traditional metrics (impact factor) is also a publisher innovating in the area of metrics of far greater relevance, which say soon make impact factors irrelevant in the near future.

One service that I, as an author, would like to see for the future, is a means of combining statistics from institutional and disciplinary repositories with the publisher's statistics. This is a development that could be pursed either by publishers or by repositories.

The data available from PLoS (from the PLoS website) includes:
Article usage statistics - HTML pageviews, PDF downloads and XML downloads
Citations from the scholarly literature – currently from PubMed Central, Scopus and CrossRef
Social bookmarks - currently from CiteULike and Connotea
Comments – left by readers of each article
Notes – left by readers of each article
Blog posts – aggregated from Postgenomic, Nature Blogs, and Bloglines
Ratings – left by readers of each article

More information is available at:
http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/

Mass digitization of books: Open Content Alliance is the right approach

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:35:00 +0000

With the Google Books lawsuit settlement likely to be decided within days, here is my take on this topic.

Libraries in recent years have been undertaking mass digitization projects, following two different approaches: working with Google to digitize the whole library's collection, including copyrighted works, or working with the Open Content Alliance under OCA principles, which include respecting the rights of content owners, and widest possible access, such as full open access for works in the public domain.

The Open Content Alliance is the right approach. Despite laudable motivations of participating libraries and Google (to expand access to the written word and preserve these books), the Google Books approach of taking works that belong to others (whether content owners or, in the case of public domain works, all of us), is just plain wrong. The impact of the proposed Google Book Settlement would mean basically a monopoly on digital books for one company, and a significant loss to the public domain. Those involved in the class action lawsuit do not represent all authors and publishers, only themselves.

Here is hoping that the Court will reject the Google Book Settlement, and that the libraries involved will abandon this approach and join the Open Content Alliance instead.

Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity: a key step in transition to OA

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:30:00 +0000

The Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) calls on universities to make a commitment to providing equity to open access journals. This is a key step in the transition to open access. I highly recommend joining COPE to every library, and university. Even if significant (or even any) funding is not immediately available, this is an important philosophical commitment to make, one that makes it possible to raise the question of whether such support should receive equal priority at budget time.

One of the reasons that this is a key step is simply the recognition of the role that universities play (through libraries) as support for scholarly communication. This has never been a standard commercial transaction, where one side produces goods and services that are then purchased by the other side. Rather, university faculty write, peer review, and often edit scholarly articles; much of the work is done on time and in office space provided by universities. This system is currently subsidized through library subscriptions. Shifting support so that open access journals receive equitable treatment is only fair.

My hopes for COPE are growth: I encourage every library and university to join. Also, I would like to see COPE someday move beyond support for article processing fees to include wholesale support for open access journals, hosting and support services, and more.

Congratulations and thanks to all of the initial signatories of COPE: Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Taylor and Francis first half results 2009: academic information revenue up 25%, and, are shareholders more interested in OA than T & F?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Informa, the owner of Taylor and Francis, has published their first half results for 2009 - see the Informa Investors Page.

Highlights: academic publishing revenues and profits are up in the first half of 2009. Informa's Peter Rigby sees open access as not a bother for HSS, less relevant to a company like Informa than to a pure STM publisher. At least one shareholder is wondering whether Informa will push harder to move to an OA business model.

Details

From the presentation powerpoint:

Publishing – Academic Information
Resilient performance
• Revenue increase of 25% (organic 4%)
• Adjusted operating profit increase of 45% (organic 4%)

Overall operating profit margin for informa was 23%, reflecting both strong performance in academic publishing and weak performance in events.

Notes from the webcast Q and A session

Interesting question (see the end of the Q and A session) about "pushing harder into an open access business model". According to Informa's Peter Rigby, OA is less relevant to HSS and hence Informa as a mixed HSS/STM publisher; Informa is allowing post-peer-review self-archiving and has an open choice option, so is doing just fine.

Another question related to whether Informa is doing anything about the cost in the area of academic information. No need, says Peter Rigby, as the sector is doing strong. This is an excellent illustration of the inelasticity of this market. Taylor & Francis is growing in profits in spite of a worldwide financial crisis. No reason to look for efficiencies!

This post is part of the transitioning to open access series.

Housekeeping: study leave / email address change 2009-2010

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:19:00 +0000

For anyone who is wondering about my e-mail address change: from September 1, 2009 - August 31, 2010, I am on Study Leave from BC ELN, beginning a PhD program at the Simon Fraser University School of Communication , as well as some strategic planning and communication-related projects for BC ELN. To avoid confusion, I'm switching to just using my generic SFU e-mail ID, and recommend using this to get my attention. I do continue to monitor the BC ELN account.

Scholarly Communication class: open educational resources

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Course materials for my scholarly communication class (LIBR559L at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies) can be found on the course blog, CC-BY-NC-SA licensed. Posted so far: the course syllabus (including the list of readings, all freely available online), the journal creation exercise, and the Scholar's Biography exercise. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who decides to make use of / rework these materials, although of course this is not required.

The first time I taught this course the material formed the basis of my book, Scholarly Communication for Librarians, apparently published in June although I am still waiting for my copy! Two chapters of this book are open access: the Open Access chapter, and the Summary and Conclusions, featuring the main points of all the other chapters.

Please join me for ALCTS Webinar September 23rd

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Please join me on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EDT for the ALCTS webinar, Open Access: Key Trends

Description

While content recruitment at the local IR may seem slow and painful, from a global / historical perspective, the growth of open access in all its flavors is nothing short of phenomenal. The benefits of the IR for authors and for institutions will become more and more apparent in the near future. The chicken will emerge from the egg, and the IR will be seen as a great career choice. This session will provide an overview of the latest key trends in open access: why we need green as well as gold, both institutional and disciplinary repositories, and open access policies to fill the repositories. Institutional open access policies will be highlighted, introducing different types of policies, what makes for good policy, and approaches to open access policy development at the university.

For details and registration for this and other programs , see the ALCTS Webinar Series.

Cost per page for HSS journals varies by 15-fold

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:19:00 +0000

The production cost per journal in a small sample of 8 humanities and social sciences journals, as reported by Mary Waltham, ranges from $90 to $1,326 U.S. per page (online only, print costs subtracted). This is a price differential of close to 15-fold. That is, the most expensive journal costs 15 times more than the least expensive journal.

The actual variation in price is likely to be higher, as this is a relatively homogenous group of U.S.-based journals that are the flagships of their associations, with costly rejection rates in the range of 90%. Production cots could be significantly higher than average humanities and social sciences journals with more common rejection rates.

For details on the Waltham study, please see my previous post.

Humanities and Social Sciences: thoughts towards transition to OA

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:29:00 +0000

Following are some thoughts on how humanities and social sciences publishers can move forward toward open access, inspired by Mary Waltham's brave preliminary foray into research on the economics of these journals, The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing among Social Science and Humanities Associations, available for download from: http://www.nhalliance.org/news/humanities-social-science-scholarly-journal-publis.shtml.

In brief: Humanities and social sciences publishers might wish to consider the marketing advantage of OA in positioning their associations / societies and journals for the future. Members of scholarly societies are scholars. Open access works to the advantage of these scholar-members, who likely have many reasons for belonging to a society, such as fulfilling the service component of expectations for an academic. Why not actively engage members in the transition? This could be helpful not only to transition journals to open access, but also healthy for the association, too.

Institutional subscribers - libraries and consortia - are vocal advocates of open access. Why not engage them in discussion about how to transition? For example, would they consider hybrid site-license / open choice approaches? Since this is a priority for libraries, would moves like this help to protect society publishers from cancellations in these difficult economic times? This post re-analyzes Waltham's data on the feasibility of an article processing fee approach for the 8 journals studied. It is suggested that self-selection of journals may have resulted in high-end rather than average costs. Factoring in advertising revenue, it seems possible that the publication cost for online-only for even these high-end journals with rejection rates in the range of 90%, could be well under $1,000. Assuming that members and institutional subscribers continue to support the journals / associations, needed APFs could be reduced substantially, perhaps to 0. Which is indeed, what most OA journals charge: nothing! Waltham's 8 non-OA journals are contrasted with 716 journals listed in DOAJ under the same general subject areas.

The marketing advantage of open access

As Waltham points out, humanities and social sciences publishers are concerned about: "the publishing support costs of marketing and selling an online version globally to, for example, library consortia and many small society publishers become overwhelmed and decide to partner with a commercial or not-for-profit publisher who can manage and implement much of the complexity associated with the production and sales of the online version".

For the humanities and social sciences journal positioning for the future, marketing to libraries and consortia can be this simple: register with the Directory of Open Access Journals. Libraries around the world are adding the DOAJ list to local serials lists and catalogues; DOAJ subject list links can be added to subject guides in a split second. With this simple step, the small society publisher can compete for impact directly with the large publishers.

Would your members support a move to open access? Why not ask?

The members of scholarly societies and associations are scholars. Open access works in their benefit; many will be authors of the journals supported by the association. Rather than fearing a loss of membership if journals are free, why not educate members about the benefits of OA and ask for their support in the transition?

For the health of the association, it would be wise to carefully frame such research to encourage members to fully consider the full range of value and benefits of the association. People have many reasons for belonging to associations. Membership in a scholarly society per se is likely listed on many a CV. Active participation in association events and volunteer work for associations counts towards the service component of expectations for an academic career - and is a great way to network. It seems reasonable to assume that members generally approve of, and care about, the good work of their societies and associations, such as providing educational opportunities and scholarships. The question of whether members would leave associations in droves without exclusive access to a printed copy of an association journal should be considered within the context of these larger questions.

Would your library and consortial subscribers support a move to open access? Why not ask?

Librarians have been vocal advocates for open access and OA policy. Rather than fearing loss of subscriptions with a move to OA, why not sit down with librarians and figure out how to transition? The University of California and Springer are involved in an innovative site license / open choice for U Cal authors. Would your library customers support a similar move on your part? Perhaps a cooperative transition to OA would help to protect your journals from cancellations in this tough economic climate?

The feasibility of an article processing fee approach

First, I would like to emphasize that the vast majority of OA journals do not use an article processing fee approach. The following comments build on Waltham's data and analysis on the feasibility of an APF approach for the journals studied.

Are Waltham's cost estimates on the high end rather than average?

Waltham found a range of publishing cost / page from $90 - $1,326 (eliminating print costs, not relevant to OA), with an average of $360 / page. With an average of 19 pages / article, this would mean article processing fees would have to be on average $7,000 per article - or $1,710 for the journal with the average cost of $90 / article.

Do Waltham's results reflect the high end of costs / page in humanities and social sciences? Note that this does necessarily reflect the skills of the researcher; it is tricky to do this kind of research, which relies for provision of data supplied by the publishers themselves, who obviously have a vested interest in research which could impact the revenue of their operations.

This research study - which the author points out is very preliminary research - involves only 8 journals in the humanities and social sciences. Each of these journals was self-selected by its association publisher. Looking at the list of titles studied, it appears that each publisher selected its flagship journal. These journals were found to have rejection rates in the range of about 90%. These rejection rates are likely higher than those of the other journals produced by each of these publishers. Since a high rejection rate increases costs (rejected articles require processing, too), the costs of these journals may not be average for the publishers, but rather at the high end.

It is common for OA publishers using the article processing fee business model to have differential fees, reflecting the cost of different journals. Most PLoS journals charge well over $2,000 U.S. per article, while PLoS One charges $1,300 per article, for example.

What about the advertising revenue?

Waltham's research found that up to 45% of a journal's revenue might be coming from advertising revenue. Once this is factored in, the APF for these probably high-end journals to cover remaining costs decreases to a low of $940 for the low-cost journal, or an average of $3,850 per article.

What if memberships and institutional subscriptions continue?

As discussed above, there are many reasons for joining a scholarly society, and it seems reasonable to assume that memberships (and hence membership revenue) will continue with a move to OA. Institutional subscriptions also seem likely to continue for these journals, partially a significant portion of the content is not peer-reviewed. If publishers actively pursue transitional subscription / OA for authors of subscribing institutions models, the odds of ongoing subscriptions seem likely to dramatically increase. If these revenue sources continue,
this changes the scenario for monies needed from APFs to nothing (which is what most OA journals actually charge) to perhaps a small fraction of the publication cost.

Noteworthy

While Waltham studied 8 humanities and social sciences non-open-access journals, there are 716 journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals in the fields of the 8 journals studied (details below).

Further Research

What is the difference between journals with a relatively low production cost / page (e.g. $90 / page) and those with a relatively high production cost / page (e.g. $1,326 / page). Hypothesis: one factor may be co-producing with a commercial publisher. Small independent association publishers may have less costs.

Details

Here are the associations and journals sampled by Waltham:

American Anthropological Association: American Anthropologist
American Academy of Religion: Journal of the American Academy of Religion
American Economic Association: American Economic Review
American Historical Association: American Historical Review
American Political Science Association: American Political Science Review
American Sociological Association: American Sociological Review
American Statistical Association: Journal of the American Statistical Association
Modern Language Association: Proceedings of the Modern Language Association (PMLA)

DOAJ Anthropology: 56 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=124
DOAJ Religion: 58 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=16
DOAJ Economics: 88 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=19
DOAJ History: 127 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=13
DOAJ Political Science: 120 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=47
DOAJ Sociology: 76 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=131
DOAJ Statistics: 32 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=59
DOAJ Languages and Literatures: 159 titles
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=9

Total: 716 journals

Waltham on feasibility of APFs, from conclusion, page 31:
"Analysis of the journal costs provided for this study confirm that a shift to an entirely new funding model in the pure form of Open Access (author/producer pays) in which the costs of publishing research articles in journals are paid for by authors or by a funding agency, and readers have access to these publications for free, is not feasible for this group of journals".

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access Series. Comments are welcome. Please send me an e-mail, or post to the Open Access Tracking Project, ssp-list, or liblicense.

Canadian copyright consultation

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:03:00 +0000

Here is my response to the Canadian copyright consultation. Canadians, take note of the Sunday, September 13, 2009 deadline for submissions.

Questions and my Responses

How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
Response
As an academic, prolific writer and scholar of scholarly communication: Canada's copyright laws do not fit academia. Most scholarly research is supported by research grants (in turn supported by public funding) and/or academic salaries. Our need is to publish as widely as possible, for maximum impact of our work and to advance our careers. The optimum dissemination approach for academia is open access to scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. Canadian academics need strong support for copyright laws that facilitate sharing, for example by strengthening fair dealing provisions, eliminating Crown copyright, eliminating automatic copyright registration, and shortening the timeline before copyrighted work enters the public domain. It is important to ensure that any copyright provisions designed for other sectors not hinder advances in scholarly knowledge.
Digital rights management and technological prevention measures, and anti-circumvention laws, are of great concern to me. Although I share my own work freely, I do not control the Internet, and so it is entirely possible that others could impose DRM or TPM without my knowledge or permission on my works. If Canadian copyright law is to address DRM / TPM, it is essential to include provisions outlawing imposition of DRM / TPM on material shared freely, as well as to allow circumvention for any lawful uses of a work.
As a creator - writer, photographer, interested in both free sharing and potentially commercial uses of my work, my view here also is that Canada should strongly support free sharing of information. The Internet and Creative Commons licensing have expanded opportunities for creativity and collaboration, with unprecedented potential for developing and enhancing culture and community. CC licensing should be encouraged and supported.
Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time
Response
AVOID notice and takedown / 3 strikes and you are out types of provisions. Canadian democracy is built on trust, assumption of innocence until one is proven guilty, rehabilitation. Notice and notice fits Canadian values.
What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
Response
Enhance and expand: fair dealing to reflect "fair use" style provisions. For example, teachers in the U.S. can hand out materials to students in class under fair use, while Canadian teachers cannot. Creative commons licensing.
Eliminate: Crown copyright (have taxpayer-support research enter directly into public domain, as in the U.S.), automatic copyright protection.
Reduce lengthy copyright terms, or require re-registry. 14 years is lots. This would bring lots of orphan works quickly into the public domain.
Avoid: anti-circumvention measures. These are completely unnecessary. If circumvention is done for illegal purposes, the illegal purpose is already covered. Notice and takedown. 3 strikes and you are out.
What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada? and 5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?
Response
Encourage and support free sharing of information, such as through Creative Commons licensing, through the means mentioned above. For example, if Crown copyright is eliminated, then anyone can read lots of research funded by taxpayers for the Canadian public interest. Businesses throughout the country, and the world, would have helpful information that could lead to new business ideas which would benefit Canadians (i.e., solve the problems that inspired the government to fund the research). Creative Commons is a means for Canadian artists to expand their reach and audience around the globe.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this consultation.
Heather Morrison, MLIS
Please note that I will post a copy of this response to my scholarly blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

Michael Smith Foundation adopts strong OA policy

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:03:00 +0000

As reported by Jim Till on Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure, the Michael Smith Foundation, a medical research funding agency funded by the British Columbia government, has adopted an open access policy - and a strong one, that I hope will be a model for other funding agencies.

Excerpt from Jim Till's blog:

On July 6, 2009, the Board of Directors of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), adopted an Open Access to Research Outputs Policy [see 2-page PDF]. The MSFHR is the provincial support agency for health research in British Columbia (BC, Canada) and is funded by the Government of BC. A pivotal paragraph of the policy statement is also available at Managing Your Award [from the MSFHR]:

All MSFHR Award Recipients who receive an award or an award renewal after July 7, 2009 must ensure that all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from research supported by that award (in whole or in part) are made freely accessible through either the Publisher’s website or an online repository within six months of publication.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series. Now that the Open Access Tracking Project is up and running, there is a much easier for us all to track progress in Canada - simply sign up for a free Connotea account, and tag any news with oa.new and oa.canada.

SCOAP3: a key library leadership opportunity in the transition to open access

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:12:00 +0000

Preprint. Serials Review 35, 2009, Balance Point. Full-text available in the SFU D-Space.

Abstract

The SCOAP3 consortium aims to transition the whole of High Energy Physics (HEP) publishing from a subscription to an open access basis. SCOAP3 currently has commitments for more than 63% of the projected 10 million Euros per year budget, from partners in more than 21 countries, including more than 50 libraries and consortia in the U.S. Full participation from the U.S., a leader in HEP research, is both essential and particularly challenging, as the U.S. does not have a national coordinating body that can make one commitment for the country, as many other countries do. While the work to undertake this commitment for the library should not be underestimated - figuring out subscription costs when journals are part of a big deal, often through a consortium - neither should the benefits be underestimated. In brief, the benefits are the optimum access that comes with open access - full open access to the publisher's PDF for everyone, everywhere; a model for transitioning to open access that involves no financial risk, as commitments are capped at current subscriptions expenditures, and SCOAP3 is addressing the issue of unbundling successful journals from big deals and reducing costs accordingly; future financial benefits as a transparent, production-based pricing model for scholarly communication introduces competition into a market where it has been lacking; gaining publisher acceptance of library advocacy efforts for open access by addressing a key concern of publishers (financing the journals in an open access environment) and perhaps most importantly, establishing a leadership role for libraries in a future for scholarly communication that will be largely open access. As Douglas (2009) explains, "To move forward in achieving open access, U.S. libraries that subscribe to any of the five journals that are considered 100 percent convertible to SCOAP3 (European Physical Journal C, Journal of High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics B, Physical Review D, and Physics Letters B) need to participate". If this describes your library, please go to the SCOAP3 website, now, to learn more and participate in this innovative global collaboration that can be a model, not only for transitioning to open access, but also for how humankind can work cooperatively across borders to accomplish a great good that will benefit all of us.

Open Access Journals Support in Canada: new research project in planning

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:31:00 +0000

This is a report of a new research project just getting started, detailed description for linking from the Open Access Directory Research in Progress section.

Project Title: Open Access Journals Support in Canada
Status: early planning stages (August 5, 2009)

Investigators: Don Taylor, Simon Fraser University, Kumiko Vezina, Concordia University Library, Heather Morrison, Simon Fraser University

Background: there are several key opportunities where research appears highly desirable to move things forward. The cross-country Synergies project is helping many Canadian society publishers in the Social Sciences and Humanities to go online. When the original funding runs out in a few years, there will be a need to sustain support for these journals, and identifying an avenue for open access support can help to spur movement towards open access. The SSHRC Aid to Open Access Journals fund is relatively new, and potentially scalable to include more journals or disciplines, should libraries be able to commit to funding for OA rather than subscriptions. The SCOAP3 initiative, which Canadian libraries have committed to through CRKN, provides a model. That is, would Canadian academic libraries be willing to commit their current subscriptions monies towards an open access scholarly publishing system? The CRKN Alternative Publishing Models also provides something that we can build on.

DRAFT RESEARCH PROPOSAL:

Survey Canadian academic libraries and university presses (CRKN members plus any that wish to self-identify as active in this area) to determine current levels of university support for journal hosting and support services in Canada in general, and open access journals in particular. The Survey may be supplemented with additional research / follow-up, e.g. viewing journal sites to determine copyright of Cdn publishers (note PKP presentation from student at Telequam on this topic).

Basic questions:

What is happening already in this area?

What might universities be willing to commit to? (e.g., would Cdn libraries go for a SCOAP3-like model for Cdn academic publishers if such were proposed)?

Identify barriers (e.g., in the U.S., in some states it is against the law to pay for anything that you can get for free. Is this the case here, and if so, how can such barriers be overcome?)

The benefits of open collaboration from the start!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:31:00 +0000

About a year ago, I posted about works-in-progress, including a research study Don Taylor & I were planning, a research study on supports for open access among Canadian libraries. The post was spotted by our UBC colleague Devon Greyson, who contacted us about similar interests at UBC. Since then, the study grew to a pan-Canadian survey on research supports by Canadian university libraries and research administration offices, by a team consisting of UBC's Dr. Charlyn Black (health policy expert and member of the committee that developed the CIHR policy), and Devon Greyson, myself & Don Taylor, and Concordia University's open access coordinator Kumiko Vezina, with lots of help from many people at several institutions. Preliminary results were presented at the 2nd International PKP Conference in Vancouver last month; see the blogpost. The team has just submitted the paper for peer-review; watch for more details on results in formal publication and further presentations. This post will not address the results of this study pe se, but rather is a recommendation: if you are planning a research study, let people know! You just might find yourself part of a larger study, with more people to share the work so that a larger study can be done with reasonable efforts by all. Many thanks to everyone on the team for this experience.

One way to share your research-in-progress, if it is about open access, is to post to the Open Access Directory's Research in Progress page. There are some interesting studies already underway listed there!

The dramatic growth of PLoS One: soon-to-be world's largest journal

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:54:00 +0000

Sometime in 2009, the open access PLoS One will likely become the world's third-largest scholarly journal, and by 2010, quite possibly the largest, by far. PLoS One appears to already be the largest scholarly journal outside the areas of physics and chemistry.

Data

On PLoS One:

"In 2007, the journal published 1,231 articles; in 2008 it published 2,722 articles. At current rates of growth, the journal is on track to publish over 4,300 articles in 2009 and assuming this growth continues at the same rate, in 2010 PLoS ONE could be publishing around 1% of all the articles listed in PubMed for that year (PubMed lists 803,00 published articles for 2008)". [i.e. 8,000 journals]. Peter Binfield, PLoS One: background, future development, and article-level metrics, ELPUB 2009.

On the world's largest journals

Dana Roth, American Scientist Open Access Forum:

PLOS One at 4800 [Heather's note - my copying error, should be 4,300] articles in 2009 will clearly be one of the largest journals, only PHYS REV B (5782) and APPL PHYS LETT (5449) published more articles in 2008.

Other journals in the 'largest' category, with their 2008 article counts, are:

J APPL PHYS (4168)
PHYS REV LETT (3905)
J BIOL CHEM (3761)
ACTA CRYSTALLOGR E (3533)
P NATL ACAD SCI USA (3508)
J AM CHEM SOC (3242)
J PHYS CHEM C (2888)
PHYS REV D (2863)

One of the world's other really large journals, the American Physical Society's Physical Review D, is on the list of journals considered 100% convertible to open access through SCOAP3 (see note below). This means that within the coming year, two of the world's largest journals may well be open access journals. The list of the world's largest journals is heavily dominated by physics, a community that has long made almost all their work open access through arXiv, and is now actively working to move a subset of their journals wholescale to open access through SCOAP3. Is it possible that in the near future the majority of the world's very large journals will be open access?

Physical Review D and SCOAP3

Five journals are considered 100% convertible to SCOAP3: Springer’s European Physical Journal C, SISSA/IOP’s Journal of High Energy Physics, Elsevier’s Nuclear Physics B and Physics Letters B and APS’ Physical Review D. From: SCOAP3 FAQ - SPARC.

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.

PubMedCentral Canada Partnership announced

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:26:00 +0000

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), National Research Council - Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) and the U.S. National Library of Medicine have announced a partnership to develop PubMedCentral Canada.

Excerpt from the press release:

PMC Canada builds on the successful PubMed Central (PMC) archive developed by the US National Library of Medicine and will join UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as a member of the broader PMC International network. This network enables national versions of PMC to share content, and will make much of PubMed Central and UKPMC content accessible through PMC Canada. The network uses software developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the division of NLM that created and administers PMC.

CIHR is contributing the funding, and NRC-CISTI the technology infrastructure.

Thanks to Peter Suber at the Open Access Tracking Project.

Corrected URL: Open Access chapter of Scholarly Communication for Librarians

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Just noticed that I posted the wrong URL for the Open Access chapter of my new book Scholarly Communication for Librarians (Chandos Publishing, Oxford 2009). Here is the correct URL: http://eprints.rclis.org/16282/.

This chapter is an overview of open access, covering definitions in depth, major types (archives and journals) and examples of major initiatives.

Many thanks to open access colleagues who reviewed this chapter for me.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy of the book, ordering information is available here.

Beyond PDF. XML is better.

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Many of the discussions on scholarly communication focus on version, with the assumption being that the best or authoritative version is the publisher's PDF. But is this really the best version for the future? There are arguments that XML is both more usable and more suited to preservation. An author's final manuscript in PubMedCentral, for example, in XML, is more searchable, generally more accessible for the print disabled, and in better shape for preserving into the future, than any PDF version.

Three great quotes on PDF, from a presentation by Alma Swan (thanks to Peter Suber and Charles Bailey on the Open Access Tracking Project):

John Wilbanks (on screen scraping): "Scraping is the right word, because having to work with PDF is really scraping the bottom of the barrel"

Clifford Lynch: "PDF is evil".

Peter Murray-Rust: "Getting to XML from PDF is like starting with the burger and trying to get back to the cow".

Comment: do we need to start writing and publishing in XML in the first place? At the very least, it seems to me that we should be asking ourselves this kind of question - and definitely questioning claims that the current best version is a publisher's PDF. There are moves in the publishing / word processing industry to facilitate this move, for example by Charlesworth Group, Nature Publishing Group, the Public Knowledge Project (Open Journal Systems / Open Conference Systems) and Microsoft, that I know of. Something to watch for, applaud and support.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: June 30, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:51:00 +0000

OpenDOAR's Peter Millington explains the numbers and how to insert charts that automatically update with OpenDOAR data, like the one below (it's easy - just copy & paste a URL!) to IJPE author Heather Morrison at the OAI6 conference. Photo courtesy of Elena Giglia.

Highlights

Growth in open access policies was highly significant this quarter; the number of departmental policies in particular, doubled in the last few months from 6 to 13. There are now well over a hundred open access policies, and many more in the works, such as the recently re-introduced U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). PLoS One is now one of the world's largest journals, anticipating publication of 4,800 articles in 2009 - and more in 2010; PLoS One may well become THE largest journal sometime in 2010. DOAJ added 253 journals; OpenDOAR and OAIster each added 43 new repositories, for a total of over 1,400 repositories facilitating access to about 22-27 million items, a distributed collection growing by at least 17,000 items per day. Both free and open access are growing steadily at PubMedCentral; the percentage of publications based on NIH-funded research that are freely available within 2 years of publication is up to 35%. Watch for this percentage to grow over the coming year as more articles pass the maximum 12-month embargo allowed under the policy which came into effect April 2008. 98 more journals are making articles not just freely accessible, but open access, this quarter in PubMedCentral, for a total of 398 OA journals in PMC.

Details

This quarter has seen significant growth in open access policies; the number of departmental policies has more than doubled in the past quarter alone, from 6 to 13. There are now well over 100 open access policies; and many more in the works.

PLoS One is rapidly becoming the world's single largest journal; PLoS One anticipates publishing about 4,800 journals in 2009, and more in 2010. [Thanks to Peter Binfield, PloS One Editor]. There are only a handful of journals in the world publishing numbers of articles in this range.

Strong growth continues in both open access publishing and open access archives. DOAJ added 253 titles this quarter, for a total of 4,252 journals. Note that not all new additions to DOAJ are new journals; one of the recently added titles to DOAJ, Revista de Administração de Empresas, has a start year of 1961.

OpenDOAR is a vetted list of open access repositories, and the largest list with over 1,400 repositories listed. Both OAIster and OpenDOAR added 43 new repositories this quarter. An OAIster search grew by more than 1.6 million items this quarter, over 17,000 items per day.

OpenDOAR has a tool that makes it easy to insert any one of a number of automatically updated charts illustrating OpenDOAR data, like the one below. It's easy - all you have to do is to copy and paste a URL!

At PubMed, both free and open access are steadily growing. 35% of NIH externally funded publications are now freely available within 2 years of publication, a 5% increase in compliance over the last year. Expect to see this number rise over the coming year as more articles pass the 12-month embargo permitted under the mandate policy that came into effect April 2008. The percentage of NIH-funded research of any age that is freely available has grown to 40%, up from 34% a year ago, suggesting that researchers are making not only new, but also older publications stemming from NIH publications freely accessible. New data from NIH has made it possible to provide a more accurate figure for the number of journals voluntarily participating in PMC, 615 (omitting predecessor journals and journals no longer providing new content). The number of journals providing immediate free access through PMC has increased by 41, for a total of 488; the number of journals providing open access through PMC has increased by 92, for a total of 398.

Google docs version for viewing (showing growth): http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rz-5IhC4cgjvMde2AQtsHXg&output=html

Open Data Edition for viewing: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=runrJbg1UlCuDK-2RipnAaA

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.

Two OA chapters of Scholarly Communication for Librarians (in press)

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:23:00 +0000

Two chapters of my book, Scholarly Communication for Librarians, in press at Chandos / Woodhouse Publishing, are now available for open access in E-LIS.

The two chapters are:

Open Access

In-depth overview of open access, covering definitions (open access publishing, open access archives, gratis and libre, open access works versus open access processes), major statements and declarations, types of open access, major initiatives, trends, advocacy and lobbying.

Summary and Conclusions

Summary and Conclusions of Scholarly Communication for Librarians, a book designed to provide librarians at all levels with the basics of how scholarly communication works, an understanding of the academic library as an essential support for scholarly communication, the impact of the decisions librarians make, and emerging roles for libraries and librarians in scholarly communication. Includes major points from all chapters, on: scholarship, scholarly journals, the scholarly publishing industry, librarianship and scholarly communication, author's rights, open access, the economics of scholarly communication, and emerging trends.

Comment: why would an ardent open access advocate publish a book that is only partially open access? One reason is simply that monographs are of interest, but not the primary focus of the open access movement; the arguments for open access for books are a bit different than for the journal articles that articles traditionally given away. The other reason is that when I started the book, the market did not appear to be quite ready for open access books. Soon, this situation will change; the official launch of Open Monographs Press is expected at the July Public Knowledge Project in Vancouver this July, for example. The flexibility of Chandos, a publisher with a well-established reputation, in allowing for two open access chapters is appreciated.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy of the book, ordering information is availablehere.

Vancouver enters the age of the open city

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Update: Vancouver City Council endorsed this motion on May 21, 2009.

Text of the central portion of Andrea Reimer's motion:

Be it resolved that the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:

* Open and accessible data: The City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns.
* Open standards: The City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps and other formats of media.
* Open source software: The City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles.

from: CBCnews.ca

A motion to go before Vancouver City Council to support open standards, open data, open source: http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-city/

Thanks to Cory Horner and the civicaccess list.

This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

[Disclosure: I am very proud to call Vancouver home!]

Enhancing the debate on open access: knowledge for all, not just all researchers

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:55:00 +0000

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and the International Publishers Association (IPA) have just released a joint statement on Enhancing the debate on open access, calling for a more rational, less heated approach to open access.

Excerpt from the IFLA/IPA statement:

2. IFLA and IPA recognise that the concerns of academic authors must be at the heart of this debate - their scientific freedom, and their needs as researchers, teachers, authors, reviewers and users are paramount.
3. IFLA and IPA acknowledge that the broadest possible access to scholarly communications is an important shared objective and that potential access to all research by all researchers, irrespective of geographical location or institutional affiliation is a shared aspiration of libraries and publishers.

Comment:

This statement places the concerns of academic authors at the centre of the debate, and assumes that access for all researchers is at issue. What about the rest of us? Students, educators, the taxpayers who fund much of the academic research, medical and other professionals, the developing world where there are many fewer academic authors and researchers? My perspective: knowledge is for all, and the goal of open access is access for all.