Joint AAU and APLU statement against the Research Works Actwww.webcitation.org"On behalf of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), whose combined memberships include most of the major public and private research universities in the United States, I [Hunter Rawlings III, President of the AAU] write to express our strong opposition to H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act. This legislation would prohibit all federal research funding agencies from establishing public access policies providing free access to scientific and scholarly journal articles arising from federally funded research. In prohibiting such agency policies, H.R. 3699 would repeal the highly effective Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...There is increasing recognition of the importance of establishing such federal agency research repositories to provide both access to the public and a rich store of interoperable research information for the scientific community. Currently, eleven federal agencies provide $100 million or more in research funding to universities and other non-profit research institutions. If these agencies all build and interconnect public access repositories of the peer-reviewed articles developed from the research they fund, the peer-reviewed articles arising from the federal government’s $33 billion annual investment in university research could be freely accessed by the public and would provide an extraordinarily valuable, interoperable database of research findings for use by scientists and scholars across all disciplines....Both the 12-month embargo period and the required submission of the final accepted manuscript rather than the final published version of the paper recognize the appropriate domain of private sector publishing and the need for subscription journal publishers to recover their very real costs of publishing. However, H.R. 3699 would extend far beyond these accommodations of publishers’ needs to preclude any feasible federal public access policies. Both the public interest and the interests of science and scholarship would be diminished. This legislation also runs counter to the substance and spirit of Sec. 103 of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act (P.L 111-358)....Because H.R. 3699 would move federal research policy backward rather than forward, we urge you to oppose this legislation and instead support balanced federal public access policies that promote the public interest and advance science and scholarship."Posted by petersuber to oa.universities oa.aplu oa.aau ru.do ru.ps oa.comment oa.nih oa.copyright oa.rwa oa.negative oa.legislation oa.usa oa.new on Wed Feb 08 2012 at 03:03 UTC | info | related

 Academics boycott publisher Elsevierwww.theaustralian.com.au"DON'T expect to see Julie Clutterbuck's name again in the Journal of Differential Equations. Or in any other journal owned by Elsevier, the Amsterdam-based behemoth of scholarly publishing. Clutterbuck, a mathematician at the Australian National University, has joined a global protest against Elsevier. At last count, more than 4300 academics had put their names to a website, The Cost of Knowledge....[I]n 2010 Elsevier made pound stg. 724 million ($1.06 billion), representing an operating-profit margin of 36 per cent. "Academics are heroic complainers and not always well disposed to profit-maximising businesses," The Economist says. It is true that for some boycotters the grievance is nothing less than the commodification of knowledge. For others, it's more specific to Elsevier...."Posted by petersuber to ru.no oa.petitions oa.pledges oa.boycotts oa.elsevier oa.australia oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 21:46 UTC | info | related

 Opening Up the Politics of Knowledge and Power in BioscienceAndy Stirling, Claire Marris, and Nikolas RosePLoS Biology 10 (1), e1001233 (2012)info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001233" Finally, normative approaches are not primarily concerned with outcomes at all—neither as ends nor means—but with the participatory processes themselves. These value such qualities as independence, openness, accessibility, legitimacy, and accountability....Posted by petersuber to oa.lay ru.no oa.biology oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 18:09 UTC | info | related

I had a great idea.  Or at least I thought it was a great idea.  However making it a reality makes me think that maybe my idea might just stay in the realm of ideas.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I swear a boat load of people got iPads or smartphones for Christmas because the calls for help about resources, ebooks, network access, etc. have really taken off. Some things like network access or knowing how much data they might consume if they are doing 3G are a little bit out of our control.  But ebooks and library resources, well hell, I thought I could help with that in a relatively easy way.  (Just hit me over the head if I ever think something is going to be easy.)

We are in process of re-designing our website so we did a survey of our users.  We learned that 53% surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that a website for mobile use of library resources is important.  We learned that our users want a website with; better organization, streamlined function, easy for tech un-savvy, and fewer clicks to get to resources.  They want a simple way to find books and ebooks.  (Clearly the catalog isn’t what they consider simple.) They want an easier way to login to resources from home, and to login once.   Not only do our users want simple easy ways to access online resources from the website and their mobile devices but they want simple (few clicks, easy one login) to ebooks from home. 

Ok, now we’re cooking. We know what our users want, so let’s get going. Somebody is working on the regular website and I thought I could help get things mobile.  I approached it on two fronts, the mobile resources and easier access to ebooks.

Lots of librarians shared their lists on iMedicalApps.com Medical Librarian Forum and we have been compiling a list of mobile friendly resources.  Not only would we have a list of mobile friendly sites and apps the library subscribed to but we would have our own mobile site linking to the mobile friendly library resources.  Additionally we came up with a few ideas on how to increase the visibility (and hopefully the usage) of our ebooks. 

I was feeling pretty confident that these things could make finding ebooks easier and also help current and future mobile users get to our resources.  Remember, I said I thought it would be easy? Just start hitting me on the head now…

The problem is the mobile site of vendors.  Many vendors like Elsevier (MDConsult and First Consult), McGraw Hill (Access database) direct smartphones immediately to their mobile site.  While this is nice, their mobile sites require users to login  using their personal login they created.  So a library user would have to have a personal login to each database: MDConsult, First Consult, and all of the Access databases we subscribe to.  If somebody is accessing our resources off campus these personal logins are needed in addition to our proxy login that our users already use to access library resources from home. 

See the problem?  People who are just browsing our resources on their smartphone on campus have to create multiple logins in order to use our online resources from their phone.  We link to our ebooks through the catalog and we are thinking about adding QR code browsing of ebooks in the stacks, but this won’t work on smartphones.  Why? Because when the person scans on the code or clicks the link in our catalog the vendor’s mobile site demands a personal login.  So there is no direct link to the ebook, they have to have a personal login.  Most users don’t think of our ebooks according to vendors, they just click on the title and they EXPECT the book to show up, they don’t expect to be asked for another login.  This method assumes our users have created a personal login with that vendor prior to clicking on the book.  Most people aren’t thinking, “Oh I want to look in Harrison’s Online, I should get a MyAccess login before I click on the title.”

The problem gets even more compounded when our users are off campus.  Our users have been trained to login to our resources using our proxy server.  This is what they have been doing for years, it is a standard for accessing resources remotely, and this is what most users want.  In fact respondents to our recent user survey said they want one login! Well, we can’t provide that if the vendors are creating an extra login! 

So even if I want to provide easy access to ebooks, I can’t.  I have remind people that they have to create a personal login with each vendor.  How do I do that?  That is a heck of mess to write in the online catalog record for each title.  “Click here for access. If you are using a smartphone you must login with your personal login.”  Great then I get more calls about how to create a personal login, to reset their personal login, or that they are using their personal login and can’t get in (but they are using their proxy login). 

Not only do I have the problem in the catalog, I would have the same communication problem on the mobile library site. As anybody who has a smartphone knows, mobile optimized sites are easier to view than the full website.  So the design is a little different than a regular website.  For example if you are linking to resources, you probably don’t want  a whole lot words explaining things.  People on a mobile library website really kind of want the links to go to the resources they need not a whole bunch of instructions about unique login procedures for each resource.

As somebody mentioned to me users don’t have to have a personal login they just tap on the link to Full Site and they can access the resources.  Um doesn’t that kill the whole point of having mobile optimized resources?  Searching th full site of MDConsult or AccessMedicine on a smartphone involves a lot of screen expanding and pinching.  Aren’t we trying to get our users to use our ebooks?  Aren’t we asking/demanding vendors that our ebooks also become mobile optimized?! 

Locking ebooks behind personal logins or forcing people to use the Full Site is not getting people to use the ebooks or online resources. It is a barrier!  Why have vendors created this artificial barrier?!  Why can’t an institutional user access an online resource or ebook without having a personal login?!

In addition to the user access problems I have with personal logins, I have two other questions/problems…

• Usage stats – Are we getting usage stats each time somebody from our institution is using their personal login? If no, that is very bad. If yes, that is good but we can get without personal logins. You already have our IP ranges and proxy info.
• Concurrent users – If you don’t have an site license then people can easily come as visitors create a personal login and then use that personal login to access your material looooong after they have left your institution.  These unauthorized unaffiliated users are taking up your concurrent user license spot(s).  We maintain our authorized users list.  We enter the expiration date of visitors, students, contractors, techs, etc. into our system.  When their badge expires they can’t access our resources via proxy.  Therefore we are in agreement with our license agreements AND they are taking up a concurrent user spot.

It is possible to have the mobile site work using institutional proxy, Thompson Reuters Web of Science is mobile optimized.  I click on the link to WoS and I am directed to the mobile site. I am not asked for a personal login.  Off campus I am asked to login to my library account then I am directed to mobile site.  Easy squeazey and MAKES SENSE!

What started out as an easy (yes keep hitting me on the head) project of providing a simple list of mobile optimized resources and linking directly to the books turned into a giant mess.  How can I recommend these mobile resources to smartphone users or the ebooks when I know it will confuse them and frustrate them.  Hell, it confused and frustrated me and I am a librarian who is FAMILIAR with this stuff.  Our users aren’t going to use this stuff the way it is set up right now and unfortunately I can’t make it easier for them because this personal login thing is out of my control.  Why should I bother setting up links to mobile resources and ebooks when it is going to cause more problems and questions then it is worth and serve as another reason to bypass the library for stuff.  No wonder people get their ebooks from Amazon….it is EASY!  Easy is what the users want, medical library ebooks in their current state are not easy, they are a royal pain. 

Why bother?!  We try to make things easily available and barriers keep getting thrown up.  It is enough to drive you batty.  According to ReadWriteWeb, mobile Internet usage has doubled every year since 2009….so this problem isn’t going away.   Hopefully in the near future I won’t be asking why bother with the mess of ebooks.

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 Open Access and Eric Raymondpetermr's blog, (05 Feb 2012)“This blog has been tackling the problem of Open Access, what it’s vision is and how to get a coherent movement. I’ve been excited to get a comment from Eric Raymond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond )... Here’s his comment in full – I then comment. http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/12/20/the-open-access-movement-is-disorganized-this-must-not-continue/#comment-102743... [An excerpt from Eric Raymond’s comment states,] ‘I endorse P-MR’s analysis and his conclusions. You need a parallel to our Open Source Definition – an Open Access Definition. And, yes, it cannot allow no-commercial-use restrictions... Some of you in this discussion seem ready to constitute yourselves as an Open Access Initiative and write an Open Access Definition. To which I say; do it! Audacity is required in these situations...’ I’m delighted to get this additional confirmation we are on the right track. We are audacious, we have our own definition (http://opendefinition.org/ )... What we need is a revitalised Open Access Initiative. One that insists on BOAI-compliant, OKD-compliant... Discussion and creativity continues on http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access ...”Posted by abernard to oa.advocacy oa.definitions oa.declarations oa.comment oa.new oa.licensing on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 15:41 UTC | info | related

 Science in the Open » Blog Archive » Network Enabled Research: Maximise scale and connectivity, minimise frictioncameronneylon.net“Prior to all the nonsense with the Research Works Act, I had been having a discussion with Heather Morrison about licenses and Open Access and peripherally the principle of requiring specific licenses of authors... The path that leads me here is one built on a technical understanding of how networks functional and what their capacity can be. This builds heavily on the ideas I have taken from (in no particular order) Jon Udell, Jonathan Zittrain, Michael Nielsen, Clay Shirky, Tim O’Reilly, Danah Boyd, and John Wilbanks among many others... Ultimately the wider global public is for the most part convinced that research is something worth investing in, but in turn they expect to see outcomes of that research, jobs, economic activity, excitement, prestige, better public health, improved standards of living. The wider public are remarkably sophisticated when it comes to understanding that research may take a long time to bear fruit. But they are not particularly interested in papers... We ignore that at our peril... So why are we having this conversation? And why now? What is it about today’s world that is so different? The answer, of course, is the internet... But there are a group of people who are starting to be interested in rocking the boat. The funders, the patient groups, that global public who want to see outcomes. The thought process hasn’t worked through yet, but when it does they will all be asking one question. “How are you building networks to enable research”... As service providers, all of those who work in this industry – and I mean all, from the researchers to the administrators, to the publishers to the librarians – will need to have an answer. The suprising thing is that it’s actually very easy. The web makes building and exploiting networks easier than it has ever been because it is a network infrastructure. It has scale... The problem arises with the systems we have in place to get material online... Currently we take raw science and through a collaborative process between researchers and publishers we generate a communication product, generally a research paper, that is what most of the community holds as the standard means by which they wish to receive information. Because the publishers receive no direct recompense for their contribution they need to recover those costs by other means. They do this by artificially introducing friction and then charging to remove it. This is a bad idea on several levels... If we care about taking advantage of the web and internet for research then we must tackle the building of scholarly communication networks...”Posted by abernard to oa.recommendations oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.tools oa.librarians oa.libraries oa.data oa.open_science oa.usa oa.negative oa.legislation oa.copyright oa.nih oa.rwa oa.cc oa.licensing oa.comment oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 15:39 UTC | info | related

 Internet Evolution - George Taylor - The Web Could Transform Science (If Allowed to Do So)www.internetevolution.com... “The Web offers the possibility of great leaps in scientific progress through collaboration and open access. But... the business of accumulating, verifying, and publishing the fruits of research -- remains firmly in the steam age... But under the banner of open access to scientific knowledge, a new mode of collaborative scientific enterprise based on Internet connectivity and availability is challenging the traditional model... In publishing, for instance, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) posts peer-reviewed papers online, with free access to all. Similarly, arXiv.org is an online, open access archive of nearly three-quarters of a million articles on physics, mathematics, biology, computer science, and other disciplines... Online science itself departs from traditional models... On sites such as MathOverflow or Galaxy Zoo, individual contributors work together on projects and problem solving in mathematics and astronomy. Social networking also meets science at ResearchGate, a networking site exclusively set up for scientists to exchange information and ideas. The site now boasts 1.3 million members. ScienceOnline 2012, the sixth annual conference (or "unconference") dedicated to open access for scientists, students, and a range of other collaborators, was held in North Carolina last month... The obstacles to scientific open access are not trivial. Peer-reviewed publication is typically required for grant awards and as part of scientists’ tenure requirements, and there is no alternative yet visible. The publishing companies, such as Elsevier, make big profits, which they are in no hurry to give up. Since 2006, a proposed Federal Research Public Access Act, which would legally enshrine the principle of open access to publicly funded research, has been struggling through the legislative process and is tied up in committee. It is now threatened by the Research Works Act, which is brutal in its determination to place access to publicly funded research firmly in the hands of the publishers ...”Posted by abernard to oa.data oa.open_science oa.tools oa.arxiv oa.plos oa.green oa.repositories oa.gold oa.journals oa.business_models oa.elsevier oa.publishers oa.usa oa.negative oa.copyright oa.nih oa.legislation oa.rwa oa.comment oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 15:37 UTC | info | related

 Petition in support of a single European Data LicensePaul KellerInternational Communia Association, (06 Feb 2012)"In line with an issue raised in our [Communia's] policy paper on the proposed amendments to PSI Directive there is now a Spanish petition that asks the Europeana Commission to propose a single open data license to be used for Public Sector Information across all EU member states...."Posted by petersuber to ru.no oa.petitions oa.licensing oa.europe oa.spain oa.psi oa.data oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 02:59 UTC | info | related

 Around the Web: Research Works Act & Elsevier boycottConfessions of a Science Librarian, (06 Feb 2012)"This post has superseded my previous post which focused solely on the Research Works Act. I have added some coverage of the Elsevier boycott which at least partially grew out of opposition to the RWA. I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott as for the RWA...."Posted by petersuber to hoap.notice ru.no oa.comment oa.nih oa.copyright oa.rwa oa.negative oa.legislation oa.usa oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.elsevier oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 02:48 UTC | info | related

 Academics Revolt Against Elsevier’s Journal Pricingm.paidcontent.org"Academics are staging a mini-revolt against science and medical journal publisher Elsevier’s terms, and analysts fear the movement could hit parent Reed Elsevier. Over 4,000 researchers have signed a petition against Elsevier practices including charging libraries for bundles of journals rather than individual titles. They also object to Elsevier’s apparent stance on the U.S. bills SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, which critics say would restrict access to taxpayer-funded academic research. The protest is currently small in the context of the world’s large researcher community, but is causing Elsevier’s business model to come under the knife. “We think that investors should ask management of Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) how a PR incident of this kind could happen, why crisis management has been so tentative and what other steps management intends to take the handle the protest,” says Bernstein Research European media analyst Claudio Aspesi, in a note titled “Occupy Elsevier”. “Dropping prices, abandoning the subscription model or the bundles would all impact the economics substantially, at least for some years. So the company can only hope that the controversy will die down in time” Aspesi thinks Elsevier’s Anglo-Dutch owner Reed Elsevier, whose Reed Business Information is still shedding titles after Reed failed to sell RBI during the downturn, should be broken up, and is pessimistic about the company. “Our scepticism is based on the expectation that academic libraries will increasingly push back and request lower price increases than in the past, threatening to abandon ‘Big Deal’ contracts if the company does not lower its expectations for revenue growth,” Aspesi writes."Posted by petersuber to oa.boycotts oa.petitions oa.elsevier ru.do ru.ps oa.comment oa.nih oa.copyright oa.rwa oa.negative oa.legislation oa.usa oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 02:43 UTC | info | related

 Elsevier Futures: Exane Paribusgroups.google.comSummary of a financial report on Elsevier by Sami Kassab at Exane Paribus: "Please find our report on Reed Elsevier released this morning. We argue that: [1] Noise around boycott against Elsevier offers short term trading opportunity. Reed Elsevier was the worst performing media stock last week. We believe this is due to investor concerns on the back of T. Gowers' petition to boycott publishing and refereeing in Elsevier's journals. We believe the share price reaction was overdone and recommend buying the shares. [2] Scientists are boycotting the boycott. Similar petitions in favour of Open Access were organised in 2000 and 2007, with no impact on Elsevier's fundamentals. Our tracking not only shows that this latest petition lags behind the two preceding ones but also suggests that its momentum is slowing. Fewer than 5,000 scientists have signed up, whereas Elsevier works with more than 6m scientists worldwide. The low take-up of this petition is a sign of the scientific community's improving perception of Elsevier. [3] Open Access unlikely to hurt financials in the medium term and is priced in. The proportion of Open Access is growing at less than 1% pa. Elsevier's contract lengths are getting longer and the company's growth efforts are focused on new products rather than pricing. Open Access is unlikely to hurt Elsevier in the next five years and the longer term risk is more than priced in, in our view....We remain buyers of the stock on the current share price weakness...."Posted by petersuber to oa.elsevier ru.do ru.ps oa.comment oa.nih oa.copyright oa.rwa oa.negative oa.legislation oa.usa oa.new oa.boycotts oa.petitions on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 02:38 UTC | info | related

 A MESSAGE TO THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY: ELSEVIER, ACCESS, AND THE RESEARCH WORKS ACTwww.elsevier.comUnsigned and undated (but c. 2/6/12). "Why then do we support this legislation? We are against unwarranted and potentially harmful government laws that could undermine the sustainability of the peer-review publishing system. The RWA’s purpose is simply to ensure that the US government cannot enshrine in law how journal articles or accepted manuscripts are disseminated without involving publishers. We oppose in principle the notion that governments should be able to dictate the terms by which products of private sector investments are distributed, especially if they are to be distributed for free. And private sector means not just commercial publishers like Elsevier, but also not-for-profit and society publishers...."Posted by petersuber to ru.no oa.comment oa.nih oa.copyright oa.rwa oa.negative oa.elsevier oa.legislation oa.usa oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 02:28 UTC | info | related

 Arend Küster and Megan Toogood, Open accesswww.jisc-collections.ac.uk"Open access publishing has arrived. There are now more than 7000 titles listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and hundreds of thousands of open access articles deposited with institutions, subject specific repositories and published in journals. But these figures don’t represent a mature industry, the revolution is still underway and there’s much potential still to be realised....The full paper is available on the QScience.com website."Posted by petersuber to oa.ru.no oa.growth oa.new on Tue Feb 07 2012 at 01:59 UTC | info | related

 About FreeFullPDFwww.freefullpdf.com"The aim of FreeFullPDF.com is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific journals, theses, posters and patents. All scientific subjects are covered and all content are freely available in PDF format...."Posted by petersuber with 1 comment to ru.do ru.ps oa.tools oa.pdf oa.formats oa.search oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 20:37 UTC | info | related

 What’s wrong with electronic journals?Gowers's Weblog, (29 Jan 2012)“It probably sounds disingenuous of me to say this, but when I sat down to write a post about Elsevier I wasn’t really trying to start a campaign. My intention was merely to make public, and a little more rigid, a policy that I and many others had already been applying, in my case without much difficulty, for several years. The idea of setting up a website occurred to me as I was writing the post: I considered it (and still consider it) not as a petition to Elsevier to change its ways — since I don’t believe there is any realistic chance of that — but as a simple way to bring out into the open all the private boycotts and semi-boycotts that were going on, and thereby to encourage others to do the same... What next? What I really mean is more like, ‘How much next?’ Do we just let the number of signatures at Tyler Neylon’s website continue to grow at its currently healthy rate and sit back and hope that at some point there will be a phase change? That was something like my original plan — or rather non-plan. But there are reasons to suppose that provoking a phase change will take a bit more effort... I had an exchange of emails with Brian Cody, another member of the Scholastica team, and it became clear that one of their aims was to make it almost effort free for the editors of a journal to do what the editors of Topology did: resign en masse and start again somewhere else with a modified name. Scholastica may well not be the only venture of its kind, and perhaps one can argue about whether it is the best, but what one can say now, with confidence, is that there is a web tool out there that makes the mechanics of starting up a new (but secretly not so new) journal almost trivial... What’s wrong with that, you might ask? I don’t have a good answer, but I do have a bad answer, which is that I, and probably many other people, have an irrational prejudice against them... Recently, however, my prejudice has weakened... However, I do think that kind of prejudice probably still survives to a significant extent, and that it would be good to try to combat it... Let me describe an imaginary new journal that would be close enough to conventional journals not to ruffle too many feathers but different enough that at least some people might find it dynamic, forward-looking, and somewhere one would love to be published... I was quite surprised that the reaction to the idea of a boycott was as positive as it was: I had expected a more divided response. I still wonder whether the true response is more divided. Could it be that the kind of mathematician who participates fully in online discussions on blogs, Mathoverflow etc. is naturally enthusiastic, whereas a more traditionally-minded mathematician just wants to be left alone to continue with a way of doing things that seems perfectly satisfactory? If so, then the apparently strong support could be misleading. I think it is this thought that makes me want to tread carefully after reading Michael Harris’s suggestion. But treading carefully doesn’t necessarily mean not treading at all. I’d be very interested to know what other people think about this: is there some moment that needs to be seized, or should we simply sit back and watch the number of signatures grow?”Posted by abernard to oa.mathematics oa.tools oa.gold oa.journals oa.petitions oa.signatures oa.boycotts oa.advocacy oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.elsevier oa.comment oa.new oa.sustainability on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 19:37 UTC | info | related

 The widely held notion that high impact publications determines who gets academic jobs, grants, and tenure is wrong. Stop using it as an excuse.www.michaeleisen.org... “I want to challenge the key assumption – made by nearly everyone – that choosing not to publish your work in the highest impact factor journal you can convince to accept it is tantamount to career ... Before I explain, I should note that my comments will deal exclusively with science in the United States... I can not deny that there is a very strong correlation between the impact factor of the journals in which someone has published and their success in landing jobs, grants and tenure... But, as we know, correlation does not imply causation. Even if hiring, grant review and tenure committees completely ignored journal titles and focused exclusively on the quality of the science (as they should), we would still expect there to be a strong correlation between success and impact factor... Encouraging the people we train to focus so exclusively on journal titles as the determinant of their success downplays the many other factors that play into these decisions: letters of recommendation, how effectively they communicate in person, and, most importantly, the inherent quality of their science. Sure, reviewers sometimes take shortcuts, but the quality of the underlying science and candidate matter a lot – and in most cases are paramount... My own lab provides several examples that demonstrate this reality...”Posted by abernard to oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.advocacy oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.gold oa.journals oa.prestige oa.jif oa.impact oa.comment oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 19:26 UTC | info | related

 Is the Open Science Revolution For Real? | Wired Science | Wired.comm.wired.com“The researcher rebellion against the closed research-and-publishing system, tallied most explicitly in a petition boycotting publisher Elsevier, continues to expand. (The Economist covers it here, and I covered the complaints last year in a feature.) The big question, of course, is whether this noisy riot will engender something like a real revolution. Will it replace the old regime with a new?... That will be depend on many things, but a key will be the construction of a replacement model for the traditional academic publishing system that so frustrates .  As studious rebels know, a key part of a successful revolution is building an alternate set of institutions and services  — an alternate infrastructure — to offer people as and after you topple the regime... To replace the traditional publishing system, they need to provide alternatives to its main functions. Those functions, as I described in my feature Free Science, One Paper at a Time, are: [1] Editing  & review –  making sure a paper is logical and intelligible; also assessing its value and significance. Review has traditionally been formal peer review... [2] publication/distribution — getting the thing out there where people can read it [3] credit/reputation — ensuring that the author or authors get credit for the work [4]archiving – making the work available to future researchers. In the current system, the journal system bundles all these functions into the paper... What are the rebels offering to replace that system? By casting around the last couple days, I’ve assembled a list of tools created by the open-science community that seek to replace or amend the various parts of the conventional journal system... together they show that the rebels (to indulge my metaphor) have gone a long way to creating the alternate infrastructure... Add that all up, the revolt is looking pretty good. Does this mean they’ll swarm right over the ramparts? Hard to say... But the pressure to change keeps building and is unlikely to stop. Some of the biggest targets are showing signs of the sort of inflexibility that mark the titan ready to fall. One source this week told me, for instance, that in the halls of one major scientific publishing concern, the senior leadership are mystified and the younger middle ranks terrified: a telling combination...”Posted by abernard to oa.green oa.repositories oa.gold oa.journals oa.impact oa.peer_review oa.data oa.open_science oa.tools oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.advocacy oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.elsevier oa.comment oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 19:23 UTC | info | related

 MIT Faculty Boycott Elsevier JournalsEllen DuranceauMIT Libraries News, (27 Jan 2012)“Nearly twenty members of the MIT community have already signed a newly posted pledge to boycott Elsevier journals by refusing to publish, referee, or do editorial work ‘unless they radically change how they operate.’ The boycott was launched as a result a posting by Fields medal-winning mathematician Timothy Gowers in which he railed against Elsevier’s pricing practices and support of the Research Works Act. He suggested that a public website be created where others could join him in “refus(ing) to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on.” Such a website now exists, and lists (as of the time of this writing) eighteen members of the MIT community, including... Professor Kai von Fintel also signed the boycott, and recently made a similar public statement on his web site...”Posted by abernard to oa.usa oa.negative oa.copyright oa.legislation oa.rwa oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.advocacy oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.elsevier oa.comment oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 19:21 UTC | info | related

 blog on mathematical journals: More reasons to support the Elsevier boycottblog.mathunion.org“Tim Gowers's excellent blog posting focused the long-standing discontent of the research community with Elsevier and nucleated a boycott which may prove to be a historic moment in scholarly publishing. I urge others to join the thousands of researchers who have signed on at the website Tyler Neylon created at thecostofknowledge.com. Recent articles in publications like Forbes and The Economist indicate that Elsevier and the rest of the business community are taking note... The arguments Gowers laid out focus on Elsevier's high prices, their bundling arrangements and subscription agreements, and their support for new laws that seem aimed at increasing publishers' profits at the expense of wide dissemination of scholarly research... However, there is another reason for researchers to disassociate from Elsevier, which I find even more compelling: their many lapses in ethical and quality publishing practices. Here are some examples: [1] The Elsevier journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals published more than 300 papers by the journal's Editor-In-Chief (58 in a single year). That these papers were not subject to peer review was later confirmed... [2] Elsevier journals have repeatedly published plagiarized work and duplicate publications... [3] Elsevier math journals have published a number of papers that make me doubt that they were subject to any peer-review whatever. An egregious example is the 2-page paper "A computer application in mathematics" in Computers and Mathematics with Applications, vol. 59 (2010) pp. 296-297... [4] On several occasions, entire editorial boards have collectively resigned from Elsevier, usually citing discontent with their pricing... [5] From 2000 to 2005 Elsevier published six phony biomedical journals, with titles such as the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, in return for an undisclosed sum from a large pharmaceutical company. The journals' contents were provided by the pharmaceutical company and published without further review, mostly reporting data favorable to their products... [6] In 1998, the Elsevier journal Lancet published one of the most significant examples of fraudulent scientific research in recent times, in which evidence was fabricated to link autism to measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, thereby setting off a health scare that led to deaths and severe injuries and which continues to this day...”Posted by abernard to oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.advocacy oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.elsevier oa.comment oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 19:19 UTC | info | related

 Established journal Evolutionary Applications to publish under open-access modelwww.eurekalert.org"Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., today announced that Evolutionary Applications has joined the Wiley Open Access publishing program. All newly published articles in the journal will be open access and free to view, download and share for non-commercial use. Since its launch in 2008, Evolutionary Applications has attracted very high quality submissions and has attained an Impact Factor of 5.145, as well as winning the 2009 ALPSP award for the best new journal...."Posted by petersuber to ru.do ru.ps oa.conversions oa.wiley oa.gold oa.journals oa.new on Mon Feb 06 2012 at 18:28 UTC | info | related