Excerpts from Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter October 26, 2001
More follow-up on the _Machine Learning_ resignations * Andrea Foster has a good article about the resignations in the October 18 _Chronicle of Higher Education_. http://chronicle.com/free/2001/10/2001101801t.htm * Robin Peek tells the story for _InfoToday_, October 22. http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb011022-3.htm * Tom Kirk, Head Librarian at Earlham College, wrote with another specimen for the collection of editorial resignations. In 1998 most of the editorial board of the _Journal of Academic Librarianship_ resigned to protest the large hike in the subscription price imposed by Pergamon-Elsevier after it bought the journal from JAI Press. Several of the editors who resigned then created _Portal: Libraries and the Academy_ at Johns Hopkins University Press. In the first issue of _Portal_ Gloriana St. Clair published a statement explaining why she and her co-founders thought it necessary to create an affordable competitor to JAL. Unfortunately, like other Portal articles, her statement is part of Project MUSE and not available online for free. I've written to _Portal_ for more details and may have them to report in the next issue. Gloriana St. Clair, statement in _Portal_ 1.1 on the need for _Portal_ http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v001/1.1st_clair.html (Accessible only to paid MUSE subscribers.) ---------- What are learned societies saying? In FOSN for 8/16/01, I offered to make a web page collecting the policy statements on FOS issues made by learned societies and professional associations --if only you would send me the URLs of the statements in your field or known to you. So far nobody has taken me up on the offer. I have these two statements so far. Do you know of others? I'll include statements by learned societies in any discipline and any country. American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/journals/posting.html American Physical Society ftp://aps.org/pub/jrnls/copy_trnsfr.asc * Postscript. I've add this list to the new page of FOS lists. If the list grows, you can watch it grow there. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#statements ---------- * The NSF has awarded Cornell University a $1.56 million grant to develop software to collect scientific information from hundreds of sites across the internet, organize it, and make it accessible to users through a unified front end. The software will mine OAI archives and "deep web" sites inaccessible to most other search engines. The NSF calls this the Core System for the National Science Digital Library. (PS: The heavy reliance on government funding suggests that the final product will be free for users, but I haven't seen this stated explicitly anywhere. Does anyone know how this stands?) http://www.newswise.com/articles/2001/10/NSDLCOR.CNS.html ---------- In other publications * In an October 18 posting to the _Nature_ FOS debate, Carol Tenopir and Donald King summarize their research on the use and costs of scientific journals from 1960 to 2000. They point out but do not fully explain the "paradox" that print journal prices have risen faster than inflation while publishing costs per page, costs per author, and costs per reading have all declined. One conclusion: "Much of the current ill will stems from ignorance -librarians and scientists do not understand the causes of rising journal prices, and publishers...are afraid of becoming obsolete if readers have access to articles without paying for them." http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/tenopir.html * In another October 18 posting to the _Nature_ debate, David Worlock argues that the nature of scholarship is changing faster than publishers, scholars, and libraries can finish fighting their old battles. Technologies like DOIs and CrossRef show unprecedented collaboration between publishers and researchers, and the OAI will transform article storage and searching. At the same time, the Semantic Web is changing the unit of scholarship from the text article to the knowledge-structure. http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/worlock.html * In the October 15 _Library Journal_, Roy Tennant surveys a variety of cross-database search technologies and describes the concept for newcomers. http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA170458 (Free registration required.) * In the October issue of _Haematologica_, Moreno Curti and three co-authors report on their longitudinal study of biomedical journals from 1995 to 2000. During this period, 85% of the journals studied added some kind of free online content. During the same period, the median impact factor for the set of journals studied showed a statistically significant rise. The association between higher impact factors and free online content was also statistically significant. http://www.haematologica.it/full/pdf/2001_10/861015.pdf * In July, Steve Hitchcock and Wendy Hall argue that two steps are needed to connect journal articles stored in open archives: (1) "decoupling journal content from [the] publishing process" and (2) "defragmentation of the control of access to works at the article level". They describe _Perspectives in Electronic Publishing_, which Hitchcock conceived and edits, as satisfying these conditions. Their paper was originally presented at the ICCC/IFIP 5th Conference on Electronic Publishing at the University of Kent. Hitchcock and Hall, How Dynamic E-Journals can Interconnect Open Access Archives http://www.bib.ecs.soton.ac.uk/data/6878/html/elpub01-online.html Perspectives in Electronic Publishing http://aims.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pep.nsf ---------- Share your thoughts * The ACM is seeking nominations for the biennial Eugene Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics. Among the contributions that might earn someone this award are "creative research concerning intellectual property issues" and "application of computers or computing techniques to problems of developing countries". The ACM will accept nominations until November 30. http://www.acm.org/awards/lawlaward.html ---------- * In FOSN for 8/23/01, I announced the launch of the Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS) and its plans to become OAI compliant. On October 24 it announced that it has become OAI compliant. http://www.chemweb.com/preprint?url=/CPS * In FOSN for 7/31/01, I described the launch of the History E-Book Project and its plan to digitize hundreds of historical monographs. The project has now put online its list of 752 books for which it will seek the electronic rights. The project is also interested in receiving book nominations from readers. http://www.historyebook.org/titlelist.html ---------- Correction * In FOSN for 10/12/01, I wrote about the new partnership of the California Digital Library (CDL) and Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress). I gave the impression that some CDL archives created with bepress tools were OAI compliant because the bepress tools were supplemented by eprints.org software. In fact, some early CDL archives were OAI compliant thanks to eprints.org software, but the significance of CDL's new partnership with bepress is that CDL is now migrating from eprints.org to bepress tools, which will create OAI compliant archives and meet other CDL needs as well. Thanks to John Ober, CDL's Director of Education and Strategic Innovation, for pointing this out. ---------- Conferences If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your observations with us through our discussion forum. * Copyright Issues in the Electronic Age http://www.sspnet.org/public/articles/details.cfm?id=181 Waltham, Massachusetts, October 29 * Paperless Publishing: Peer Review, Production, and Publication http://www.sspnet.org/public/articles/details.cfm?id=181 Washington, D.C., October 30 * The XML Revolution: What Scholarly Publishers Need to know http://www.sspnet.org/public/articles/details.cfm?id=181 Waltham, Massachusetts, November 1 * Information in a Networked World: Harnessing the Flow http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM01/index.html Washington D.C., November 2-8 * Long Term Archiving of Digital Documents in Physics http://publish.aps.org/IUPAP/ Lyon, November 5-6 * Electronic Book 2001: Authors, Applications, and Accessibility http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook2001/ Washington D.C., November 5-7 * Internet Librarian 2001 http://www.infotoday.com/il2001/ Pasadena, November 6-8 * Content Summit 01: Funding opportunities for European digital content on global networks http://www.contentsummit.com/ Zurich, November 7-9 * Setting Standards and Making it Real (on Digital Reference Services) http://vrd.org/conferences/VRD2001/program.shtml Orlando, November 12-13 * First Annual Meeting of the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium http://www.tei-c.org/Publicity/pisa.html Pisa, November 16-17 * NINCY Town Meeting: Copyright and Fair use: Creating Policy http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/ninch/ Eugene, November 19 * ARL Workshop for Publishers: Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries: Understanding Your Market http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html Philadelphia, November 19 * Eighth Call for Proposals of the European IST Programme http://www.ukishelp.co.uk/ukishelp/SI12254ku/system/Viewfull.cfm?ObjectID=318&Order=Current London, November 27 * European Forum on Harmful and Illegal Cyber Content http://www.humanrights.coe.int/media/cyberforum/main.htm Strasbourg, November 28 * eGovernment [in Europe]: From Policy to Practice http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/egovconf/index_en.htm Brussels, November 29-30 * Digital Media Revolution in the Americas http://www.iamericas.org/events/eventlist.html Pasadena, November 29 - December 1 * Fourth SCHEMAS Workshop: Sharing [metadata] schemas http://www.schemas-forum.org/workshops/ The Hague, November 30 * 2001 IST Exhibition and Awards http://europa.eu.int/information_society/newsroom/istevent/programme/index_en.htm Düsseldorf, December 3 * School for Scanning: Creating, Managing, and Preserving Digital Assets http://www.nedcc.org/sfsfl1.htm Delray Beach, Florida, December 3-5 * Online Information 2001 http://www.online-information.co.uk/online/ London, December 4-6 * The Electronic Library: Strategic, Policy and Management Issues http://www.britishcouncil.org/networkevents/2000/0134p.htm Loughborough, December 9-14 * 4th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries http://www.icadl2001.org/ Bangalore, December 10-12 ---------- The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute. http://www.soros.org/osi.html ========== This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848). Please feel free to forward any issue of the newsletter to interested colleagues. If you are reading a forwarded copy of this issue, you may subscribe by signing up at the FOS home page or the FOS Newsletter page. FOS home page, general information, subscriptions, editorial position, feedback form http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm FOS Newsletter, subscriptions, back issues http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos FOS Discussion Forum, subscriptions, postings http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum Guide to the FOS Movement http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters Copyright (c) 2001, Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm