The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

UC Profs Have Problems With The Google Books Settlement

A group of prominent faculty representatives from the University of California, one of Google’s earliest and closest allies in its plan to digitize books from major libraries, is the latest to raise concerns about important aspects of a high-profile class-action settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers. In a lengthy letter to the court where the settlement is awaiting review by a federal judge, the group questioned whether the settlement is in the interest of academic authors. The group also suggests that the Authors Guild did not appropriately represent the interests of academic authors, many of whom want their works to be widely accessible. Read more at:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/uc-professors-seek-changes-to-google-books-deal/

Boston University Votes In Favor Of Open Access Publishing

Boston University is creating an online archive where faculty and staff can post academic research that the public could access for free. President Robert Brown said the goal is to bypass the more restrictive practice of publishing papers in academic journals. The change would give anyone free access to the scholarly work, which often is available only to journal subscribers. Professors will volunteer to publish their research online. Anyone using the work must credit the authors and agree not to use it for profit. Read more at:
http://news.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view/2009_02_17_Boston_University_endorses_free_online_research_access/srvc=home&position=recent

University And Journal Publisher Forge Experimental Open Access Agreement

The University of California libraries and Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) have concluded a groundbreaking experimental agreement to support open access publishing by UC authors. Under the terms of the agreement, articles by UC-affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal beginning in 2009 will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate open access. There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license. Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons (by-nc: Attribution, Non-commercial) license. In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository. Read more at:

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/19335

A Quick Guide To Understanding Author's Rights

Author's Rights, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give journal article authors a quick introduction to key aspects of author's rights and to foster further exploration of this topic though liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent Web sites. Find it at:

http://www.digital-scholarship.org/ts/authorrights.pdf

Harvard Faculty To Vote On Open Access Measure

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free. Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online. Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?ex=1203483600&en=9c4a2b023c47a292&ei=5070

Open Access Advocate Calls Scholarly Publication "Anti-Publication"

From a blog post over at Grand Text Auto on the author's refusal to deal with a traditional journal publisher: I think there must be a few things that those of us who are part of the scholarly publishing process can do to foster an open-access future. The easiest thing that I’m able to think of is simply not volunteering our labor to lock academic writing away from the public. This [scholarly publishing] process is one that I characterize as anti-publication. It may serve some credentialing purposes and help universities assess tenure and promotion cases, but it ends up restricting access to scholarly work rather than helping to publish that work, that is, helping to make it available to the public. Read the post at:
http://grandtextauto.org/2007/12/21/digital-media-games-and-open-access/#comments

Seven Things You Should Know About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is the subject of the latest addition to the EDUCAUSE series, "Seven Things You Should Know About..." Creative Commons is an alternative to traditional copyright, devel¬oped by a nonprofit organization of the same name. By default, most original works are protected by copyright, which confers specific rights regarding use and distribution. Creative Commons allows copyright owners to release some of those rights while retaining others, with the goal of increasing access to and sharing of intellectual property. Read more at:
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7023

Article Points Out Advantages Of Open Access Journals

This article concludes that articles published in open access journals are disseminated more quickly and are also cited more quickly than articles published in traditional journals. The researchers also found that publishing in open access journals facilitates dissemination to a higher degree than self-archiving (e.g., availability from an institutional repository). Read more at:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157

Web Sites Give Students More Places To Sell Used Textbooks

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussed textbook publishing as a way for academic presses to meet the challenges of declining mongraphic sales (Survival Strategies for Academic Publishing, June 17, 2005, login required).  One obstacle, however, is the used book market, which the Chronicle described as "disastrous" for textbook publishers, forcing them into a state of "continuous revision."  Here's a story about a web site that enables students to sell their textbooks online, presumably for more money than they'd get from the campus bookstore. Read more at:

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/7/emw260070.htm

Research Fraud Increased 50%

For the past three years, Dr. Andrew Friedman, surgeon and researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School,  had been faking -- actually making up -- data in some of the respected, peer-reviewed studies he had published in top medical journals. Friedman's research fraud case is part of a record high last year. Read more at:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/07/10/fake_research_allegations_reach_new_highs/