Open Humanities Press

Open Humanities Press (OHP) is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory. Presently OHP publishes seven peer-reviewed journals: Cosmos and History; Culture Machine; Fibreculture; Film-Philosophy; International Journal of Žižek Studies; Parrhesia; and Vectors. All journals were chosen by OHP’s distinguished editorial advisory board “for their outstanding contribution to contemporary theory” and all “are independent, published under open access licences and free of charge to readers and authors alike.”

OCLC and Google to Exchange Data, Link Digitized Books to WorldCat

OCLC recently announced that it had signed an agreement with Google.com to exchange data that will facilitate the discovery of library collections through Google search services. From the press release:

Under terms of the agreement, OCLC member libraries participating in the Google Book Search™ program, which makes the full text of more than one million books searchable, may share their WorldCat-derived MARC records with Google to better facilitate discovery of library collections through Google.

Google will link from Google Book Search to WorldCat.org, which will drive traffic to library OPACs and other library services. Google will share data and links to digitized books with OCLC, which will make it possible for OCLC to represent the digitized collections of OCLC member libraries in WorldCat. . . .

WorldCat metadata will be made available to Google directly from OCLC or through member libraries participating in the Google Book Search program. . . .

The new agreement enables OCLC to create MARC records describing the Google digitized books from OCLC member libraries and to link to them. These linking arrangements should help drive more traffic to libraries, both online and in person.

Company of Biologists announces Development's online archive

The Company of Biologists has completed the digital retroconversion of the Journal of Embryology and Experimental Morphology (JEEM), the predecessor of its journal, Development. The entire contents of JEEM is now freely available online.

Scholarly Communication Symposium on Web 2.0 at Drexel

Webcasts from the the 5th Annual Scholarly Communication Symposium: Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication are now available at the Symposium web site: http://scholar2scholar.wikispaces.com/. Webcasts available include Jean Claude Bradley's presentation, Enhancing Scientific Communication through Open Notebook Science as well as the panel discussion. The Symposium website also offers notes from the round-table discussions, links to photos of the event on Flickr, and suggestions for further readings on Web 2.0 and Scholarship.

Scholarly Communication: Faculty Needs and Ways of Meeting Them

The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) of the U. of California, Berkeley recently made available Draft Interim Report: Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An In-depth Study of Faculty Needs and Ways of Meeting Them.

Abstract: The Center for Studies in Higher Education, with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is conducting research to understand the needs and desires of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. In the interest of developing a deeper understanding of how and why scholars do what they do to advance their fields as well as their careers, our approach focuses on fine-grained analyses of faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly communication lifecycle, including sharing, collaborating, publishing, and engaging with the public. Well into our second year, we have posted a draft interim report describing some of our early results and impressions based on the responses of more than 150 interviewees in the fields of astrophysics, archaeology, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

Our work to date has confirmed the important impact of disciplinary culture and tradition on many scholarly communication habits. These traditions may override the perceived “opportunities” afforded by new technologies, including those falling into the Web 2.0 category. As we have listened to our diverse informants, as well as followed closely the prognostications about the likely future of scholarly communication, we note that it is absolutely imperative to be precise about terms. That includes being clear about what is meant by “open access” publishing (i.e., using preprint or postprint servers for work published in prestigious outlets, versus publishing in new, untested open access journals, or the more casual individual posting of working papers, blogs, and other non-peer-reviewed work). Our work suggests that enthusiasm for technology development and adoption should not be conflated with the hard reality of tenure and promotion requirements (including the needs and goals of final archival publication) in highly competitive professional environments.

For more information about the research project see the Future of Scholarly Communication website.

Berkeley to Pay Authors’ Open-Access Charges

The May 2008 SPARC enews reports on a very welcome new initiative by the U. of California, Berkeley to provide grants to its faculty and students to pay author and related charges for publication in open access journals:

It’s one thing to say you support open-access publishing. It’s another to provide authors with a pot of money to actually pay for it.

That’s what’s happening at the University of California Berkeley. In January, the university launched the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative, a pilot program co-sponsored by the University Librarian and the Vice Chancellor for Research to cover publication charges for open-access journals.

Faculty, post-doc and graduate students can apply for up to $3,000 to cover the cost of publishing an article in an open-access publication. The fund also gives up to $1,500 for the cost of so-called hybrid publications’ paid access fees, where information is freely available but the journal limits the right to redistribute. The pilot program will last 18 months or until the initial $125,000 fund runs out. The hope – and challenge – is to find a permanent funding source.

The article continues with further details about Berkeley's plan as well as information about the U. of North Carolina, Chapel-Hill and the U. of Wisconsin-Madison which have also established funds to pay for open-access research.

The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 2

Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has just published Version 2 of his very useful The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/etdb/etdb.htm

"This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical."

Harvard Law Faculty Votes for 'Open Access' to Scholarly Articles

Almost three months after their colleagues in Arts and Science faculty in Harvard Law School voted unanimously to mandate that their peer reviewed articles be deposited in a digital institutional repository and be open access. From the news release:

In a move that will disseminate faculty research and scholarship as broadly as possible, the Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to open access. . . .

Under the new policy, HLS will make articles authored by faculty members available in an online repository, whose contents would be searchable and available to other services such as Google Scholar. Authors can also legally distribute the articles on their own websites, and educators here and elsewhere can freely provide the articles to students, so long as the materials are not used for profit. . . .

The vote came after an open access proposal was made by a university-wide committee aimed at encouraging wider dissemination of scholarly work. Earlier this semester, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to adopt a policy similar to the Law School’s new initiative.

Similar initiatives are underway to promote free and open access to scholarly articles elsewhere, although no initiative extends as far as Harvard's. Legislation before Congress would mandate that all federally funded research be available in open access.

A Digital Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae

Explore a digital Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae. The University of Chicago Library's copy of Antonio Lafreri's Renaissance-era Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae contains nearly 1,000 prints of major monuments and antiquities in Rome and is the largest in the world.

Credit Line: Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, [speculum image number, B211] , Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Open Access: New issue, New edition

The new issue of Peter Suber’s The SPARC Open Access Newsletter, May 2, 2008 and the 2007 edition of Charles W. Bailey’s Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are available to read.