Hilary

Output from a roundtable convened by the House of Representatives' science and tech committee and the OSTP. Participants were from Boston University, Elsevier, University of Michigan, Cornell University, American Institute of Physics, University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, Georgetown University, Yale University, Public Library of Science (PLoS), University of Alabama, American Society of Plant Biologists, University of Tennessee, Association of American Universities, Public Library of Science (PLoS), Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Elsevier. - Hilary

@Björn - quite. See OA News comments:- http://www.earlham.edu/~peters... - Graham Steel

"Cornell University Library is beginning an effort to expand funding sources for arXiv to ensure its stability and continued development. We intend to establish a collaborative business model that will engage the institutions that benefit most from arXiv — academic institutions, research centers and government labs — by asking them for voluntary contributions. We are working with library and research center directors at the institutions that are the heaviest users of arXiv to refine our plan and to enlist support. We expect to release the plan, with a call for broader engagement and contribution, in early 2010." - Hilary

lol, Bill, I have several bad jokes about powder, but they don't seem appropriate given the reality here. - Mickey Schafer

A brief article covering “The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery” - a collection of essays in honor of Jim Gray. - Hilary

"The Administration is seeking public input on access to publicly-funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles. Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. The Administration is seeking views as to whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented." - Hilary

From the Office of Science and Technology Policy: "The question that this Forum will address is: To what extent and under what circumstances should such research articles—funded by taxpayers but with value added by scholarly publishers—be made freely available on the Internet?"... the first phase of the forum plan requests input on Implementation: who should enact policies, how should such a policy be designed... The OSTP is requesting input from the public and various stakeholders. - Hilary

"Publisher lawsuit against public university that makes electronic copies of course readings available to students without paying royalty fees." - Hilary

"Clearly modeled after PubMed, PubSCIENCE wanted to attract scientists and the general public to its information. Noting that the U.S. federal government funds 80 to 90 percent of scientific research and development, [the Department of Energy] touts PubSCIENCE as a significant taxpayer benefit. The private sector never saw it that way. Since its inception, PubSCIENCE has been a target. Database producers and some scholarly publishers felt threatened by the free availability of peer-reviewed scientific information." - Hilary

DOE/OSTI keeps trying. Worldwide science and science.gov and other things. I think that original one had too much competition, too many naysayers, and was too expensive while not being that effective. - Christina Pikas

Journal publishing in the humanities is much more expensive than in the sciences with a much lower acceptance rate: "Waltham estimates an average of almost $526 per page published in these journals, as compared to an average of just $266 in STM journals." Another surprising fact: "more than half of our institutional subscribers have opted for print-only subscriptions" - Hilary

Some interesting observations on legal scholarship: "In the past five years, legal blogs have become an acknowledged and accepted part of the world of legal scholarship....Citations in the Westlaw JLR database are an imperfect metric, but they tend to confirm the change. Consider the number of times that the phrase “Volokh Conspiracy” and/or “volokh.com” appeared in the database...In 2005, the phrases appeared 24 times in the JLR database. The year 2009 isn’t over yet, with roughly 20–30% of issues schedule for a 2009 publication not yet out and on Westlaw. Still, the phrases have appeared 108 times so far in the JLR database." - Hilary

"the Contributed track seems to yield less influential papers on average, but is more likely produce truly exceptional papers" - Hilary

Now that's food for thought! - Björn Brembs

"The effect of press releases, and popular press coverage more generally, on citation counts is an open question which deserves further study [2]." - yes. - Daniel Mietchen

By Theresa Velden and Carl Lagoze: "New web-based models of scholarly communication have made a significant impact in some scientific disciplines, but chemistry is not one of them. What has prevented the widespread adoption of these developments by chemists — and what are the prospects for adoption over time?" - Hilary

Mat - if there is any follow-up meeting it will be discussed in the Google group http://groups.google.com/group... - Jean-Claude Bradley

"This paper is intended as a starting point for discussion on the possible future of scientific communication in chemistry, the value of new models of scientific communication enabled by web based technologies, and the necessary future steps to achieve the benefits of those new models. It is informed by a NSF sponsored workshop that was held on October 23-24, 2008 in Washington D.C. It provides an overview on the chemical communication system in chemistry and describes efforts to enhance scientific communication by introducing new web-based models of scientific communication. It observes that such innovations are still embryonic and have not yet found broad adoption and acceptance by the chemical community. The paper proceeds to analyze the reasons for this by identifying specific characteristics of the chemistry domain that relate to its research practices and socio-economic organization. It hypothesizes how these may influence communication practices, and produce resistance to... more... - Hilary

By Theresa Velden and Carl Lagoze, with input from myself and several others. - Hilary

An analysis of acknowledgment statements (mostly in the computer science literature) - the authors compare acknowledgments to citations and finds that "[the] number of citations made to the most acknowledged individuals does not correlate well with the number of acknowledgments to those individuals". - Hilary

A long report/book from the National Academies of Sciences with recommendations for how to address issues related to data sharing and code/software sharing. Several journal policies have been based on this, such as the PLoS journals statement on software sharing: http://www.plosone.org/static... - Hilary

wow, comprehensive list - Mike Chelen

Peter Hirtle comments on the case with a view towards fair use - the case involved Blackwell, Elsevier, OUP, Sage and Wiley (spelled Wily here???) who sued a coursepack copying shop (Excel Copying) and its owner. Summary judgment has been granted in favor of the publishers. Excel argued first that the copying was permitted under UMich's licenses, and then that they did not engage in direct infringement because the students were doing the copying. The court also rejected a fair use defense "because Excel is a commercial operation, the purpose of the copying was not educational". - Hilary

Hirtle wonders about the potential liability of libraries: "it is common for libraries to receive from a faculty member a copy of a course pack and place it on reserve (much as faculty members provided copies of their course packs to Excel). If a student then borrowed that course pack and copied it on a library photocopy machine, would the library be liable?" As the commercial nature of... more... - Hilary

Problem is, D, if the *library* gets sued the faculty still might not feel it...? - Bill Hooker

The university has also dismissed 3.2% of its non-faculty workers. The value of the endowment dropped 27% in the fiscal year ending Aug 31. - Hilary

It has also been a few years since I stepped into a library .. I don't even know where the UCSF library is. I am guessing that a lot of libraries already do this but given the shift to online shouldn't the role of the libraries include helping people find what they need using current tools. Ex - setting up automatic queries, getting suggestions on what to read via online bookmarking... more... - Pedro Beltrao

"Academic abstention is the doctrine (never formally promulgated) that courts should defer to colleges and universities when it comes to matters like promotions, curricula, admission policies, grading, tenure, etc. The reasoning is that courts lack the competence to monitor academic behavior; they should get out of the way and let the professionals do the job....In 2009, courts still pay lip service to this doctrine but in practice, Amy Gajda tells us in her terrific new book, “The Trials of Academe,” they now boldly go where their predecessors feared to tread... “litigation and ‘rights talk’ have permeated every crease and wrinkle of academic life.”" - Hilary

Has the increasing willingness of courts to rule on cases involving the ivory tower/s led to an increasing reliance by academics on a legal framework to navigate and frame academic disputes (e.g. use of contracts in academic work and the rise of explicit university IP policies), perhaps as an attempt to preempt legal problems? Or has the increasing use of contracts encouraged court... more... - Hilary

"The bulk of digital books in libraries are treated like printed ones: only one borrower can check out an e-book at a time, and for popular titles, patrons must wait in line just as they do for physical books. After two to three weeks, the e-book automatically expires from a reader’s account." - Hilary

Worth a look in this context http://www.ocrterminal.com/ . Performed fairly well on a screenshot of a scanned pdf of newsprint. - Garret McMahon

"Students with research interests in scientific data management, sharing and reuse have a unique opportunity to participate in the Open Data fellowship program. Open Data is an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) sponsored by NSF. Open Data fellows engage in a vibrant set of research activities at the University of Michigan in the conduct of responsible data-intensive science and engineering involving faculty and doctoral students from SI, Computer Science and Engineering, Bioinformatics, Materials Science, and Chemical Engineering." - Hilary

Very cool IGERT! - Steve Koch

Covers article processing fees, advertising, sponsorships, internal and external subsidies, donations / fundraising, endowments, partnerships, versioning, use triggered fees, and value added fee services. - Hilary