SciTech Library Question

.:The University of Alberta Libraries is pleased to make available an audio recording of our March 20th forum with Dr John Willinsky - Open Access: The Sea Change in Scholarly Publishing (mp3 format) - .

Dr Willinsky's award-winning Public Knowledge Project is the world's leading open source software for journal publishing, and his recent book: The Access Principle (MIT Press, 2006), has won this year's Blackwell Award for Scholarship.

To learn more about support available from the University of Alberta Libraries, visit our Open Access Publishing Information Site. Please see also the article, "Public knowledge - Open access publishing pushes scholarship into the public realm, advocates say", from the 13 April 2007 issue of the University of Alberta's newspaper, Folio.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: From yesterday's Press Release, and as reported by Peter Suber, and elsewhere:

January 25 2007
THE BRITISH LIBRARY, LONDON -- Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has signed an agreement with Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, to collaborate on the development of a global science gateway. The gateway would eventually make science information resources of many nations accessible via a single Internet portal.

Called ‘Science.world,’ the planned resource would be available for use by scientists in all nations and by anyone interested in science. The approach will capitalise on existing technology to search vast collections of science information distributed across the globe, enabling much-needed access to smaller, less well-known sources of highly valuable science. Following the model of Science.gov, the U.S. interagency science portal that relies on content published by each participating agency, ‘Science.world’ will rely on scientific resources published by each participating nation. Other countries have been invited to participate in this international effort.

Recognising the impact of international research efforts, Dr. Orbach stated, “It is time to make the science offerings of all nations searchable in one global gateway. Our goal is to speed up the sharing of knowledge on a global scale. As a result, we believe that science itself will speed up.”

Lynne Brindley said, “We are delighted to be embarking on what we expect to be a very fruitful collaboration with the DOE to develop the Science.world resource. The British Library has a long history of delivering online information resources through international partnerships – the most recent of which being the UK PubMed Central database, which has generated a huge amount of interest since it was launched on January 9.”

Increasingly science projects are international in scope, with researchers across the globe collaborating on projects as diverse as energy, linear colliders, genomes and the environment. At the same time, the US and UK have recognised the importance of providing their citizens with one-stop electronic access to increasing volumes of science information, with a growing sense of the need for reciprocity and sharing of science knowledge across national boundaries.

Objectives of the “Science.world” initiative are to:

• Search dispersed, electronic collections in various science disciplines;
  
• Provide direct, seamless and free searching of open-source collections and portals;
  
• Build upon existing and already successful national models for searching;
  
• Complement existing information collections and systems; and
  
• Raise the visibility and usage of individual sources of quality science information.

The US Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) (www.osti.gov) will work with the British Library (www.bl.uk) and international counterparts to develop a prototype of “Science.world” in 2007.

For further information please contact: Ben Sanderson at the British Library Press Office (telephone 01937 546126, email: ben.sanderson@bl.uk) or Lawrence Christensen (telephone 020 7412 7114, email: lawrence.christensen@bl.uk)

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: From the ACRLog: :

In the December SPARC Open Access Newsletter, Peter Suber provides an evaluation of the results of the November elections from the point of view of Open Access (sometimes defined as free public access to federally funded research), and provides his predictions for Open Access in 2007.

Suber notes that Open Access advocate Lieberman won and Open Access opponents Santorum and DeWine lost, yielding 3 critical victories for Open Access policies. (On another political note, net neutrality advocate Ed Markey will chair the House Telecom and Internet Subcommittee.)

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Knowledgespeak reports today that BioMed Central, under its new initiative called Chemistry Central, "...a new service publishing peer-reviewed open access research in chemistry from BioMed Central", is launching a new journal called Chemistry Central Journal. From the Chemistry Central Journal site:

Chemistry Central Journal (ISSN 1752-153X) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal recently launched by Chemistry Central. Chemistry Central, developed by the same team who created BioMed Central, the leading biomedical open access publisher, is committed to ensuring peer-reviewed chemical research is immediately and permanently available online without charge or any other barriers to access.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: The latest Knowledgespeak reports that the Institute of Physics is launching a new open access journal, Environmental Research Letters:

The Institute of Physics, UK, has announced the launch of open–access (OA) journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL). The new journal seeks to bring together professional scientists, economists and engineers, as well as the public sector and people engaged in efforts to understand the state of natural systems and, increasingly, the human footprint on the biosphere. Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley serves as the editor-in-chief.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: The 18 May 2006 issue of Knowledgespeak includes mention of a study just published in PLoS Biology, which suggests that OA articles are more likely to be cited more frequently than non-OA articles. The study, Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles, was written by Gunther Eysenbach, University of Toronto, and was based on analysis of articles published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Excerpts from the abstract:

Open access (OA) to the research literature has the potential to accelerate recognition and dissemination of research findings, but its actual effects are controversial. This was a longitudinal bibliometric analysis of a cohort of OA and non-OA articles published between June 8, 2004, and December 20, 2004, in the same journal (PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Article characteristics were extracted, and citation data were compared between the two groups at three different points in time: at “quasi-baseline” (December 2004, 0–6 mo after publication), in April 2005 (4–10 mo after publication), and in October 2005 (10–16 mo after publication).

Continue reading "Open Access Articles Generating More Citations Than Non-OA - Report in PLoS Biology" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Biointerphases has published its first issue, March 2006. Biointerphases is published by AVS, formerly the American Vacuum Society, and hosted by the American Institute of Physics.

Topics Include… •Interface spectroscopy •In vivo mechanisms •In vitro mechanisms •Interface modeling •Adhesion phenomena •Protein-surface interactions •Biomembranes on a chip •Cell-surface interactions •Biosensors / biodiagnostics •Bio-surface modification •The nano-bio interface •Biotribology / Biorheology •Molecular recognition •Cell patterning for function •Polyelectrolyte surfaces •Ambient diagnostic methods

Biointerphases
Fulltext v1+ (2006+)
http://biointerphases.org/
ISSN: 1559-4106.

Continue reading "Biointerphases - New Open Access Journal" »

Posted by George Porter at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: The Japan Science and Technology Agency has release Journal@rchive, an archive of articles from Japanese journals, some going back to the 19th century. From the About page:

Journal@rchive is an archive site of J-STAGE operated by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). On Journal@rchive, academic journals scanned through the Electronic Archive Initiative are released from their first issues, including those issued in the 19th century. The Initiative commenced by JST in FY2005 aiming at two goals: (1) to preserve of academic heritages of Japan, and (2) to further promote worldwide distribution of Japanese research results.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Optics Express, the Open Access journal of the Optical Society of America, "... was recognized by Essential Science Indicators as having the highest percent increase in total citations in the field of Physics in both September 2005 and January 2006. Optics Express is a SPARC Leading Edge publisher partner.

Posted by George Porter at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Open Access Authoring @ Caltech is a new venue with a new strategy for communicating observed Open Access behaviors by campus researchers to campus researchers.

Have you ever noticed that advocacy is a concept fraught with potential conflict? Advocacy routinely involves pushing for change, not merely hinting or suggesting. Pushing is a strategy which is most usefully employed by those with a strength or elevation advantage. Sisyphus is a classic(al) example of lacking the strategic elevation advantage.

Campus politics is an intensely local game and is, in all respects, intense. Libraries and librarians are rarely power players in this realm. Advocacy, as such, "you should do thus and so..." will need to have resonance, momentum, the height advantage, to have any real impact. A documentary blog, asserting observed items of fact, may help to create momentum.

Continue reading "Open Access Authoring@Caltech: OA Advocacy Without Attitude" »

Posted by George Porter at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hindawi Publishing has embraced Open Access publishing in a major way. Hindawi is an established, low-cost, for-profit STM journal publisher that has decided that OA for-profit publishing is a viable model, both for start-up titles and by converting formerly subscription-based titles. In December 2005, Hindawi had a slate of 12 OA titles. The list has since expanded to 14 titles (8 with content) with the stated intent to grow by another 15 journals by the end of 2006.

Continue reading "Hindawi Publishing's Open Access Titles" »

Posted by George Porter at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: The following is of interest to those working in molecular biology and requiring access to protein sequence daabases. The UniProt Consortium is comprised of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), and the Protein Information Resource (PIR). Until recently, EBI and SIB together produced Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL, while PIR produced the Protein Sequence Database (PIR-PSD). The UniProt databases (UniPARC, UniProtKB, UniREF) are built upon the pooled overlapping and complementary resources, efforts and expertise of these pioneereing efforts; UniProt FAQ

Posted by George Porter at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Geochemical Transactions has had a troubled history. Four lackluster years hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry led to a transfer to the American Institute of Physics. AIP opted out due to a continuing dearth of manuscript submissions over the last two years.
With volume 7, the editorial board is trying a new tact. The journal is moving to BioMed Central and adopting an author pays [UK pounds 800, Euros 1185, US$1410], Open Access publishing model. Officially the move is effective on 1 January 2006. Currently, the new website has an announcement of the purchase of all of the backfiles (funded by the ACS Geochemistry division) and an editorial on the new vision for the journal.

Martin A A Schoonen, Ken B Anderson and Scott A Wood. Moving Geochemical Transactions forward as an open access journal. Geochemical Transactions 2006, 7:1. doi:10.1186/1467-4866-7-1

Geochemical Transactions, the first online-only journal in geochemistry and environmental chemistry, is now the first major open access journal in this subject area. All issues of Geochemical Transactions, including the back content, will be fully and permanently available online to all, without a subscription charge. Copyright of all future articles will be retained by the authors. Geochemical Transactions remains the official journal of the Division of Geochemistry of the American Chemical Society. The generous support of the Division has made it possible to make the back content available without a subscription charge.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hindawi Publishing Corp. publishes a dozen Open Access journals, 10 of which are directly applicable to engineering.

• Differential Equations and Nonlinear Mechanics - Forthcoming 2005; Print ISSN: 1687-4099 | Online ISSN: 1687-4102.
  
• EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing - Forthcoming 2006; Print ISSN: 1687-4714 | Online ISSN: 1687-4722.
  
• EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology - Forthcoming 2006; Print ISSN: 1687-4145 | Online ISSN: 1687-4153.
  
• EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems - Forthcoming 2006; Print ISSN: 1687-3955 | Online ISSN: 1687-3963.
  
• EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking - Fulltext 2004+; Print ISSN: 1687-1472 | Online ISSN: 1687-1499.
  
• International Journal of Biomedical Imaging - Fulltext 2005+; Print ISSN: 1687-4188 | Online ISSN: 1687-4196.
  
• International Journal of Rotating Machinery - Fulltext v8+ (2002+); Print ISSN: 1023-621X | Online ISSN: 1542-3034.
  
• Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology - Fulltext v1-2 (2001-2002), 2003+; Print ISSN: 1110-7243 | Online ISSN: 1110-7251. [Volume numbering pattern change]
  
• Journal of Nanomaterials - Forthcoming 2006; Print ISSN: 1687-4110 | Online ISSN: 1687-4129.
  
• Mathematical Problems in Engineering - Fulltext v1-8 (1995-2002), 2003+; Print ISSN: 1024-123X | Online ISSN: 1563-5147. [Volume numbering pattern change]

Posted by George Porter at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Andrew Waller, U Calgary, posted an e-mail to Jerome-l regarding a new collaborative blog on open access issues, called OA Librarian. From his e-mail:

OA Librarian is a new, cooperatively produced weblog, which combines a pathfinder function with news and commentary on open access and librarianship. Please visit us here: http://oalibrarian.blogspot.com/

Continue reading "OA Librarian - New Collaborative Open Access Blog" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As commercial STM publishers continue to increase the subscription prices of their journals, and charge for backfile access, is it time for them to consider offering open access to their archives? Dana Roth of the Millikan Library at Caltech considers the benefits and consequences of such a move in this commentary:

Open Access Archives and STM Publishers - A Commentary by Dana Roth

One wonders ...

One wonders when commercial publishers might re-think their marketing strategies and recognize that their library subscribers deserve some compensation for years of annual price increases that far exceed inflation (for either CPI or pagination). The cumulative effect of decades of these often questionable price increases is exemplified by an analysis of the 2004 subscription costs, pagination, and cost/page.

Factoring in the ISI Impact Factors (IP) and normalization of the cost/page/IP values for each commercial journal against the Journal of the Electrochemical Society (JES) produces some very startling results. These normalized values (2004N$/p/IP) are possibly a measure of the cost-effectiveness of each journal compared with JES.

While the Electrochemical Society's JES is somewhat unique in its very reasonable cost/page, they are certainly not publishing this journal at a loss. The normalized values of the 2004 cost/page/IP indicate that the J. Electrochem. Soc. is more cost effective than the J. Applied Electrochem. by a factor of 32. Alternatively, looking simply at the difference in the $cost/page data suggests that, if published by a society, J. Electroanal. Chem. could be priced at $512/year instead of $9649.

Given these presumably handsome profits, would it be unreasonable to suggest that commercial publishers consider making their online archives freely available thru an equivalent of PubMed Central?

One can only imagine the enormous positive public relations that the first commercial publisher will receive for this small token of appreciation to the library and research community ... and that this might encourage others to follow suit. This would also have the beneficial effect of freeing up funds for the learned society journal back files, which when their capital costs are met could also be made freely available. Thus, with a little publisher cooperation, an Open Access environment for virtually all journal articles published more than ten years ago would be a reality.

P.S. Publishers should also strongly consider offering RSS feeds, and MARC records for new online books in addition to currently offered e-mail announcements.

Dana L. Roth
Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32
1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125
626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540
dzrlib AT ibrary.caltech.edu
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: KnowledgeSpeak reports that BioMed Central will assume publication of Geochemical Transactions, the online journal of the Geochemistry Division of ACS, beginning 1 January 2006. From the BioMed Central press release:

BioMed Central is pleased to announce that it will publish Geochemical Transactions, the online journal of the Geochemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, from January 1, 2006. Geochemical Transactions ranks third in impact factor among geochemistry journals and will become the first open access journal in the field.

Geochemical Transactions joins the 140+ open access journals currently published by BioMed Central, including over 70 titles that are run by independent editorial groups. In line with the publisher's open access policy, all articles published in Geochemical Transactions from January 1, 2006 will be immediately and permanently accessible online free of charge. All articles that were published in the journal prior to 2006 will also retrospectively become open access.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: Jay Bhatt on STS-L and Roddy MacLeod in the Internet Resources Newsletter have reported on a new open access initiative regarding petroleum engineering. Petroleum Journals Online is a new publishing initiative involving a number of open access journals covering a variety of topics in petroleum engineering:

Petroleum Journals Online (PJO) publishes the first fully refereed e-journals of petroleum engineering. The publications cover the following main areas of petroleum engineering namely: petrophysics, production geology, drilling, production, reservoir engineering, and petroleum management and economics. Content and editorial board composition are international in scope. Articles are accepted on the basis that they will make a lasting contribution to technical literature. Information regarding scope, policies and author guidelines specific to each of the e-journals can be found by visiting the "About" section within the relevant journal's website.

Of interest are the many "Reading Tools" available with each article, including links to author bios, "capture the citation", Dublin Core metadata, "add comment to the item", and links to related items such as other works by the author(s), quotations, book reviews, etc.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: George forwarded the following press release:

The Hindawi Publishing Corporation is pleased to announce the launch of its Open Access Institutional Membership program. The Institutional Membership was created in order to give libraries and other institutional sponsors the opportunity to encourage Open Access publishing within their organization.

Researchers from Member Institutes will be able to publish in any of our Open Access journals without incurring an article processing charge (usually around €600 per article). A membership for the year 2006 will cost a flat-rate of €2000 per institute, and it will apply to all of our existing Open Access journals as well as any Open Access journals that Hindawi launches during 2006 (around 20 new OA titles are expected in 2006). As an added bonus, all members who sign up during 2005 will automatically be given a free membership for the remainder of this year.

Hindawi currently publishes 10 Open Access journals in a number of fields including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biomedicine, applied mathematics and materials science. All articles published in our Open Access journals are released using a Creative Commons Attribution License and are freely available at www.hindawi.com.

For more information about our Open Access Institutional Membership, please visit www.hindawi.com/oa/im.html . If you would like to take part in this program, or if you would like to ask us any questions, please send an email to oaim@hindawi.com.

Paul Peters
Senior Publishing Developer
Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From a HighWire announcement which slipped past me 6 months ago:

The Nucleic Acids Symposium Series consists of the proceedings of the Symposium on Nucleic Acids Chemistry held annually in Japan. The online edition of the series is freely available to all, therefore no subscription is needed. Limited copies of the proceedings are printed and distributed to delegates at the symposium.

Nucleic Acids Symposium Series
Fulltext v42+ (1999+)
http://nass.oxfordjournals.org/
Print ISSN: 0261-3166 | Online ISSN: 1746-8272

- George S. Porter

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: George Porter forwarded information regarding the rapid ascent of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics into the top 50% of journals in its field, according to an article the August 2005 issue of in-Cites. When asked how he accounts for the increased citation rate of the journal he edits, Chief Executive Editor Dr. Ulrich Pöschl noted the following:

The high and increasing citation rates of ACP are certainly due to multiple reasons, most of which are related to the advantages of its interactive open access journal concept (freely accessible two-stage publications with public peer review and interactive discussion as detailed on the journal website*). We think that the following aspects are most important:

1. free internet accessibility of all articles (open access publishing);
   
2. rapid dissemination of novel scientific results as discussion papers on the ACPD website (minimum time from submission to publication on the order of one week);
   
3. public documentation of the review process (quality assurance) and availability of complementary information in fully citable interactive comments from the referees, authors, and other interested scientists, which have not been publicly available in traditional scientific journals; and
   
4. top quality and information density of the final papers published in ACP after revision and peer review completion in view of the interactive public discussion, including referee comments like in the traditional closed peer review process plus the input from other interested scientists

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Geosphere is the Geological Society of America's first Open Access journal. Geosphere joins GSA's two established journals, Geology and Geological Society of America Bulletin, and its magazine, GSA Today, all of which are hosted by Allen Press . Accoding to the journal's Additional Information page, Geosphere will appear bimonthly.

Geosphere
Fulltext v1+ (2005+)
http://www.gsajournals.org/gsaonline/?request=get-archive&issn=1553-040X
ISSN: 1553-040X

[Thanks to Jim O'Donnell and Michael Noga.]

- George S. Porter

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

.: George Porter, contributor to STLQ and Librarian at Sherman Fairchild Library, CalTech, offers a thoughtful analysis on open access and the impact on readership, using PNAS as a test case. - Randy.

An opportunity presents itself with the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is a respected, established scientific journal.

PNAS is a signatory of the DC Principles and has chosen a 6 month window of exclusivity for subscribers. In addition, PNAS instituted a Walker/Prosser model of OA by the article in late 2004. Under this model, authors may pay an additional fee to provide immediate global access to their published article.

Continue reading "PNAS, Open Access, and Levels of Interest - Commentary by George Porter" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

.: George Porter reports the following: Cancer Informatics is a new peer-reviewed, open-access journal from Libertas Academica. The first issue has already been released. A banner on the journal's website indicates Cancer Informatics has been accepted for indexing in PubMed, although I haven't found independent confirmation yet.

Jason Moore, a member of the editorial board, from the Computational Genetics Laboratory at Dartmouth Medical School, provides a good summary of the target areas of Cancer Informatics in a posting to his Epistasis Blog.

Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online (EBO) is a new Open Access journal, the first issue of which has not yet been released. EBO is the second Open Access journal started by Libertas Academica, following the recent debut of Cancer Informatics.

Libertas Academica is a fairly new arrival on the publishing scene, having been "... established in 2004 to promote and expand Open Access to scientific, technical and medical information. Our mission is to implement Open Access journals whilst still preserving the very high editorial standard that have characterized conventional subscription-based publishing in the past."

Cancer Informatics
Fulltext v1+ (2005+)
http://www.la-press.com/caninfo.htm
ISSN: 1176-9351

Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online
Forthcoming v1+ (2005+)
http://www.la-press.com/evolbio.htm
ISSN: 1176-9343

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: As posted by George Porter on a number of listservs today:

PLoS, the Public Library of Science, launched their third Open Access journal this week. PLoS Computational Biology joins PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine.

PLoS Computational Biology is the first journal to launch of the three new titles announced for introduction in 2005. PLoS Genetics has a preview available of some of the articles which will appear in the debut issue. PLoS Genetics will go live on July 25. PLoS Pathogens is slated to debut in September 2005.

PLoS Computational Biology
Fulltext v1+ (2005+)
http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/
Print ISSN: 1553-734X | Online ISSN: 1553-7358

Continue reading "PLoS Computational Biology Debuts" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:32 AM | Permalink

:: Interesting article in Wired News: Open-Access Journals Flourish. According to the article, at least 1,525 open access journals are available, which is between 5-10% of the journals on the planet.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: From an e-mail received today from Cambridge:

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, a new peer-reviewed, open access journal, has launched publication. Accessible at http://ejournal.nbii.org/, the e-journal provides a platform for the dissemination of new practices and for dialogue emerging out of the field of sustainability.

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy includes peer-reviewed full-text articles, guest editorials, and community essays. The guest editorial in the premier issue is by Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor, Harvard University. Each issue presents a symposium exploring the sustainability issues relating to the topic.

Complete issues of Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy will be published twice a year and are available at no charge at http://ejournal.nbii.org. In addition, articles for issues in progress will be posted after completing the peer-review and editorial process.

The journal is published as part of an ambitious government / private industry partnership between CSA and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII).

For additional information about please access http://ejournal.nbii.org/about/about.html.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: George Porter forwarded a message written by Chuck Hamaker and posted to the SPARC Open Access Forum by Peter Suber, regarding Blackwell now offering free access to archives of some of their journals:

These journals on the Blackwell (s)ite all STATE they have free archives. There are others that are free at the moment, but don't have a statement about whether they are free or not, and their are other titles that just make certain sections i.e. reviews, free.

There are undoubtedly others. This was a quick run through. But it shows a significant number of major journals are making their backfiles free, across a range of subjects.

BLACKWELL's Free Archives -([partial list I'm sure]}

Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica
Published on behalf of the Institution Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica
Free access to issues over two years old

British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
Published on behalf of The British Pharmacological Society
All online journal issues older than one year are available free to all users.

Cellular Microbiology
Free access to all review articles
Free access to issues over two years old

Continue reading "Blackwell Offers Free Backfiles to Selected Titles" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: David Stern, Director of Science Libraries and Information Services, Kline Science Library, Yale University, has written a timely piece on open access. He argues that the open access publishing model isn't necessary or wanted, and represents a danger to the stability of the current scholarly publication network. In Open Access or Differential Pricing for Journals: The Road Best Traveled?, from Online, v29 n2, March/April 2005, he writes:

Open access (OA) is becoming a reality, with new cost models under development. The various cost models will have serious short- and long-term implications for libraries and dangerously impact the scholarly communication network. I believe that the adoption of the OA model for journals will create serious instabilities within the existing scholarly publication industry. OA, as a business model, is neither necessary nor desirable. With or without the often-discussed author charges approach, it would be almost impossible to obtain the same amount of total revenue through selected libraries as now exists from the much larger base of library subscriptions. Tiered or differential pricing (and services) among the existing subscribers would be a far more logical approach to supporting a modified scholarly journal distribution network.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: George Porter sent word about the following new open access journal for organic chemistry:

San Diego, CA.: The prestigious Beilstein-Institut today announced the launch of the first major Open Access journal for organic chemistry. Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry will be published by the Beilstein-Institut in co-operation with BioMed Central, the Open Access publisher. The peer-reviewed online journal will begin publication during 2005, and a call for papers, providing full information for authors, will be issued in May.

Director of the Beilstein-Institut Martin Hicks made the announcement at the American Chemical Society 229th Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. Professor Jonathan Clayden, of the University of Manchester, has been confirmed as the Editor-in-Chief, and an international editorial advisory board is also being appointed.

The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry will publish outstanding original research on all aspects of organic chemistry and related disciplines. Areas covered in the journal will include: organic synthesis, organic reactions and mechanisms, natural products chemistry and chemical biology, organic materials and macro- and supramolecular organic chemistry.

Continue reading "Beilstein Launches Open Access Journal on Organic Chemistry" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: George Porter forwarded this post from Peter Suber on Open Access News, which will be of interest to engineering librarians, especially mechanical:

Hindawi Publishing has announced that The International Journal of Rotating Machinery has converted to open access, effective immediately. From the announcement: 'IJRM is edited by Prof Wen-Jei Yang of the University of Michigan, USA. The journal employs an open access model based on article processing charges to be paid by the authors' institution or research grant. The journal shall have an online edition which is free with no subscription or registration barriers and a print edition which shall be priced at a level reasonable for covering the printing cost. All articles published in the journal shall be distributed under the "Creative Commons Attribution License," which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Hindawi is currently working on retro-digitizing the back volumes of the journal and will make these volumes available online in the near future.' (PS: Kudos to Hindawi for this important step.)

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: As posted by George Porter to PAMNET-L (and other listservs): Theory of Computing (ToC) is based at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science, with mirrors at IIT Kanpur, SzTAKI, Budapest, and KTH, Stockholm. ToC cites the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (EJC) as the source of its publishing model. Considering that EJC recently has been added to ISI's Web of Science, this seems like a reasonable choice of role models. In addition, ToC has a separately published section, Quantum Computing.

Theory of Computing is the second of two Open Access journals specializing in theoretical computer science which were inspired by the editorial board revolt at the Journal of Algorithms. [For background on the Journal of Algorithms kerfuffle, consider reading Commentary: The Crisis In Scholarly Communication and Journal of Algorithms Fallout Getting Noticed, Stanford U Takes Stand Against "Pricey Journals] Both are overlay journals, utilizing the Computing Research Repository (CoRR), the computer science portion of arXiv.

Continue reading "Theory of Computing -- New OA journal" »

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: From Chemical & Engineering News, March 7, 2005, v83 n10, p10: "ACS Broadens Article Access - Conditions set for free availability one year after publication"

The American Chemical Society is broadening access to research articles published in its scholarly journals. The society is introducing two experimental policies that define how readers can view free digital versions of the articles beginning one year after publication.

The first policy represents a response to public access guidelines recently released by the National Institutes of Health (C&EN, Feb. 7, page 23). NIH encourages authors whose work it funds to submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central, the agency's free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. ACS has decided to take on the task of submission to PubMed Central on behalf of its authors, according to Robert D. Bovenschulte, president of the society's Publications Division. ACS will authorize PubMed Central to make the authors' versions of unedited manuscripts available to the public 12 months after the edited, final articles are published by ACS.

:: The March v6.3 2005 issue of ACS's LiveWire is now available.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: Charles W Bailey,Assistant Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development, University of Houston, sent the following e-mail regarding the Open Access Bibliography:

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals presents over 1,300 selected English-language books, conference papers (including some digital video presentations), debates, editorials, e-prints, journal and magazine articles, news articles, technical reports, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding the open access movement's efforts to provide free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature.
Most sources have been published between 1999 and August 31, 2004; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1999 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet (approximately 78 percent of the bibliography's references have such links).

This bibliography has been published as a printed book (ISBN 1-59407-670-7) by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

ARL and the author have made the above PDF version of the bibliography freely available. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

:: I read this on PAMNET-L, and think it's a brilliant idea:

Dear colleagues,
I would like to inform you about a new, online service provided by SISSA - the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste - to the scientific community, called PoS - Proceedings of Science.

http://pos.sissa.it

PoS publishes online, at moderate rates for organizers, conference proceedings in the fields of Astronomy, Biophysics, Mathematics, Neuroscience and Physics and Science communication. Access by the readership is OPEN ACCESS, without registration or charge. Moreover, the online publication procedure is fast and user-friendly thanks to the software system that runs the entire editorial procedure. I think that including this open resource, which publishes highly rated conferences, in your databases could improve the service offered by your library. Given its low rates and its easy use I think that you could recommend this service to conference organizers in your institution.

Best regards
dott. Andrea Wehrenfennig; SISSA Library Head
tel. 0039-040-3787523; fax 0039-040-3787528
andreaw AT sissa DOT it; http://www.sissa.it/library

Posted by Randy Reichardt at 9:34