[GOAL] Religious studies in the web archive: a new opportunity?
Religious studies in the web archive: a new opportunity? http://wp.me/p20y83-13F http://wp.me/p20y83-13F To paraphrase a former archbishop of Canterbury, this post is a call to hearken unto the cause of the archived web. Religious studies scholars were quick to embrace the emerging discipline of Internet Studies, and in particular to see the potential of social media as an object of study for understanding new ways in which individuals and organisations acted religiously online. This enthusiasm has not been matched by a similar engagement with the archived web. (Continues…) Peter J. Webster Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ Covering the evolving open scholarship movement in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Open Library of Humanities Update, Part 2: More about disciplinary curation; a first Religious Studies content initiative; and partnering with libraries for sustainable funding
Open Library of Humanities Update, Part 2: More about disciplinary curation; a first Religious Studies content initiative; and partnering with libraries for sustainable funding http://wp.me/p20y83-12k http://wp.me/p20y83-12k And if you missed it, here is a link to Part 1: Open Library of Humanities Update, Part 1: Now accepting submissions; Religious Studies and Theology editors in place http://wp.me/p20y83-YF http://wp.me/p20y83-YF Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Covering the evolving open scholarship movement in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess @ gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] New year, new Omega Alpha | Open Access
Today’s post http://wp.me/p20y83-Zb is by my new partner on the blog, Dr. Peter Webster. Peter is an historian of contemporary British Christianity, based in the UK. Previously with the British Library, Peter now directs his own digital resources consulting business. In this post, Peter introduces the expanded coverage we are planning for Omega Alpha | Open Access. I also spruced-up the look at bit. Up to now, the blog has been closely focused on Open Access (capital O, capital A) as it relates to scholarly journals and books for religious studies and theology (RST). However, the last few years have seen the development of several other ‘ pens': open data, open peer review for publications, or the development of software tools in an open source way, to name just a few. (continues…) Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Covering the evolving open scholarship movement in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] “The public domain is … a disgrace to the forces of evil”
The public domain is . . . a disgrace to the forces of evil http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/the-public-domain-is-a-disgrace-to-the-forces-of-evil/ A Fair(y) Use Tale (2007) is short film by Eric Faden, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA). Faden mashed-up clips from several Disney animated movies to create this transformative (and therefore, legal) work to inform about copyright and fair use. The irony that Faden used material from The Walt Disney Company--which vigorously (some would say notoriously) defends its copyright--is not lost on the viewer. (Continues. . .) Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Is there a serials crisis yet? When it comes to Theological and Religious Studies journals, Id have to say yes
Jeroen/Falk, Greetings. Thanks for your insights. I doubtlessly over-simplified the situation when offering a disciplinary comparison. Frequency and volume are bound to affect publication costs, and hence subscription costs. It is true that Humanities articles tend to be longer, though maybe this is off-set somewhat, for example, by the use of charts and images in Science articles. In my defense, especially as I hail from a small liberal arts college context, it may be small comfort to try to parse-out a subscription cost by saying, “Well look at how many more articles we get each year from this journal.” A journal that is too expensive is simply too expensive. Though certainly more precise, I’m not sure how many librarians base budget decisions on article counts. Of course my main point still stands, and I think Falk reinforced it in part when alluding to the journal pricing website, and saying: prices differences between commercial and non-commercial publishers are huge in all disciplines.” If the trend toward commercial acquisition of non-commercial journals continue, the result is going to be higher subscription prices within our disciplines. It is what we are seeing in Theological and Religious Studies. We must strenuously encourage societies and academic institutions not to sell-out their (our!) intellectual assets to commercial publishers. My other main point is the unsustainable rate of price increases for journal subscriptions over time, again, a factor that we witness with commercial publishers with far greater frequency than with non-commercial publishers. While societies will allow a subscription rate to remain flat or increase slowly over many years, a commercial publisher is sure to impose regular annual increases—as much as the market will bear. A commercial publisher sees absolutely no sense in this behavior that only suggests to them an under-valuing of a profitable intellectual property. It may make little or no business sense because the society (ideally) does not view its journal(s) as either a property or as a business. Rather, it is an expression of an intellectual mission—a medium of communication for the dissemination of knowledge. Have a great weekend! Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess On Jun 27, 2014, at 4:20 AM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote: Gary, Not wanting to defend high price increases I do think that you should take into account the number of papers published in the average journal in the various fields and how this number develops over time. The typical humanities journal may have 4-6 issues with 4-8 papers, so 16-48 papers per annum whereas the typical chemistry journal may have 8-12 issues with 24-48 papers resulting in 192-572 papers per annum. This partly explaines the big interfield journal cost variety. I suspect that the pressure to publish and sheer growth of the number of researchers has caused these numbers to rise over the past few years, also in humanities. That also partly explaines the rising journal costs. So take a per article view. Or academics should decide to write less and read and think more ;-) Jeroen Bosman Utrecht University Library …snip... True Jeroen, The very interesting database www.journalpricing.com shows the following picture: 1. The share of journals run by non-profit publishers in HSS is similar to most of STM disciplines, and the share of journals run by for-profit publishers seems to be increasing in all disciplines. 2. The prices differences between commercial and non-commercial publishers are huge in all disciplines. 3. Although the average price per journal is much higher in STM, the difference disappears if one takes the price per article as a measure, even if one can assumes that an article in the HSS are usually longer than in STM. For example, the median journal price in the field of History was around $400 last year and in Chemistry, that is the most expansive discipline of all, it was $1.800. But the median price per article in a History journals was $21 and in Chemical journals $13. The reason is quite simple. Chemical journals publish on the average 10 times more articles per journal than History journals. Best, Falk ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Is there a serials crisis yet? When it comes to Theological and Religious Studies journals, I’d have to say yes
Is there a serials crisis yet? When it comes to Theological and Religious Studies journals, I’d have to say yes http://wp.me/p20y83-X4 The other day, over on Library Journal’s website, Dorothea Salo published a short piece entitled “Is There a Serials Crisis Yet? Between Chicken Little and the Grasshopper,” which, as it happens, I read the evening after participating on a panel presentation at the American Theological Library Association’s annual conference in New Orleans. The panel was entitled “Open Access: Responding to a Looming ‘Serials Crisis’ in Theological and Religious Studies.” My role on the panel was to place the case for open access within a context that suggested unsustainable journal pricing was no longer limited to disciplines in the Sciences. Although Humanities journals, including those in Theological and Religious Studies, are still typically priced at a fraction of Science journals, I provided evidence that rapid increases in prices over a relatively short period of time pointed to a looming serials crisis in our disciplines. … As I mentioned, when we think of the “serials crisis” we have tended to associate it with journals in the Sciences. Humanities journals, including titles in Theology and Religion are priced at a fraction of Science journals. I threw this table up on the screen from figures I pulled from the 2014 Library Journal Periodical Price Survey. Since Philosophy Religion journals are so “cheap” we might be tempted to ask, “So what’s the problem?” To illustrate the problem as I see it, I shared some in-progress research I am doing on title and price changes for Theological and Religious Studies journals published by the Big 5 commercial academic publishers… Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] I dropped the “NC” from my Creative Commons License
I dropped the “NC” rom my Creative Commons License http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/i-dropped-the-nc-from-my-creative-commons-license/ I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but I was finally pushed into action by a post I read this morning on Hugh Rundle’s blog. What did I do? I dropped the “NC”--the non-commercial use stipulation--on the Creative Commons license I’ve been using on my blog. Rundle writes: Originally I chose a CC-BY-NC license because I didn’t like the idea of some commercial publisher selling my work as part of a package. Partially this was me thinking “If they’re going to charge, I should get a cut and partially They shouldn’t be allowed to charge people for my work that I give away for free. I am sure you have discerned that these two thoughts are contradictory. Actually, I’ve never cared about getting a cut. But as an open access advocate I was definitely concerned that a commercial interest not be able to profit from work that I was giving away for free. I reasoned the added friction of the “NC would serve as a deterrent. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oaopenaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Journal of Buddhist Ethics celebrates twenty years open access
Journal of Buddhist Ethics celebrates twenty years open access http://wp.me/p20y83-TR As 2013 was drawing to a close, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics celebrated twenty years of continuous publication as a pioneering and highly regarded online open access journal in Buddhist Studies and the larger field of Religious Studies. ... I am not fond of thinking how quickly the last twenty years appear to have flown by. But I am amazed both by the developments of computer and network technology in the interim and the insight of scholars who grasped early-on the potential of this technology as a medium for scholarly communication. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Springer launches first open access journal in Religion: International Journal of Dharma Studies
Springer launches first open access journal in Religion: International Journal of Dharma Studies http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/springer-launches-first-open-access-journal-in-religion-international-journal-of-dharma-studies/ It was almost two years ago that I received an email from the then publishing editor in Religion and Philosophy at Springer Science+Business Media expressing an interest by the publisher to launch open access journals in Religion. I wrote about the conversation I had with the editor in response to that email back in March 2012. At that point Springer had no open access journals in Religious Studies, although it published seven subscription-based journals in the discipline. This has now changed. At the end of 2013 the International Journal of Dharma Studies (ISSN 2196-8802) launched on the SpringerOpen platform. Continues… Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Society of Biblical Literature releases (restrictive) Green Open Access Policy
Society of Biblical Literature releases (restrictive) Green Open Access Policy http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/society-of-biblical-literature-releases-restrictive-green-open-access-policy/ Founded in 1880, the Society of Biblical Literature is the oldest and largest learned society devoted to the critical investigation of the Bible from a variety of academic disciplines. As an international organization [of over 8,500 members], the Society offers its members opportunities for mutual support, intellectual growth, and professional development (from the website). The Society of Biblical Literature is publisher of the flagship Journal of Biblical Literature (begun in 1881) and numerous respected monograph series in biblical studies and cognate disciplines. On Friday, January 24, members received an email notifying them that “through the careful review of the Research and Publications Committee, [the SBL] has developed a Green Open Access Policy for authors who contribute to the SBL publishing program.” The full (two page) policy document is available here (PDF). Continues... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] “When Obsession With Ownership Outlaws Sharing, It Is The Way of Sodom”: Harold Feld on intellectual property, Jewish ethics, and Aaron Swartz
“When Obsession With Ownership Outlaws Sharing, It Is The Way of Sodom”: Harold Feld on intellectual property, Jewish ethics, and Aaron Swartz http://wp.me/p20y83-Tm I invite you to head over to the Wetmachine: Tales of the Sausage Factory blog, where public interest attorney Harold Feld has posted the text of a speech http://tales-of-the-sausage-factory.wetmachine.com/intellectual-property-jewish-ethics-and-aaron-swartz/ he delivered as part of a panel discussion on Tuesday evening at The Jewish Study Center, Washington, D.C. on the topic of intellectual property law and Jewish ethics. The panel discussion was inspired by the death (suicide) of internet and open access activist Aaron Swartz. (I posted a tribute to Aaron Swartz back on January 20, 2013 here http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/tribute-to-aaron-swartz-watch-his-how-we-stopped-sopa-keynote-at-f2c2012/.) ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] “Truthiness” isn’t quite truth, and “sciencey” isn’t quite science, even if published in Science: Mike Taylor’s “Anti-tutorial: how to design and execute a really bad study”
Truthiness isn't quite truth, and sciencey isn’t quite science, even if published in Science: Mike Taylor's Anti-tutorial: how to design and execute a really bad study http://wp.me/p20y83-Qb I’m a sucker for good satire. In a recent post I referenced Dorothea Salo's delightfully satirical article, How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative where she lays out a detailed agenda for dissuading academic libraries from effective participation in scholarly communication activities on their campuses. This week, while trying to find the best hook for posting about the 'sting operation' conducted on a selection of open access journals recently reported in the journal Science, I landed on Mike Taylor's October 7, 2013 blog post, Anti-tutorial: how to design and execute a really bad study. The blog-o and Twitter-spheres have over the last four days offered extensive reporting and analysis of the article that appeared in the October 4, 2013 issue of Science. If you are one of a handful of persons who by now has not heard about this story the gist is this: … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] EBSCO Serials Price Projections for 2014 recognizes rising impact of open access; highlights perils of continued publisher consolidation
EBSCO Serials Price Projections for 2014 recognizes rising impact of open access; highlights perils of continued publisher consolidation http://wp.me/p20y83-PE EBSCO Information Services is not only a well-known database aggregator of academic journal literature and e-books, they also manage the purchase of print and electronic journal subscriptions for libraries and institutions (its original business). The other day I received EBSCO’s Serials Price Projections for 2014 (September 26, 2013) http://www2.ebsco.com/en-us/Documents/PriceProjections2014.pdf. The main point was delivered to us unceremoniously, right at the top: At the time of writing, we expect the overall effective publisher price increases for academic and academic/medical libraries for 2014 (before currency impact) to be in the range of 6 to 8 percent. Since I have become used to budgeting a 10 percent annual increase for journals over the last several years this sounds almost (keyword) like a bargain. Beyond this news, there were some interesting bits in their assessment of Market Dynamics, which included a strong awareness of the evolving impact of open access, despite the continuing dominance of the pay-for-access model. … Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Library Publishing Toolkit e-book available as free download!
Library Publishing Toolkit e-book available as free download! http://wp.me/p20y83-MW I want to make sure to pass along items of interest that surfaced during my summer hiatus. For example, on August 1, 2013, the Press of the Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project, a resource-sharing cooperative of New York public and academic libraries, published an open access e-book entitled Library Publishing Toolkit, edited by Allison P. Brown, et al. (with a Forward by Walt Crawford). The 401 page book is available as a free download here (PDF). This book is a positive resource for those seriously inclined not to follow Dorothea Salo’s (satirical) advice in “How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative” (that I referenced in my last post), and it falls in the same vein of several of my previous posts (such as here and here) covering the “library as publisher” movement. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Standing at a point of transition: Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes
Standing at a point of transition: Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/standing-at-a-point-of-transition-johannes-trithemius-in-praise-of-scribes/ In the August 2013 issue of the open access Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, Dorothea Salo has written a sumptuous satire, whose diabolical advice on how to dissuade an academic library from participating in changing the long-standing scholarly communication system nearly rivals that of Uncle Screwtape in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters. (Salo herself points to Machiavelli and Swift as indirect inspirations.) “How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative” http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss4/3/ is simultaneously entertaining and brutally insightful. ... Much of the recently witnessed change in the scholarly communication system (and corresponding audacity of libraries to be involved) of which Salo speaks has been facilitated by the digital technology revolution. We are early enough into this revolution both to remember clearly where we’ve been and to see the outlines of where we might be heading coming into sharper focus. It does seem that there is something fundamentally different in the works this time around. It will no longer be just another incremental evolution of analog. This time it seems we may be looking at the effective (keyword) passing of analog itself. We are standing at a technological transition point. Do we understand what we are experiencing? Do we know how we are supposed to feel? Should we be scared? Should we be excited? Both at once? With a propensity for drawing historical analogies for guidance (e.g., here http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/reblog-plato-the-invention-of-writing-and-the-e-book/ and here http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/reblog-when-youre-used-to-paper-rolls-it-takes-some-time-to-convert-to-turning-pages-of-a-book/), I was attracted, in a decidedly non-satirical way, to the last part of this excerpt in Salo’s article ... Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Open Library of Humanities is recruiting discipline editors, including Theology Religious Studies
Open Library of Humanities is recruiting discipline editors, including Theology Religious Studies http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/open-library-of-humanities-is-recruiting-discipline-editors-including-theology-religious-studies/ Open Library of Humanities, a multidisciplinary open access “mega-journal” platform inspired by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and their multidisciplinary science journal PLOS ONE, announced that it is now recruiting discipline editors across the Humanities, including Theology and Religious Studies. … This is a wonderful opportunity for any scholar interested in open access and new models of scholarly publishing and communication. I am especially excited by the unambiguous invitation of OLH to represent Theology and Religious Studies on equal footing with other disciplines in this developing Humanities publishing venue. It strikes me as an unique opportunity for our discipline, both to disseminate research widely, and to become active partners in a larger multidisciplinary conversation. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible
Of course you are correct Stevan. I note that Berners-Lee created the code in 1989 in my post. But I probably should have titled this the 20th birthday of the OPEN or PUBLIC WWW. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess On May 1, 2013, at 7:00 AM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote: …snip… Message: 2 Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:40:02 -0400 From: Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com Subject: [GOAL] Re: Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Umm, the WWW was not born in 1994. It was born in 1990 and became part of the Internet in 1991... (This year might be the 15th birthday of when Tim B-L wrote the code, though...) On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Omega Alpha | Open Access oa.openacc...@gmail.com wrote: Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible http://wp.me/p20y83-Kt …snip… Message: 3 Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 01:41:37 -0400 From: Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com Subject: [GOAL] Re: Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Correction: *25th* anniversary of when Tim B-L wrote the WWW code... ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible
Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible http://wp.me/p20y83-Kt My concept of the world changed on a cold November evening in Brandon, Manitoba, 1994. I attended a public information meeting put on by a new company (I forget the name) that called itself an “Internet Service Provider” (ISP, for short). The company was offering access to the Internet, a global system of interconnected computer networks, upon which I would be able to send and receive electronic mail, and most intriguing, browse across and between pages of text and image documents (hyper)linked together into a “world wide web” of freely and readily accessible information. The sell was accomplished simply by providing a live demonstration. I was totally captivated. The next day, I drove down to the local computer store and bought a SupraFAXModem 14400 to connect my Apple Macintosh Classic computer via the telephone line to the Internet. I got a 15-year old kid in town to supply me with a 3.5″ floppy disk loaded with the necessary TCP/IP and PPP software, an email client, and a copy of the NCSA Mosaic web browser. After just a couple phone calls to that same 15-year old kid to help me troubleshoot some initial configuration problems, I was on! (Incidentally, that kid went to work for Apple Computer at the age of 17.) … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Lacking any sense of proportion: Michael Eisen pushes back on The New York Times’ “dark side of open access” article
Lacking any sense of proportion: Michael Eisen pushes back on The New York Times’ “dark side of open access” article http://wp.me/p20y83-J0 On Sunday, April 7, 2013, The New York Times ran a front page article written by Gina Kolata entitled, “Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too),” which exposed “a world of pseudo-academia [running parallel with legitimate scientific and scholarly communication], complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor them.” … The article quotes several scholars, who as a result of their personal experience have come to call this parallel world the “Wild West,” or the “dark side of open access.” The article also refers to the work of research librarian Jeffrey Beall, who tracks what he calls “predatory open access journals,” estimating “that there are as many as 4,000 predatory journals today, at least 25 percent of the total number of open-access journals.” The article is highlighting a real problem. But after acknowledging (barely, in passing) that “open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those published by the Public Library of Science,” the clear message is that scholars today ought to be skeptical and suspicious about open access. Though not stated—indeed no constructive response or course of action is really offered in the article—the impression is left that in the face of open access run amuck, the only safe harbor is the “traditional business model…built on subscription revenues.” continues… Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Conversation with two religious studies scholars on committee at Open Library of Humanities
Conversation with two religious studies scholars on committee at Open Library of Humanities http://wp.me/p20y83-GM The other day I checked-in on developments over at Open Library of Humanitieshttps://www.openlibhums.org/. As I reported earlier here and here, the idea for this very interesting project sprang from a number of often asked questions: Why hasn't anyone created an analog to the Public Library of Science (PLOS)http://www.plos.org/--meaning, a broad-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to publishing open access research--for the Humanities? What would it take--meaning, at least, editorial and technical infrastructure, sustainable funding, and broad-based scholarly support--to create such a PLOS analog for the Humanities? Given our deep and long-standing scholarly communication traditions, would such an approach--meaning, in particular, developing a multi-disciplinary mega-journal like PLOS ONEhttp://www.plosone.org/--even work in the Humanities? ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess @ gmail . com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Public Knowledge Project releases Open Monograph Press version 1.0
Public Knowledge Project releases Open Monograph Press version 1.0 http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/public-knowledge-project-releases-open-monograph-press-version-1-0/ In a press releasehttp://pkp.sfu.ca/node/6225 dated March 26, 2013 on its website, Public Knowledge Project announced the first full version release (1.0) of its Open Monograph Press (OMP)http://pkp.sfu.ca/omp open source platform software. OMP is an open source software platform for managing the editorial workflow required to see monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions through internal and external review, editing, cataloguing, production, and publication. OMP will operate, as well, as a press website with catalog, distribution, and sales capacities. OMP is the latest development at PKP, which aims to do for electronic online monograph publishing what its incredibly successful Open Journal Systems (OJS)http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs has done for online journals. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail . com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Now we know first-hand: Editorial board of librarians resign over journal publisher’s restrictive licensing
Now we know first-hand: Editorial board of librarians resign over journal publisher’s restrictive licensing http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/now-we-know-first-hand-editorial-board-of-librarians-resign-over-journal-publishers-restrictive-licensing/ The entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administrationhttp://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjla20/current, published by the Taylor Francis Group, has resigned in protest over the publisher’s restrictive author licensing policies. Brian Mathews, who was preparing a special issue of JLA on library futures as guest editor, reportedhttp://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2013/03/23/so-im-editing-this-journal-issue-and/ the mass resignation (including the text of the board’s statement) this last weekend on his The Ubiquitous Librarianblog. In the post, Mathews also linked to a post from Chris Bourghttp://chrisbourg.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/my-short-stint-on-the-jla-editorial-board/, one of the former board members, and from Jason Griffeyhttp://jasongriffey.net/wp/2013/03/23/the-journal-of-library-administration/, who earlier declined to participate in Mathew’s project due to pointed reservations regarding TF’s author policies. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail . com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Article processing charges reduced to $99 on SAGE Open humanities and social sciences “mega journal”
Article processing charges reduced to $99 on SAGE Open humanities and social sciences mega journal http://wp.me/p20y83-EG Back in May of last year I posted about SAGE Publication's open access multidisciplinary humanities and social sciences mega journal called SAGE Open (eISSN 2158-2440). The journal, launched in May 2011, is operated using a producer-side revenue model, where authors (or their sponsors) are charged an article processing fee (APC) once a submitted manuscript has been accepted for publication. The format for SAGE Open is similar to PLOS ONE, the multidisciplinary open access science mega journal published by the non-profit open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS). I just learned (thanks to Richard Poynder for the tip) that SAGE has reduced the APC levied for published articles in SAGE Open to $99. (Here is a link to the SAGE press release.) This charge is reduced dramatically from the standard fee of $695, and down significantly from the introductory rate of $395 that was previously in force. I confirmed the price change on the Manuscript Submission page of the journal site. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Watch his How we stopped SOPA keynote at F2C2012
Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Watch his How we stopped SOPA keynote at F2C2012 http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/tribute-to-aaron-swartz-watch-his-how-we-stopped-sopa-keynote-at-f2c2012/ Open access to scholarly literature and research online depends upon an open Internet. It is easy to forget this is not a given. The Internet has become such an integral part of our daily lives as academics. We can hardly imagine now a world without it. We have sensed its potential and have been building an information infrastructure based on our experiences with its free beginnings. It is easy to take that freedom for granted. It was one year ago today that Congressional leaders in the United States shelved two pieces of legislation, ostensibly geared toward curbing online piracy, but which could have had far-reaching and unintended consequences, threatening through censorship this concept of a free and open Internet. It was a close call. The House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate version, the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), were widely believed, both within Congress and among their supporters in the media industry (including many commercial academic publishers), to be destined for easy passage. However, a groundswell of organizational and, most significantly, citizen opposition forced the lawmakers to back down. A significant voice in that citizen opposition to SOPA and PIPA was a fellow named Aaron Swartz. Aaron was a prodigious young computer programmer and an activist dedicated to the fight for free and open access to information and knowledge on the Internet. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences http://wp.me/p20y83-BF The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. ... Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per article costs low. ... Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide. The tweet linked to a post on his blog soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it? PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
Heather, PLOS ONE is only one of seven journals published by PLOS. I'm not aware that PLOS has any plans to abandon its original strategy. Martin should probably be invited to offer his own description and intention (I don't know if he is on this list). It does seem, however, that it is specifically the PLOS ONE mega journal format that he is looking at as a model for his HSS effort. If there is any conflation it's only in the sense of: PLOS publishes PLOS ONE. Therefore, PLOS is providing the model for PLOHSS (not through any affiliation, just by example). In any event, as I understand it, PLOHSS is not the official name for the effort, it's only a placeholder designation for the initial ideas hub website http://www.plohss.org he has setup. See on his blog here https://www.martineve.com/2013/01/13/an-update-on-the-plohss-project/, where he is soliciting ideas for a name. Also, I believe it was in the Library Journal interview http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/01/oa/qa-martin-eve-on-why-we-need-a-public-library-of-the-humanities-and-social-sciences/#_ where he indicated that discussions might conclude that they separate the humanities and social sciences into subset journals. At the very least, my take was that by invoking PLOS he is saying HSS should be able to have its own online public library of open access article literature. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess On Jan 18, 2013, at 7:24 PM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote: Message: 3 Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:18:31 -0800 From: Heather Morrison hgmor...@sfu.ca Subject: [GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it? PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Cc: boai-forum boai-fo...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Message-ID: fc0abee7-ad47-4ff9-a7de-12b95cf12...@sfu.ca Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 It seems that we are equating PLoS with PLoS ONE, the megajournal. Is PLoS planning to abandon its original strategy of producing top-quality journals to compete with the likes of Nature and Science? If not, some thought about how to talk about this might be a good idea. Along this vein, I am wondering if it is wise to brand a new humanities and social sciences megajournal after PLoS - at first glance it gives the appearance that HSS is considered to be slow and lacking in innovation. This is not the case. It is true that there are many very traditional publishers in HSS, but it is also true that a large portion of the world's STM journals are still being published by Elsevier. best, Heather Morrison On 2013-01-18, at 11:03 AM, Jean-Claude Gu?don wrote: The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on. The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its journal-like identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that journal. As a result, an article could be associated with several journals, but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each journal could repackage the articles it owns to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pai! ns of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large
[GOAL] JSTOR announces free limited reading access to its journal archive
JSTOR announces free limited reading access to its journal archive http://wp.me/p20y83-zK I am an academic librarian at a small liberal arts college. I am committed, within the confines of a finite library budget, to provide access to the most relevant, highest quality information resources (journals, books, and media) possible for our students and faculty. One important component of this access commitment are the 11 Arts Sciences collections and 1 Life Science collection (over 1,600 titles) we subscribe to on the JSTOR full text journal archive platform. ... In a press release dated January 9, 2013, JSTOR announced that following a successful 10-month test, it is now expanding an experiment called Register Read, which will give anyone who signs up for a JSTOR account free online reading access to up to three articles every two weeks in over 1,200 journals from nearly 800 scholarly societies, university presses, and academic publishers in the JSTOR archive. Affiliation with an academic institution is not required. ... I'm sure they ran the numbers after the pilot to arrive at this figure. I'm also sure they engaged in a Herculean effort to get buy-in from all the publishers that agreed to join the program. I don't want to sound ungrateful. It's a start. Maybe it's not the number of articles so much as the access timeframe that feels particularly tight-fisted. Research activity is not evenly spaced in time like this. If I'm doing research or working on a writing project I need access to many sources in relatively short spurts of time. Three articles every two weeks translates into 78 articles a year, 39 articles every 6 months, or 20 (rounding-up from 19.5) articles every quarter. What if JSTOR gave me the option of accessing up to 20 articles every three months to use as I needed? That would have an entirely different feel about it--more generous. It would make the Register Read service significantly more useful to independent scholars. I don't see Register Read as a form of open access, though I grant it is a step toward the opening of access. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] The open access journal as a disruptive innovation
The open access journal as a disruptive innovation http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/the-open-access-journal-as-a-disruptive-innovation/ I admit it. As a humanist scholar I have not been much inclined to read books or articles on economics. I mean, what could be more boring, right? And all that math. Well, my inclination has been slowly changing since I began writing this blog. My level of sophistication is pretty basic, and I still try to avoid the math whenever possible. But the economics of academic publishing, particularly journals, has become strangely compelling to me as I have learned more about open access and the dissemination of scholarly research as a digital product in an online environment. My first exposure came just a few months after starting the blog. I read an interesting article by Caroline Sutton in College Research Libraries News (December 2011) entitled “Is free inevitable in scholarly communication? The economics of open access.” … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Adoption of open access in Theological Studies will accelerate with a new generation of scholars--like Jack
Adoption of open access in Theological Studies will accelerate with a new generation of scholars--like Jack http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/adoption-of-open-access-in-theological-studies-will-accelerate-with-a-new-generation-of-scholars-like-jack/ Jack Weinbender works half-time in our library as my assistant. He’s a whiz around an Excel spreadsheet, so I regularly put him to work gathering and representing our user and resource statistics. He’s also a mean (self-taught!) web coder, so I put him to work implementing the recent re-design of our website. It looks great! Jack is a senior at a nearby seminary. He is currently preparing applications to various doctoral programs in ancient Near Eastern and biblical studies for next Fall. Jack is an excellent student and a competent researcher. I hate the prospect of losing him as an employee, but I sincerely wish him well in his desire to find a placement for continuing his studies. The other day Jack shared with me a draft of the Statement of Intent he is preparing to accompany his applications. As I was reading, I encountered this excerpt (included with permission)… Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Hat Tip: “The Future of Publishing” (But I viewed it from the perspective of open access)
Hat Tip: "The Future of Publishing" (But I viewed it from the perspective of open access)http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/hat-tip-the-future-of-publishing-but-i-viewed-it-from-the-perspective-of-open-access/I'm surprised I hadn't seen this earlier. I want to thank a librarian colleague for the link, who posted it this afternoon to a listerv we both frequent. Thiswonderfully clever video was uploaded to YouTube back in March 2010. According to the description, "This video was prepared by the UK branch ofDorling Kindersley Books and produced byKhaki Films."The video was produced for a commercial publisher's sales conference. Ironically, I viewed it from the perspective ofopen accessand found its messagecompelling and powerful.I encourage you to view the 2:30 video in its entirety. I won't spoil the experience. But I’ll give you a hint. Notice how the message (in this excerpt)completely changes when it’srewoundGary F. DaughtOmega Alpha | Open AccessAdvocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theologyhttp://oaopenaccess.wordpress.comoa.openaccess at gmail.com|@OAopenaccess___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] “Snippet view” in Google Books is not open access
Greetings. After a bit of a hiatus, I have updated my blog http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com for your interest. “Snippet view” in Google Books is not open access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/snippet-view-in-google-books-is-not-open-access/ Kevin Smith’s Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog is my go-to site for unpacking the meaning of recent court decisions relating to copyright and fair use and their implications for academic communities, especially libraries. His post on Judge Harold Baer, Jr.’s October 10, 2012 ruling in favor of HathiTrust in The Authors Guild v. HathiTrust copyright infringement lawsuit is an excellent and encouraging read. Discussion on a listserv I frequent following the HathiTrust ruling included this comment from one participant: I read this story last night and an argument can be made for either side, but it reminded me of one of my pet peeves in this area. I find this whole thing of putting whole books (minus pieces here and there) at Google Books or other places really problematic. I can readily understand journal articles being open-access but not books…. Your comments are always welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] First library published open access issue of New Theology Review launched today!
First library published open access issue of New Theology Review launched today! http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/first-library-published-open-access-issue-of-new-theology-review-launched-today/ Back in June I interviewed Melody McMahon, director of the Paul Bechtold Library at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois following her announcement that the library was assuming publishing responsibility for the institution’s journal, New Theology Review. In addition to becoming the publisher, McMahon would be assuming the role as the journal’s co-editor. Accompanying the announcement was the news that this long-running print and subscription-based journal (published since 1988) would be converted to online only and going open access. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Blog Update: What is the better online journal format: periodical issues or open annual volumes?
What is the better online journal format: periodical issues or open annual volumes? http://wp.me/p20y83-rZ The other day I received an email from Geoffrey Moore, the new editor of the journal Doxology: A Journal of Worship. Last year, this long-running journal (founded in 1984 by The Order of Saint Luke) converted from print to online, and from subscription-based access to open access. I'm always very interested in reporting on stories like this because it speaks encouragingly to increased awareness and momentum in favor of open access, even among established journals. I am preparing a profile of Doxology for an upcoming post. In this post I thought it would be of interest to share my response to a question posed by Geoffrey. He was wondering about the best format for Doxology as it continues to move forward as an online open access journal. They could stay with the traditional mode of publishing discrete issues on a periodic basis (quarterly, bi-annually, annual, etc.), with each issue containing roughly the same amount of editorial, article, and review content (the print Doxology was published as an annual); or they could adopt an open annual volume format, with no fixed published quantity and new content continually added throughout the year as it becomes available (and passes the review process). … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Open access Journal of Southern Religion adopts Creative Commons Attribution license
Open access Journal of Southern Religion adopts Creative Commons Attribution license http://wp.me/p20y83-q5 Earlier this month, the long-time online open access Journal of Southern Religion (ISSN: 1094-5253) began releasing its content under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The announcement can be found on the JSR blog here. If JSR was already an open access journal, what is the significance of this development? Gratis and libre open access The JSR announcement gives me an opportunity to distinguish between two general concepts of open or free access to online academic literature. The distinguishing terms usually applied in this discussion are gratis and libre. Gratis is related to the word grace, often connoting the idea of something given as a gift, and meaning a good or service that is provided without price or requirement of compensation. From the recipient’s point of view, the good or service is provided without charge. It’s free! Gratis open access allows reader access to online scholarly content without a subscription or article paywall barrier. (Access to a browser-equipped computer with an Internet connection, which may not be free, is assumed.) … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: First use of the phrase open access?
Stevan,
I would have guessed BOAI as the first OFFICIAL use. I'm trying to ferret-out
the PRE-HISTORY of the term--even its informal, coincidental or unconscious
use--LEADING UP to the conscious decision of those involved in BOAI (including
yourself, Stevan) to call this thing that we're all now talking about open
access.
Thanks.
Gary F. Daught
Omega Alpha | Open Access
http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com
Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology
oa.openaccess@ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess
On Aug 7, 2012, at 12:25 AM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote:
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 00:00:01 -0400
From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Subject: [GOAL] Re: First use of the phrase open access?
To: Global Open Access List \(Successor of AmSci\)
goal@eprints.org
Message-ID: c0192983-2881-49bf-b9c7-a2ba62f42...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
The term became official with Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read
On 2012-08-06, at 6:29 PM, Omega Alpha | Open Access wrote:
Greetings. Does anyone know who/when first used the phrase open access to
refer to toll free publication and/or access to scholarly literature, though
not necessarily yet as a technical term?
Could this be a candidate? I'm reading the transcript of Stevan Harnad's
presentation: Implementing Peer review on the Net: Scientific Quality
Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals in the Proceedings of the 1993
International Conference on Refereed Electronic Journals, 1-2 October1993.
Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1994, 8.1-8.14, and come across the
following excerpt:
Enter anonymous ftp ('file transfer protocol'--a means of retrieving
electronic files interactively). The paper chase proceeds at its usual tempo
while an alternative means of distributing first preprints and then reprints
is implemented electronically. An electronic draft is stored in a 'public'
electronic archive at the author's institution from which anyone in the
world can retrieve at any time?.The reader can now retrieve the paper for
himself, instantly, and without ever needing to bother the author, from
anywhere in the world where the Internet stretches--which is to say, in
principle, from any institution of research or higher learning where a
fellow-scholar is likely to be.
Splendid, n'est-ce pas? The author-scholar's yearning is fulfilled: open
access to his work for the world peer community. The reader-scholar's needs
and hopes are well served: free access to the world scholarly literature (or
as free as a login on the Internet is to an institutionally affiliated
academic or researcher)?. (8.4-8.5)
The use here is clearly not yet technical, and yet it has all the earmarks
of future application. The words access, open, and free are used
repeatedly in the Proceedings, but I was unable to find any the phrase open
access was used elsewhere.
I suppose the next question would be: At what point did this informal and
(perhaps) coincidental use become formalized into a technical signifier?
Curious and interested.
Gary F. Daught
Omega Alpha | Open Access
http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com
Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology
oa.openaccess@ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess
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[GOAL] Open Access Interview: New Testament Scholar Larry Hurtado
Open Access Interview: New Testament Scholar Larry Hurtado http://wp.me/p20y83-nw It’s been a number of years since I’ve really immersed myself in direct theological research--ever since my vocational path diverged from the start of a doctoral program and took me, first into pastoral ministry and then to my present career in academic librarianship. I did get a chance to step back into the pool a bit while working on my Information and Library Science degree at the University of Arizona in 2004. I wrote a paper on intertextuality and canon for a graduate independent study elective course in Judaic Studies. And for the research methods course in the library program, I developed a research proposal that intended to look at the adoption of the codex book form by early Christian communities from a sociological perspective, using diffusion of innovations theory developed by Everett Rogers. I continue to be intrigued by the evolution and historical adoption of codex book technology, especially as a background and possible analogy to the technological developments we are currently witnessing with e-books, e-readers, and tablet computers. As time allows, I try to connect with the literature that offers new insights into this topic. I think it was in 2007 that I read a fascinating book entitled The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (William B. Eerdmans, 2006), which includes a chapter on the early Christian preference for the codex book form. This was my first exposure to the writings and scholarship of the author, Larry W. Hurtado. I subscribe to GOAL: Global Open Access List, an international email forum moderated by Richard Poynder dedicated to discussing open access issues in scholarly communication. Imagine my delighted surprise when reading through a recent daily digest of GOAL I see a post and several subsequent replies by Larry Hurtado. It has been my contention since beginning this blog that the advancement of open access scholarly communication in Religion and Theology critically depends on the awareness, engagement, and (hopefully) the authorization from established and respected scholars regarding this issue. It is easy to assume that many scholars are either still blissfully unaware of open access; they don’t understand what the fuss is all about (the current system has worked well enough for them); or they are suspicious of the scholarly rigor and quality of research submitted to open access journals. That is why I was so excited to see Professor Hurtado’s posts. I emailed him and asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed for my blog. He graciously consented. What follows resulted from an email interchange and a face-to-face conversation online via Skype. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess | Academia.edu ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access
As I mentioned in my brief review which linked to Peter Webster's article, he isn't saying humanities scholars will reject OA, but there needs to be nuance within the larger conversation. His articulation was helpful to alert us to the fact that different disciplines take differing approaches to scholarly communication. Current funding models clearly favor the sciences, which tend to be more flush with cash to cover APCs (which, as has been discussed, are being exploited to keep commercial publishers in control of the system, and their revenues). I tend to agree with Falk, however. I appreciate the realities of disciplinary and institutional inertia, the power of tradition, and the fear of jeopardized reputations and (in the case of many scholarly societies) revenue streams. But there are now virtually no technical barriers for any community or group of scholars to start publishing a low cost OA journal before the end of day today (depending on your time zone). The tools are readily available. These journals can be designed to reduce the time period between submission and publication. Whether new or existing, what is needed is for the scholarly communities and the respected scholars within these communities to AUTHORIZE these journals with their reputations. We will sit on editorial boards of these OA journals. We will serve as reviewers for these journals. We will submit our research articles to these journals. We will validate for our institutions the quality of the research published in these journals for tenure and promotion, and for the encouragement of junior scholars who are trying to build their own reputations. We will encourage our institutions' provosts, department heads, libraries and university presses to help fund/lend expertise to these journals as they grow and require more administrative and technical support. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openacc...@gmail.com | @OAopenaccess Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:52:56 + From: Reckling, Falk, Dr. falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at Subject: [GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Message-ID: 16331e0f-672a-45de-975e-16f583b71...@fwf.ac.at Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1250 I think there is still a misunderstanding with Gold OA. Running a OA journal does not necesserily mean to charges article fees! ...snip... What is needed is a very good editorial board and a basic funding by an institution/society, or by a consortium of institutions or by a charity or ... Or why not considering a megajournal in the Humanities and apply a clever business model as PEERJ tries it right now in the Life Science?: http://peerj.com/ In the end, it is up to the community to develop models which fit their needs ... Best Falk ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access
Hat Tip: Let’s not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access http://wp.me/p20y83-no Nice article this morning by Peter Webster on the Research Fortnight website entitled Humanities left behind in the dash for open access. http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_newstemplate=rr_2colview=articlearticleId=1214091 Check it out. Webster observes that much of the current conversation around the growth of open access focuses on the sciences and use of an “author-pays” business model. He feels inadequate attention in the conversation has been given to the unique needs of humanities scholarship, and why it may be harder for humanist scholars to embrace open access based on the “author-pays” model. There is no Public Library of History to match the phenomenally successful Public Library of Science. … Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Google's role in sustaining the public good to research parallel to developments in open access?
Les/Peter, The problem I see with the many is the problem of FRAGMENTATION of search and discovery. If I put my academic librarian hat on for a moment and observe the way our students (and frankly, faculty too) tend to seek for needed/relevant information, they want one-stop convenience. They don't want to have to go to numerous sites to search for stuff. That is why Google is such a compelling experience. We have recently implemented EBSCO Discovery Service on our campus as a way to bring that convenience of Google-like search and discovery to vetted library resources. But at present, open access resources are only a small portion of this (though I believe EDS does search OAIster, DOAJ [though mainly at the journal level only], BioMed, etc.). OK, we might applaud Microsoft for trying to bring competition into the market by providing a similar experience to academic search. But am I REALLY going to duplicate my search efforts between 2 or more search engines? This brings me back to the original point: Google is great. But can/ought we continue to rely so heavily on Google (or Bing/Academic Search, etc.) to assure continued indexing to open access literature? Second, I noticed you referred to REPOSITORY indexing services. Here I think we may encounter a disciplinary difference. In the humanities, and especially religious studies/theology, I believe the growth of open access has a much better shot via the JOURNALS (Gold) route. I don't see any problem with humanities scholars utilizing repositories for practical preservation and supplemental discoverability. But this is not going to be enough to encourage a shift to OA. Scholarly tradition in the humanities strongly values associating one's research with textual artifacts and textual communities that create a sense of historical continuity. They want their research to appear as articles in journals of reputation within their discipline, and to be preserved in the archives of those journals. The first step (and this is the role I have assumed as an OA advocate in religious studies) is to reassure humanist scholars that open access journals can function just as effectively as well-known and well-reputed subscription-based journals have done in the past. Humanities scholars are also concerned with discoverability. Here we have been stressing that OA can do a BETTER job with discoverability because, among other things, we can easily submit their research to indexing through search engines such as Google. Here too, this brings me back to the original point: Google is great. But can/ought we continue to rely so heavily on Google (or Bing/Academic Search, etc.) to assure continued indexing to open access literature? Good weekend to all! Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access On Jul 14, 2012, at 7:00 AM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote: Message: 2 Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:29:37 + From: Les A Carr l...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Subject: [GOAL] Re: Google's role in sustaining the public good to research parallel to developments in open access? To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Message-ID: EMEW3|d148925cce8122914a7e596c5be81781o6DBYf03lac|ecs.soton.ac.uk|485ff2db-fc83-4818-b60b-cdefca304...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 I'm finding these sentiments puzzling. There are many repository indexing services, such as OAIster, BASE, OpenAIRE and any number of indexing services from the DRIVER stable. (There's also Bing and Microsoft Academic Search.) None of these get much use because Google is so dominant, but there ARE a number to choose from. As Peter says, it's not that difficult. There's all sorts of searching innovations that I'd like to see beyond Google, and Microsoft are trying hard in this space. I'd like to see even more community efforts offering greater utility than spot the word but I guess that these will emerge with the network effect of more OA from more authors. Sent from my iPhone On 13 Jul 2012, at 17:14, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.ukmailto:pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Omega Alpha Open Access oa.openacc...@gmail.commailto:oa.openacc...@gmail.com wrote: Les, Greetings. I wasn't questioning the public good Google has contributed *to date*, and I know they aren't the only game in town. However, they are the dominant player. To the degree that indexing is vital for open access research discoverability on the web, don't you think that it is a potential problem for a commercial entity to serve such a crucial role with nothing more than market forces and a promise to be a good corporate citizen to sustain the effort indefinitely? Google Scholar is not yet serving-up ads, but there is really nothing to stop them. I agree with these sentiments - I think it is irresponsible for academia
[GOAL] Google's role in sustaining the public good to research parallel to developments in open access?
Greetings. I get the sense that Google Scholar is becoming the default indexer for open access research in STM with slower but also increasing uptake in the SS and humanities. Google is so nearly ubiquitous now it is easy to forget they are also a commercial company. At some point, a conversation surely needs to happen regarding Google’s role in sustaining the public good to research parallel to developments in open access. Is anyone aware of the status of such a conversation? Thanks. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openacc...@gmail.com http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] From my old school files, Part 2: Excerpts from that research paper on the development of the scholarly journal
Greetings. I have updated my blog http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com for your interest. From my old school files, Part 2: Excerpts from that research paper on the development of the scholarly journal http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/from-my-old-school-files-part-2-excerpts-from-that-research-paper-on-the-development-of-the-scholarly-journal/ I have a few very interesting stories brewing regarding a couple of theological journals that have converted from subscription-based to open access (the library will become the publisher for one, and the other is based at an institution that, along with its library, strongly supports and promotes open access), and a society journal which is not open access per se (although they provide a web archive of freely available back issues) but recently reversed a decision to go with a commercial publisher. I hope to have my research for these stories completed before too long. I have to confess, however, that since the end of the school year (despite the fact that I work throughout the summer) I’ve been feeling pretty lazy about writing. I know. That’s not good. Bloggers need to keep a forward momentum going so their readers will stay engaged. So, if only to let you know that I’m still alive, I’m following-up with the plan I suggested in a recent post to excerpt relevant bits from the semester paper I wrote for my Foundations of Library and Information Science course back in May 2004. The paper is entitled The Scholarly Journal: Long Tradition Behind the Coming Change. … Thanks for your comments! Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access oa.openaccess @ gmail.com ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] A few Religious Studies articles showing up in SAGE Open open access “mega journal”; reviewers being solicited
Greetings. I have just updated my blog http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ for your interest. A few Religious Studies articles showing up in SAGE Open open access “mega journal”; reviewers being solicited http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/a-few-religious-studies-articles-showing-up-in-sage-open-open-access-mega-journal-reviewers-being-solicited/ The other day I received an email from a librarian colleague who is also a scholar in New Testament. He considers himself an “under-employed Ph.D.,” by which I gather means having the academic credentials but not a full teaching position. I don’t know the circumstances of his situation, but I do know he is not alone. Professorships in Biblical Studies are notoriously difficult to come by. His email was interesting on a number of levels. He was asking, as someone who is trying to establish himself “as a competent scholar,” why he should consider open access instead of trying to get his articles accepted in “well-known and prestigious journal[s].” He was also curious about copyright issues with open access. These are important questions that I want to follow-up with in a subsequent post. In this post, however, I want to write about the specific situation that prompted his questions. A couple of weeks ago he received an unsolicited invitation from SAGE Publications to be a reviewer for their new open access journal, SAGE Open. He had never heard of SAGE Open. He wanted to know what this was all about. As always, your comments (posted to the post) are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
