Presenter: Sara Fuchs, Digital Initiatives Library, Department of Scholarly Communication & Digital Services, Georgia Institute of Technology

Sara Fuchs

Time: 4-5pm, July 9th, 2009

Place: SFU Harbour Centre, Sauder Industries Room 2270

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Abstract

Session Overview

Background

The Georgia Tech Library Department of Scholarly Communication & Digital Services set up an institutional repository in 2004 in hopes that faculty members could self-submit. Although they had always had a repository, it was usually set up after conferences had occurred. The department later decided to provide more support and began to help faculty create, store and view their papers, especially since nobody else on campus was offering similar services. The service provides both conference and journal support, as well as the uploading of any video recordings (of lectures as well), and digital archiving on the centralized repository for Georgia Tech authored materials, known as SMARTech. Submission onto SMARTech requires that the authors grant a non-exclusive license to Georgia Tech for non-commercial uses– mainly to raise awareness about open access to graduate students and supporting scholarly collaboration. SMARTech is now one of the largest institutional repositories in the United States and 35th in the world according to the Ranking Web of World Repositories, a project by the Spanish public research body Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).

Lessons Learned with Open Conference Systems (OCS)

OCS works well for what it is supposed to do. It was a low pressure situation for the department because there was no need to maintain the OCS software, as everything was eventually going to end up in the repository. They found that clients enjoyed using OCS much more than the normal email workflow.

However, there were still challenges. With OCS, the process of accepting and rejecting proposals was more difficult– conference calls seemed to be much easier, and there is always a time lag in uploading presentations. Another challenge surfaced while setting up the Open Repositories 2009 Conference, mainly because they were working with two different websites. It made it very difficult to collect and retrieve conference papers. The Access Services Conference was the first time the payment function of OCS was used. Again, it was difficult to synchronize across two websites and this required going through multiple steps.

Customization

Clients wanted something more slick and streamlined, and wanted to use the more interactive parts of OCS, such as giving comments directly to authors, etc. In order to do this, all .css and template files had to be modified. New headers needed to be created, as well as modification of some menus, journal layout, and downloading of specific plug-ins. This proved to be very time-consuming, and this took design changes out of the hands of journal managers/editors. That being said, clients were highly satisfied and this became a showpiece of the department’s collaboration with faculty.

Questions

(Ran out of time)

Comment: Some of the difficulty in syncing between two websites might be easier if you upload/download directly from OCS instead of another location.

Related Links

• SMARTech
• EPAGE
• Information Technologies & International Development (ITID)
• IPPW-6 International Planetary Probe Workshop
• Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009
• Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)

July 9, 2:30 PM – Sauder Industries Room 2270

Presenters

Devon Greyson, Information Specialist with the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research

Donald Taylor, Electronic Resources Librarian at Simon Fraser University

Session Abstract

Background

The presentation provided an overview of a recently completed, quantitative study on the compliance of Canadian University libraries, as well as their concomitant research offices, with legislated funder mandates. Canadian research projects must provide open access versions of their findings as a condition of receiving financial support. The two presenters, Devon Greyson and Donald Taylor, outline the model used to determine relationships amongst all relevant parties, the guiding research questions, their methodology, the results and areas that require more investigation.

Session Overview

Devon Grayson at the PKP Conference (with permission)

Devon Greyson began the presentation by providing an overview of the study, which will be available through open access, on funding mandate compliance. Essentially this was a group project that created a common conceptual model of how research works in Canadian universities.

Scholarly Research Cycle (posted with permission of authors)

Open access has changed this research model, particularly because of Open Access Mandates instituted by Canadian research funders. The CIHR (Canadian Institute of Health Research) requires open access to peer reviewed articles within 6 months of publication, which places significant “impetus on the researcher” to publish results on line, or else funding will be curtailed. Similar policies in other Canadian organisations in the health sector, such as the Genome Project, are in place.

The Study’s Methodology

The study focussed on Canadian universities as a whole, which was represented by the libraries and research offices of each institution. The researchers used to following questions to guide their study:

(1) Are the various research agencies aware of open access funding mandates?

(2) Do they view the mandates as part of their purview?

(3) What is the extent of coordination between the libraries and research offices at each university?

Although there have been similar studies before, the survey questions used did not suit the Canadian context. Consequently new questions were drafted that applied to the research model above. The study concerned itself only with members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and separate surveys were given to the respective libraries and research offices involved.

Donald Taylor pic

Overview of the Results

Donald Taylor at the PKP Conference (with permission)

Donald Taylor continued the presentation by reviewing the preliminary results. Surprisingly, only forty eight percent of research administration offices returned surveys, but sixty seven percent of libraries responded. Only thirty seven percent of the universities involved completed both surveys.

Sense of Mandate (posted with permission of authors)

Activity (posted with permission of authors)

Awareness (posted with permission of authors)

The three slides above illustrate that libraries are far more aware of the open access funder mandates than their counterparts. All of the libraries are aware of the mandates, compared to seventy eight percent of research offices. It is clear that libraries have a clearer understanding of their mandate to provide broad education on open access issues, whereas research offices recorded low numbers across the spectrum of questions. Furthermore, libraries were far more willing to engage in open access related activities or plan future endeavours than their research offices. Lastly, sixty percent of universities and research departments were aware of the other’s activity.

Conclusions

The results and responses tend to paint a picture of a lack of coordination and collaboration between two parties, with a few exceptions (some universities planned to include cooperation with other departments). It is also clear that there is an awareness lag between librarians and research administrators. It would seem that the two divisions have different views of their roles with regards to the mandates.

Follow-up Questions

(1) Is there overall compliance with mandates?

(2) Do authors want to participate in OA activities?

(3) How do we change the attitudes of researchers?

Analysis

This study illustrates that there is a distinct lack of understanding and cooperation on behalf of research offices to comply with legislated funding mandates, which explains Geist’s assertion that many universities are agonisingly slow to adopt open access initiatives (2007). These mandates have been instituted to ensure that researchers self archive their work and make it freely available in the associated institutional repository, which benefits the research community as a whole. It would seem that some research is being stalled as a result of a lack of compliance and that many journal publications resent having their economic domains infringed upon.

Related Links

Devon Greyson articles on Scientific Commons

Donald Taylor articles on Scientific Commons

Canadian Mandates Explained

Developments in Canadian Funding Mandates for OA

References

Geist, M. (2007). Push for open access to research . BBC News, Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6404429.stm

July 9, 11:00 AM – Fletcher Challenge Room 1900

Panellists

Barbara Cohen, Director of Humanitech, University of California, Irvine.  Steering Group, The Open Humanities Press.

Gary Hall, Professor, Media and Performing Arts, Coventry University, UK.  Co-founder of The Open Humanities Press.

Marta Brunner, Librarian for English and American Literature and Comparative Literature at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA

Shana Kimball, Publications Manager in the Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) at the University of Michigan Library

Session Abstract (Not Applicable)

Logo (source)

Background

This question period followed a series of presentations related to the Open Humanities Press and two libraries that are supporting their new endeavours of producing single monograph titles. The questions from the audience have been quoted as exactly as possible with the condensed responses from the panel provided underneath.

Relevant Sessions

Part 1 – On Open Humanities Press: A Panel Presentation by Members of the OHP Steering Group

Part 2 –  On Library Publishing and the Open Humanities Press: A Panel Presentation by the UCLA Library and the University of Michigan Library’s Scholarly Publishing Office

Session Overview

Question 1: How is the OHP dealing with the lack of representations of many cultures and the issue of concentration of media control, such as Thomson Scientific?

Hall replied that he has “huge problems with Thomson Scientific” because all journals have to be registered with them. Younger, less established researchers, or those who are marginalised, cannot publish due to the prohibitive cost. The high price for translating work into English is also impeding academics of other cultures from gaining their due recognition.

Question 2: How do you establish accreditation when the OHP is creating decentralising and destabilising force? Furthermore, if we are in a stage of transition how do we reassure our scholars about the credibility and reliability of open access journals?

Cohen lead the response of the panellists by asserting that we that we have to cope in times of change. We are still retaining some traditions as we move forward, which Bolter refers to as remediation when one media uses the prestige of another to gain credibility (Bolter, 2001). Cohen further asserts that the goal of OHP was to match print quality online: Now it is to surpass it. Kimball then added that experimental works, such as the liquid novel, provided authors with a wider range of options, which benefits everyone. Brunner contended that we need to enthusiastically embrace these trends in order to ensure innovation. Hall argued that the Press is conscious of forging ahead, but that “it also needs to bring people along with it”. Hall stated that there is a tension that exists between being innovative and reassuring scholars that online journals are credible, authoritative sources.

Question 3: How do we give credit and attribution to original authors? How is the author being redefined?

Hall answered that Wikis are collaborative, but there is software that can track input. Hall is actually disappointed in this scenario given that this is a regression of sorts to old traditional authorship. Academics are becoming increasingly involved in open access because it leads to greater prestige for authorship, but again this aligns with old customs that don’t suit the goals of new media.

Question 4: What are the business models for open access monographs? Is grant money part of this equation?

Cohen agreed that grants are important and that as the OHP moves to the monograph series they will be made available. Kimball answered that Michigan State is exploring new revenue streams, but they are operating on the traditional model of rewarding authorship. Hall added that authors are now paying in many cases. Kimball clarified that new alternatives, such as teaching relief, are needed to be offered to reward “gifts of labour” in this new era. Another idea would be to create graduate fellowships or scholarships to do valuable research assistant work. This would work well in libraries because many unknown collections still haven’t been processed. Hall suggested that we “could shift the library model” so that each one publishes its own work and then freely shares it. He concluded that there is no easy access.

Question 5: What are liquid books?

Hall re-established that liquid books are actually referring back to their original status as conglomerations of knowledge. A liquid is fluid and constantly moving, which is why it is an appropriate description for what books really are.

Analysis

The seminal question during this period exposed the issue of how the OHP has to negotiate the contradictory pressures to succumb to traditional models of academic endorsement in order to gain credibility, as well as to provide a vehicle for innovation, originality and modernisation. Furthermore, a press such as the OHP needs to have a business model in order to cover the costs accrued, which is anathema to the ideals of open access proponents. This tension between open and restricted access, or market oriented and non-profit motives, are creating a dialectic series of synthesises that will eventually lead to the pervasiveness of open access content (Schmidt et al., 2005); however, these changes will likely need to retain some features of the old models in order to maintain legitimacy.

Related Links

Liquid Books

Human Tech (Barbara Cohen)

University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office

Open Humanities Press

Gary Hall Discusses His Philosophy with regards to Online Content

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schmidt, K. D., Sennyey, P., & Carstens, T. V. (2005). New roles for a changing environment: Implications of open access for libraries. College & Research Libraries, September, Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://paws.wcu.edu/kschmidt/publications/CandRL.pdf

July 9, 9:30 AM – Fletcher Challenge Room 1900

Presenters:

Marta Brunner, Librarian for English and American Literature and Comparative Literature at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA

Shana Kimball, Publications Manager in the Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) at the University of Michigan Library

Session Abstract

Archived Video Stream of Session

Background

This session provided the library perspective as a follow up to the previous discussion on the Open Humanities Press (OHP) and its involvement with digital monographs, or “liquid books” (Hall). UCLA is working in partnership with the Open Humanities Press to fulfil a number of open access ideals, while the University of Michigan Library is working specifically to produce and distribute many of the works housed by the OHP online.

Session Overview

Marta Brunner at the PKP Conference (courtesy J. Miller)

Marta Brunner began the second half of the Open Humanities session by explaining her involvement with the online press. Originally she blogged the OHP and its endeavours prior to being contacted by one its founders, Sigi Jöttkandt, to be part of the body’s steering committee. Brunner has used her association with the OHP to bridge the dichotomous divide between research and library domains, which UCLA library has found to be an enormous asset.

“What future is UCLA library working to achieve?” Brunner asserted that this overarching question is the underlying motivation for the university’s work with the OHP. Furthermore, in light of the financial crisis and reduced budgets, open access issues are at a “watershed moment” where scholars and librarians will be working together to make more research freely available online. Brunner then outlined the library’s six fold vision, which ranges in order from most to least achievable:

1. UCLA seeks to be a flourishing hub of institutional repositories. While this is gaining ground many professors are still distrustful of online sources and perceive them to lack the same credibility as their print counterparts.

2. The library envisions itself as a curator of scholarly records. While this is considered a mandate for most university libraries, the “costs of migration” mean that “much content is overlooked” (Brunner).

3. UCLA hopes to disseminate an increasing amount of new digital media, which “enables semantically enhanced” (Brunner) products. The library has not been able to fulfil this goal on a large scale, but has created digital maps through the Hypercities project.

4. The library anticipates playing a greater role in providing open access content in classrooms. The UCLA library uses “a more liberal policy” (Brunner) towards content, which aligns neatly with the ideals of the OHP. One of the main benefits of this institutional leniency will be the increasing availability of cheaper text books spawned from more widely recognised open access scholarship.

5. The UCLA library hopes to be a paragon of a sustainable business model for housing and distributing open access content. Brunner used the comparison of the cost of a Toyota Corolla and the journal “Applied Polymer Science”: The periodical costs considerably more. Consequently, libraries will be facing economic crises as budgets are cut and journal costs stay high.

6. The most difficult goal to attain will be reducing to restrictive nature of academic tenure on open access scholarship. The generally perceived lack of authority of online sources continues to hinder the open access movement.

Shana Kimball at the PKP Conference (Courtesy J. Miller)

Shana Kimball began by posing a different question: “How do we scale a liquid book?” The University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) seeks to provide an answer for this important query. Kimball outlined the role of the publishing branch of the library bOpen Humanities Press Panelefore explaining its core principles. The speaker then elaborated upon how these values guide the publisher’s work towards making research publications more cost effective, as well as elucidating on its partnership with the Open Humanities Press.

The University of Michigan publishing branch currently supports forty predominantly open access online journals, as well as a few print publications. The organisation also runs a “robust” reprint service for its online repositories and has published over 9000 titles on Amazon. Additionally, the SPO is working with the OHP to develop its online monograph (single subject books) endeavour as part of a pilot project whereby the university will “convert, host, provide access to, and archive” the series.

The University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office also operates with a set of six main beliefs to guide its aim of making scholarly publishing “more sustainable and scalable” (Kimball):

1. The SPO works at the peripheries of mainstream library services by providing copyright counsel in the copyright arena, cataloguing metadata, maintaining digital library functions and financing complicated transactions.

2. The SPO forms partnerships with other organisations to provide supplementary services, such as content sharing or publication conversions into digital forms amongst other enterprises.

3. The SPO believes strongly in protecting the rights of authors to use their own material as they see fit.

4. The SPO takes small, calculated risks that focus on perpetuating and promoting experimental texts, such as producing scholarly works within Comment Press that can be freely annotated.

5. The SPO provides a myriad of services that range from electronic publication to print on demand to content preservation.

6. The SPO is working cooperatively with the Open Humanities Press to extend its number of published series, as well as further enhance its reputation for high quality academic work. Authors will be able to choose to use a creative commons license while retaining copyright protection.

Ultimately, the SPO cannot attain the goal of supporting the OHP without creating partnerships with other bodies. Furthermore, the task of producing single monograph publications is a daunting one because the library / publisher relationship has been traditionally weak. Kimball concluded her presentation by welcoming interested parties to inquire about future collaborative endeavours and reaffirmed her organisation’s commitment to building the reputation of open access content, as well as being an agent of change in the advancement of the Open Humanities Press’ ideals.

Analysis

Both the UCLA Library and the University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office acknowledge to importance of the Open Humanities Press and seek to propagate its principles to the wider academic community. However, achieving change and gaining acknowledgment is proving to be difficult due to general academic distrust, high operational costs, a system of reputation based incentives that favour established scholars, as well as an overwhelming amount of content through which to sort. The goals of the OHP are laudable, but there needs to be an economic compromise between open dissemination of information at no cost to the consumer and providing profitable rewards to creators, researchers or artists in order to perpetuate the transmission of knowledge. The University of Michigan SPO appears to be negotiating this difficult dialectic by working with open access supporters, while charging for unique services and publishing traditional print journals, which is referred to as the mixed approach (Schmidt et al., 2005). The UCLA library, on the other hand, is focussing on reducing costs by embracing predominantly open access works. It will be interesting to see which institution offers the more sustainable business model and if other libraries will adopt these new paradigms. Moreover, it illustrates that the new open access ethos is having to coexist with traditional print resources until an alternative, yet effective, system of rewards can be established.

Related Links

Open Humanities Press

UCLA Library

University of Michigan Scholarly Publishing Office

Hypercities

Comment Press

References

Albert, K. M. (2006). Open access: implications for scholarly publishing and medical libraries. J Med Libr Assoc, 94 (3), Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1525322&blobtype=pdf

Antelman, K. (2004). Do open-access articles have a greater research impact?. College & Research Libraries, September, Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crljournal/2004/sep/antelman.pdf

Schmidt, K. D., Sennyey, P., & Carstens, T. V. (2005). New roles for a changing environment: Implications of open access for libraries. College & Research Libraries, September, Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://paws.wcu.edu/kschmidt/publications/CandRL.pdf

Presenter: Heather Morrison, Project Co-ordinator, BC Electronic Library Network – Session abstract

Heather’s presentation was recorded.  It’s available here.

Session Overview

In this session, Heather Morrison presented an overview of the economic environment in which scholarly publication currently exists, focusing her attention on potential effects of the growth of the Open Access (OA) movement on this environment.

The Macroeconomics of Scholarly Publishing

Heather began by framing her discussion with the modern definition of economics, that is, the study of our behavior and the means by which we achieve certain ends given limited resources.  This was used to raise the following question: “Where is the money to help with the transition to fully OA publishing?”

The current economic situation was then explored with a description of the estimated costs of per-article publishing in the domains of science and technology.  These estimates range widely from one publisher to the next;

• BMC – 1500$/article
• PLoS One – 1300$/article
• Springer Open Choice – 3000$/article
• Hindawi – 800$/article

These costs, among not-for-profit publishers, are broken down in the following way:

In the realm of highly profitable for-profit publishing, the per-article cost is broken down in the following manner (as per Heather Morrison’s research).  Alarmingly, in this economic model, nearly 50% of the per-article revenue goes to profits and taxes.  Perhaps most interestingly, she pointed to a number of examples where for-profit publishers charged from 6 to 7 times more for publications that were actually less cited than similar journals put out by not-for-profit publishers.

Alternative to the current model

Looking at these numbers allows an examination of costs that may be reduced through a transition to fully OA publishing and the introduction of a number of efficiencies.  OA technology such as Open Journal Systems could offer the following benefits;

• reduction in the costs of coordinating the refereeing process
• elimination of typesetting and printing costs
• reduced systems and staffing costs
• elimination of authentication, hosting and troubleshooting costs
• dropping the need for copyright policing

Other less direct efficiencies introduced by the adoption of fully open-access publishing include a rethinking of the rejection process, with a reduction in the need to resubmit rejected articles to additional journals.

With these new efficiencies and cost savings, Heather suggests, libraries would have additional resources to allocate to building collections, rather than buying collections; to funding institutional repositories rather than spending on inter-library loans and to digitizing and preserving electronic collections rather than shelving print journals.

What if the subscription-based scholarly publishing industry were to collapse?

The concern has been raised by a number of publishers that the introduction of fully open access publication may threaten the viability of the current subscription-based model.  Heather contends that although they are unlikely to fail any time soon, if the major publishers collapsed, there is sufficient open-access support available to help journals carry on with their publishing activities.  She argues that this collapse (again, however unlikely) would provide an opportunity to rethink, renew and rebuild our publishing system.

Commentary

Not surprisingly, this presentation gave rise to a healthy amount of discussion.  Questions were directed both to Heather Morrison and Frederick Friend who gave a talk on the future of scholarly publishing.  The following questions were raised;

How would fully open-access publishing be cheaper than the subscription-based system? The savings are thought to come from the wresting of control of costs from the publishers into the hands of academics.  In order for the savings to materialize, however, academics will need to focus on transforming several aspects of the economics of publishing.

If libraries are already struggling to cope with the rising costs of subscriptions, how can they set aside money for open-access initiatives? This will likely require a multi-faceted approach.  Librarians will need to set priorities along with researchers in order to make decisions about which subscriptions are most needed.  If needed, they may also need to consider canceling “one big deal” in order to leave room for OA funding.

Related links

References

Morrison, H. (2009). Open access and the economics of scholarly communication. PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-08, from http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/paper/view/136

July 10th, 2009 at 2:30pm

Abstract

Presenters: Brian Rosenblum and Scott Hanrath

Background

(Source)

Contact: brianlee@ku.edu

Brian Rosenblum is Scholarly Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Kansas Libraries, where he has administrative, production and outreach responsibilities in support of a variety of digital initiatives and scholarly communication activities, including KU’s institutional repository and digital publishing services. Prior to joining the Kansas digital initiatives program in 2005, Brian worked at the Scholarly Publishing Office at the University Library, University of Michigan, where he helped develop numerous electronic journals and digital scholarly projects.

Session Overview

Brian Rosenblum outlined that in 2006 the University of Kansas (KU) library looked at new roles to support scholarship on campus. A survey was undertaken to determine campus needs. The university comprises some 28,000 students and 2,300 faculty.

Initially it was hard to ascertain which journals were asscociated with faculty research. The library is still encountering new journal activities. Local journal editors were interviewed to discuss needs, and a forum was formed to build relationships with editors.

New roles for the library included stewardship of scholarship production at Kansas, as well as working directly with faculty in terms of metadata tools and tagging systems. A mandate was established for the digital publishing services, including supporting faculty in all forms of digital publishing, exploring new publishing models, and promoting increased visibility and access. In 2005 the KU Scholarworks Repository was launched; however this does not have author submission  or peer review tools that OJS has.

Rosenblum gave some examples of KU digital publishing. The Biodiversity Informatics journal was launched by a single professor using OJS. This would not have been possible within the standard printing process. Several journals are available as back issues online (subject to a 3 year lag), enabling much wider access, of particular relevance to South America. Other journals are in traditional print, but also available online with immediate access. Rosenblum showed some download statistics, but these are coarse measures at present, needing more informatics for detailed records.

KU is the first public US university to have an open access research policy, announced in June 2009.

Scott Hanrath, as technical lead, outlined the technical aspects of digital publishing at KU. Technical roles have been split up between different departments, so there is a need for careful communication , planning, and identification of who does what. Customization of OJS has been mainly cosmetic, altering the look and feel of sites. Un-needed options have been stripped out. IT support staff have created the ‘KUdifier’ plug-in to personalize OJS. For the import process it’s been found to be better to work in smaller chunks, either 2 – 4 years of a journal or less than 400 articles at a time.

Rosenblum outlined the following points for the future: a more sustainable workflow, a need to outline the value of this service (especially in the light of budgetary cuts), improved OJS training, editorial advisory board meetings, and hosting a larger editors’ forum.

Question

A member of the audience asked about the process that led to the university adopting open access. Rosenblum replied that the tenured librarians encouraged the initiative to originate from the education department. There was a small, but vocal opposition. A visit from John Willinsky for consultation in February encouraged the process. The motion was passed with 22 in favour, and one abstention.

Resources

Brian Rosenblum Scientific Commons

Digital Initiatives at the University of Kansas

Journals at KU

News release (KU open access)

Date: July 8, 2009

Presenter: Sely M.S. Costa, University of Brasilia

• Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Science

• Chief Librarian, Central University Library, University of Brasilia-DF

Interests: scholarly communication, open access, electronic publishing, institutional repositories, organisation communication, and information science theory.

Abstract

Session Overview

Sely Costa PKP2009, with permission

Presentation:

Sely Costa Pkp2009

Powerpoint provided by Sely Costa

As Chief Librarian, she has started many projects to use a number of different programs to support research dissemination. Repositories now offer a simple step in the publishing process for librarians. The role of librarian has changed to become a more active participant in scholarly publication process. She works with journals, books, conferences, learning, articles, proceedings, and learning objects. They use OJS and have begun publishing. They have a project with a repository that is still in development. They have tested the use of OCS for conferences. It is under discussion for inclusion in the library system of Information Policies, Information Units and Information Services and Products. The draft of their Open Access policy is also under discussion.

PKP offers help in Conference Organizing and Proceedings, as well as e-books and e-journal publishing. They will update to the OJS Suite when it is possible. OCS has been used for both international and national conferences, has worked well and has been well received.

As librarian, her role is to highlight the new roles of these technologies. Librarians are major actors in the scholarly communication process. The University library is an essential element in the scholarly communication system.

They are the first academic library to be able to help others run conferences, etc. There is some resistance to OJS in Brazil, but the researchers at her university are in full support of it. Understanding the process makes all the difference. The activities done by the libraries now make them essential in the process.

Concluding Discussion and Questions:

(shared between Sely Costa, Brazil and the preceding workshop presenter Alberto Apollaro, Argentina)

1. <Question not heard> Sely: We are doing a project investigating over 700 uses of OJS use. People are not aware of the business models that need to be defined, nor are they aware of defining the strategic access policies to consider before creating a journal. You work with journals that already exist…but, who looks after this for CONICET? Sely: CONICET itself. We are thinking of using OJS to create journals from scratch, but we do not have clear policies of access and we need to define these policies. (See blogger’s Links of Interest near the bottom of the page)

2. (To Alberto Apollaro, Argentina ) Have you had 10 journals that have gone through the review process? Not yet. We are in the information stage with the journals. But there are journals interested in this? Yes. Comment from attendees: Libraries have lost a lot of their power, but with technologies, they are gaining new popularity. The universities are very fond of PKP software. I assume SciELO was a digital library and not a publishing agent. Sely: Yes. We think not all our publications will be in SciELO, so we need to create another collection. In the end, we need to create a bridge between SciELO and this website.

3. Sely, how do you work with your University Press, because it sounds like there could be some synergies there. (Answer summarized) We just changed our administrator. I offered to create a digital journal. He is concerned about losing subscribers. I need to talk to him about this. We have 6 or 7 African countries who speak Portugese, so if we can have these journals available for access, it is great for our university. We have Master’s dissertations that have had many, many downloads. I am a researcher and a librarian and I know what a researcher needs from the library. PKP has really helped me.

4. How do you see this playing out at other university libraries in Brazil? There are already some libraries doing it. I call myself the Open Access Evangelist. I feel so good that I have been able to influence people in my country.

Links of Interest:

CONICET is the Argentinian government agency established to organize and direct research that is publicly funded.

CONICET also has been listed on an open source portfolio (OSP) site, called OpenEd Practices, that uses SAKAI, an environment that complements the OSP software. No contributions appear from CONICET to date.

SciELO is a scientific, electronic, online library containing selected Brazilian journals.

Presenters:

• Heidi Drasbek Martinussen, System Librarian, Technical University of Denmark
• Helle Damgaard Andersen, Webmaster, IT Department for Library and Web, Copenhagen Business School
• Kirsten Suhr Jacobsen, Conference Consultant, Copenhagen Business School Library

(From left to right: Helle Damgaard Andersen, Heidi Drasbek Martinussen, Kirsten Suhr Jacobsen)

Time: 2:30-3:30 pm, July 9th, 2009

Place: SFU Harbour Centre, Earl & Jennie Lohn Room 7000

Abstract

2008 Paper (.pdf, in Danish)

———————————————————————————————

Session Overview

Beginnings

Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) began a project in 2008 to review twenty open source and proprietary conference management systems and to test out the three that were best suited for research libraries (i.e. includes functionalities such as registration/payment, review process, etc.) This project was carried out collaboratively by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Aalborg University, and Copenhagen Business School (CBS); each institution was to test out seven systems, respectively.

The following diagram represents the various characteristics of the systems, such as those that only support review or registration/payment functionalities, as well as pricing – red denotes that the system was VERY EXPENSIVE.

(source)

Following the preliminary testing stages, the three institutions each chose one of their seven conference management systems, and carried out pilot projects on the selected system:

1) Proceedings Central tested by Aalborg University

Proceedings Central (now ScholarOne Proceedings) was a proprietary system developed by Thomson Reuters. While it had many benefits, its major downfall was that it was expensive and only supported review functionalities, much more like the Open Journal Systems (OJS) publication system. In addition, it was frustrating to use outside of North America because the system was configured to follow US time only.

2) Indico tested by the Technical University of Denmark

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has been using the Indico system for several years now. It is an open source system that was originally developed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and supported by the European Union. Its greatest advantage is that it makes registration very easy– setting up registration forms can take as little as half an hour. The major challenge with Indico is that the system is not aesthetically pleasing, but they are currently working on developing a better looking version that is expected to be available in the fall. The presenters likened Indico to the ‘little brother’ of Open Conference Systems (OCS) as its functions are very comparable to the latter.

3) Open Conference System (OCS) tested by the Copenhagen Business School

The Open Conference System (OCS) was developed from OJS system and thus has inherited characteristics that are not always best suited for the needs of a conference management system. An example of this is that it is difficult to set up individual conferences– they must be set up as annual conferences.

Conclusions

While there are still many items on the presenters’ wish-list for OCS, the system seems to be the best so far in terms of designs, the building of the conference site, and multilingual support. It also has a large community of users behind it, and includes a wiki, as well as a support and user discussion forum.

Future Directions – a further look into the systems

The goal for the current project is to have DTU run fourteen conferences with Indico in 2009, and CBS run seven conferences with OCS to further develop and examine the respective systems. DTU and CBS also hope to collaboratively develop a ‘light’ version of OCS, that has fewer functions to better:

• provide for a quick set up for registration,
• support a conference that already has its own webpage, but requires payment and review functions,

The Role of the Library

The presenters also highlighted the role of the library in relation to the use of conference management systems. The library can serve as technical/user support, act as a central solution and housing for conferences, as well as provide payment system integration so that users are not limited to using PayPal.

Questions

Comment: Fantastic work. It is exciting to see someone to push forward OCS. Major problem with both OJS is that everyone is going in different directions. The more institutions pick up OCS, the more polish and fine-tuning it is going to get. Good to get feedback. This is the advantage to open source– this is how the software improves! And an obvious sign that the community works effectively.

Question: What is the volume for abstracts, attendees, etc. (that is provided by OCS)? Answer: Very wide range.

Question: How did you come down to deciding on Indico and OCS? Did you use a checklist for all the technical requirements for the 20 systems? Answer: Yes.

Question: Is there any proprietary system that has similar functional abilities of OCS and at reasonable price range? Answer: It is very difficult to get prices out of proprietary systems and functionality is usually very unclear-“this system does it all” seems to be the standard response.

References

Martinussen, H., Damgaard, H., Jacobsen, K., & Pedersen, J. (2008). Nye veje for forskningsbibliotekerne? conference management systems. DF Revy, 31(8), 21-23.

Related Links

• Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF)
• Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
• Aalborg University
• Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
• Open Conference System (OCS)
• Open Journal Systems (OJS)
• European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

Date: July 9, 2009

Presenters: Astrid van Wesenbeeck and Martin van Luijt – Utrecht University

Photo taken at PKP 2009, with permission

Astrid van Wesenbeeck is Publishing Advisor for Igitur, Utrecht University Library
Martin van Luijt is the Head of Innovation and Development, Utrecht University Library

Abstract

Presentation:

Powerpoint presentation used with permission of Martin van Luijt

Quote: “We always want to work with our clients. The contributions from our users are very important to us.”

Session Overview

The University Library is 425 years old this year. While they are not scientists or students, they have a mission to provide services that meet the needs of their clients. Omega-integrated searches bring in all metadata and indexes it from publishers and open access areas.

Features discussed included the institutional repository, digitization and journals [mostly open and digital, total about 10 000 digitized archives].

Virtual Knowledge Centers [see related link below]

– this is the area of their most recent work
– shifts knowledge sharing from library to centers
– see slides of this presentation for more detail

The Problem They Saw:

We all have open access repositories now. How do you find what you need? There are too many repositories for a researcher to find information.

The Scenario

They chose to address this problem by targeting the needs of a specific group of users. The motivation – a one-stop shop for users and increased visibility for scientists.

The Solution:

Build an open-access subject repository, targeted at veterinarians,  containing the content of at least 5 high-profile veterinarian institutions and meeting other selected standards.

It was organized by cooperating to create a project board and a project team consisting of knowledge specialists and other essential people. The user interface was shaped by the users.

Their Findings:

Searching was not sufficient, the repository content, to use his word, “Ouch!” Metadata quality varied wildly, relevant material was not discernible, non-accessible content existed and there were low quantities in repositories.

Ingredients Needed:

A harvester to fetch content from open archives.

Ingredients Needed 2:

Fetch more content from many more archives, filter it and put it into records and entries through a harvester, then normalize each archive, and put it through a 2000+ keyword filter. This resulted in 700,000+ objects.

Ingredients 3:

Use the harvester, filter it and develop a search engine and finally, a user interface.

Problem: The users wanted a search history and pushed them into dreaming up a way of doing that without a login. As designers, they did not want or need that login, but at first saw no way around a login in order to connect the history to the user. Further discussion revealed that the users did not have a problem with a system where the history did not follow them from computer to computer. A surprise to the designers, but it allowed for a login-free system.

Results: Much better research. Connected Repositories: Cornell, DOAJ, Glasgow, Ugitur, etc.

Workshop Discussion and Questions:

1. How do you design an intelligent filter for searches? [gentleman also working to design a similar search engine] Re-harvesting occurs every night with the PKP harvester rerunning objects through the filter. Incremental harvests are quick. Full harvests take a long time, a couple weeks, so they try not to do them.

2. Do you use the PKP harvester and normalization tools in PKP? We started, but found that we needed to do more and produced a tool outside the harvester.

3. <Question not heard> It was the goal to find more partners to build the tool and its features. We failed. In the evaluation phase, we will decide if this is the right moment to roll out this tool. From a technical viewpoint, it is too early. We may need 1 to 2 years to fill the repositories. If you are interested in starting your own, we would be delighted to talk to you.

4. I’m interested in developing a journal. Of all your repositories, do you use persistent identifiers? How do I know that years down the road I will still find these things? Is anyone interested in developing image repositories? There is a Netherlands initiative to build a repository with persistent identifiers. What about image repositories? No. There are image platforms.

5. Attendee comment: I’m from the UK. If valuable, we’ll have to fight to protect these systems because of budget cuts and the publishers fighting. So, to keep value, we’ll have to convince government about it.

Related Links:

OAI6 talk in Virtulal Knowledge Centers

University Library at Utrecht

Online Journal

Open access interview

http://www.igitur.nl

http://www.darenet.nl

http://www.surf.nl

http://www.openarchives.org

NARCIS, a dutch repository of theses

First Monday article

Posted by Jim Batchelor, time, date

July 9th 2009 at 10am

Abstract

Presenters: Sophia Jones and Vic Lyte (apologies for absence – please email any comments and queries)

Background

(Source)

Sophia Jones, SHERPA, European Development Officer, University of Nottingham.

sophia.jones@nottingham.ac.uk 44 (0)115 84 67235

Sophia Jones joined the SHERPA team as European Development Officer for the DRIVER project at the end of November 2006. Since December 2007, she has also been working on the JISC funded Intute Repository Search project.

Jones has a BA in Public Administration and Management (Kent), an MA in Organisation Studies (Warwick) a Certificate in Humanities (Open University) and is currently studying part time for a BA in History (Open University). She is also fluent in Greek. Prior to joining the University of Nottingham, Jones worked as International Student Advisor at the University of Warwick, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Leicester.

Sophia’s interests include international travel, music, cinema and enjoys spending time reading the news of the day.

(Source)

Vic Lyte MIMAS, Director of INTUTE, University of Manchester

Mimas, University of Manchester, +44 (0)161 275 8330 vic.lyte@manchester.ac.uk
Vic Lyte is the Director of the Institute Repository Search Project. Lyte is also Development Manager at Mimas and also Technical Services Manager at Mimas National Data Centre. Lyte’s specialty areas are design and development of Autonomy IDOL technology within Academic & Research vertical and advanced search and discovery systems, architectures and interfaces with research and teaching context. Lyte’s work is lead by repository and search technologies.

Session Overview
The UK Istitutional Repository Search (IRS) was initiated after a perceived gap was noticed in the knowledge access search process, where there appeared to be unconnected islands in knowledge materials.  The IRS followed on from the intute research project. The high end aims included easier access for researchers to move from discovery to innovation  by linking repositories to exchange knowledge materials. The IRS uses two main search methods: a conceptual search and a text-mining search. A question was asked by a member of the audience to differentiate the searches. Jones responded by stating that the conceptual search searches documents, whilst the text-mining search searches within documents.

Jonesa then demonstrated the two types of searches by using an example quesry of ethical research.  Searches can be added by suggested related terms, or narrowed down by filtering through repository or document type. The conceptual search results can also be viewed as a 3D interactive visualisation. The text-mining search can also be viewed as an interactive cluster map.

In summary Jones stated that IRS had met all its high end aims. In engaging in a focus group with the research community there was encouraging support. The only suggested improvement was a personalisation aspect, which the IRS would have the potential to add, with a projected roll out in the next phase of IRS.

(Source)

Questions and comments

1. How is the indexing managed? Answer: Please email Vic Lyte.

2. Does IRS have data-mining tools in the set? Answer: Yes, this was developed by NaCTeM.

3. How much does IRS cost? Please email Vic Lyte.

4. Is IRS available now? Yes, there is free access. However at this stage IRS is more of a tool than a service.

5. Comment from Fred Friend (JISC): I’m from the UK. If this is valuable, we’ll have to fight to protect these systems because of budget cuts and the publishers fighting. So, to keep it’s value, we’ll have to convince government about it.

References

Intute Repository Search (IRS) project

IRS Demonstrator Tool

Mimas Press Release February 26 2009