When: Friday, July 10, 2009 2pm – 3pm

Room: Main Concourse – Fletcher Challenge Room 1900

Presenter: Gregg Gordon

Gregg Gordon is President and CEO of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).  SSRN is a digital repository that has close to 100,000 full-text documents.  The network allows readers access to full text and articles without any changes, but no access to the meta data attached to the articles.  It has received approximately 30 million downloads so far.  SSRN is part of the social networking community through a blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Gregg Gordon (Source: Photo taken by Helen Szeto)

Session Abstract

Session Video

Session Overview:

Gordon’s presentation is about the growing amount of scholarly information that is out there and the connections that can be made with it.  He starts off by defining the term “critical mass.”  Critical mass is the minimum amount of something required to start or maintain a venture.  Gordon believes that there is an endless abundance of information out there.   There is a lot of research, but he asks the question, how can academics sort through everything?  The biggest complaint received at the SSRN is that there is too much information with over 1000 journals available on the network.

(Source: slide courtesy of Gregg Gordon)

Gordon explains how the scholarship of information is growing.  The Open Journal System (OJS) has enabled the creation of over 3000 OJS journals, which means over 3000 new publishers.  Every 20 years, the amount of scholarly journals available is doubled.  Ninety percent of all scientists are alive today, which means they are still making contributions to the scholarly world.  The amount of research available increases because readers are getting access to earlier research stages.  In the SSRN, 13% of the citations are towards working papers.  Drafts are being referenced.  Interdisciplinary classifications are also increasing research relevance.  Academics are able to see the content from a broader amount of subjects.

(Source: slide courtesy of Gregg Gordon)

Gregg Gordon Presentation (Source: Photo taken by Helen Szeto)

Gordon says that traditional publishing models are slowing innovation.  On the other hand, clusters of information are increasing innovation.  Information is being connected to make more meaningful relationships.  People are growing up with access to information and therefore understand that information needs to be free.  Depositories are being built, but not used widely.  Greg offers a formula to get people to the depositories.  “C(onversation) + C(onnections) = C(ommunity)”  Communities will form when people are talking about the information out there and making connections with the pieces.  Gordon says as you find more content, you determine what is important to you.  The community also has to provide many means to access the information.  Content is being accessed through the web and various social networking sites.  Wireless allows information to be accessible anywhere and everywhere.

Clusters and Connections of Relevant Information (Source: slide courtesy of Gregg Gordon)

In Gordon’s search trend analysis, he has discovered that people are looking at blogs and wikis to find what is important to them.  Journal use has declined a little bit in trend.  Gordon makes a reference to a NY Times article regarding Google search being replaced by YouTube in an elementary school.

The overall underlying message is that communities are key to sharing ideas and making relevant connections in your field of study.

Session Analysis:

Gordon makes good use of visual slides to display his ideas of growing information and the communities that emerge from the connections being made.  By visually being able to see the clusters of information and the connections they form, we have a better understanding of their impact.  Gordon has shown that repositories will be more efficiently used when the information is clustered and networks are created.  We learn that communication is vital in grouping relevant research together.  People need to have discussions and to share their ideas in the communities.  Gordon is showing us how we can make better use of the information mass that is already out there.

Session Questions and Answers:

1)    Why is there more structure in the scholarly publishing of hard sciences than in the social sciences?

Reply:   Gordon compares scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing and social sciences to a rifle shot and a shotgun approach.  STM is like a rifle shot where information is very cloistered.  “Social sciences have a shotgun approach because you want to get your information out there by getting published.  In the hard sciences, you are writing to fund your lab, while in the social sciences; you are writing to build your lab.”    There are two clear differences in submission approaches.  “Some academics do not want to submit anything until it is it ready, while others will send out a proposal to put their stake out there.”

2)    Gordon also comments that there needs to be a person checking the data to ensure that quality is there.

Related Links

• Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
• PKP 2007 – Creating Scholarly Communities and Fostering Innovation (presentation by Gregg Gordon)
• Critical Mass is Critical, Building Authority in a Changing World (under Feb 6, 2009 – video of G. Gordon’s presentation)
• Bepress: The Other Legal Repository
• An Interview with SSRN’s Gregg Gordon

Presenter: Thomas Abraham

Session Cancelled due to travel difficulties

Open Access Journal Publishing in the Agricultural Sciences (full pdf. presentation submitted by Thomas Abraham through email to John Willinsky)

Background

Work focuses on Scientific Journal Publishing in India; for the promotion of electronic publishing; developing OAI-PM

Related Links

Scientific Journal Publishing in India (SJPI)

Article: Barriers to electronic publishing of scholarly journals from India: Findings from (SJPI)

PKP 2007 conference information

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)

Ramon Martins Sodoma da Fonseca

Presenter: Ramon Martins Sodoma da Fonseca

July 10, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.

Background

Ramon Fonseca participated in the PKP conference on behalf of the Brazilian government as well as representing the IBICT institution.  In English, IBICT translates as Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology.

Fonseca started his talk out by firstly acknowledging the sponsorship and invitation from the PKP conference; making it possible for him to be here speaking in Vancouver.

Note: I will attempt to use the Google Translate tool for as many links as possible.

Session Overview

IBICT’s main mission is to promote scientific interchange, training and development; contributing to the progress of technology innovation in Brazil.  IBICT strives to expand Brazilian intellectual production nationally and internationally.

One key element of Fonseca’s workshop was to inform the public at large the the Web tools such as blogs, CMS, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook etc. has allowed numerous opportunities for Brazilians to “have a voice.”  The Web provided the tools and Fonseca claimed Open Access has allowed the exchange of knowledge into and out of Brazil possible.

Some IBICT initiatives:

• DiCi (1st attempt at open access)
• Perl (Digital Library Project)
• TEDE (Online Theses and Dissertation Publishing System)
• BOTD (Brazilian Digital Library)
• SEER (meaning OJS in Portuguese)

These software initiatives were launched to specifically to ensure people in Brazil had free access to knowledge.  IBICT also currently provides training and support to national journal editors online which is more cost effective than face to face workshops.

Other Services provided by IBICT:

• COMUT (Bibliographic Communication Program)
• CCN (National Collective Catalog Serial Publications)
• CanalCiencia (Science Communication Channel)

Fonseca also talked about the Social Inclusion Program that gives assistance in accessing online knowledge with children in rural areas of Brazil and technical and infrastructure support to Indigenous communities.

One of the issues that Fonseca discussed was the current importance of maintaining the software and ideas.  Launching the systems and concepts of Open Access is important but these projects need continual restructuring and continued experience for the sustainability of the programs.

The IBICT continues to look for solutions to Open Access and the impact of the Web for making positive and forward thinking decisions regarding technology, system development and strong partnerships for networking the goals and missions of IBICT.

Audience Input

An audience member asked about using MOODLE as a software for an in-house small college class journal.  Fonseca suggested that the college look into OJS because it can adapted into many formats and is a very stable system.

Related Links

Article by Fonseca

DSpace University of New Mexico

Open access book on Open Access

Presenter: Pierre de Villiers

July 10th, 2009 at 2:00 p.m

(Used with permission from Pierre de Villiers)

Read the Session Abstract

Webstream

Background info

As a new discipline to Africa, Family Medicine needed a forum to communicate scholarly work throughout Africa.  Ten countries in the neighbouring area of the Sub-Sahara joined together and through academic support and affiliation with well known academic associations started a new journal, The African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine (PHCFM).  Their mandate was to ensure 20-30 publications were accepted and published per year.  It delves into family medicine for the primary health care giver using African context.  They use Open Journal Systems, and Creative Commons licence to ensure accessibility over the ten participating countries.  They have multiple citations in Google scholar.  The editor-in-chief is Professor Gboyega A Ogunbanjo from the University of Limpopo, South Africa.  He is a specialist family physician.

The journal is mainly supported by the Flemish Inter-university Council (VLIR), a department for University Cooperation for Development, through the project VLIR-ZEIN 2006 PR320, but also has local support from Africa as well.

View Participating Partners in the new African journal, PHCFM in a larger map

Session Overview

Dr. de Villiers starts this session describing why he started this new journal.  He has been the editor of the South African Academy of Family Practice/Primary Care journal (SAAFP) for the past ten years (the journal has fifty years of experience).  Since that time, South Africa (SA) has made family practice into a specialty and now there is a great emphasis on primary health, care not only in SA but all over Africa.

He recognized many problems in communicating the knowledge of Family Practice in Africa:

• There were no full African journals at the time
• Most research was published in non-African-run journals
• It was difficult for African scholars to get published

SAAFP went online in 2005 as the first journal in Africa to do so.  Open access to the journal started in 2006 and saw a dramatic effect on increased submissions to this journal as well as those articles sent to NEJM.  Submissions were too numerous by far to publish solely in SAAFP and the need for a new journal was finally realized.

Once Dr. de Villiers decided to start this journal (PHCFM), he had standards he needed the journal to commit to.

1. Published in English
2. Peer reviewed
3. Open access
4. Onlne – for global visibility
5. Rolling publication – articles could be published as they became available
6. DOI – Crossref
7. Ability to print on demand at end of every year
8. Copyright – would use creative commons licencing to keep it open
9. Credible Editorial board – Large African component as well as international made for highly visible editors

On November 18th, 2008, the official launch was in Kampala (picture above).  Since then, the statistics on the journal have been staggering.

• Submitted 74
• Published 16
• Edited and accepted 11
• Declined 27 (36%)
• In-review 15
• Days-to-review 55, and days-to-publication 126

People are reading this journal, mostly from SA but a strong component are from Nigeria and the rest of the developing world.  The website has registered  over 2000 unique visitors this year, with 3.42 visits/person.  People like what they see and 77% of people come back through internet bookmarks.

When Dr. de Villiers asked, what did we do right?  He believes he had many good things working for him:

• Credibility of his editorial board – this gives the author/reader trust to submit articles as well as to use the journal as a reference tool
• Quality of editorial process (maybe too good with 36% rejection rate?)
• Sponsorship of funding and support
• OJS/online availablity
• Professional publishing service

This journal was endorsed by the World Association of Family Doctors (WONCA) at their 2009 conference and has been indexed in African Index Medicus.  African Journals on Line (AJOL) will be accepting the journal this year, and they hope to be indexed in PubMed next year.

He states some of the challenges he has seen as well as anticipates seeing are:

• Need for continued funding (>5 years)
• High rejection rate
• Author support may be needed
• Additional funding to publish more articles (costs 500 euros per article)

When talking about the future of what he thinks the journal needs to do to stay visible and expand:

• Accreditation – needed from the Department of Education in order to get more funding (their application is being considered now)
• Continuing Professional Development credits needed
• XML publishing (under review)
• Thesis abstracts  will start to be published July 2009
• French abstracts/articles will be started to help readership

Related Links

Open Journals Publishing

VLIR ZEIN PR320 project

Presenter: MJ Suhonos, Session Abstract

July 10, 2009 at 11:00 a.m.

Background

MJ Suhonos is a system developer and librarian with the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University. He has served as technical editor for a number of Open Access journals, helping them to improve their efficiency and sustainability. More recently, he leads development of PKP’s Lemon8-XML software, as part of their efforts to decrease the cost and effort of electronic publishing, while improving the quality and reach of scholarly communication.

Session Overview

“Lemon8-XML is a web-based application designed to make it easier for non-technical editors and authors to convert scholarly papers from typical word-processor editing formats such as MS-Word .DOC and OpenOffice .ODT, into XML-based publishing layout formats.” (Lemon8-XML).

This was a packed session, 50+ attendees. This technical session attempted to give a fairly non technical overview of the L8X software and its relationship to the PKP software suite and equally importantly to highlight the rich benefits that are provided by using XML workflow and the foundation it provides for the future.

The big question is why use XML workflow. Using XML workflow allows numerous things to be possible. These include interaction with other web services (direct interaction with indexes and better interaction with online reading tools); automatic layout (generate html and/or PDF on the fly); complex citation interaction (forward and reverse linking which allows the discovery of everyone who cited you anywhere on the web; advanced bibliometrics, not just impact measures; resource discovery (universal metadata can find related works; and rich document data allows search engine to be much more effective; the document becomes the metadata (remove separation between article and document so all information is in one place. This is the goal of L8X, to convert articles into structured xml and thus enable these benefits. This is also future proofing as XML makes documents fundamentally open, convertible and preservable. Archiving XML (which is text) is much more flexible than archiving PDF files.

Using XML allows connection and communication to all these systems and means of display. We are also future proofing, as XML will be able to be modified into future formats, as its just text.

Where does this fit within PKP framework? Already being used in OJS (import and export and exposing metadata to OAI harvesters). But the next goal is to apply these benefits to all kinds of scholarly work e.g. journal articles, proceedings, theses, books / monographs. So moving L8X into the PKP web application library will allow all these features to be made available to the whole PKP framework. So that’s the near term future plans for L8X. In the long term, beyond the next few years, the goal is to work on this concept of the doc is the metadata by building support for multiple XML formats in the web application library (WAL) and the merging of annotation, reading tools and comments directly into the article.

The distributed resource-linking diagram at the end of the presentation, some find complex. Essentially, structured metadata is needed to make this a reality, which is to let applications in the publication sphere all talk to each other.

Session Questions
Question: How automatic is automatic into XML for non-technical people? When can I just upload my doc and have it magically turn into XML?
Answer: Probably not ever, but it is semi automatic already. Some tools, like L8X, automate part of this process. Some things can be automated, but some will always require human effort.

Question: Will I be able to use L8X in my applications after this is integrated into the PKP framework?
Answer: We would like to be make L8X available for use after it becomes part of the framework and without requiring the framework. We are considering this for the future.

References and Related Links

Lemon8-XML

Lemon8-XML demo server (login: lemon8  password: xmldoc)

NLM Journal Publishing Tag Set

Open Journal Systems

OpenURL Overview

XML Introduction

Original Abstract Title:  An Online, Open Access, Student-Authored and Peer-Reviewed eJournal in Biotechnology

Presenter: George M. Garrity

July 10th, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.

(Used with permission from George Garrity)

Background info

A course (MMG 445 Basic Biotechnology) taught at Michigan State University by George Garrity has been a leader in student open access knowledge publication. The curriculum ensures its students learn the rigorous method of peer review in their field by becoming both authors and reviewers. The course and website follow Creative Commons licensing and pay particular attention to intellectual property. The students hope to be published at the end of this course after surviving the said scientific methods of journal editing and learning about biotechnology to boot.

Session Overview

The session starts with Professor Garrity describing a 20-year old course description that claims to deliver thoroughly out-of-date biotechnology topics and methods.  You would think this would mean a zero percent class registration, but in contrast the class has been increasing in size every year and the university has placed a cap at 50 students!  Word of mouth has ensured that this important course for all students is continued.  Why is this course important you ask?  Garrity goes on to explain that there are 5 essential elements students need to possess and are rarely taught in school:

1. Curiosity
2. Open to new ideas
3. Problem solving
4. Critical reading and listening skills
5. Ability to express oneself clearly (written and verbal)

He continues on to describe what happens in the real world and skills you need to possess to become successful in your field:

1. work on multidisciplinary teams
2. be adaptable
3. ability to acquire new skills quickly.

He shows how the course has changed over the 10 past years and how the course has come from a traditional lecture based series to a now completely virtual university with all lectures given online and students able to blog/chat online with each other and professor at the same time.  He has instituted a blog for students to ask questions about the given weekly lecture (and this is the class participation mark).  The students do not get away with mindless, redundant questions either.  They will get thrown back to the students to revise.

(Used with permission from George Garrity)

The course is structured into 4 assignments:

1. Review paper (topic of their choice from Current Biotechnology) 30%
2. Student Reviewer (4 other student papers) 30%
3. Presentation of their paper 30%
4. Class Participation 10%

Garrity and invited expert guest lecturers ensure that the whole process is valid and conforms to proper methodology. They also ensure that students are true to their said interests and get the work authored and reviewed in a timely fashion. The whole process  has to be completed in one academic semester (13 weeks).  There is a 70% acceptance rate and students are held to high standards.  He relates to the class the importance of publication and how the scientific community uses this process to communicate, gain recognition and as a tool of quality control.

(used with permission from George Garrity)

The student publications can be viewed online via the Open Journal System and have been thoroughly cited in Google scholar.  These review article have been cited by other peer-reviewed articles multiple times, have been published by Elsevier and have been used in hiring interviews.  Student Alumni have come back to class to give ringing endorsements of the reality of the class and well as to become teaching assistants or guest lecturers.

One of the biggest components is the no-tolerance policy on plagiarism which is painfully spelled out by Garrity in class and even goes on to tell the students how he will catch them.  You would think this would turn students off of the idea, but he still gives examples of multiple plagiarized papers each semester.

As stated above the course goes beyond plenary sessions to include the above unique writing as well as faculty and student-generated online videos. They do this using Web 2.0 online programs (Adobe Connect Pro/Skype) which are similar to Jove (Journal of Visualised Experiments).  Please see the YouTube tutorial below for an example of how Adobe Connect Pro works.   These are easy to use and cheap to install in the classroom.

(used with permission from George Garrity)

Questions from the audience

Most questions centred around plagiarism and how he could detect the multiple examples.

The shared techniques from simplest to complex were:

• multiple different fonts in a paper
• multiple writing styles in a paper
• undergrad level English/grammar forging into graduate level writing and then back again
• use of technically perfect writing, however strung together in such a way that it made no scientific sense

A specific technique he used centred around an “anchoring” word which is a word that shouldn’t be used commonly that appears.  He places this word with three or four surrounding words in google and tries to find wrong citations or mis-citations.  All evidences of plagiarism is reported back to the Academic Council and Dean.

Notable Accomplishments

The eJournal continues to increase in circulation with >92,400 downloads to date (Source).

Seven student articles have been downloaded > 2000 times and 23 papers over 1000 times (Source).

The eJournal has been chosen as the first place recipient in the 2007 MSU-AT&T Faculty-Staff Awards for Instuctional Technology.

Related Links

Open Journal Systems

Scientific Writing Reference texts

MMG 445 Homepage

(Source)

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.

Brian Edgar at PKP 2009. Photo by C. Gratham

Presenter: Brian Edgar – Stanford University. Bio

July 10, 2009, 10:00-am-10:30 pm. SFU Harbour Centre. Rm 7000

Session Overview

Mr. Edgar presented the preliminary results from a survey of over 1,000 OJS editors around the world. The goals behind the survey were to gather information about who is using the journals, where they are located, and to gain a sense of their funding models as well as what motivates them to do this work,

While the data analysis is still in the preliminary stages, Mr. Edgar presented some of the survey results and commented on a number of the findings as follows:

• South America, Europe,  and North America (in descending order) accounted for 75% of the journals
• Almost half the journals were in the Social Sciences with Health Sciences and Technology and Engineering the next most common topic areas
• More than half the journals were sponsored by academic departments and another third by  scholarly associations
• The rate at which the journal accepted articles was quite variable with roughly equal numbers distributed across all the acceptance rate bands
• A very high percentage of the journals used editorial and double blind review procedures
• In most of the journals, the editor is personally responsible for copy editing, layout, and proofreading
• But it is not a full-time job for the editors. In 80% of the journals, editing requires less than ten hours per week.
• Most of the journals reported small (or zero) expenses and revenues. However, a small percentage reported more than $50,000 in both.  Mr. Edgar commented that these zero expense journals seem to indicate a new model for journal publishing becoming possible
• For those journals that generated revenue, it mostly came from institutional funding, followed by subscriptions, and then from advertising
• Most of the editors were motivated to do their work due to a desire to provide new knowledge and a service to the community and not for financial benefit
• While 83% of the journals qualified for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), only 22% actually were included
• Around 40% of responders continued to produce print journals

Questions and Audience Comments

A lively discussion ensued following Mr. Edgar’s presentation. Some of the key points are as follows:

• While the data analysis is still preliminary, they hope to have a more complete analysis by the fall of 2009.
• One audience member asked how many of the OJS journals were included in the ISI. The original survey didn’t ask about inclusion in the ISI, but they did ask about indexing.
• There was considerable discussion about why the number  of OJS journals in DOAJ is small. One possible explanation is that the DOAJ has a big backlog in evaluating journals for inclusion, so it may be possible that the number of OJS journals in DOAJ will be increase as the backlog is cleared.
• There was also much discussion about those institutions reporting zero costs. There are real costs:  servers, people’s time, cost of producing the knowledge, etc. But some felt that those costs  are rightly viewed as a part of the operating costs of the university and it may be legitimate to not include them specifically in the journal cost. On the other hand, some people need to be able to put a time/cost as part of their justification to create an OJS journal, and they would like to see those costs broken out. An audience member pointed out that the data collected (e.g. hours per week that editors spend on the journal) can be converted to generate this data.

Related Links

• The Public Knowledge Project Open Journal System (OJS)
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• ISI Web of Knowledge (ISI)

When: Friday, July 10, 2009

Room: Main Concourse – Fletcher Challenge Room 1900

Time: 9:30 am – 10:30 am

Presenter: Frederick “Fred” Friend

Fred Friend studied history in Kings College, London.  Next, he obtained a post graduate library qualification at the University College in London.  Fred’s library career has spanned from Manchester University, to the University of Leeds, to the University of Nottingham and finally at University College in London.  He currently holds the title of Honorary Director of Scholarly Communication at the University College in London.  He is an OSI Open Access Advocate and a JISC Consultant.

Fred Friend (source: Photo taken by Helen Szeto)

Abstract

Session Video

Session Overview:

Friend is here today to discuss the future of scholarly journal publishing with the movement towards the Open Access model.  He begins the session by letting the audience know that the publishers in the UK are saying Open Access will destroy scholarly publishing.  He continues by listing the assumptions that the publishers have.  Some publishers see Open Access as a threat, while others see opportunities in the new model.  Many publishers want the change in model to support rather than weaken journal publication.  Publishers put the emphasis on the quality of the journal, while researchers put the emphasis on the article.  They want to see public money to help increase publication.  Friend asks the questions, “What kind of business models can be made viable in the future?  Which models will enable high and effective use of published research?”  There are large areas of agree and disagreement.

(Source: slide courtesy of Fred Friend)

This is where the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) comes into the conversation.  It is a national committee in the UK that provides universities and researchers with information that they need in order to make the right choice.  JISC is a strong supporter of open access and want to help maintain the existing model.  They want to help promote innovation especially in helping universities decide which are the best innovative approaches.  JISC supports both “green” and “gold” open access development alongside support for licensing deals.  They want to collaborate with other stakeholders of scholarly journal publishing within the UK and world.  Friend is here today to see JISC have more collaboration with the Public Knowledge Project.

The one key factor about providing information is the choice about cost and impact factor.  JISC commissioned a report on the economic implications of alternative scholarly models.  It also looked at how it would help the UK economy.  Findings from the report showed that the UK benefited from moving towards either a self-archiving model or the gold Open Access model.   It can get very fast returns by moving top open access (either green or gold).  The Netherlands and Denmark have made similar reports.  JISC also examines how much it will cost for institutions to switch models.  They are trying to work with publishers on offering authors a choice between copyright and licensing.

Many policy statements in Europe have supported Open Access.  Collectively, the European Union committed to an Open Access policy research funded through FP7.  Local European institutions are considering how to manage these Open Access changes.  There is stronger interest in gold Open Access in Europe than in the United States.  Globally, countries with newer growth economies and less established publishers do not appear to be more advanced in Open Access developments than ones with established economies.

Fred Friend Presentation (Source: Photo taken by Helen Szeto)

(Source: slide courtesy of Fred Friend)

In future developments, Friend believes that there has to be a lot more in advocacy.  Many researchers are concerned that their favourite journals will disappear.  Fred says that academic journals will not collapse because of their importance to the research community.  He believes their survival will come through changes in the repository.  The academic community will take more control over the research dissemination process while publishers will act as service providers.  Changes will happen, there will be variations and hybrids of new and old models.  There will not be one model that will be able to dominate such as the subscription model has.

Analysis:

Friend recognizes that changes will need to be made to the subscription model in order for scholarly publishing to remain.  His presentation provides a positive outlook for publishers in a world with Open Access.  Both models can survive together, but changes will need to be made by both.  The key word in the presentation is “change.”  Things cannot stay the same; changes will have to be made to the traditional scholarly publishing model.  Friend encourages everyone to go out and advocate for these changes.  He believes that is the way to change the traditional model.

Session Questions and Answers:

1) One audience member said, “There are some green Open Access advocates who are very vocal about researchers …giving money to publishers when they can do it for less themselves. What is the cost of building institution repositories?

Reply: “Green Open Access is the best value for money of the 3 models, which is evident at the national level in the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark.” Friend doesn’t believe it will be the sole model used.

2) How do you get over the problem of having researchers demand certain journals?

Reply: Friend’s suggestion is to cancel subscription and buy gold Open Access journals.

3) Addressing the awareness of difference economies.

Reply: Friend says that charges to each model are based on their cost in the current system.  He thinks that the costs will settle down over time.  There will still be variations in models because there are different costs involved.

4) Friend comments on the voluntary labour in the publishing models. Voluntary labour is not free because mostly the institutions subsidize it. Problems occur with certain inefficiencies such as people not skilled in what they are doing. People are spending time doing something that someone else can be doing better.

5) What makes you think that the cost will be better controlled in the new models?

Reply: Friend believes that the academic community will control costs.

Related Links:

• Berlin 6 Open Access Conference: Frederick Friend
• Description of JISC’s scholarly communications work
• EFFECTIVE SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION: JISC working for UK teaching and research presentation
• The European Commission’s open access policy
• Funding Policies and Research Access Round Table
• Google Scholar: Potentially Good for Users of Academic Information (2006)
• Open access advantages, opportunities, support: JISC and the UK parliamentary enquiry into scientific publications by F. Friend
• Negotiating Prices and Licenses for Networked Electronic Information by F. Friend
• Recommendations on paying gold OA publication charges in the UK are included in a working party report