Meredith Farkas blogs on Open Access and the tenure track

Meredith Farkas links to her recent article “Library Faculty and Instructional Assessment” from the latest issue of Collaborative Librarianship in her October 23, 2013 blog post “Opening up knowledge on the tenure track“. The post is a thoughtful reflection on the current state of publishing and how it impacts the decision making of tenure track librarians.

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More threats to policing the open access model

Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion from the [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

For more information, check out a previous newspost entry: “Predatory Open Access Publishers.”

“In 2012, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, told The Chronicle that he keeps a list of “predatory” open-access publishers, whose main goal is to generate profits. Such publishers, says Mr. Beall, “add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.””

http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/

Open Access Scams

We here at Collaborative Librarianship are all for open access, but all good things have a negative side.  We encourage you to follow Jeffrey Beall’s web page capturing “predatory Open Access Publishers.”

“In 2012, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, told The Chronicle that he keeps a list of “predatory” open-access publishers, whose main goal is to generate profits. Such publishers, says Mr. Beall, “add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.””

http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/

Reducing links to content that is not #openaccess

I am moved by the fact that the editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration left the publisher.   I used to blog about articles appearing in commercial toll access journals, but I think I will stop (or greatly reduce) the practice.  People can find that content if they wish; I don’t need to let people know that it exists.  If I find green OA versions of articles that are behind paywalls, I will be happy to link to that content.  For example, it is too bad that there is no Open Access version of this article from the Journal of Access Services.

I will probably continue to let people know about content that appears in books.  Books are a different sort of beast. If Anna or Valerie want to link to journal articles that are behind paywalls, that is ok with me.

Librarians and Lawyers

Inside Higher Ed.
Excerpt: “Beall, who’s been running the blog devoted to critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing for about a year, declined to answer questions specifically related to the letter or the Canadian Center for Science and Education. But he said predatory open-access journals are those that unprofessionally exploit the author-pays, open-access model for their own profit. He guessed that amounted to 5 to 10 percent of open-access journals, which have proliferated in recent years due to increased pressure on academics, particularly in Asia, to publish”

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/15/another-publisher-accuses-librarian-libel#ixzz2LGJJxlvT

Open, but not open?

Nature, Excerpt: “Academics are — slowly — adopting the view that publicly funded research should be made freely available. But data released yesterday suggest that, given the choice, even researchers who publish in open-access journals want to place restrictions on how their papers can be re-used —for example, sold by others for commercial profit.”

Survey of open access scholarly journals

“Edgar, B. D. & Willinsky, J. (in press). A survey of the scholarly journals using Open Journal Systems. Scholarly and Research Communication.

Abstract A survey of 998 scholarly journals that use Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open source journal software platform, captures the characteristics of an emerging class of scholarpublisher open access journals (with some representation from more traditional scholarly society and print-based titles). The journals in the sample follow traditional norms for peerreviewing, acceptance rates, and disciplinary focus, but are distinguished by the number that offer open access to their content, the growth rates in new titles, the participation rates from developing countries, and the extremely low operating budgets. The survey also documents the limited degree to which open source software can alter a field of communication, as OJS appears to have created a third path, dedicated to maximizing access to research and scholarship, as an alternative to traditional scholarly society and commercial publishing routes.”