The Convergence of Digital-Libraries and the Peer-Review Process

Pre-print repositories have seen a significant increase in use over the past fifteen years across multiple research domains. Researchers are beginning to develop applications capable of using these repositories to assist the scientific community above and beyond the pure dissemination of information. The contribution set forth by this paper emphasizes a deconstructed publication model in which the peer-review process is mediated by an OAI-PMH peer-review service. This peer-review service uses a social-network algorithm to determine potential reviewers for a submitted manuscript and for weighting the relative influence of each participating reviewer's evaluations. This paper also suggests a set of peer-review specific metadata tags that can accompany a pre-print's existing metadata record. The combinations of these contributions provide a unique repository-centric peer-review model that fits within the widely deployed OAI-PMH framework.Comment: Journal of Information Science [in press

The Open Access Journals Toolkit

Contents: Getting Started 5 • Scope, aims and focus 5 • Choosing a title for your journal 6 • Types of content accepted 7 • Kick-off and ongoing funding 11 • Disciplinary considerations 16 • Journal setup checklist and timeline 18 • Running a journal 20 • Article selection criteria 20 • Publication frequency and journal issues 23 • Attracting authors 25 • Peer review and quality assurance 27 • The costs of running an online open access journal 31 • Running a journal in a local or regional language 34 • Flipping a journal to open access 36 • Indexing 38 • Building and maintaining a profile 38 • Journal and article indexing 41 • Search engine optimisation and technical improvements 43 • Journal and article level metrics 45 • Staffing 49 • Roles and responsibilities 49 • Recruiting journal staff 51 • Building an editorial board 54 • Training and staff development 57 • Policies 59 • Developing author guidelines 59 • Publication ethics and related editorial policies 61 • Compliance with funder policies and mandates 64 • Copyright and licensing 66 • Displaying licensing information 68 • Corrections and retractions 70 • Infrastructure 72 • Software and technical infrastructure 72 • Journal appearance and web design 74 • Article and journal metadata 76 • Structured content 79 • Persistent Identifiers 81 • About the Open Access Journals Toolkit 83 • About 83 • What is an open access journal? 86 • Frequently asked questions 89 • Glossary 92 • Further reading 9

Open Access to Scientific Publications – An Analysis of the Barriers to Change?

One of the effects of the Internet is that the dissemination of scientific publications in a few years has migrated to electronic formats. The basic business practices between libraries and publishers for selling and buying the content, however, have not changed much. In protest against the high subscription prices of mainstream publishers, scientists have started Open Access (OA) journals and e-print repositories, which distribute scientific information freely. Despite widespread agreement among academics that OA would be the optimal distribution mode for publicly financed research results, such channels still constitute only a marginal phenomenon in the global scholarly communication system. This paper discusses, in view of the experiences of the last ten years, the many barriers hindering a rapid proliferation of Open Access. The discussion is structured according to the main OA channels; peer-reviewed journals for primary publishing, subject- specific and institutional repositories for secondary parallel publishing. It also discusses the types of barriers, which can be classified as consisting of the legal framework, the information technology infrastructure, business models, indexing services and standards, the academic reward system, marketing, and critical mass

Open access strategies in the European research area

This report presents an overview and analysis of strategies towards open access (OA) of peer- reviewed publications in the European Research Area (ERA), Brazil, Canada, Japan and the US from the year 2000 onwards. The analysis examines strategies that aim to foster OA (e.g. researcher and institutional incentives) and discusses how OA policies are monitored and enforced. The analysis is supported by findings from the literature on the global progression of OA since 2000, and comments on themes and debates that have emerged from the movement

Libraries as Journal Publishers

Increasing library involvement in journal hosting and publishing is an important topic for serialists. This installment of "The Balance Point" column presents articles that offer descriptions and analyses of the current state of ideas and activities related to libraries as publishers. Featured authors discuss the publishing and journal hosting tasks libraries can perform, programs and activities related to journal hosting, titles hosted, challenges, next steps and the benefits or drawbacks foreseen in the current paths of the libraries they represent

Course Manual - National Workshop on Effective Management of E-Resources in Research Libraries

The National Workshop on “Effective Management of EResources in Research Libraries" is the first of its kind organised by the Library & Documentation Centre of ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi. Periodic trainings on newer technologies developed in the field of Library & Information Sciences help library professionals to enhance their professional competencies that will contribute largely to the output of the parent organization. Digital repositories are the need of the hour where the Institute can showcase the research findings. ICAR-CMFRI is a pioneer in developing Institute repository and the open access repository of the Institute "eprints@cmfri" now stands 1st among ICAR Institute repositories, 3rd among Indian repositories and 343rd among the world repositories. Topics of current relevance towards development and modernisation of research libraries are included in the Workshop which is expected to help the participants to understand the possibilities and ways of supporting the research activities of the parent Institution more effectively

Open Access Journals in Serbia: Policies and Practices

This study is the result of the project Revisiting Open Access Journal Policies and Practices in Serbia, funded through the EIFL Open Access Programme. The project was implemented by the Serbian Library Consortium for Coordinated Acquisition – KoBSON between 22 March 2016 and 22 January 2017

Operational database for storing and extracting data

This deliverable lays out the work as done as part of MACSUR CropM on data, with the  focus on improving data management and have shared data curation for future use. The  issue was tackled with help from the MACSUR central hub coordination in the form of Jason  Jargenson from University of Reading. The data management as proposed and  implemented in this deliverable is very much a bottom up process, in which partners in a  meeting in Spring 2013 in Aarhus investigated the best way forward for data management  across activities in CropM.As a follow up to this, the work was mainly divided in three  parts:  1. The  Open  Data  Journal  for  Agricultural  Research,  mainly  focused  on  long  term  data  archival  and  citation  of  data  sets,  as  input  and  outputs  to  the  modelling  work,  as  part  of  MACSUR,  lead  by  Wageningen  UR  2. The  Geonetwork  data  catalog  hosted  at  Aarhus  Universitet,  that  allows  for  operational  access  and  storage  of  data  sets  as  part  of  the  ongoing  work,  also  for  restricted  access  of  the  consortium,  and  as  a  first  step  to  visualization,  lead  by  Aarhus  Universitet.  3. The  work  on  rating  data  sets,  that  provides  a  tool  for  improving  data  set  access  in  an  early  phase  for  connecting  them  to  models,  lead  by  Reading  University.  At the end of the deliverable some next steps are giving for data activities in the context  of AgMIP and beyond