Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives: costs estimates and sustainability issues

The RIOJA project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja) investigated the feasibility of an overlay journal model in collaboration with the arXiv and in the scientific domain of astrophysics and cosmology. Scientists in this community are active users of e-prints repositories such as the arXiv. Furthermore, they have the support of Professional Associations and Learned Societies that have been pioneers in adapting to new publishing models and in particular electronic journals. Long term access to information as well as maintaining provision to sustainable systems/services is important to various parties in the scholarly communication system: the creators of information, developers and managers of services, libraries, publishers, funders and also users. Although scientific journals have been in existence since the 18th century (Lawal, 2001), factors such as increased journal subscription prices in the last decades and the emergence of new technologies have triggered discussions on the potential of new business models for publishing research. Furthermore, the advent of the open access movement also contributed to exploration of the issues around free access to information and provision of sustainable services. Exploring aspects of sustainability is something that should be seen over a period of time and whether launching, converting or simply maintaining a new or existing system/service the needs of the community it serves should be taken into account. Scientific journal publishing is a complex process. Besides disseminating scientific knowledge, registration of a claim for new discovery and a quality “stamp” it also facilitates social factors. Besides making research findings available and contributing to the advancement of knowledge, publishing is also a means for measuring quality of the work of scientists, allocating funding, and acknowledging contributions to knowledge. In this report, we will try to provide an overview of a new publishing model, that of the overlay journal. We will discuss the use of the arXiv by scientists in astrophysics and cosmology as well as the role of professional associations and learned societies in the publishing process for this community. We will briefly explain the methods employed to compile this report. We will also briefly present the RIOJA toolkit before we try and identify costs in the publishing process associated with the functions of registration, certification, and awareness and archiving. This report does not aim to provide a comprehensive report of actual journal publishing costings. Despite the fact that there are studies in existence that tried to document costs associated with journal publishing, the information presented there rarely corresponds to the actual costs of individual journal functions. In addition, the interviews with publishers and editors did not reveal any substantial information about costings that have not already been reported in the literature or are available on some publishers' websites. Where appropriate, this report aims to acknowledge studies conducted previously as pointers to further reading and, where applicable, to compare reported findings to observations made during the development and implementation of the RIOJA toolkit (described below). We will conclude this report with some of the issues reported in the literature around sustainability of services and some brief suggestions for further work

Establishing Processing Priorities: Recommendations from a 2017 Study of Practices in US Repositories

Building upon archival scholarship and previous solutions addressing backlog collections, this study seeks to identify a comprehensive, integrated, and effective strategy to establish and maintain processing priorities. This study is based on supporting research, which includes the results of a survey of archivists and the findings of five focus group discussions about processing priorities. Using these findings, the authors (a) consider whether this focus on an old problem has motivated archivists to find innovative solutions; (b) determine whether archivists are using these tools; (c) consider whether and how archivists have changed processing priority practices and policies; and (d) seek to clarify current metrics to establish overall processing priorities

The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles

Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles. We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigateOAin three populations: (1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, (2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and (3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI. We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made freeto- read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license. We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA.Weencourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice

You’ve Gotta Read This! Connecting with Readers at an Academic Library

At our small, liberal arts college, the library has developed a vibrant browsing collection of popular fiction and nonfiction titles in both print and ebook formats. Additionally, we have developed extensive outreach and programming initiatives to support the recreational reading habits and intellectual engagement of our students and faculty outside of the classroom. Some of these efforts include an annual summer reading booklet, an online featured reader column, and first year and other thematic reading and discussion groups. Learn how librarians on our campus continue to successfully promote recreational reading in support of lifelong learning

Write Free or Die: Vol. 03, No. 01

Student Writing, Quality vs. Quantity, Page 1 Upcoming Events, Page 1 Writing Committee Members, Page 2 Dangling Modifier, Page 4 Ask Matt, Page 5 Faculty Profile, Page 7 Grammar Box, Page 9 Past Perfect, Page 10 (WAC)ky Resources, Page 1