Scholarly Communication and the Continuum of Electronic Publishing

Electronic publishing opportunities, manifested today in a variety of electronic journals and Web-based compendia, have captured the imagination of many scholars. These opportunities have also destabilized norms about the character of legitimate scholarly publishing in some fields. Unfortunately, much of the literature about scholarly e-publishing homogenizes the character of publishing. This article provides an analytical approach for evaluating disciplinary conventions and for proposing policies about scholarly e-publishing. We characterize three dimensions of scholarly publishing as a communicative practice -- publicity, access, and trustworthiness, and examine several forms of paper and electronic publications in this framework. This analysis shows how the common claim that e-publishing "substantially expands access" is over-simplified. It also indicates how peer-reviewing (whether in paper or electronically) provides valuable functions for scholarly communication that are not effectively replaced by self-posting articles in electronic media.Comment: 35 page

A Continuum of Publishing Opportunities: The Purdue University Library Publishing Division

Formed in 2012, the Purdue University Libraries Publishing Division creates a collaborative environment uniting the Purdue University Press and Scholarly Publishing Services. The Publishing Division is dedicated to enhancing the impact and reach of academic research and scholarship through the development and dissemination of books, journals, digital collections, innovative electronic products, technical report series, and conference proceedings. Through the integration and collaboration of Purdue University Press and Scholarly Publishing Services, the Purdue University Libraries Publishing Division has become a leader in its capacity to produce high-quality publications serving a continuum of scholarly publishing needs across the University and beyond. This session will highlight the evolution, business models, benefits, and opportunities of a traditional university press collaborating with fellow information professionals in the Libraries and across the university. Thereby providing sustainable and targeted services to support faculty, staff, and students at all stages of the scholarly communication process, as well as scholars working beyond the confines of Purdue

Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?

While many authors believe that their work has a greater research impact if it is freely available, studies to demonstrate that impact are few. This study looks at articles in four disciplines at varying stages of adoption of open access—philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering and mathematics—to see if they have a greater impact, as measured by citations in the ISI Web of Science database, if their authors make them freely available on the Internet. The finding is that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are both adopting open access practices and being rewarded for it

Will the Open Access Movement be successful?

No doubt that from the point of view of scholars around the world, Open Access (OA) seems to be the obvious solution to the evident problems of scholarly publishing in the present age of commodi?cation. Access to the academic literature would be universally available and hence not restricted to those lucky enough to belong to wealthy institutions that are able to afford all the subscriptions necessary. Furthermore, many believe that only if we have a fully digital, openly accessible archive of the relevant literature, enhanced with overlay functions such as commenting, reviewing and intelligent quality ?ltering, we will be able to overcome restrictions of the present, paper-based scholarly communication system. Many initiatives have been launched (e. g. the Berlin Declaration1), some funding agencies have already reacted by adopting Open Access policies (notably the British Wellcome Trust2, but also the German DFG3 or the Austrian FWF4), new journal models are being tested to prove that Open Access is a viable economic model (e. g. BioMedCentral5), Open Access self-archiving servers ?ourish around the world (not least in philosophy) and even high politics has reacted (most recently the European Commission6). A few years ago, this author boldly predicted that a third phase of (re-)de-commodi?ed scholarly publishing is around the corner after the old de-commodi?ed period and the present age of almost universal commodi?cation (Nentwich 2001). But still, after a decade or so of initiatives (a well-known timeline on Open Access goes back to the 1990s, the Budapest Initiative7 dates from 2002), of testing and promoting only a fraction of the available scienti?c literature is Open Access (a rough estimate is 15 %8). It is growing, no doubt, but we are a long way from universal Open Access. So, will the Open Access Movement be successful? Or, put differently, can it be successful? What are the chances that the incumbents—the big commercial (as well as the non-pro?t, associational) publishing industry will give way to a de-commodi?ed future? Is there a middle-ground where all the players and interests could meet? This paper will contribute to this open debate by analysing recent trends and weighting the arguments put forward (this contribution, however, is not an account of the overwhelming amount of papers published on this issue, but cites them very selectively

Digital Archiving in the Context of Cultural Change

The term 'archiving' has its origins in the context of the printing press. As our social constructs change and evolve with the advent and ubiquity of the network, it is necessary to recognize that established terms can hamper adjusting to the inevitable evolution

Harvesting for disseminating, open archives and role of academic libraries

The Scholarly communication system is in a critical stage, due to a number of factors.The Open Access movement is perhaps the most interesting response that the scientific community has tried to give to this problem. The paper examines strengths and weaknesses of the Open Access strategy in general and, more specifically, of the Open Archives Initiative, discussing experiences, criticisms and barriers. All authors that have faced the problems of implementing an OAI compliant e-print server agree that technical and practical problems are not the most difficult to overcome and that the real problem is the change in cultural attitude required. In this scenario the university library is possibly the standard bearer for the advent and implementation of e-prints archives and Open Archives services. To ensure the successful implementation of this service the Library has a number of distinct roles to play

Implications of Copyright Evolution for the Future of Scholarly Communication and Grey Literature

Traditional practices regarding copyright are undergoing transformation. Although it is still common for scholars to give up their rights to their articles so that they will be published, this happens less frequently than it once did. Our analysis of the RoMEO database [1] shows that 75% of publishers allow authors to post their work in an online repository, whether that repository is hosted by their institution or on a personal web page. Whatever becomes of the open access movement to make all peer-reviewed journal articles immediately available online, copyright liberalization represents an enduring legacy of the open access movement. Online repositories are a more natural home for grey literature than open access journals. Repositories can store working papers and technical reports (among other content types) just as easily as peer-reviewed articles. Crucially, repositories can also store raw data, the grey content that lies at the root of much scholarly discovery. Copyright liberalization has encouraged the proliferation of such repositories; one prominent example is arXiv, which primarily serves physicists and computer scientists [2]. As scholarly discourse evolves, the preservation and promotion of grey content should command more energy than providing access to discrete grey literature