Big deal - good deal? Or is there a better deal?

The purchase by library consortia of all journals published by one publisher - the so-called Big Deal - is bad for small publishers and for large libraries even if - in the short-term - good for large publishers and for small libraries. The publishing and library communities need to find alternative purchasing models which provide better deals for those disadvantaged by the prevalence of the Big Deal, while retaining the benefit of scale in negotiation and supply

UK access to UK research

Technological changes are providing opportunities for easier access to publicly-funded research. While these opportunities for easier access have been growing, concerns have been expressed that current business models are preventing their realisation. Even well-funded university libraries are unable to purchase all the books and journals required by researchers and learners. A survey conducted by the JISC, CURL and SCONUL looked at six situations of access in one UK university to the research papers and books written by researchers in another comparable UK university. The survey indicates that UK researchers and learners may not have access to around one-third of publications by researchers in other UK universities. The shortfall in access varies from university to university and relates to all types of content but particularly to books and journals from smaller publishers. Targeted additional funding and support for new access models are suggested to improve access for UK researchers to UK research

Keeping your head in a revolution

Explores new developments in information services

Improving access: is there any hope?

World-wide calls for improvements in access to journal literature are being answered by a plethora of projects and services. Consortial purchasing, national licences and "big deals" dominate changes in collection development. Moves to set up affordable easy-to-use electronic document delivery services offer an alternative model based on single-article purchase. More radical barrier-free access models are moving the economic emphasis away from purchasing to input-payments. Are all these projects and services making a difference or will access to journal literature be no better in years to come than it is now? It is arguable that only those initiatives which are developing new models through collaboration between the stakeholders will succeed in making a major break-through in access

How can there be open access to journal articles?

The possibility of open access to journal literature has generated considerable discussion in the academic, publishing and library communities. The discussion has largely centred not on the desirability of open access in principle but upon its practicability and its effect upon the traditional journal publication system. This article will examine points made in the public discussion of the two major routes to open access outlined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), author self-archiving in academic repositories and the publication of journals using new toll-free economic models. Issues both for and against open access have been raised by authors, by publishers and by librarians, and a realistic approach to the feasibility of open access is important. The conclusion reached will be that open access to journal literature is feasible through either BOAI strategy but that more investigation is needed of both the positive and the negative messages received from stakeholders with as much experimentation of different models as possible

Co-ordination to improve access in the UK : the response of the JISC to the parliamentary report 'Scientific publications: free for all?'

JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee of the four Higher Education Funding Councils in the UK and also has a responsibility for networked services to the Further Education Colleges. JISC Strategy includes “improving the effectiveness of scholarly communication”. This involves implementing cost-effective improvements in access to academic content for learners and researchers in colleges and universities. One route to cost-effective improvements in access through negotiation of “big deals” – Pilot Site Licence Initiative 1996-99, NESLI 1999-2002, NESLi2 2002-. This route partially effective but many difficulties – e.g. long negotiations, small publishers not included, many universities and colleges unable to buy in. Push for Open Access coming from both JISC Journals Working Group and JISC Scholarly Communication Group

Community Structure in the United States House of Representatives

We investigate the networks of committee and subcommittee assignments in the United States House of Representatives from the 101st--108th Congresses, with the committees connected by ``interlocks'' or common membership. We examine the community structure in these networks using several methods, revealing strong links between certain committees as well as an intrinsic hierarchical structure in the House as a whole. We identify structural changes, including additional hierarchical levels and higher modularity, resulting from the 1994 election, in which the Republican party earned majority status in the House for the first time in more than forty years. We also combine our network approach with analysis of roll call votes using singular value decomposition to uncover correlations between the political and organizational structure of House committees.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures (some with multiple parts and most in color), 9 tables, to appear in Physica A; new figures and revised discussion (including extra introductory material) for this versio