Open access in Australia: an odyssey of sorts?

Scholarly communication change and open access (OA) initiatives in Australia have followed an Odyssean path in the last decade. The stop-start nature of early initiatives demonstrates that institutional leadership is essential for the successful deposit of academic content in an institutional repository. Similarly, OA policies from the two Australian Research Councils were delayed for nearly a decade, partly due to publisher pressure and bureaucratic conservatism. More successful has been the development of full, or hybrid, open access university e-presses. These presses, usually embedded in the scholarly infrastructure of the university, provide monographic models for wider global consideration. Australian universities are now reflecting, partly through recent Research Council edicts and monitoring global OA developments, greater awareness of the need for action in scholarly communication change Journal: Insights 26.3 (2013): 282-28

Scholarly communication 1971 to 2013. A Brindley snapshot.

This chapter attempts a snapshot of the dramatic changes impacting on scholarly information access and delivery in the last forty years through the prism of Lynne Brindley’s career. This was a period in which historical practices of information and access delivery have been dramatically overturned. In some respects, however, the models of scholarly publishing practice and economics have not changed significantly, arguably because of the dominance of multinational publishers in scholarly publishing, exemplified in the ‘Big Deals’ with libraries and consortia, and the scholarly conservatism imposed to date by research evaluation exercises and tenure and promotion practices. The recent global debates on open access to publicly funded knowledge, have, however, brought scholarly communication to the forefront of attention of governments and university administrations .The potential exists for scholarly research to be more widely available within new digital economic models, but only if the academic community regains ownership of the knowledge its creates. Librarians can and should play a leading role in shaping ‘knowledge creation, knowledge ordering and dissemination, and knowledge interaction’

Recent developments in scholarly communication: a review

This review article on recent developments in scholarly communication focuses on the content of three 2013 publications: The future of scholarly communication, edited by Deborah Shorley; Debating open access, edited by Nigel Vincent and Chris Wickham; The big deal and the damage done, by Walt Crawford

Citation, Citation, Citation? Scholarly Publishing Trends on Campus

Real estate agents on popular television shows cite location, location, location as the three most important factors in selling a house. Similarly, publishers and academics might say that the three most important factors for them, with the proliferation of university league tables and research assessment exercises, are increasingly citation, citation, citation! Publication metrics have become one of the most significant indicators for academic assessment. The scholarly process is increasingly geared to publish or perish syndromes, with number crunching of citations often taking precedence over the effective dissemination of research knowledge

Fatal attraction? Research assessment, publications and University rankings

[Conclusion:] This all may seem a long way from the euphoria or depression of university rankings. In an ideal world university league tables should be relegated to the intellectual basement but this is clearly not going to happen, rather the reverse. In that process of ranking universities there is a clear need for coordinated analysis of the methodologies, the need to establish improved data for comparative purposes and most importantly, a wider examination of the implications for scholarly research itself. Otherwise the current “Wizards of Oz” could reach the same conclusion as Dorothy on the bibliometric yellow brick road

Scholarly communication, scholarly publishing and university libraries. Plus ca change ?

The scholarly communication and research evaluation landscape is locked into historical paradigms which inadequately reflect the opportunities of the digital era. Why hasn’t the Internet disrupted the practices and the economics of scholarly publishing? The article traces how university library budgets have become dominated by a small number of multinational publishers and attempts at scholarly communication change have only had limited impact, despite the opportunities for increased global distribution of research scholarship. Open access initiatives are assessed in relation to future scholarly communication change in which university libraries play an increasing role in campus scholarly ecosystems

Book to the future: 21st century models for the scholarly monograph

There are many similarities between the fifteenth and twenty first centuries in the impact of technological change on information flow and consequent cultural and societal impacts. New modes of distribution offer improved opportunities for access to and distribution of scholarship, particularly for the scholarly monograph

Book to the future: can you judge a digital book by its POD cover?

Brief survey of current publishing trends with particular reference to the ANU E-Pres

Open all hours? Institutional models for open access

Conclusion: In H G Wells’s ‘Country of the Blind’ the “one-eyed man is king’, while Canadian author Margaret Atwood has said, “an eye for an eye only leads to more blindness”! Many in the academic community remain “blind” to OA issues and are often constrained in taking action by historical practices, and more importantly by reward systems, both perceived and real. They thus occupy the academic institutional “country of the blind”. Informed institutional leadership, combined with vibrant advocacy programmes and enhanced reward systems, is required for relevant eyes to be opened to the nature and benefits of OA. Institutions now have the chance to accelerate the OA scholarly communication process. Such “action does not require total agreement with the OA movement's beliefs and proposals, but it requires an active engagement with them.”(Bailey, 2005) This “engagement” with individual researchers in institutions will be the key to scholarly communication change