Open access in humanities and social sciences: visions for the future of publishing

For this month's column, the editors are gearing up for the Library Publishing Forum, which will be held March 29?30, 2015, at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. We have interviewed the forum's keynote speakers, Martin Paul Eve and John Willinsky, who will share their vision of open access in the humanities and social sciences as well as their thoughts on future developments

Expanding scientific knowledge frontiers: open repositories in developing countries supported by NRENs

The current scenario of Internet operation has brought many challenges and opportunities to science as result of the evolution of technologies and network infrastructures, key enablers to information access at distinct levels. Regarding research and teaching, scientific Open Access (OA) repositories play a key role in the production, dissemination and sharing of knowledge. OA repositories improve the visibility, accessibility and availability of results from teaching and research activities, contributing to the knowledge society through the provision of scientific publications without restrictions.Taking worldwide OA initiatives and the Portuguese experience as case study, this paper analyzes technical challenges and strategies for building open repositories supported by National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in the African context. Considering Mozambique as the main target of this paper, the study of: (i) existing national and international initiatives; (ii) MoRENet -the Mozambique Research and Education Network; and (iii) SABER repository, will support the proposal of a set of directives and policies for the development and sustainability of a common OA platform for scientific and academic national production.We believe that this open repository will bring an undeniable added value for Mozambique knowledge growth, fostering the country development at both scientific and social levels.The authors would like to thank UM documentation services and RCAAP by sharing expertise in OA field. This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in the scope of the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/2014.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

From the open road to the high seas? Piracy, damnation and resistance in academic consumption of publishing

Armin Beverungen conducts research on how universities retain their charitable status in a market environment, and on the teaching of ethics in business schools. Steffen Böhm has a particular interest in the economics and management of sustainability. He has also founded an open access journal and an open access press, MayFlyBooks. Christopher Land works on artists and the management of their creativity

Open Access Publishing in Business Research: The Authors’ Perspective

Open access (OA) publishing is now accepted as an integral part of the emerging trends within scholarly communication. Business librarians, like their subject specialist colleagues in other disciplines, are increasingly called upon to interpret scholarly communication trends to their faculty. This study surveys 1,293 business faculty from American schools of business accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Issues explored include business faculty publishing practices within the discipline and how these affect academic advancement, obtaining articles for their own research, electronic publishing, self-archiving, and their perceptions about OA publishing generally.With support from the Emerald Publishing Research Award 2009

The poverty of journal publishing

The article opens with a critical analysis of the dominant business model of for-profit, academic publishing, arguing that the extraordinarily high profits of the big publishers are dependent upon a double appropriation that exploits both academic labour and universities’ financial resources. Against this model, we outline four possible responses: the further development of open access repositories, a fair trade model of publishing regulation, a renaissance of the university presses, and, finally, a move away from private, for-profit publishing companies toward autonomous journal publishing by editorial boards and academic associations. </jats:p

No budget, no worries: Free and open source publishing software in biomedical publishing

Open Medicine (http://www.openmedicine.ca) is an electronic open access, peer-reviewed general medical journal that started publication in April 2007. The editors of Open Medicine have been exploring the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in constructing an efficient and sustainable publishing model that can be adopted by other journals. The goal of using FOSS is to minimize scarce financial resources and maximize return to the community by way of software code and high quality articles. Using information collected through archived documents and interviews with key editorial and technical staff responsible for journal development, this paper reports on the incorporation of FOSS into the production workflow of Open Medicine. We discuss the different types of software used; how they interface; why they were chosen; and the successes and challenges associated with using FOSS rather than proprietary software. These include the flagship FOSS office and graphics packages (OpenOffice, The GIMP, Inkscape), the content management system Drupal to run our Open Medicine Blog, wiki software MediaWiki to communicate and archive our weekly editorial and operational meeting agenda, minutes and other documents that the team can collectively edit, Scribus for automated layout and VOIP software Skype and OpenWengo to communicate. All software can be run on any of the main operating systems, including the free and open source GNU/Linux Operating system. Journal management is provided by Open Journal Systems, developed by the Public Knowledge Project (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs). OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions, assignment of peer reviewers, through to online publication and indexing. The Public Knowledge Project has also recently developed Lemon8-XML (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ lemon8), which automates the conversion of text document formats to XML, enabling structured markup of content for automated searching and indexing. As XML is required for inclusion in PubMed Central, this integrated, semi-automated processing of manuscripts is a key ingredient for biomedical publishing, and Lemon8-XML has significant resource implications for the many journals where XML conversion is currently done manually or with proprietary software. Conversion to XML and the use of Scribus has allowed semi-automated production of HTML and PDF documents for online publication, representing another significant resource saving. Extensive use of free and open source software by Open Medicine serves as a unique case study for the feasibility of FOSS use for all journals in scholarly publishing. It also demonstrates how innovative use of this software adds to a more sustainable publishing model that is replicable worldwide

Spinal arteriovenous shunts presenting as intracranial subarachnoid haemorrhage

Item does not contain fulltextBACKGROUND: In approximately 5% of patients with intracranial subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), the cause is another than a ruptured aneurysm or perimesencephalic haemorrhage. One of these causes is a spinal arteriovenous shunt (SAVS). The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of patients with SAVS who present with intracranial SAH without symptoms and signs suggesting a spinal cause. METHODS: We systematically reviewed the literature and searched the SAH database of the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, for patients with SAVS presenting with intracranial SAH and studied the characteristics of patients with SAVS whose clinical presentation mimicked intracranial SAH caused by rupture of a saccular aneurysm. RESULTS: Thirty-five patients were identified after a review of the literature. In our SAH database, comprising 2142 patients included in the period 1985-2004, we found one patient (0.05%, 95 % CI 0.006- 0.3%). SAH due to SAVS occurred at any age (4-72 years). The SAVS was located at the craniocervical junction in 14 patients, at the cervical level in 11, and at the thoracolumbar level in the remaining 11 patients. The majority of patients (n = 26, 72%) had no disabling deficits at discharge or follow-up. CONCLUSION: Rupture of a SAVS presenting as intracranial SAH is rare and can occur at any age. The SAVS can be located not only at the craniocervical junction or cervical level but also in the thoracolumbar region. Most patients with SAVS presenting as intracranial SAH have a good recovery