Useful guide for developing Open Access Journals

David J. Solomon’s Developing Open Access Journals: A practical guide is well worth the read.  This abridged, point form version of his full length book is an excellent reference resource.  I was impressed with Solomon’s nods to alternative publishing practices, such as suggesting that instead of waiting for regular intervals to publish a journal issue, that journals publish articles as they are ready for publication announcing them to readers via an e-mail subscription list.

Solomon also introduces the reader to alternative flavours of OA to illustrate the multiple methods that journals can use to finance their operation, and in several places indicates the role of institutions and libraries as hosting and research partners for journals.

ELPUB 2008

I am really inspired by some of the sessions I attended at ELPUB 2008 in Toronto June 25-27.

Publishers at York University will soon be introduced to the WebCite service.  It is a self-archiving service for web URLs, allowing users to request that a web page be archived. A successful request results in a permanent link that can be used to cite that snapshot of the web location at that particular time in perpetuity, allowing authors to use web URLs in their bibliographies with confidence.

Gunther Eysenbach`s paper discussing the WebCite service can be found here.

I am also looking forward to indexing some of York University`s encoded archival desciption files with California Digital Library`s eXtensible Text Framework. I attended the pre-conference workshop and am now happily playing with XTF on my laptop.

Research performance metrics and peer rankings

Stephen Harnad, in his article “Validating research performance metrics against peer rankings” creates a solid argument for using both technometrics and peer review to strengthen the validity of both.

Stephen mentions Citebase, a scientometric search engine that reference-links nearly 500,000 papers and ranks papers and authors based on citation counts, download counts and other metrics.

Stephen cites different factors contributing to the OA impact advantage:

(1) early access

(2) quality bias – higher quality articles are more likely to be made OA

(3) quality advantage – higher quality articles benefit more from being made OA

(4) usage advantage – OA articles more accessible quickly and easily

(5) competitive advantage

Useful quote: “Citation counts of OA articles are on average twice as high as those that are not.”
Harnard & Brody 2004 doi: 10.3354/esep00076
Hajjem et al. 2005 http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11688/

Research Library Publishing Services

In ARL 258 June 2008, Karla Hahn discusses the results of an ARL survey of research library publishing.

Quotes of note:
“The largest costs lies in the startup process of advertising, prototyping, creating workflows, and generating whatever layout and graphic design is considered adequate.”

“Almost all library publishing services have a substantial foundation in library operational support. All of the respondents who currently utilize library budget funds anticipate continuing to rely on this funding.”

“The question is no longer whether libraries should offer publishing services, but what kinds of services will libraries offer. Consequently, leaders need to ask to what extent can the university benefit from in vestments in library publishing services.”

Portico and Ithaka Digital Preservation Survey

I just finished reading the Portico and Ithaka Digital Preservation Survey. It appears that while respondents are view the loss of journal content to be unacceptable, about 66% are not yet taking action.

While studies of this sort are necessary, I found the Portico branding on every page a little too pushy, and I’m uncertain if its smart to put faith entirely into any one approach.

Interesting notes:

“Perceiving the landscape as complicated was one of the variables most strongly associated with not participating in an e-journal initiative.”

“Research libraries should be taking care of e-journal preservation on behalf of the entire library community.”