Group items tagged

This article is an announcement of, and response to statements issued by the AHA on two separate occasions. The author discusses the stagnant nature of attempts to deal with open access with an economic regard to academic journals. He supports a consortium model, and calls for general support for fledgling open access journals from the AHA.

This website is, as its title suggests, a directory of open access journals. These journals are free, full text, quality-controlled scientific and scholarly journals that cover a wide range of subjects. It features search fields for both journals and articles, with the ability to search by title, ISSN, author, keywords, and abstract.

This article discusses the economic nature of publishing from the viewpoint of an author and editor of the works of others. The author explains the legitimacy of publishing companies' practices in the past, but calls into question those of modern for-profit publishers. He rejects the current model, in which his readers would pay more for a day's use of his article than for either of his books, and supports a billable-hours system like that of lawyers or psychiatrists.

This article discusses the extensive nature of scholarly publishing. He explains the industry in terms of a social contract between the supply side, publication, and the demand side, the consumers. The supply side of this contract has enjoyed large growth recently, with the continued growth of digital outlets, while the demand side has remained stationary, maintaining its view of the book as the definitive form of publication. In conclusion, the author argues that curation will solve this problem, and become more important that publication once publication ceases to be limited.

This article discusses Microsoft's departure, for lack of potential business, from the digitization of books. He argues that Google's vast lead in this area will allow them to continue to dominate it with its competitors failing to find sufficient outside funding. The article concludes hoping for a joint funding by leading institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

This article expands on the subjects discussed in Dan Cohen's earlier article on The Social Contract of Scholarly Publishing. He breaks the supply and demand model, introduced in the previous article, into four influential categories that need focus to better both sides. He argues for impartiality when approaching a text, passion for the subject, shame for the lack of sharing compared to other fields, and the shift from narcissistic desires for compensation to a desire for communal knowledge.

This blog post by Dan Cohen discusses the collection of digital ephemera, such as twitter posts, and its legitimate relevance to historical analysis. Cohen leans towards supporting the Library of Congress in their decision to take historical artifacts like this seriously, citing examples of thankful historians rejoicing over the preservation of what was thought to be scrap paper. He then goes on to discuss the problem in terms of costs, noting the relatively cheep nature of the digital texts.

This Article discusses the interests that Google and Yahoo have in Wikipedia. The story that Cohen claimsis being missed is the generosity exhibited towards Wikipedia by these two corporations with little or no apparent compensation. He then explains the benefits that Wkipedia can offer to the field of data mining.

This is a follow-up article to a post Cohen wrote on Wikipedia and its relation to Google and Yahoo. In this post, he discusses the validity of Wikipedia as a tool to create text profiles of subjects for search engines.

This website seeks to make history accessible to an online audience through a series of online exhibits. Topics range from "Imaging the French Revolution" to "The September 11 Digital Archive." The website offers free access to primary sources as well as accompanying teaching modules.

This online digital library, also called the "Million Book Collection," provides free online access to a searchable archive of digitized books. The website seeks to make digitally preserved and freely available "all the significant literary, artistic, and scientific works of mankind." This enormous undertaking is supported by Carnegie Mellon University and an extensive list of contributors from around the world.

The American Historical Association was founded in 1884, and promotes historical studies across "every historical period and geographical period." The AHA produces several publications including the American Historical Review, a history journal, and AHA Today, the AHA's blog. The website also serves to provide teaching materials.

This editorial takes a more personal view of the HathiTrust verdict, and its application to the blind and print-disabled. The author gives personal accounts of genius he has witnessed in this community, explaining his excitement that they will now have access to millions of works rather than small collections.

This is article on the HathiTrust verdict explains the extent to which the verdict will affect the use of digitized materials in university libraries. The verdict held that digitizing works for the purpose of providing access to the blind and print-disabled is not only fair, but transformative use. This will allows universities to not only maintain digitized texts for this audience, but to share them among each other, reducing wait times for materials from months to minutes.

The author explores a potential new solution to peer review in the the work of scientific journal publisher Elsevier. The director of this project argues that it encourages quality reviews while acknowledging the reviewer's contribution by allowing them to choose whether or not to remain anonymous.

Another early announcement of the HathiTrust's Orphan Works initiative, this article discusses the pros and cons of the project, and the potential changes that it may bring. The author speculates on possible benefits while pointing to the important decisions that will have to be made regarding copyrights.

This statement from the Authors Guild explains their disagreement with the ruling in favor of the HathiTrust Digital Library. Accusing the project of carelessness in searching for the copyright-holders of "orphan works," the article expresses disappointment in the lack of action taken by the courts.

This article is an early announcement of the Authors Guild's lawsuit against the HathiTrust Digital Library. It explains the accusations of copyright infringement from the Authors Guild, who seek the complete halt of the HathiTrust's reproduction and distribution of digitized works, not limited to the Orphan Works project.

This article helps to give a general overview of the current state of fair use, specifically with regards to the HathiTrust project. The author is hopeful, giving the project's Orphan Works undertaking more credit than the Authors Guild. He argues that the meticulous nature of the work being done is promising, and may lead to solutions to the many and various problems raised by the public domain.