Group items tagged

Now, most of the attention on changes in scholarly publishing has been focused on e-journals. We wish to expand that circle of light so that it takes in the indexing of serials. The index, as every scholar knows, is critical to the quality of the research. The value of a library's serial collection is only as good as its indexing. What scholar has not wondered about the impact of overlapping, inconsistent, and incomplete indexing services on their work? When the weaknesses of the current indexing services are matched against the potential of open-access systems, we may have a tipping point in convincing scholars that the profession would be far better served by open-access publishing systems. We argue that a primary candidate for scholarly publishing's tipping point is the coherence, integration, and precision that these open-access systems can bring to the scholarly exchange and enhancement of knowledge, especially when compared to the current state of the serial index and the hit-and-miss of full-text Web searches.

There is a chart of costs of some electronic indexes, although it may be outdates (2000-01). This article examines the degree of overlap between different academic databases.

Head of NY PL explains value of libraries in future: "brilliant research collections such as ours will always be relevant to students, writers, and scholars who need to exploit all of our unique collections - manuscripts, archives, and so on - that will not be on the World Wide Web."

"The prospect of ubiquitous digitization will not change the fundamental relationships among scholarship, academic libraries, and publication. Collaboration across time and space, which is a principal mechanism of scholarship, ought to be enhanced. Reforms in copyright law will be required if the promise of digitization is to be realized; absent such reform, there is a serious risk that much academically valuable material will become invisible and unused. Ubiquitous digitization will change radically the economics that have supported university-based collections of published material. Scholars and scholarly institutions (including libraries and university presses) must assert vigorously claims of fair use and openness."

"The aim of this project is to discover: a) whether or not as a result of the digital transition and resources being created digitally, young people, the "google generation", are searching for and researching content in new ways and if so, how this will shape the way they research and search in the future; b) whether or not new ways of searching and researching for content will prove to be any different from the way that existing researchers/scholars work. "

"Project objectives:\n\nThe project's major objective is enriching the toolkit used for the assessment of the impact of scholarly communication items, and hence of scholars, with metrics that derive from usage data. The project has created a semantic model of the scholarly communication process, and an associated large-scale semantic store that relates a range of bibliographic, citation and usage data obtained from a variety of sources. After mapping the structure of the scholarly community on the basis of the established reference data set, MESUR will conduct an investigation into the definition and validation of a range of usage-based metrics. The defined metrics will be cross-validated, resulting in the formulation of guidelines and recommendations." Van De Sompel, et al

bob stein

This is not a scholarly article, it is one person trying to relay his thoughts and predictions about the future of publishing. He welcomes comments, and there are several. He discusses a little bit the history of the print to digital transition, like the added interaction between books and authors via author webpages, or a scholars ability to easily access source materials if they are linked to the original article. This may be useful as a historical guide to discuss where book publishing started and how the publishing model is changing.

John Willinsky: "This paper reviews and addresses the critical issues currently confronting monograph publishing as a matter of reduced opportunities for scholars to pursue book-length projects. In response, it proposes an alternative approach to monograph publishing based on a modular design for an online system that would foster, manage, and publish monographs in digital and print forms using open source software developments, drawn from journal publishing, and social networking technologies that might contribute to not only to the sustainability of monograph publishing but to the quality of the resulting books."

How will scholars have access to print collections if libraries go digital? "This working group was convened in December 2007 to advance the work originally begun under the auspices of the North American Storage Trust, to develop a common understanding of the inter-institutional agreements necessary to promote cost-effective management of legacy print collections. The committee was charged with compiling and synthesizing policy documentation for shared print collections so that common requirements might be identified."

Argues that scholars must shape development of tools. On Stanford Library plan: "The Stanford faculty recommendations are telling for several reasons, which is why I've bothered to begin my discussion there (or, here, as I enjoy the hospitality of the Stanford Humanities Center as a digital humanities fellow). The faculty committee has made a series of highly reasonable and well-argued proposals. Guiding them is a belief, correct in my opinion and that of most humanists, that books aren't going away, we need them and shall continue to do so for a long time to come, and we cannot pit digital tools against book culture. We must accept the hybrid world of scholarly work and earnestly endeavor to support it."

Abstract "Commercial publishing interests are presenting the future of the book in the digital world through the promotion of e-book reading appliances and software. Implicit in this is a very complex and problematic agenda that re-establishes the book as a digital cultural artifact within a context of intellectual property rights management enforced by hardware and software systems. With the convergence of different types of content into a common digital bit-stream, developments in industries such as music are establishing precedents that may define our view of digital books. At the same time we find scholars exploring the ways in which the digital medium can enhance the traditional communication functions of the printed work, moving far beyond literal translations of the pages of printed books into the digital world. This paper examines competing visions for the future of the book in the digital environment, with particular attention to questions about the social implications of controls over intellectual property, such as continuity of cultural memory."

The INKE group is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. The network is led by Canadian scholars, but includes members from the USA and the UK. It is comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer. Our work is divided into four key research groupings: textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management.

"The ARL has hired two consultants, October Ivins of Ivins eContent Solutions and Judy Luther of Informed Strategies, to study at-risk, peer-reviewed journals with no electronic incarnation or good e-subscription model. The team is assessing 4,000 such journals "to see if there isn't an opportunity for the libraries to help" them survive, Ms. Luther explained. She and Ms. Ivins described the study at a working session of the ARL's Scholarly Communication Steering Committee, chaired by James G. Neal, university librarian at Columbia University, and again at a briefing for the wider meeting."