A bill which would require California-funded research to be deposited in open access repositories passed the state’s Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee on May 1.
The Winds of Change | Periodicals Price Survey 2013
By on April 25, 2013 5 Comments
The stock market has hit record highs, and unemployment has reached the lowest level since the recession began. Despite this good news, the library economic environment has not seen commensurate improvement. There continues to be a struggle to find the resources needed to support library collections and services, and conditions remain highly unsettled.
E-Textbooks Redux: What Does Kirtsaeng Mean to the Market? | Peer to Peer Review
By on April 9, 2013 Leave a Comment
Librarians rejoice! The Supreme Court of the United States insisted in its Wiley v. Kirtsaeng decision that we can legally lend foreign-manufactured materials!
The case was about textbooks and textbook-market arbitrage, though. That’s worth keeping sight of. Extrapolating from reactions on all sides, what does the Wiley v. Kirtsaeng decision likely mean for the textbook-publishing business, and what can textbook publishers and libraries do if they don’t like that?
Predatory Publishers | Peer to Peer Review
By on April 4, 2013 7 Comments
There are definitely publishers who come to mind when I hear the expression “predatory publishers.” My first thought is of the high-profile academic publishers who are increasing their journal prices by ten or 20 percent per year, leaving libraries with impossible choices to be made between maintaining their journal subscriptions in key fields or buying [...]
Ten Questions with the Library Publishing Coalition
By on April 2, 2013 Leave a Comment
More than 50 academic libraries, in collaboration with the Educopia Institute, founded the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) this January. The project initially emerged from conversations between Purdue University, the University of North Texas, and Virginia Tech. LJ caught up with the co-authors of the LPC’s founding documents—Julie G. Speer, Associate Dean for Research and Informatics, University Libraries Virginia Tech, and Charles Watkinson, Director and Head of Purdue Libraries’ Scholarly Publishing Services and the Purdue University Press—to find out how the LPC is progressing.
Six Questions with Damon Jaggars, former JLA Editor in Chief
By on March 28, 2013 Leave a Comment
Damon E. Jaggars, Associate University Librarian for Collections & Services at the Columbia University Libraries, recently stepped down as editor of the Journal of Library Administration (JLA), along with the rest of the editorial board, because of disagreement with the publisher’s licensing terms. LJ caught up with him to hear his reasoning and plans for the future.
JLA Board Resigns Over Licensing Terms
By on March 27, 2013 1 Comment
Editor-in-chief Damon Jaggars and the whole editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned en masse on March 22 over the journal’s licensing terms.
Research Librarians Discuss New Ways to Support Scholars
By on March 11, 2013 1 Comment
The stable and predictable days of the 20th century, when research libraries could rely on their prized local collections to define their distinct and distinguished place on campus, are long gone.
The 21st-century’s user-centric networked world and the concomitant Sturm und Drang of cyber scholarship have caught research libraries in a seemingly unending flux. Traditional practices and services are no longer adequate to support scholars, but how best to reassess and redefine services, how best to reposition the library within the scholarly enterprise, how best to add new value, remains an ongoing, critical challenge.
Thirty-two research librarians gathered March 5-6 in Scottsdale, AZ, at a symposium hosted by Ex Libris to discuss this challenge, which is as prickly, vast, and shifting as the nearby Sonoran Desert.
Scholars and Musicians | Peer to Peer Review
By on March 7, 2013 Leave a Comment
The White House recently released a memo entitled Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. According to the memo, “the Administration is committed to ensuring that…the direct results of federally funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community.” To clarify “direct results,” the memo continues: “Such results include peer-reviewed publications and digital data.” Along with the recent Congressional bill The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), the country is possibly one step closer to open access scholarship.
Administration Takes Faster Action on Access to Federally Funded Research
By on February 22, 2013 Leave a Comment
In a policy memorandum released today, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director John Holdren directed Federal agencies with more than $100 million in research and development spending to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication, and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research.
In one swoop, Holdren may have achieved many of the aims of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), the recently introduced legislation which many feared is likely to die in committee as its predecessor FRPAA repeatedly did.
