Electronic publishing issues and future trends Anne Bell

Electronic publishing: issues and future trends Anne Bell

Electronic publishing: issues and future trends • Alternatives to existing e-journals – “Free online scholarship” – “Open access to research information” • The present scholarly publishing system is failing

What is wrong with the present system? • Office of Fair Trading Report September 2002 – price increases above inflation – large price disparity between commercial and non-commercial journals – high profits for commercial STM publishing – bundling of journals by commercial publishers, possibly hindering others from entering the market.

What is wrong with the present system? • Electronic publishing not producing benefits for scholarly communication – Driving costs up further but not making information available more widely or more quickly • Copyright transfer

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? • Open access journals – creating new journals whose content is freely available – encouraging publishers to make their content freely available • Author self archiving – e-print archives

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? • Open access journals – SPARC – Public Library of Science – Pub. Med Central – High. Wire Press – Bio. Med Central – Budapest Initiative

Open Access Journals: SPARC • Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition • Activities: – promotional initiatives – high quality low cost alternative journals • Achievements: – price reductions – academic quality – editorial board defections

Open Access Journals: Public Library of Science • Organisation of scientists worldwide • Open letter signed by 30, 000+ scientists from 180+ countries • “…committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world. ”

Open Access Journals: Pub. Med Central • Free public archive for the life sciences • Launched January 2000 by (US) NIH • Both non-peer reviewed pre-prints and peer-reviewed journal papers • Intended that journals would submit content after print publication • Not the same as Bio. Med Central!

Open Access Journals: High. Wire Press • Large free online archive of published articles in the life sciences • Stanford University Library • Hosts 340+ journals that provide free online access to their full-text, including back issues

Open Access Journals: Bio. Med Central • Commercial publishing house • Core journals are e-only - rapid publication, peer reviewed, archived • Committed to the free availability of original research (not added value content) • Author charges • Institutional Membership programme

Open Access Journals: Budapest Initiative • Open Society Institute (OSI) meeting December 2001 - international effort to make research articles freely available on the internet • Backed by $3 M from George Soros. • Advocates alternative system in parallel with established journals • Signed by institutions and individuals

What are the new electronic publishing initiatives? • Author self archiving via e-print archives – Free access to pre-publication versions of papers to expedite communication – Started in 1991 with the Los Alamos physics server (ar. Xiv) – Relationship with traditional journals – Terminology: e-print and pre-print, and are they “archives”? – Copyright

Author self-archiving via e-print archives • Discipline-based: Physics (Los Alamos), Cog. Prints (Southampton) − Pre. PRINT Network • • Institutional: Nottingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Open Citation Project (Citebase) eprints. org

Author self-archiving: Cog. Prints: • Stevan Harnad, Southampton University • Funded by JISC • Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, areas of Computer Science, Anthropology, Biology and Medicine • Both pre-refereed pre-prints and refereed, published reprints

Author self-archiving: Copyright • Publishers’ policies: many allow post publication e-prints to be deposited in earchives by authors • If they do not, there is an alternative known as the Harnad/Oppenheim strategy

Author self-archiving: Institutional archives • MIT – DSpace • UK pilot developments at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham • JISC FAIR Programme: – SHERPA, e-prints UK, TARDIS, ROMEO

Author self-archiving: Institutional archives • JISC FAIR Programme: – SHERPA Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access – TARDIS Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and d. ISclosure – ROMEO Rights MEtadata for Open archiving – e-prints UK

Future trends… • “So far, paper is the only commonly used medium that we know can preserve texts for hundreds of years” – (Peter Suber) • “Publishers are collaborating as never before, among themselves and with digital libraries, to support new electronic services such as reference linking and mediated access…” – (Steve Hitchcock et al)

Future trends • “The online medium has opened up a powerful new capability that will dramatically increase the visibility, accessibility, navigability, interactivity, usability and citability, hence the speed, impact and productivity, of peerreviewed research. ” – (Stevan Harnad)

Some conclusions… • Journals can continue to thrive because they provide major benefits • Publishers should not object to web archives, and authors should not abandon journals • Authors may become publishers and traditional publishers become facilitators • Institutional archives are being created but need to be filled by authors