Documenting the deficiencies of Google Scholar

Péter Jacsó, Puppy love versus reality: The illiteracy, innumeracy, phantom hit counts and citation counts of Google Scholar, a PPT presentation at the UKSG Annual Conference (Warwick, April 3-5, 2006). Hits GS-worship hard; hits GS harder.

Source: Peter Suber Open Access News Blog (27 April 2006) [FullText]

Researcher's Profile to Accompany Archived Work

The Dutch DARE program has launched a Profile Management System called PROMAS. From today's announcement:

PROMAS [is] a browser-based tool which integrates existing information from various academic data sources (CRIS, repositories, teaching info, plus others). PROMAS enables academics and institutes alike to create academic profiles in various formats, depending on the situation... Advantages are that the information is always up-to-date and only already existing information is being used. The HARVEX-project has realized not only a prototype, but a fully working production system. Core features of PROMAS are: [1] The system is explicitly directed toward archiving the results of academic labour and in so doing giving the opportunity to fully make use of the possibilities and objectives of the universities DARE repositories; [2] It gives the academics and institutions the possibility to strengthen the communicative aspects of their work toward the relevant stakeholders, by putting specific accents or structures in his profile which he / she thinks his stakeholders will find important; [3] It is in connection with the modern way in which communication and interaction take place in the academic community. Information is being communicated through (text) files in different formats (RTF, HTML, PDF) directed towards human reading and understanding. Information is also used more and more by stakeholders through harvesting meta-data by way of XML / RSS-feed standards (machine reading and understanding)."

Source: Open Access News Blog (26 April 2006) [FullText]

Open Courseware: Another Essential Direction of Open Access Movement?

Toru Iiyoshi, Opportunity is Knocking: Will Education Open the Door? Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, April 2006.

Excerpt: "[O]ne of open education's most critical questions --how can open education's tools and resources demonstrably improve education quality?-- [is] rarely mentioned [at conferences on open education]... The main tenet of open education is to make educational assets freely available to the public. This is becoming easier and less expensive as network and multimedia technology evolves... But several obstacles may stand in the way of using these and other powerful tools and resources in ways that will actually improve the quality of education.

First, although the tools and resources are readily available, transferring practical knowledge about how to use them is not easy. Indeed, this kind of pedagogical know-how is notoriously hard to make visible and portable... [T]he vast majority of this kind of practical knowledge remains tacit and invisible in the experiences of the educator or educators who created the materials... This is why Carnegie's Knowledge Media Lab is working...to develop and disseminate support tools and resources that capture not only materials but the stories and experiences of real teachers using those materials in... concrete settings...

Second, true success in open education requires a change in education culture and policy. The education community values activities like scholarly writing and pursuing new research questions... But... adapting or improving another's educational materials is rarely understood to be a creative, valuable contribution...

Finally, we must look beyond institutional boundaries and connect efforts among many settings and open source entrepreneurs... An initiative like the Sakai Project, for example, which is working to design, build, and deploy a new online education platform that includes course management, electronic portfolio, assessment, collaboration, communication, and other tools actually coordinates multi-institutional collaborative efforts and offers institutions the chance to collectively advance teaching and learning... This is the kind of cooperation and knowledge sharing that will catapult open education to a new level.

...I anticipate three dramatic improvements over time: increased quality of tools and resources, more effective use, and greater individual and collective pedagogical knowledge. Ideally, all will occur simultaneously, combining local classroom innovations and learned lessons through global knowledge sharing... Opportunity is knocking. Will we open the door?"

Source: Peter Suber. How can open courseware make education better? OA News Blog (26 April 2006) [FullText]

What form of OA should universities recommend to faculty?

Jonathan Zittrain gave his inaugural lecture yesterday as Oxford's first Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation. His title: The future of the Internet – and how to stop it. A webcast is available. The Oxford press release contains this tidbit (Thanks to Peter Suber OANews Blog):

Another issue explored during Professor Zittrain’s lecture, was the potential of the Internet for scholars and students around the world. He argued: "Universities should encourage or even require their faculties to publish in open access journals and to publish working papers ahead of final drafts, so that their work is not locked up by some journal copyrights which are increasingly testing the budgets of libraries who wish to subscribe."

Comment by Peter Suber. I applaud Zittrain for endorsing OA in his inaugural lecture. However, universities should require deposit in OA repositories not publication in OA journals (although they should encourage publication OA journals). (1) There aren't enough OA journals today and there won't be for some time. OA journals can easily grow in size but cannot as easily grow in number or scope. (2) Even when there are enough OA journals and they cover every research niche, a requirement to publish in OA journals would limit the freedom of authors to publish in the journals of their choice. (3) If the goal is OA, then universities needn't steer faculty away from subscription journals, at least when these journals consent to the OA archiving of peer-reviewed postprints, as about 70% of them do today. By contrast, (4) OA repositories are available today; (5) they scale quickly and easily; (6) they are compatible with the survival of conventional journals; and (7) they are compatible with author freedom to submit their work wherever they like. These are the reasons why all the OA mandates by funding agencies (public and private) focus on OA repositories, not OA journals.

Why Faculty Don't or Won't Deposit Their Articles into the University's Science Archive

Lesley Perkins, Ego? What ego? OA Librarian, April 26, 2006. Excerpt by Open Access News Blog:

"One of the biggest challenges for academic librarians is getting faculty to deposit their articles into the university's institutional repository (IR), assuming there is one, of course. There are numerous reasons why faculty don't or won't deposit their articles, and there are numerous strategies, some more effective than others, for convincing them to do so. John Willinsky (UBC professor, and author of The Access Principle) believes the key is to appeal to their ego. Faculty love to see their work widely disseminated, read, praised and cited. It feeds their ego, they're human. But what's the hook? John suggests putting a section on the university website homepage that advertises the IR and the university's research output with a feature called "Faculty Article of the Day" (or week, if daily seems too arduous), with a link to the article in the IR. He claims that many faculty check their institution's homepage regularly to see what's new and which faculty member's work is getting attention. It won't take long before faculty realize that if they want their research featured on the homepage, they'd best find a way to deposit it in the IR. Why not go a step further and add the same feature to the university library homepage? Double-boost those egos, and increase access and exposure while you're at it?

Comment by Peter Suber: The Dutch take this idea a step further with Cream of Science, which showcases to the whole country --or, actually, the whole world-- the best work on deposit in Dutch OA repositories. The strategy has been very successful both in attracting readers and stimulating deposits."

Explaining Essentials of Open Access to Science Community. A Must Know

This morning the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) released its response to the UK Gowers Review of Intellectual Property.

Excerpt by Peter Suber: "Open Access (the provision of free online access for all to scholarly research articles) is an aim which is closely aligned with the objectives of many of our members, particularly learned societies. For example, the mission of the Royal Society of Chemistry is ‘to foster and encourage the growth and application of [chemical] science by the dissemination of chemical knowledge’; that of the British Ecological Society is 'to advance and support the science of ecology and publicise the outcome of research, in order to advance knowledge, education and their application'; and that of the Society for Endocrinology is 'the advancement of public education in endocrinology'.

There are essentially two ways of achieving the aim of Open Access (OA) – OA publishing, and self-archiving... The [second] means of achieving OA is for the article (often in a prepublication form) to be deposited in a freely accessible archive; these archives may be either subject-based (such as ArXiv in high-energy phyics and related areas – the first such archive to be established, in 1991, or the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central), or institution-based – the latter are a more recent development and as yet are relatively thinly populated with content. Until now, publishers have generally been relaxed about permitting (or even helping) authors to self-archive prepublication versions of their work; some have even allowed them to deposit a PDF version of the final published article. However, as the number of archives increases, the systems for cross-searching them become more developed, and research funders begin to insist on self-archiving, some publishers are becoming concerned. Some of our members have found that, where all or most of a journal’s content can be found in an archive, users appear content to use that version rather than the one on the publisher’s website, despite the fact that the latter has undergone peer review and editing, and has additional functionality such as reference linking. Since a recent survey of librarians also shows that usage is an important factor in deciding to cancel a journal, we are worried that self-archiving may result in damage to journals’ viability.

Open Access enthusiasts tend to confuse retention of copyright with the ability to self-archive; however, this is inaccurate and publishers may explicitly permit, limit or even forbid self-archiving whether or not the author has transferred copyright – ALPSP has produced model agreements for both circumstances. Publishers are increasingly introducing some limitations on authors’ ability to self-archive, including a time delay to protect subscription income. However, we are concerned that authors do not always observe these conditions, and archive managers are abdicating any responsibility for removing wrongly posted items.

We would be very concerned at any move which limited or removed publishers’ ability to control the manner and timing of self-archiving, as we believe this could ultimately damage or even destroy the viability of journals. If journals are lost, the valuable functions they perform for the scientific community – not only managing the process of peer review, but also selecting and gathering together in one convenient place a manageable quantity of relevant information for a particular community, as well as developing new features and indeed new journals – will be lost. In addition, those learned society activities (such as conferences, bursaries and research grants, as well as public education) which are partially supported by journal income will also suffer.

The response also has sections on mass digitization initiatives, like the Google Library project; fair use; DRM; orphan works; CC licenses, and other OA-related topics.

Comment by Peter Suber: (1) ALPSP is right that OA serves the missions of many of its members. (2) ALPSP is right that when articles are deposited in OA repositories, they attract some readers away from the published versions at publisher web sites, as measured by downloads from the publisher sites. However, there's no evidence to date that decreased publisher downloads translate into decreased subscriptions. Library subscription decisions are orthogonal to user download decisions. (3) The ALPSP's own March 2006 study found that high journal prices far surpass OA archiving as a cause of journal cancellations. (4) ALPSP is right --if I may paraphrase-- that retention of copyright is neither necessary nor sufficient to allow authors to self-archive. It's not necessary because authors don't need the full bundle of rights in order to authorize self-archiving. It's not sufficient in the sense that many journals (for example, Nature and Science) say that they let authors retain copyright but in the fine print insist on exceptions that deprive authors of the right to self-archive. However, retaining copyright simpliciter or without qualification is more than enough to allow authors to self-archive. (5) Funding agencies that encourage or require OA archiving are not amending copyright law, not making funded work uncopyrightable, and not interfering with the freedom of authors to transfer copyright or the freedom of publishers to acquire and hold copyright. (6) The Gowers commission should understand that the rationale for encouraging or requiring OA archiving is to make research literature more accessible, visible, discoverable, and useful. Even if publishers could document harm to themselves, which they have not yet done, funding agencies have a right to lay down conditions making the work they fund benefit more stakeholders rather than fewer. Public funding agencies in particular have a right, and obligation, to put the public interest in access to publicly-funded research ahead the economic interests of a private-sector industry. (7) Funder policies will not undermine peer review. One reason is that journals charging subscription fees are not the only providers of peer review. Another is that the funder policies only apply to articles already published in peer-reviewed journals.

Source: ALPSP on OA archiving and copyright. Open Access News Blog (24 April 2006) [FullText]

Neurobiology of Lipids Fourth Anniversary: Scope Expanded, Subject Postscript Archive Mission Taken

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am writing to inform you that Neurobiology of Lipids is expanding its' scope.

In addition to the publication of original research articles, review articles, commentaries, correspondence arising matters and all other type of manuscripts, NoL will be archiving original research articles (on the subject of the neurobiology of lipids) published in other journals.

A year ago Neurobiology of Lipids welcomed National Institutes of Health (NIH) new policy on Public Access effective May 3, 2005 (see NoL Newsstand 6 February 2006). A year latter the first Report on the NIH Public Access Policy showed the policy compliance rate is 3.8 %. It means that just "three point eight percent of the literature that was eligible for archiving under the NIH Public Acces policy actually got archived in NIH PubMedCentral (PMC). This is despite NIH did its level best to communicate the policy to researchers, and they’re decently competent at outreach." In contrast, for-profit publishers didn’t spread much info on NIH policy among researchers. While the policy had no teeth and researchers don’t understand and don’t care about the economics or socioinformatics of publishing, we hope the benefits of archiving your original research article in NoL are compelling.

First, you will retain the publication impact of the original journal (Science, Nature, PNAS, Journal of Lipid Research, FASEB Journal, Neurology, or any other journal that you selected as the first place of publication and succeded publishing at).

We realise the lack of comparable impact by the Neurobiology of Lipids is the major reason you feel hesitant to submit your best data to NoL. We feel happy pre-publication inquiries and recent submissions indicate there is a change for good. We further hope that NoL archiving of your articles published elsewhere will help to bridge the gap between your willingness to have your major data published in major journals, and your possible interest to contribute to NoL.

Second, you will have article archived at the Neurobiology of Lipids, the major subject publication, where it will be accessible to everyone for free.

What is the readership of the Neurobiology of Lipids? We hope that NoL home page visitors world map (available in smaller or bigger clusters) and article access statistics (available at the journal home page) will point you to the answer. The following data may be of additional interest (aslo see the journal page "Why publish in NoL?").

By now we have established several avenues of dissemination to ensure great readership. Published papers are promoted by Neurobiology of Lipids content alert email service (presently 970 individual subscribers working on the subject of the journal scope). Neurobiology of Lipids articles are indexed at the Chemical Abstracts (a service by American Chemical Society), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and in all major universal web search engines including Yahoo, Google and academic Google Scholar and Elsevier Scirus. At Google, NoL home page rank is 6 of 10 (compare with the Google rank value of 7/10, 8/10, and 9/10 for Journal of Lipid Research, Journal of Biological Chemistry and PNAS, for example). Neurobiology of Lipids is also indexed in great number of academic libraries worldwide, Harvard Open URL generator, Serials Solutions, Bowker Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, NIH NLM catalog, EBSCO A-to-Z service, BIOSIS Biology Browser, and subject resources, such as the paper of the week collection by Alzheimer Research Forum (that has 3000+ current subscribers). NoL articles are well cited as judged by ISI Web of Knowledge Science Citation index. This will provide additional citation opportunity when your original research report is archived in NoL. As we informed you previously, last year NIH PubMedCentral (PMC) welcomed NoL to work on meeting technical requirements of the journal archiving in PMC. We will continue working on PubMedCentral archiving immediately after we know (in June 2006) about the decision on the Grant proposal by NoL managing editor, having NoL archiving in PMC as one of the specific aims of this Open Access project.

Third, easy submission for archiving in NoL

NoL will consider for archiving the original research articles, peer-reviewed and published in other journals before submission for NoL archive. When your article is in press, and the proofs are corrected, it will be natural to consider submitting the corrected final article text file and image files to NoL for archiving (along with the "Manuscript Registration" form submission to be modified to allow archiving submission by April 12, Neurobiology of Lipids 4th anniversary). We will process your article to yield NoL archived article in .HTML, Adobe .PDF, and NIH DTD .XML format. The article will be labelled with the " Neurobiology of Lipids Archive" article prefix and will indicate peer-review was performed by the original place of publication along with full citation details of original publication.

To ensure the original publisher is duly identified, you will have to submit to NoL complete citation information, such as journal title, ISSN number, volume and issue numbers, date, paging, DOI, PubMed ID, and hyperlink (URL) to the article on the Publisher/other web site(s).

Forth, the independence pleasure of liberating your scholar output from commercial publisher cabal, making your research freely available to peers and the public:

As a part of article submission for NoL archive, you will have to verify your copyright. Because your article has been published previously, check your copyright transfer form to be sure you have the right to post it. Check current policies of your publisher, because new regulations may override the terms you accepted in the past and presently allow archiving. If it is a work of multiple authorship, ascertain that the other authors also approve article archiving at NoL.

Understanding Neurobiology of Lipids major archiving term is also important. At present many for-profit and learned societies' scientific publishers allow self archiving and Institutional archiving of scholar works. See specific language of the self-archiving policy by Elsevier and Science magazine by AAAS. The latter source further says, that in order "to qualify as a personal web site the site must be devoted to the author's research and owned by the author (or if the author's employer is a non-profit institution, owned by that institution)." To meet such requirement by publishers you will have to agree (upon submission of your article for NoL archiving) with "personal website" definition of your NoL postscript archive web folder, the publication unit of Neurobiology of Lipids. Archived article folder, however, will retain the standard structure of NoL publications, such as <www.neurobiologyoflipids.org/content/4/3> , for example.

As a part of your submission, you will also have to grant to NoL, the right to disseminate your article postscript, provided that the integrity of the article is guaranteed, that the original publisher is duly identified, and that proper attribution of authorship and correct complete citation details are endorsed on the postscript publication.

Because of universal free open access to your article, we do not believe archiving in NoL will create a redundant publication

Conclusion

As a result of your article archiving in NoL, it will become belonging (in addition to your pride of original publication elsewhere) to a so called Open Access domain, freely available for both peers and the public. I therefore feel confident NoL archiving of your article won't create a redundant publication. Those of you who could not read yest very interesting artcile "Brain cholesterol turnover required for geranylgeraniol production and learning in mice" by Kotti et al., [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. (7 March 2006) 103(10): 3869-74] because of no subscription to PNAS should realize what I am talking about. Would this article archiving in NoL yield any harm other then the increase of readership, article usage and future citation impact? The answer rests with you, Neurobiology of Lipids contributors and readers.

Sincerely,


Alexei Koudinov, MD, PhD
Editor
Neurobiology of Lipids (ISSN 1683-5506)
www.neurobiologyoflipids.org

Publisher policies don't affect rates of self-archiving

Kristin Antelman, Self-archiving practice and the influence of publisher policies in the social sciences, Learned Publishing, April 2006.

Abstract: Authors in different disciplines exhibit very different behaviours on the so-called 'green' road to open access, i.e. self-archiving. This study looks at the self-archiving behaviour of authors publishing in leading journals in six social science disciplines. It tests the hypothesis that authors are self-archiving according to the norms of their respective disciplines rather than following self-archiving policies of publishers, and that, as a result, they are self-archiving significant numbers of publisher PDF versions. It finds significant levels of self-archiving, as well as significant self-archiving of the publisher PDF version, in all the disciplines investigated. Publishers' self-archiving policies have no influence on author self-archiving practice.

(Peter Suber note at OANews Blog: Several articles from the same issue might touch on OA issues. See the TOC)