New Formats and Models for Scholarly Communication: Publication and Access - for Bergren Forum at Alfred University (April 2009)

1. New Formats and Models for Scholarly
Communication: Publication and Access

2. Scope Note:
For the purposes of discussion today we primarily
refer to:
publication of scholarship, in electronic formats,
available on the internet
And on these, we merely scratch the surface

3. Beyond Paper:

4. .. and More
Less Obvious Benefits
! you work is more likely to be actually discovered
! and cited (and reused)
! permits metrics of usage
! extends paper bibliography into a “knowledge network” (linking content,
citations, scholars & readers to be come an exchange)

5. "We're living through—in our historical
generation—the largest increase in
human expressive capability in history."
- Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of
Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin, 2008.

6. ...
“but
is
not
without
its
issues”
...
! access, cost and distribution models
! preservation
! intellectual property and rights management
! media/medium literacy
! impact on teaching, learning the research process
! implications for authors institutions
! evaluation the peer review process
! promotion tenure

7. Same Old Wine
Brand New Bottle
! Retained traditional distribution/economic model: (subscriptions,
memberships, pay per article, bundled titles)
! Scholar writes, the publisher “prints” the user pays
! Transition works without disruption is familiar
! Electronic copy became a “value-added” product or “new” pay
service

8. The Forest For
The Trees
“But That’s How We’ve Always Done It”
! You donate your IP to publishers in return for peer review and
dissemination.
! You also donate service as reviewers and editors
! You’ve surrendered your rights to share it
! and you, your colleagues, your libraries ... are increasingly unable
to buy it back!
! and we just can’t afford it !

12. A Convergence
! Costs Unsustainable
! The Technology Is Here
! Opportunity to Rethink What We Do

13. Some Advantages of OA
! Remove barriers to access
! Re-establish author rights
! Cost efficiencies less time to ”press”
! Facilitate broad pre post pub review
! Encourages collaboration and data sharing
! Greatly increased visibility

14. Unfortunate
Misconceptions
! OA is incompatible with peer review.
! Retaining rights is a reflection of lack of
quality

15. OA Journals

16. Repositories
Digital Archives

17. Tipping Point

19. Making A Statement
! philosophical commitment to removal of access
barriers
! raising the level of understanding conversation
! re-affirming the rights of authors
! inspire action on policy and practice
! celebrate the value of scholarship to a home
institution

20. Creative Commons

21. Recap
! New formats = new communication opportunities
! Legacy publ. models ill-suited unsustainable
! Opportunities to assert author rights, re-use rights remove
access barriers
! Your work, which you gladly donate, is the currency we will
use to buy advances in scholarly communication ... where/
how will you spend it?

23. An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make
possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the
willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their
research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of
inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet.
The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic
distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely
free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars,
teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access
barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich
education, ... uniting humanity in a common intellectual
conversation and quest for knowledge.
---From the Budapest Open Access Initiative