Information Research Weblog

From Hazel Edmunds:

I think there are two issues raised in Tom Wilson's "Not the national library" which need to be addressed.

As a non-academic I get frustrated time and time again by research resources being available to "universities" or "registered HE and FE institutions" and so on. Surely if a service has been paid for from central government funds then the service should, with appropriate safeguards for confidentiality and security, be available to all? This is not something which is unique to the British Library.

Charging for a service, over and above the funding that comes to an organisation from government, is, I suggest, a different issue to be resolved by the board of the organisation and the funding body. In the case of the British Library, as I understand it, the Director was charged with the task of increasing usage and she's certainly achieved that -- the reading rooms are frequently so full that getting a seat of any kind is impossible. There is a buzz about the place that says the building is used and enjoyed. Increased usage does, however, mean that more money is needed not less -- more cleaners, more security people, more staff in the basement getting books and journals out, more staff at the reading room desks to answer queries ... I don't need to go on, do I? The response of government? Cuts, in real terms, to the budget. Can't write more now -- I'm off to the BL to do more research!

A certain amount of publicity has surrounded the British Library's announcement that it is to make available in digital form some 100,000 old titles - mainly from the 19th century. It is good news that the collection will be open to staff and students of UK universities, but bad news that it will not be open access to all. The British Library Act of 1972 gives the Board the right to impose charges, with the approval of the relevant Secretary of State, but it seems to be entirely against the intent of the major provision of the Act. The Library is defined as consisting of "a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, periodicals, films and other recorded matter, whether printed or otherwise." and when reasons of preservation, or otherwise, require the provision of digital versions of documents, they surely become part of the 'collections' referred to, and have no special status, and, therefore, no special reason for charging. The costs of running the Library and the costs of digitisation are derived from tax - with the exception that relationships with such as Microsoft may provide additional resources - and we have the usual situation in the UK of the citizen being required to pay twice for anything connected in any way with government information and data. Write to your MP today! The British Library needs more money to preserve its present services, and is going to need more to enable it to fulfil the role of national library more effectively and more openly.

The presentations from the Berlin 5 conference on open access (held not in Berlin but in Padua, Italy) are now online.

I haven't read all of them yet, and probably won't, since, as far as I can tell they are all Powerpoint presentations without the accompanying paper. As a result, some elements of practically all of the presentations are unintelligible without the context and in one or two cases the presentation as a whole seems to bear little resemblance to the title of the paper or to the abstract.

By and large, it looks to have been a pretty humdrum affair, with the same old issues being debated, wheels being reinvented and nothing new emerging.

Repositories and the 'author pays' models seems to be the only models discussed and mention of the collaborative, no-money-changes-hands model of Information Research (and of other journals covered in our Case Studies series) is non-existent.

Fred Friend of UCL and JISC tells the audience that JISC (the UK's Joint Information Systems Comittee of the Higher Education Funding Councils) "is now working with other organizations on models which fund gold OA publication charges as part of the research process and budget" having experimented with spending &pund;384,000 to persuade publishers to adopt author-charges and finding that it 'did not scale' - i.e., it would cost to much to continue.

I wonder if JISC has any idea of how many OA journals, operating on a subsidy and collaboration basis, that amount of money could have funded? With a £10,000 start-up subsidy, JISC could have got 38 OA journals under way - or 15 journals could have been given a £5,000 a year for five years with the same amount of money (or, rather, a little less). That could have made a very significant impact on the development of open access in the UK and could have persuaded a number of small-circulation, scholarly journals to have converted to the OA route. As it is, £384,000 has gone into the pockets of shareholders. Great thinking, JISC!

It seems that Harvard's top economists are looking more to electronic dissemination of their work than they are to publication in the top journals. The explanation from Dani Rodrik's Weblog:

Several pieces of evidence bolster the view that one factor contributing to these trends is that the role of journals in disseminating research has been reduced. One is that the citation benefit to publishing in a top general-interest journal now appears to be fairly small for top-department authors. Another is that Harvard authors appear to be quite successful in garnering citations to papers that are not published in top journals. The fact that the publication declines appear to be a top-department phenomenon (as opposed to a prolific-author phenomenon) suggests that a top-department affiliation may be an important determinant of an author’s ability to sidestep the traditional journal system.

Rodrik is Editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics and he notes that his own experience as an editor of a prestigious journal supports this conclusion.

It's been a while since I last checked on the 'hits' on papers published in Information Research, so here's an update. It's a pretty crude measure of popularity, but the best we can do at the moment. Here we have the most hit papers in each of the published volumes of the journal from 1 to 11:

• Volume 1: An action research approach to curriculum development. 70,618 hits; 15 Google Scholar cites (4,708 hits to 1 cite)
• Volume 2: Scanning the business environment for information: a grounded theory approach. 55,272 hits; 16 cites (3,454:1)
• Volume 3: Business Use of The World Wide Web: a report on further investigations. 17,298 hits; 42 cites (412:1)
• Volume 4: Information in organisations: directions for information management. 46,971 hits; 18 cites (2610:1)
• Volume 5: Recent trends in user studies: action research and qualitative methods. 33,612 hits; 21 cites (1,600:1)
• Volume 6: Determining organizational information needs: the Critical Success Factors approach. 65,863 hits; 13 cites (5,066:1)
• Volume 7: Environmental scanning as information seeking and organizational learning. 79,429 hits; 30 cites (2,648:1)
• Volume 8: The nonsense of knowledge management. 158,371 hits; 126 cites (1,257:1)
• Volume 9: Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour. 47,390 hits; 13 cites (3,645:1)
• Volume 10: Information and knowledge management: dimensions and approaches. 13,749 hits; 4 cites (3,437:1)
• Volume 11: Scanning the business external environment for information: evidence from Greece. 17,070 hits; 0 cites.

The data reveal that it takes an average of 2,884 hits to generate 1 citation in Google Scholar. I shall have to get round to checking out that number with more of the papers.

The advice of the lobbyist retained by the publishers has been revealed on the Web (Peter Suber has more of the story). The first paragraph of that advice is very telling:

The Coalition faces the daunting task of trying to win support for an issue in which publishers are not sympathetic - continuing to charge fees for access to scientific journals. It's hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information. There's no magical sound bit that will cure this issue, however, at the present time there is little or no "pushback" from the publishing industry. To inject the industry's position into the debate, we recommend bypassing mass "consumer" audiences in favor of reaching a more elite group of decision makers employing strategies that emphasize "high-concept" rhetoric and in-the-trenches political-style communications.

Mmmm, interesting, eh? There's an even more interesting set of Rhetorical campaign points:

• Develop simple messages (e.g., Public access equals government censorship; Scientific journals preserve the quality/pedigree of science; government seeking to nationalize science and be a publisher) for use by Coalition members
• Develop analogies that put the public access issue into a context whereby target audiences will understand its pitfalls and perilous implications not to mention the hypocrisy of science leaders getting salaries and honoraria but declaring the publishing industry's need for capital as being somehow immoral
  • Paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.
  • In theory this may provide free taxpayer access to research that they fund, but they will pay eventually with substandard articles and their money being used to develop and maintain an electronic article depot rather than to fund new research.

Enough said, I think. It's beginning to dawn on the PRISM Coalition that they have shot themselves in the foot by adopting some of what was proposed and, clearly, for them to adopt some of the other ideas would be even more disastrous. For example, how much of the industry's profits go to investment in capital developments? Well, these companies' reports are on the Web and Reed Elsevier, for example, report that out of an operating profit of £1,210 million in 2006 (up 9% on 2005), capital expenditure was £196 million, while dividends paid to shareholders amounted to £371 million (up 10% on 2005), with a further £271 million being spent on share repurchases. So, 16% on capital developments and a total of 53% on dividends and share repurchasing. I think we can see where the company's priorities lie.
Not that this is a bad thing - companies are in business to pay dividends to shareholders, but I wonder what the profits would be if the publishers had to pay for their raw material and for the peer-review? I suspect that we would see many fewer journals and an even more rapid increase in true OA publishing.

Good news on the Open Access front. The Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie is moving from toll access (i.e., subscription based) to open access. Keven Haggerty, the editor of CJS/CCS, writes in his editorial:

The financial implications of this move remain somewhat opaque, and I have agonized over this issue. The situation of independent scholarly publishing in Canadian has always been precarious. This is particularly true with the CJS/CCS which does not receive any association funds. Retiring the hard copy version of the journal eliminates subscription revenue, which is one of our major sources of funding. That said, mimicking wider publishing trends, the journal’s subscriptions have been substantially declining at the same time that our electronic readership (through Project MUSE and other venues) has increased dramatically. Moreover, it was always the case that most of our subscription revenues went to cover the costs associated with producing a hard copy volume, such as printing, subscription management and postage.

He goes on to note that CJS/CCS has been subsidised by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, but he expects to continue to receive these funds, since the SSHRC is an advocate of open access.

Many scholarly journals, published by universities and university presses must be in very similar situations - living off subsidy and subscriptions, the latter paying for most of the paper-associated costs (as well as those of maintaining the record of subscribers). With the move to OA, such costs are wiped out at an instant and what is then need to live on is a very much smaller amount of money. In the case of Information Research it is a zero amount of money, since there is no income and no monetary subsidy. Perhaps with this example, and the example of new scholarly journals taking the free OA track from the beginning, universities will begin to realise the advantages of OA. True OA - not the author-charge model - what I have called the Platinum Route.

This news picked up from Heather Morrison, via Peter Suber

The publishers' lobby organization has changed the language of its top page - no doubt the result of the wave of opposition it aroused by attempting to mislead researchers, funders and, most importantly, the policy makers.

However, no one should imagine that this means that the organization's ideas have changed, nor its way of putting a spin on just about everything it says. For example, we are directed from the top page to:

Learn more about government intervention and the risks and unintended consequences of proposed legislation;"

and, clicking on the link, we find:

Various initiatives and proposals have been put forth by special interest groups and some legislators that would force private sector publishers to surrender to the federal government all peer-reviewed articles that report on research supported by federal research grants.

Such undue government intervention in scholarly publishing poses inherent risks and problems, including:

* Threats to the economic viability of journals and the independent system of peer review

* The potential for introducing selective bias into the scientific record

* Government data repositories being subject to budget uncertainties

* Unwarranted increases in government spending to compete with private sector publishing

* Expropriation of publishers' investments in copyrighted articles

* Undermining the reasonable protections of copyright holders"

Let's look at these in turn: the first links the economic viability of journals with the independent system of peer review, as though if the former is threatened, as it is, the latter will also be detrimentally affected. However, this is not the case: the system of peer review exists because of the willingness of academics to give their time freely to ensure the integrity of published research work. True, it is not perfect, but it works and it would continue to work in an open access world: there is no reason whatsoever to assume that if the academic community wished peer-review to continue, it would not do so. However, the academic community could do the established commercial publishers considerable damage if they withdrew their voluntary labour. How, then, would the publishers ensure the integrity of the research record? Presumably, if the subscriptions continued to flow, they would be quite happy. Methinks they do protest too much on this point!

The second point on the introduction of 'selective bias' is presumably related to the first: they are suggesting that if peer review did not exist in an open access world, and continued in the commercial publishing world, the quality of what is published would be lowered and 'bias' would result. But this is nonsense: the answer is to repeat the points above. There is no necessary connection between commercial publishing and peer review. Indeed some publishers are quite happy to publish journals with no scholarly review, or with editorial review only - are they leaping to the barricades to prevent the rise of open access? Of course not.

The notion that somehow the existence of commercial publishing is some kind of fall-back system if government-funded data repositories were to be underfunded to the extent of ceasing to exist is also nonsense. Publishers do not maintain alternative data repositories, nor do they contribute to them. Organizations such as the ESRC Data Archive in the UK collect raw data from the researchers who collect it, along with the research instruments, coding manuals, etc. No publisher does any of this work, so to link their publishing activities to the existence of data archives is simply silly.

'Unwarranted increases in government spending' - oh my, that's really a beauty! Here is an industry that obtains its raw material free of charge as a result of government, charitable foundation and industry spending on research, and then benefits from the subscriptions of the institutions that employ those same researchers, complaining that the government might cut their profits by encouraging open access publishing. That's very rich. In effect the publishers are saying: "Look government, you spend all this money to give us raw material from which we can make a profit, so please don't encourage anything that might limit those profits!" And I love the idea of 'private sector publishing'! If only! Let us imagine what 'private sector publishing' would actually involve: first, the publishers would have to pay authors to write for them, as they pay novelists and the authors of travel books, biographies, etc., etc. Then, they would have to pay academics to review the papers they had paid for to determine whether they were appropriate to publish (of course, under this system, they would rapidly forget about peer-review, since it would eat into their profits), and then they would have to market vigorously to persuade institutions to buy their products. And, at the same time they would have to compete with a public sector open access system. Can you guess what would happen? I leave it to your imaginations.

So there's a danger of government expropriating industry's investment in copyrighted articles and, final point, of undermining the rights of copyright holders. Well now, what are we to make of this? First, the industry has invested nothing in the copyrighted articles - the investment has been made by government, etc. They have an investment in the published article, but not in the original copyrighted source. And it is a moot point, I understand, from lawyer friends as to whether an author can actually sign away his or her copyright. I believe there is no case law in the UK on this point and publishers are unwilling to take a case to court in case they lose. If this is so, then the copyright holder is the author of the text and/or his or her institution, depending upon the practice of the institution and all that can be granted to the publisher is a licence to publish under negotiated terms. Perhaps those threatened copyright holders (the authors) should bear this in mind and, instead of signing away their rights - which may not actually be lawful - they should negotiate. After all, they are now in a strong position, given the existence of open access, and free, journals in so many fields.

Take all this stuff with a pinch of salt and make sure your representative in Congress or Parliament understands that lobby talk is not necessarily reporting with integrity.

The Swedish national library, Kungliga Biblioteket, has launched an R&D programme in open access under the title Open Access.se. The information is all in Swedish and my knowledge of the language amounts to little more than saying 'Hej!' - but that, plus a dictionary suggests the following.

The programme has three elements in its 2007 call for proposals:

1. The contents of open archives in universities and university colleges. This has two elements to it: creating critical mass in the free availability of scientific publications; and, Expanding the contents of open archives with new types of material.
2. Promoting the use of material in open archives and OA journals.
3. Quality issues - towards determining the framework for certifying open archives in Sweden and such issues as the services to be offered, etc.

A news item on the KB site notes that the KK-Stiftelsen (the Swedish Research Council) is contributing 2.5 million Swedish kroner (approx. £183,000 or $371,000) to the programme for 2008-2009.

Clearly, Sweden means business :-)

I've reviewed three of Leandro Herrero's books in the journal over the past couple of years:

• The trouble with management,
• The leader with seven faces, and
• Viral change: the alternative of slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organizations.

so I thought I would do this one on the Weblog - a first, in other words - at least for me.

Herrero's books are built on his background knowledge of psychology and on his practice as a management consultant. The result is the the books are always well-grounded, not only experience of his ideas in practice, but also in sound theoretical knowledge. The difference from many similar texts is that this author's books are actually readable.

Now there's another: Leandro Herrero New leaders wanted: now hiring! 12 kinds of people you must find, seduce, hire and create a job for. Beaconsfield: Meeting minds. 2007. £15.95

The author's starting point is one with which we are all familiar: the world has changed, distance is diminished, the pace of organizational life has increased, presence is global not local. Where Herrero differs in his analysis is that, rather than debate new business models, or the challenge of the networked society, or e-commerce, he chooses to focus on the kinds of people who are needed by today's businesses.

After a brief introduction, each chapter is about one of the twelve types of 'new kinds of people' needed in the organization, if it is to survive in the global economy. Each is given a catchy title that encapsulates the qualities involved: re-constructors of elephants; riders of the network; disruptors; talki-walkers and so on. I shan't spoil your fun in finding them when you read the book (as you surely must!), but we'll look in a little more detail at one of them, chosen at random (literally, I used a random number table :-).

Chapter 5, is just about the only chapter without the catchy heading (just my luck!): it's called 'HCIF Managers', which is translated as, 'human capital investment fund managers' - not exactly likely to stick in the mind, and I think that 'People Person' might have served as well. In common with the other chapters, there is first an explanation of the metaphor (here it is the metaphor of investment - the HCIF manager treats people in the organization as investors of their own human capital), with a page devoted to a keyword associated with the type, in this case it is 'talent', since the HCIF manager must be skilled at recognizing what talents the individual is capable of investing. This is followed by a section on the implications for the organization - it must be a place where people believe it is worth investing in. This discussion is followed by a 'recruitment briefing', a profile of the person needed, and a section headed, 'In the meantime in the office', which is a check list of things to do to foster the organization worth investing in.

For the Chief Executive, looking at how to change his/her organization, the advantage of the book is that it is an easy read and s/he can quickly decide how many of the types are already in the organization and which ones are missing. For it is not Herrero's claim that each one of these types is good for a particular kind of organization, but that today's organization needs all twelve. There is, however, the 13th type:

...you - Manager, CEO, Head of HR, Chairman of the Board, Section Head, Team Leader or Business Owner - are the 13th type: a leader who understands this messy, crazy environment full of possibilities and whose role it is to seduce these 'new people' and to support them within the organization. (p. 11).

The book concludes with a 'Summing up' and an 'Epilogue' (Mapping your organization's DNA), which provides another twelve characteristics of people, which the reader is advised to try to detect in their organization. If this book does nothing more that get the executive out of his or her office in into the retail outlet or the shop floor or the trading room, or wherever, it will have more than done its job.

Recommendation: buy it!

See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/04/1341248&from=rss

When even one of the world's most prestigious university presses behaves in this manner one really must ask, When is the academic community going to take scholarly communication back into its own hands?

I suggested, last week, that academics should resign from editorial boards of journals published by the supporters of PRISM. Clearly, then, I had to do so myself. Below is a copy of my letter to the Editor of the International Journal of Information Management (a journal I founded). I have written in similar terms the editor of Education for Information.
----------------------------------------

Dear Philip,

I have felt for some time that there is a conflict of interest in my membership of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Information Management, given my advocacy of open access publishing and, more to the point, the fact that I am publisher and editor of an open access journal.

This feeling was strengthened by the recent announcement of the lobby group PRISM, established, as I understand by the commercial publishers as an attempt to discredit the open access mode of publishing. In particular, their claim that open access threatened the peer review process is nothing less than the 'big lie' - the propaganda technique of Dr. Goebbels - and, clearly, I cannot let my name continue to be associated with a publisher who is prepared to use this kind of tactic.

You and I both know that this claim is nonsense and it is a very great pity that the publishers are prepared to employ the services of a lobbyist who adopts this kind of strategy: it does little to encourage trust in their motives.

I particularly regret that I have to resign from the Board of a journal that I founded and with which I have been associated for so long, but in the present circumstances no other course of action is available to me.

Given that one of the claims of the PRISM Website is that the publishers spend significant amounts of money on supporting the peer review process, and given that, in common with other academic referees, I have never benefited from that spending, I shall in future refuse to undertake unpaid refereeing work for any journal which is not an open access publication.

I shall be copying this message to my colleagues on the Editorial Board and to my Weblog, in support of the open access movement.

With regrets and kind regards to you, personally,

Tom

------------------------------------------------------------

The reaction to the establishment of PRISM is growing apace! Thanks to Peter Suber for a pointer to this post from Coturnix, which summarises the debate with quotations from just about everybody.

In the last item, I suggested writing to the UCU and AAUP to find out what their reaction to PRISM is likely to be.

Here's my message to the UCU - I sent it to Malcolm Keight, National head of higher education and mkeight@ucu.org.uk and I suggest that other members of UCU should do the same:

----------------------------------- Dear Malcolm,

I'm not sure that you are the right person on the UCU contact list. but, no doubt you will pass this message on if you are not.

You will be aware of the debate that has been going on for some years now on open access to the scholarly output and of such developments as RCUK attempt to evolve some kind of policy and the government's rejection of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on the subject.

The most recent development is the establishment in the USA of 'PRISM' (http://www.prismcoalition.org/), the somewhat (and deliberately) misleading "Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine". In spite of its title, this is, in fact a lobby group for the publishing industry and, no doubt it will seek to extend its activities in some way or other to the UK.

So, my question is: What is the UCU intending to do to counteract the highly misleading propositions put forward on the PRISM Web page?

My suggestion (http://www.free-conversant.com/irweblog/) is that academics should resign from the editorial boards of non-OA journals and begin to charge a daily rate for reviewing papers.

I'll be interested to have your response, -------------------------------------------------------------

Heather Morrison's pro-OA blog has a nice comment on PRISM - the publishing lobby against OA. Noting:

PRISM, the Coalition of the highly profitable publishing industry developed by a branch of the Association of American Publishers, is alerting us to their concern that they believe that the hundreds of millions of dollars a year of revenue they enjoy is at risk, and that we average citizens and voters MUST act to join their lobbying effort, and share our deep concerns about this with our U.S. representative.

I am sure that you, dear reader, are every bit as concerned as I am about this horrendous possible loss of profits for the wealthy. Urgent action is needed, now!

Let's set up a charitable foundation to help out these poor profit-makers. We can call it, "Save the Millionaires!".

Nice one, Heather!

I have another suggestion: since the publishers are spending so much money on the peer review process, isnt't it time that those who do the reviews were properly paid for it? The University and College Union in the UK, I believe, has a recommended daily rate for consultancy and similar work - or at least the Association of University Teachers had such a rate and, when I last looked, it was £650

It takes me, typically, about a day to properly review and write my comments on a paper, so £650 would seem a fair return for the work.

However, apart from that, the real issue is that the commercial publishers are making the running in trying to persuade the population to support their ludicrous claims - so what are the academics going to do? Sit back and wait to be rolled over? Business as usual? There's only one response to this development and that is to fight it. What are the American Association of University Professors and the UCU going to do in response? Can we expect them to lobby Congress and Parliament to counter the action of the publishers? I don't live in the US, but perhaps someone could write to the AAUP and ask them, and I shall do the same here in the UK asking the UCU how it proposes to counter any developments here.

And there is something else, which is long overdue, that all academics can do: resign from the editorial boards of non-OA journals, and state their daily rate for reviewing. Let's have a bit of action! I doubt if anyone will notice it when I resign from the two commercially-published journals on which I serve (one of which I founded), but if we have concerted action from thousands of academics then perhaps the publishers will understand that setting up PRISM to peddle their lies is counter-productive.

The commercial journal publishers are really in a state of panic. Reports from various sources point to their launch of PRISM: The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, a lobby organization to help them try to persuade the US Congress (and presumably Parliament in the UK) to ban Open Access. Of course, they don't say that: we have the usual weasel-worded statement that lobby organizations in the USA seem to be adept at. Fortunately, it isn't going to fool many on this side of the Atlantic. I can't imagine many scientists anywhere taking much notice of the proposition that:

Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing, putting at risk the integrity of scientific research by:

• undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it;
• opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record;
• subjecting the scientific record to the uncertainty that comes with changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling with definitive versions; and
• introducing duplication and inefficiencies that will divert resources that would otherwise be dedicated to research.

Now, what does all that mean. Well, the first one is anti free-OA journals - they are simply lying, and they know it. Free OA, scholarly journals operate the same peer review process as do commercial journals: if they didn't scholars wouldn't publish in them, but free, collaboratively supported journals are growing in number and take away submissions from the commercial journals, which will find it harder and harder to maintain quality. So - in panic - they are lying to you, because, rather like the neo-con supporters that the same lobbyists worked for, the big lie is the only strategy. Perhaps Karl Rove has gone straight from the White House to PRISM?

Number two is a nice one: here are the publishers, going down the so-called 'Green Route' by allowing self-archiving, or the 'Gold Route' of 'author payments' now complaining that this will lead to 'selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record'. What hypocrisy! This particular point just shows how misled are those who think that it is possible to negotiate with business on access. What this means is: 'If you publish in subscription journals, anyone can publish and we will bear the risks; if you want Open Access then you may not be able to afford it.'

Number three is a variant on the second. It plays with the idea that the archived version of a paper may not be the 'definitive' version - unless the publisher allows archiving of the published text. And that business about 'changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling', means "Hands off big business - let us keep on making money by allowing us to get our raw material free of charge and then charge outlandish subscription rates for the privilege of access."

And the final point? Well, here I have to agree with the publishers. Self-archiving may lead to duplication and inefficiencies, since one never knows where a paper is archived - is it in the individual's own home-pages (like mine), is it in an institutional archive, is it in a disciplinary archive (also like mine), or is it only available in the subscription journal that is only accessible to those who can afford to view it - also like some of mine :-) ?

What this recent initiative by the publishers points to is that the only sure way for the scholarly communities to take charge of the scholarly communication process is to rid themselves of their commercial exploiters and promote the publication of free, collaboratively produced and subsidised journals. Forget the Green and Gold routes insofar as they depend upon the acquiescence of the business world and go for the Platinum Route - it is the only way to take charge, and you have been exploited long enough.

Perhaps 'PRISM' really means, 'Publishers Resisting Intellectual Solidarity in the Market'!

From LIS News a story about Questia making 5,000 online books freely available. On a quick look, I guess that many of these are already freely available from sources such as Project Gutenberg. It's always nice to have alternative sources, but I couldn't see any download option

Heather Morrison's Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics has a useful entry for sources of data and information on open access.

One source she points to may be of interest to a lot of people: this is OAIster - pronounced, judging by its logo, "oyster". OAIster harvests open access sources and currently covers getting on for 12.5 million papers. An excellent tool for lesser known journals that may still contain something useful for you.

Thanks again to Peter Suber's newsletter for an item about the decision of the American Anthropological Association to transfer its publishing services to Wiley-Blackwell. The basis for the decision appears to be, in part, a report by the AAA's Director of Publishing which contains a truly amazing proposition:

Today’s electronic environment mitigates against a small scholarly publisher continuing to operate its entire program independently

I don't think I've seen such an unintelligent statement about publishing in the electronic era. It is exactly the opposite of the true situation: the electronic environment makes it easier for scholarly societies to pursue an independent programme. I would urge members of the AAA to abandon their organization (since it has abandoned them to the vagaries of commercial decision making) and develop their own alternative publishing outlets. There are many examples of collaborative, non-commercial OA journals from which they could take models and encourgement.

PS: I ought to have pointed out that the statement is also illiterate: the word sought was "militate" not "mitigate" - you can't "mitigate against" something - "mitigate" means to lessen the effect of something.

Thanks to Peter Suber's OA News for this item:

The German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG) has announced a funding program to launch new science journals, expand existing journals, and help print journals make the transition to electronic publication. To be eligible for funding, the journals must meet the DFG guidelines for open access, peer review, and preservation. (Thanks to the Informationsplattform Open Access.)

The enlightened character of this development compares favourably with the still unresolved policy of the UK Research Councils, which seem continually to be running scared of actually making a decision - the latest information that I could find on the Website was that discussion of its report on the subject was an agenda item for a meeting of the Executive Group held on the 25 April 2007. What the outcome was appears not to be recorded. However, we know from the earlier publications on the subject that the RCUK considers that there are only two forms of open access, "author pays" and "self-archiving". The notion that research funds, instead of supporting commercial publishers through "author payments", could go to the formation of new, collaborative, no fee, no subscription e-journals, is not on their agenda. The real reason for this, of course, is that the Research Councils fear offending government policy towards business - even if those businesses lie mainly outside the UK. The evidence for this is in the UKRC's own document. The intention is announced to:

Initiate a project to investigate the impact of author-pays publication and self-archiving on research publishing. Three leading publishers (Macmillan, Blackwell and Elsevier) have indicated that they are prepared to be involved in the project.

Obviously the companies want to be involved to protect their interests and I can't envisage anything happening to seriously affect the status quo.

The issue of funding OA publishing is the subject of another pair of items in Peter's newsletter: one on the University of Wisconsin setting aside resources to pay for OA - including support for free journals; and the other points to Heather Morrison's Weblog, where, in an article on the use of National Institutes of Health research funds, she notes:

If half the articles were paid for through article processing fees, about 32,500 articles, the $30 million NIH is already paying for publication charges would cover an average of $923 per article. That this is well within the realm of feasibility is illustrated by the fact that, while $923 average is less than the fee charged by some open access publishers, but it is more than is charged by other open access publishers, including the profitable Hindawi.
The feasibility of full open access publishing for NIH-funded research becomes even more obvious when we consider the possibility of redeploying some or all of the "indirect costs", from subscriptions or site licenses to support for open access initiatives.

Came across and interesting tool recently, called GTDinbox for Gmail. This is an add-in, or perhaps 'top-up' would be a better term, to Gmail, enabling you to use it within the 'Getting things done' methodology.

I haven't used GTD in the past, but this application may just persuade me to do so.

From a SPARC mailing list I learn that Google has not only opened its data to university research, but also requires the researchers to publish in open access journals.

I look forward to receiving the numerous submissions that will flow from this decision :-)

To Durham City at the weekend - best known for having the finest cathedral in Britain:

 

 

This building is less well known, although no doubt the fans of Indian cuisine think it is a great place, but if you look carefully between the windows of the first floor, you will see the 'torch of learning' that was, if my memory serves me right, the one time symbol of the county library movement. And it just happens to be where I started my career, as a rather nervous 16-year-old just out of school:

 

 

The new library (the second since then) is down at the bottom of the street and is known as the Clayport Library:

 

 

Somehow, they've never managed to achieve the same architectural standard since the cathedral was built :-)

I had an interesting message on a mailing list today:

SAGE Publications are pleased to offer free online full text access to the current and back issues of the following selected Information Sciences <https://online.sagepub.com/cgi/register?registration=FT77503> journals, until 30 September 2007, as listed below:

• IFLA Journal
• Journal of Information Science
• Journal of Librarianship and Information Science
• Information Development
• Business Information Review
• Journal of Health Informatics

No reason is given for this interesting trial, but I assume that it is something to do with the success of open access journals. Perhaps income from them is low, since journals in the field typically have quite small subscription lists and perhaps funding them through advertising is on the cards?

I don't know that many of those reading this Weblog will have known, or know of, Professor Wilf Saunders, who died last Friday. Wilf was the founding Director (in 1962) of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, under the original name of the Postgraduate School of Librarianship.

Wilf was President of the Library Association and Chair of the Committee that recommended the amalgamation of the LA, the Institute of Information Scientists and Aslib - an idea that did not come to fruition at the time, but which subsequently led to the merger of the LA and the IIS into CILIP. He received a CBE for his services to education.

Wilf became known to a wider audience when his "Dunkirk Diary of a Very Young Soldier" formed part of the background for the BBC drama/documentary on the Dunkirk evacuation. Published by Birmingham Public Libraries, where Wilf had begun his career, the "Diary" told his personal story of the preliminaries to the evacuation and his own days on the beach, often wading in water to boats that sank under their loads, before being taken off and transported back to England. He made a brief appearance in an interview associated with the programme. After Dunkirk, Wilf, a Signaller, attended officer training and spent the rest of the war in North Africa and Italy, in charge of a signals unit.

His many friends around the world will miss him - someone described by one of his contemporaries as "a True Gentleman".

Hi,

By any chance does anybody has some more information on "ROAMING LIBRARIANS" or "ROAMING REFRENCE" ? I will appreciate all your help and suggestions on this. We want to implement this in our library but before that I would like to hear about your experiences and challenges (technical, management etc) if anyone of you had while implementing this service. That will be a great help for me in planning and laying out this project.

Thanks,

Gigs

Your experience on FaceBook sounds more like MySpace. I've never had a friend request on FaceBook that turned out to be a spammer peddling porn. I have had a few friend requests from authors who write in genres I like so I haven't minded those.

MySpace is another matter. Until I tweaked my profile to require a full name and an email address, I would receive 3 - 5 friend requests daily that wanted to lure me to porn sites.

I'm not a cheerleader for FaceBook and won't try to convert you but I can see the potential in an academic setting. That's where the students are. There are also interesting apps being written for FaceBook including some that provide connectivity to library resources. Why a library app? If the students are going to be there anyway why not give them easy access in the event they have a sudden urge to look something up.

I joined Facebook recently, just to find out what it was all about, since libraries are now trying to use it (rather unsuccessfully, as far as I can tell) to create 'communities' of their users.

A number of friends and acquaintances seemed to join up at about the same time, so I found a group almost immediately. However, I also found that the amount of use I made of the system was minimal and that it added little more to the experience of communicating than does my ordinary use of e-mail. I also found messages telling me that person X wanted to be my 'friend' - these turned out to be spammers, peddling pornography in general and porongraphic images in particular.

I don't really need any more spam - and am thankful that Gmail's system gets rid of most of it for me, so I have deactivated my account and do not plan to reactivate it at any time.

I suppose these social networking sites are of some use, but I can't really imagine what it might be!

I imagine that most readers of this Weblog will have heard of Google's acquisition of gapminder.com and its Trendalyzer software. Recently, in relation to this, I came across a reference to www.ted.com, where TED = Technology, Entertainment and Design, and to a video by Hans Rosling, a Professor of Public Health in Sweden with 20 years experience of health research in Africa. Rosling was the inspiration behind gapminder.com and the TED site has an incredible video of his performance at the annual TED conference in Monterey, California. I recommend it: for the subject matter, for the presentation and demonstration of the power of Trendalyzer, and for the surprise ending. Go take a look.

Take a look also at the other videos available - there are some outstanding presentations: I particularly liked that by Evelyn Glennie, the star percussionist, who has been deaf since she was 12 - wonderful stuff; but there are many more available, such as James Watson, Jimmy Wales, E.O. Wilson - and that's just in the "Ws"! I think I'm going to be viewing these videos for weeks ahead!

McGee's Musings has a nice piece on 'knowledge management'. I particularly liked:

If you can manage at all, you must do so at another level of abstraction. You aren’t managing knowledge; instead you are trying to manage the conditions under which knowledge work takes place and within which valuable knowledge might be created or put to use. At that point, it becomes more productive to think in terms of leadership rather than management; particularly if you subscribe to Colin Powell’s characterization of a leader as someone you’ll follow to discover where they’re going.

The World List... has been further expanded by the addition of a number of Latin American countries, details for which were kindly provided by Ian Johnson as a result of his 'Revistas' project (http://www.rgu.ac.uk/files/Latin%20American%20Library%20Schools%20v7.doc) - I still have to review the information for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where there are larger numbers of departments, but that will happen. I've also added one or two other countries myself and we now have a total of 92 countries and 586 institutions and I don't know how many departments and courses - perhaps someone would like to count them! Xenu reports that there are 2,864 links to check. I try to do that a couple of times a year and each time, some 30% of the links have changed and need to be removed or corrected.

Which brings me to the question of maintenance. I regularly receive comments about the value of the list for curriculum development and/or research purposes, but maintenance is a key problem.

This can be dealt with by charging universities in developing countries an annual fee for entry in the directory - perhaps by Department or School; this would provide a service to everyone and a free service to the developing world. Departments pay for entry in printed directories of courses, and something in the order of $250.00 or £125.00 per entry (i.e., whatever appears under the name of the department) would correspond favourably with the rates of printed directories - with the added advantage of a world-wide readership (28,000 hits on the index page since last September); naturally, under this regime, if a university didn't wish to pay, it wouldn't get an entry.

Does the community value the list sufficiently to pay for it?

This from John Williams, author of a letter to the editor in the last issue of IR:

Good morning, Professor Wilson.

1.In case you missed it, the announcement of the sad and untimely death of Michie and McClaren can be found at either of these sites.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/09/car_crash/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6281348.stm

2. Regarding my Letter in the current issue of IR, I have happened to find an even longer term that the Patent Office took in granting a patent. This was William Friedman's application of 1933 for a Cryptographic System. No version of the patent was ever declined by PTO (unlike Mooers' experience). However, it was not granted until August 2000, 31 years after his death. The Assignee was the National Security Agency. The Patent Number is 6,097,812. It would make an interesting book to discover the top 25 information technology patents that took the longest to be granted, by the way.

3. My two colleagues on the Mooers project have returned from a session of research at the Smithsonian Archives and their Watson Davis collection. Davis was Mooers' father-in-law. A number of things turned up, however there is one that might interest you. This was a letter to Davis written by John Mauchly in 1947 with a blind copy to Mooers. Mauchly sought Davis' advice on how to keep the general public informed of progress in electronics and computer science. Davis ran Science Service at the time and was able to give Mauchly some direction by return letter.

However, it's serendipitous that there is evidence of a need for popularizing computer science from Mauchly at the same time as Mooers and his wife published Electronics: What Everyone Should Know (1947: Bobbs-Merrill). Mooers, in publishing this book, was following the example of his friend Robert Fairthorne who had published several titles in Longman's March of Time series of popularizations of science/technology in the 1930's and 40'. Fairthorne's topics were aeroplanes, wireless, and cinema and television, among others. The wireless introduction became a British Army field manual during World War II, I believe.

4. One of my colleagues on the Mooers project is Gwen Alexander. She has just been appointed Dean of the Library School at Emporia State University. If you are coming to the States in the future, please drop me an email. Gwen would enjoy hosting a lecture by you to her students at the School. I've spoken to her and you can consider this a standing invitation.

Finally, congratulations on being number six in the survey of library science/information management literature. When I wrote the cohort section of the introduction to our bibliography of information retrieval and data mining five years ago, I predicted that a cohort would form around you and Information Research. That has happened. Your status pleases me and the recognition is well deserved.

Best regards,

John

If you use the World list of schools and departments of information science, etc. you will find a completely re-designed site when you next check it. Not all of the links have been checked in the process, but that task is ongoing. The new version has a significant increase in the number of departments recorded for India, thanks to Dr. V.J. Vijayakumar and I shall be updating the Far-eastern countries with information provided by Chris Khoo of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

If you spot errors in the directory, please let me know.