Delayed open access: An overlooked high-impact category of openly available scientific literature

Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk (2013) Delayed open access: An overlooked high-impact category of openly available scientific literature JASIST, Volume 64, Issue 7 pages 1323-1329.  DOI: 10.1002/asi.22856

Summary:

Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Although a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning OA have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals and collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether, 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111,312 articles in 2011; 77.8% of these articles were made OA within 12 months from publication, with 85.4% becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have citation rates on average twice as high as those of closed subscription journals and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall, the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume and by including a substantial proportion of high-impact journals.

CHORUS-Publishers Propose Public-Private Partnership to Support Access to Research

From The Chronicle of Higher Education (open-access article)-June 5, 2013
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/publishers-propose-public-private-partnership-to-support-access-to-research/44005

"Called Chorus—the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States—the partnership would use publishers’ existing infrastructure to identify and provide free access to peer-reviewed articles based on publicly supported research. The proposal comes as an August deadline looms for federal agencies to comply with the new policy."

"Chorus would require little or no federal money, the document says, because it would draw on resources that are already in place or in development. It would use existing tools and services such as CrossRef, FundRef, and Orcid to make articles more easily found, searched, and archived. (CrossRef is a publisher-supported research-linking service; FundRef collects information about where money to support specific research comes from; Orcid provides persistent digital identifiers for individual researchers that help track their work.)"

Details of the May 9, 2013 Executive Order:
Under the terms of the Executive Order and a new Open Data Policy released today by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget, all newly generated government data will be required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, greatly enhancing their accessibility and usefulness, while ensuring privacy and security." 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/09/landmark-steps-liberate-open-data
 
Open Data Policy
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf

Executive Order
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-

PLOS Statement on CHORUS - 7 June 2013
plos.io/14BMTnX #2013SSP

Free e-book on Data Science with R

Free e-book on Data Science with R 

A new book by Jeffrey Stanton from Syracuse Iniversity School of Information Studies, An Introduction to Data Science, is now available for free download. The book, developed for Syracuse's Certificate for Data Science, is available under a Creative Commons License as a PDF (20Mb) or as an interactive eBook from iTunes.

The book begins with the following clear definition of Data Science:

Data Science refers to an emerging area of work concerned with the collection, preparation, analysis, visualization, management and preservation of large collections of information. Although the name Data Science seems to connect most strongly with areas such as databases and computer science, many different kinds of skills - including non-mathematical skills, are needed.

Direct link to ebook page: http://jsresearch.net/wiki/projects/teachdatascience

See blog entry: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2013/02/free-e-book-on-data-science-with-r.html

re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories launched

28 May 2013
re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories launched

An increasing number of universities and research organisations are starting to build research data repositories to allow permanent access in a trustworthy environment to data sets resulting from research at their institutions. Due to varying disciplinary requirements, the landscape of research data repositories is very heterogeneous. This makes it difficult for researchers, funding bodies, publishers, and scholarly institutions to select an appropriate repository for storage of research data or to search for data.

The re3data.org registry allows the easy identification of appropriate research data repositories, both for data producers and users. The registry covers research data repositories from all academic disciplines. Information icons display the principal attributes of a repository, allowing users to identify the functionalities and qualities of a data repository. These attributes can be used for multi-faceted searches, for instance to find a repository for geoscience data using a Creative Commons license.

By April 2013, 338 research data repositories were indexed in re3data.org. 171 of these are described by a comprehensive vocabulary, which was developed by involving the data repository community (http://doi.org/kv3).

The re3data.org search at can be found at: http://www.re3data.org
The information icons are explained at: http://www.re3data.org/faq

Repository operators can suggest their infrastructures to be listed in re3data.org via a simple application form: http://www.re3data.org/suggest   The re3data.org team reviews and then lists the proposed repositories in the registry. A repository is indexed when the minimum requirements are met, i.e. mode of access to the data and repository, as well as the terms of use must be clearly explained on the repository pages.

re3data.org is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Project partners inre3data.org are the Library and Information Services (LIS) of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the KIT Library at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). re3data.org cooperates with the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI). The three partners with their expertise in information infrastructures guarantee the sustainability of the registry in the future.

Detailed information can be found in the following PeerJ preprint:http://doi.org/mnn

New Report: Digital Content: What's Next? - ALA Office for Information Technology Policy

May 22, 2013 - OITP released Digital Content: What’s Next?, a new American Libraries digital supplement that explores concepts recently introduced to the publishing arena, including self-publishing, digital preservation, ebook archiving and libraries as book publishers.

• Read the report: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/7d9e3366 
• Share the press release: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2013/05/new-american-libraries-supplement-examines-future-ebook-lending

White House announcement on Open Data

On Thursday, May 9, 2013 "...President Obama signed an Executive Order directing historic steps to make government-held data more accessible to the public and to entrepreneurs and others as fuel for innovation and economic growth. The Executive Order declares that information is a valuable resource and strategic asset for the Nation. We couldn’t agree more.


Under the terms of the Executive Order and a new Open Data Policy released today by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget, all newly generated government data will be required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, greatly enhancing their accessibility and usefulness, while ensuring privacy and security." 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/09/landmark-steps-liberate-open-data

Open Data Policy
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf

Executive Order
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-

Editorial Board of Journal of Library Administration resigns over licensing terms

 
Author contributors objected to the the journal publisher requirement of $2,995 author page charges to make each article open access.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4149752/library-journal-resigns-for-open-access-citing-aaron-swartz

"In a dramatic show of support for the open access movement, the editor-in-chief and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration announced their resignation last week. In a letter to contributors, the board singled out a conflict with owners over the journal's licensing terms, which stripped authors of almost all claim to ownership of their work."

and from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Journal’s Editorial Board Resigns in Protest of Publisher’s Policy Toward Authors 
by Jack New  Wired Campus (March 26, 2013)
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/journals-editorial-board-resigns-in-protest-of-publishers-policy-toward-authors/43149

(included a reaction form the journal publisher, Taylor & Francis Group)