A presentation by Library Waaijers on open access at the university. His presentation has been used in the Dutch congress to celebrate the opening of the library in February. His presentation is therefore already available.
Leo takes the research article as an example, and explains the publishing and peer review process. In which authors normally pay with handing over their copyrights. In a newer model authors pay in cash for the review process. In brief these are the two publishing models.
The quality construct of academic journals is grounded in the impact factors. And Impact Factors are debated to say the least. On the latter he quotes Michael Mabe from Elsevier:
“Extending the use of the journal impact factor from the journal to the authors of papers in the journal is highly suspect; ……[impact factors] are not a direct measure of quality and must be used with considerable care.”
He shows us the Sherpa/Romeo categorization of copyright contracts. Reasearhcers want their articles to be published in high impact journals, that have high circulation and easily reused and presented on websites and cv’s. Preservation also matter to the researchers.
According to Leo it is time to act. The publishers won’t act. Authors, research funders and policy makers are acting al have acted. In the powerpoint of Leo he mentions (and links) many of these statements.
Leo then draws a call for proposal for Wageningen University as follows.
“Annually, WUR produces N articles in (sub) discipline Y. A consortium comprising WUR, the Ministry of Agriculture, FAO, NWO wants to tender the reviewing process for these articles under the following conditions:
- The reviewing process must be independent, rigorous and swift.
- The reviewing may be anonymous, named or open (to be decided on).
- All N articles will pass the reviewing process.
- As a result of the reviewing the articles are marked 1 to 5.
- Articles with marks 3 to 5 are accepted for posting in the Wageningen institutional repository and for immediate open publishing in Wageningen Yield 2.0 (in WUR house style).
- Subsequently authors may publish their articles in any journal.
- In their appraisal procedures for staff and research projects members of the consortium will weigh articles with marks 3, 4 and 5 as if they were published in journals with impact factors 3, 8 and 15 respectively (figures are nominal and subject to disciplinary calibration).
- The national library of the Netherlands will take care of the long term curation of the accepted articles
Proposals for a three year contract should be sent to ……The allocation of the contract will be based on the best price-performance ratio.”
Really interesting, but wonder when the time is there we actually get this idea sold.
Introduction – Digital Library Development
Libraries are rightly called the store house of valuable knowledge. It was invented in 5th century BC with both fiction and non fiction books and today there are millions of library all over the world. With rapid growing advancement in every field more and more documents are becoming available in printed forms and Libraries keep and preserve materials making availability of all the historical items.
Many Libraries in India have not yet catalogued all of their holdings and searching the physical format of over 100 years has become a difficult task. Due to the invent of new technologies, many providers are now providing customized digitization services to the libraries around the world.
Digital Library Advantage -
Digital libraries need not keep large and expensive stores of bulky and decaying paper. Libraries can shrink from large warehouses to small rooms and catalogs can be electronic, electronically updatable, and computer generatable, making them easier, faster, and cheaper to search, produce, and update. Libraries will not need to buy multiple copies to allow for book scuffing, book destruction, or to place one book in several categories.
Nor will they need binderies to bind journals or magazines into volumes, or to rebind old books. Nor will they need reshelvers. Also, the library can more easily refer readers to other books with similar subjects, tastes, or interests.
Libraries will not need to chemically treat their decaying books, microfilm them, or transcribe them to large-print, or audio. All transformations are easier with electronic books.
Useful Reference –
Pressmart Media Limited : Leader in providing digital archiving solutions.
Newspaper is a regular published print product containing information, news and advertising. Newspapers are living textbooks and they are source of information and learning. It’s a source to find out whats happening in movies, books, concerts, games, jobs and events. Major advantage left to newsprint is that reading it does not require any sophisticated, cumbersome technical equipment. This offers the reader a high level of flexibility: newsprint can basically be read in any place at any time. The reader can absorb the information offered at his own pace. Even the fact that the reader can touch and feel the printed paper while turning the pages may be of some importance.
Disadvantage of Printed edition of newspaper -
Circulation of the newspaper is one of the principal factors, circulation is not the same as copies sold because many copies are read by more than one person this is a major offset as the number of copies distributed are not read.
People away from their home place would always love to read their regional paper wherever they are in any part of the world. Take my case; I have been hunting for my favorite newspaper Times of India in the heart of New York City but in vain and the only solution I found at this time is e-paper.
E-paper and its advantage -
Will e-paper is going to replace the printed edition in future is the question to be asked? ePaper is the replication of newspaper pages which allows one to get the same experience as reading the hard-copy edition and e-paper has the advantages of being interactive, multimedia, of providing internal and external networks and offering selection functions, the possibility of regular updates, access to archives, rapid access to a large number of newspapers, and being paperless, thus creating no problems of waste disposal.
Not even that it’s more convenient from the customer’s point of view while reading the e-paper, I came across Nokia new model cell phone, and by clicking on it; I was taken directly to the website, where I could compare the prices.
So this has led to some predictions that is newspapers will shrink or even disappear?
All the recent surveys both in USA and abroad indicate that print newspaper readership is going down; there has been a dramatic drop in the circulation of papers.
Full time professional employment at daily newspapers is falling. In a desperate attempt to offset the falling revenues, more newspaper groups are setting them up online.
All of the major news publishers have adopted e-paper technology in order to increase their readers and revenue.
Looking at the enormous growth in the Digital News Publishing Industry, many new media companies are offering ePapers and eMagazines at affordable costing with low or no upfront investment. Pressmart Media Limited, a leading new media services company based out of India and USA provides an excellent Multi channel distribution on Web, Mobile, Podcast, Search Engines, Social Networks, Web2.0 sites and RSS.
I hope you do agree that digital versions of news publications will be an added advantage for publishers in increasing their brand value, customer reach and revenues.