Open Access is Sustainable Access for the Library

Faculty scholars and researchers routinely give away the fruits of their labors to for-profit publishers of scholarly communication. To maintain the integrity of our peer-review process, faculty also function as unpaid reviewers for these same publications. Finally, faculty frequently serve as unpaid or poorly paid editors for these journals. Yet after faculty have freely and willingly contributed content and labor to the publishers of our scholarly journals, the resulting publications are sold to our Libraries, at an enormous expense, generating significant profits for the publishers and creating an ever-expanding budgetary black hole for the Library!

If this situation fails to arouse an appropriate sense of injustice, perhaps consider that the general public –- which has already paid for all of this research through their tax dollars –- often cannot access this literature without paying a per-article cost to the publishers!

But change is at hand. There are concerted efforts on multiple fronts to restore some sense to the scholarly communication process. A growing number of university libraries have established institutional repositories to provide general access to the work of their scholars and researchers. Authors are amending their copyright agreements to ensure that their work can be freely accessed via their institutional repositories. The National Institutes of Health are requiring research that they fund be made accessible — at no additional cost — to the public that paid for the research. An increasing number of scholars and researchers are taking scholarly communication into their own hands by introducing Open Access (OA) journals as an alternative to journals produced by for-profit publishers.

Join us in exploring these myriad efforts to liberate scholarly communication during the international celebration of Open Access Week, October 19 – 23, 2009. Events organized for the week are:

PANEL DISCUSSION ON OPEN ACCESS ISSUES
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
12:00 noon
Queen Lili’uokalani Center, Room 412
RSVP required*; light lunch will be served*
*RSVP at <http://128.171.57.14:3128/surveyor/survey.asp?s=01068210099083128> by October 19th)

Listen to faculty members who are involved in Open Access publishing discuss trends and issues.
Panel Participants:
Mark Wright, Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences
Will McClatchey, Professor of Botany
Ken Rehg, Professor of Linguistics
Gary Ostrander, Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Education

COPYRIGHT AND AUTHOR RIGHTS PRESENTATION
Thursday, October 22, 2009
12:00 noon
Queen Lili’uokalani Center, Room 412
RSVP required*; light lunch will be served
*RSVP at <http://128.171.57.14:3128/surveyor/survey.asp?s=01223122096186058> by October 19th)

Speaker:
Danielle M. Conway, Professor of Law & Director, UH Procurement Institute

VISIT THE GRADUATE STUDENT OPEN ACCESS INFORMATION TABLE
Monday, October 19th
Tuesday, October 20th
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Campus Center

You can talk to graduate students about Open Access issues, receive free information, and an get an Open Access pen!

Open Access Publishing – Catherine Nancarrow

Open Access Publishing
May 15, 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Manoa Campus, A153 Hamilton Library (Eugene Yap Room)

We will have the opportunity to hear from a managing editor from the Public Library of Science, an organization devoted to open access publishing.

Catherine Nancarrow is the Managing Editor of PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease.

She will be speaking at an afternoon session on Friday, May 15th in Hamilton Library about open access journal article publishing and its short and long term benefits to faculty/academicians, universities, and libraries. New models of research publication can serve to increase the creative use of knowledge and information, and help us take a giant step forward in advancing science (basic and applied) at a time when doing so has a fresh focus in the US.

Working closely with her editorial boards, Ms. Nancarrow brings a tremendous amount of insight into the researcher/publisher relationship and will be able to address many of the questions researchers may bring to this session regarding open access publishing and the Public Library of Science publications.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in October 2000 by Harold E. Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael B. Eisen. PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource. The PLoS journals include: PLoS ONE, PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens, and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Though PLoS is focused on science, any researcher will find this discussion about open access publishing enlightening.

Sara Rutter
Science & Technology Librarian
Hamilton Library
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Scholarly Communication – Special Event!

Publishing and the Dissemination of Scholarship: Is the Process Broken?

The growth of knowledge depends on timely, widespread dissemination of scholarship. For the last 300 to 400 years, the results of scholarly efforts have been shared through journals and monographs. That system may have outlived its usefulness. Worse yet, the current system of dissemination of scholarship may actually be creating barriers to research. As the numbers of journals and scholarly books have grown, it has become increasingly incumbent on academic libraries to be the primary sources for, and thus the main purchasers of these scholarly products. The web now offers alternative channels for publishing research results and analyses. More important, the web has the capability to allow more timely, more widespread, more accessible, and less expensive dissemination of scholarship. These changes will not, can not be imposed from the top; they are being brought about by the actions of individual faculty members, making themselves aware of trends in scholarly communication and incorporating those changes in their publication habits.

Please join us for a discussion about new strategies in scholarly communication that will greatly increase public access to research, and sharing and collaboration among knowledge workers.

Presenters are: Kelly Aune (UHM Faculty, Department of Speech), Ross Christensen (UHM Librarian, Humanities), Beth Tillinghast (UHM Librarian, Project Manager for ScholarSpace), and Sara Rutter (UHM Librarian, Science)

April 29, 2009
Noon-2 pm
Campus Center Executive Room
Light refreshments will be served

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy – Open Access for 2008-2009

From AIP -

The American Institute of Physics is pleased to announce its newest journal: the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE). To complement this online-only journal, AIP has developed a website with components that go beyond the standard journal webpage.

JRSE is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal covering all areas of renewable and sustainable energy-related fields that apply to the physical science and engineering communities. As an electronic-only, Web-based journal with rapid publication time, JRSE is responsive to the many new developments expected in this field. The interdisciplinary approach of the publication ensures that the editors draw from researchers worldwide in a diverse range of fields. Topics covered include:
•    Bioenergy – bioreactions and bioengineering
•    Geothermal energy – geysers, heat pumps, and novel devices
•    Marine and hydroelectric energy – waves, tides, and dams
•    Nuclear energy – fission and fusion
•    Solar energy – photovoltaics and solar thermal converters
•    Wind energy – turbines and electrical systems and controls
•    Energy conversion – solid oxide and proton exchange membrane fuel cells and novel devices
•    Energy efficient buildings – photovoltaics, solar thermal converters, and passive solar approaches
•    Energy storage – hydrogen and batteries
•    Power distribution – conventional and superconducting transmission, fluctuating loads, and controls
•    Renewable energy resource assessment
•    Transportation – hydrogen, batteries, fuel cells, bioenergy, and vehicles

Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE) will be Open Access for 2008-2009. [http://jrse.aip.org/]

The Plant Genome – new open access journal

The Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) has started a new international, open access, electronic only journal called The Plant Genome. This journal will be published three times a year and will publish original research investigating all aspects of plant genomics. In order to support this open access journal, CSSA is using the model where authors are charged for publication. The first issue is available and the table of contents contains several sections: Research Highlights, Review & Interpretation, and Original Research. Interestingly, the editorial, Welcome to The Plant Genome, discusses the idea of using wikis, discussion boards, and blogs to develop resources and facilitate discussion. The combination of an open access journal and these other communication vehicles has a lot of potential for collaboration and generation of new ideas.