Scholarly Publishing Archive - Science and Engineering University at Buffalo Libraries

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Archive for the ‘Scholarly Publishing’ Category

NAS Celebrates 150 Years of Service to U.S. Science

President Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation creating the U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS) on March 3, 1863, shortly after establishment of the Land Grant Colleges, under the 1862 Morrill Act. These two events provided the U.S. a strong foothold from which American scientific achievements were born. Since then, the National Academy not only promoted excellence in science through its publications (report series and the acclaimed journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences-PNAS) and its elected body of scholars into The Academy; the National Academy elevated the quality of scientific, engineering and medical achievements to the most prestigious places worldwide.

From its humble beginnings, additional entities were spawned and created an even more robust atmosphere celebrating and driving America’s scientific achievements. President Woodrow Wilson signed an executive order in 1918 that paired science and public policy through the National Research Council, which works in concert with the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering (created in 1964)and the Institute of Medicine (in 1970).

Among the celebratory remarks about the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Academy, Robert Cicerone, NAS President, elaborated on the goals and mission of the Academy in an editorial in the March 19^th issue of PNAS. They include a concise inventory of the Academy’s current mission (read his full editorial):

Validate scientific excellence,
Enhance the vitality of the scientific enterprise,
Guide public policy with sciences, and
Communicate the nature, values and judgments of science to government and the public.

The Reports of the National Academies and the National Research Council are published by the National Academies Press (NAP). NAP publishes roughly 200 reports per year, all of which are entered into the UB Libraries collection of E-book Resources with many of their titles also acquired in their print formats. They are often used as supplemental readings for classes in the sciences, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. It is interesting to note that among publishers, NAP is the first self-sustaining publisher making its reports available on the Web for free, in an open access model.

Celebrating a Milestone in Biology with a New Database

This announcement comes to you on the “Diamond Celebration” of the 60^th Anniversary of one of biology’s greatest accomplishments. Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics is a new online database offered by the Wellcome Library in London. It provides a historical glimpse into the race to deduce the chemical structure of the DNA molecule. The crux of this resource is the April 25, 1953 landmark paper published by James Watson and Francis Crick in the journal, Nature, where they reported the chemical structure of DNA, a feat that stimulated a biological revolution that is still unfolding.

Codebreakers brings together more than one million photographs, sketches, notes, and essays related to the Watson & Crick investigation of DNA’s chemical structure. Future plans call for adding resources from 20 smaller collections, 650 digitized images and 500,000 additional pages of text. This $5.88 million dollar project is one of the world’s most comprehensive sources for a cross-disciplinary look at one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. Additional information is found at: http://wellcomelibrary.org/using-the-library/subject-guides/genetics/makers-of-modern-genetics.

Open Access Journal Directory – New Milestones

Ever wonder whether there were any good open access journals in your field? The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), launched in 2003, now lists over 8,000 peer reviewed journals. Simply put, open access (OA) journals are freely available to all readers on the Internet and do not have subscription charges. Many studies show that OA articles are downloaded and cited more than equivalent articles locked behind subscription walls.

Using DOAJ, journal titles can be searched using keywords and browsed by subject areas. They just announced two important milestones:

1) More than 1 million articles are now searchable in DOAJ. They expect this figure to increase significantly in the months to come.

2) More than 50% of the journals are providing metadata at article level.

In February, the White House issued a new directive that open access will be mandated for most federally funded research within the next year. Visit our Scholarly Communications web site for more information.

Career Day: ACS on Campus at Univ. of Rochester on April 15th-16th

From my fellow chemistry librarian, Sue Cardinal:

The University of Rochester will host ACS (American Chemical Society) on Campus on Monday, April 15th, from 6-8 pm at MacGregors’ (Henrietta location) and on Tuesday, April 16th, from 8:30 am-6:00 pm at the Carlson Science & Engineering Library. The event is free, but registration is required in order to attend some or all events. (http://acsoncampus.acs.org/event/?ee=71 ). Complimentary food will be provided at both the Monday and Tuesday events for all registered participants.

ACS on Campus (http://acsoncampus.acs.org/events/university-of-rochester/ ) is an outreach program dedicated to helping students, post-docs, and faculty advance their careers. The program brings leaders in chemistry, publishing, research, science communication, and career development to university campuses to present seminars and workshops. Students and faculty are invited to learn about topics such as the basics and ethics of scholarly publishing, SciFinder® and exploring a career in industry or government. ACS on Campus is a great opportunity to network, build skills and learn tips and strategies to help you advance in your career.

Please visit the website mentioned above for location and speaker information as well as additional details. Questions can be sent to Sue Cardinal scardinal@library.rochester or 585-275-9007 or acsoncampus@acs.org.

The University of Rochester ACS on Campus Planning Committee includes: Sue Cardinal (Carlson Library), Jennifer Taylor Howell (ACS), Mike Baranello (Chemical Engineering), Robin Cooley (Chemistry Department ), James Shanahan (Undergraduate Chemistry Council), Udo Schroeder (Chemistry Department) and Will Eckenhoff (Younger Chemist Committee)

Stunning New Open Access Publication / Data Directive from the White House

On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directed any federal agency spending more than $100 million per year on R&D to create open-access policies within the next six months. The policy will require all research articles funded by these agencies to be made open access (free-to-read) within 12 months of publication. In addition, digital data must be made publicly accessible. Naturally, classified research is exempted.

One option for fulfilling these upcoming requirements is to deposit your publications and data in our UB Institutional Repository. Our new Scholarly Communications web site has sections on publicly archiving your scholarship and on data management. These web pages contain the contact information for library staff that would be glad to discuss this new development with you.

Agencies covered by the new policy include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, and Transportation, as well as the EPA, FDA, NASA, and, mostly importantly, NSF. The White House announcement contains a link to the actual directive. A 3/7/2013 Chronicle of Higher Education article discusses the impact these new policies might have.

What’s New in Web of Knowledge

Earlier this month, Web of Knowledge began rolling out a series of new features and updates designed to give users a clearer and more complete view of scholarly material. These changes provide greater context and searchability, which developers hope will allow users to retrieve articles and citations with more efficiency and accuracy.

In terms of improving search capabilities, Web of Knowledge claims to now display more complete bibliographic descriptions, which include added context and data, in addition to adding more comprehensive information to it’s Cited Reference Lookup Table. The UK/US synonym dictionary has been expanded as well in order to pool results with more consistency. All together, these features create a more accurate and comprehensive picture of a work’s citation information.

At the user level, developers have also added a number of interesting functions to make searches more flexible and organizing retrieved works easier than ever. Users can now:

Mark and export cited references from an article’s bibliography
Search for a cited article or title
Display all known authors (and their positions) listed in a bibliography
Truncate values in the Topic, Title, UID, and ID codes fields

In all, these changes should continue to make life easier for those who use Web of Knowledge to any large degree, and are likely to precede future updates and innovations as databases become increasingly user-centric.

Web of Knowledge is a collection of multi-disciplinary databases containing leads to citations with bibliographical references for articles from over 8,000 journals. Many of the references include author-prepared abstracts, as well as links to the full-text of articles (when available).

Can We Afford This? The Elsevier Boycott

If you follow publishing news sources or social media, you may have read about a scholars’ boycott of Elsevier, the largest science, technical, and medical journal publisher in the world. This boycott originated with a blog post by Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK, and a winner of the Fields medal, mathematics’ highest honor.

This triggered the creation of a web site, the Cost of Knowledge, by others that encourages scholars to join the boycott to not edit, write, and/or review for any Elsevier journal. The rationale for the boycott as given by the web site is the high cost of Elsevier journals, the bundling of journals into large “Big Deals”, and their support for certain legislation designed to limit free access to scholarly materials. Over 8,000 people have signed up for the boycott, though the only verification is a one-time email message to the registrant.

This boycott has been widely reported on the internet including in Nature magazine and the Chronicle of Higher Education. One tangible result of the boycott seems to be that Elsevier withdrew its support of the Research Works Act which contains provisions that would prohibit open access mandates for federally funded research. To be fair to Elsevier, it should be noted that:

Elsevier publishes an immense spectrum of journal, varying greatly in cost, cost per page, and prominence in the field.
Other publishers such as Taylor and Francis have journals with high prices (in excess of $8,000 per year) and high cost per page.
Elsevier disputes the allegations and undoubtedly is unhappy about being singled out. [Read the Chronicle article cited above.]

One can search the Cost of Knowledge to see which scholars have signed up from any given city or institution. Although it is not the intention of the library to, in any sense, dictate where our scholars should publish, the boycott does call attention to the long developing, but extremely serious crisis, in journal pricing. Over the past few years, journal price increases have finally moderated slightly, inflating an average of about 8% per year, but they have inflated annually at an unsustainable double-digit rate for over three decades. This graph shows the trends from 1986-2003.

Whether you personally decide to join the boycott or not, we suggest that affordability, which can directly affect the availability of your scholarly work, be a regular part of your decisions as to where you publish. Many disciplines now have peer-reviewed open access options where anyone in the world can read your material freely with no subscription barriers.

Predatory Online Journal Publishers – Be Careful

Have you received an email soliciting manuscripts or offering an editorial board position from a publisher you have never heard of before? The journal may have a great sounding name and you may recognize some prominent names already listed on the editorial board.

Unfortunately, it may be from an unscrupulous publisher whose main goal is to publish as many papers as possible while exacting high publication charges (article processing fees) while providing minimal if any peer review and exposure. Some of the people on the editorial board may not even know they have been listed or may be trying unsuccessfully to have their name removed. The fact that manuscripts require publication fees may be buried in the fine print or communicated only after acceptance of the manuscript. There have even been reports of flawed manuscripts being published despite the author’s objections.

A March 4, 2012 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Michael Stratford highlights this problem, discussing the publisher OMICS in detail, http://chronicle.com/article/Predatory-Online-Journals/131047/. We know such email solicitations are occurring here at UB as a number of our faculty have made inquires about these publishers. One of our librarians with a business background received an email asking him to join the editorial board of a “new peer-reviewed, open access journal titled Conference Papers in Oncology” published by Hindawi which is based in Egypt. Be aware that some publishers use U.S.-based address to disguise their true location. To add to the confusion, some publishers like Hindawi actually do publish some reasonably well established journals. However, there are concerns about how effectively Hindawi and other publishers can effectively oversee scores if not hundreds of new titles.

If you have any questions about a publisher solicitation, feel free to contact your subject librarian listed at http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/askalibrarian/inperson/index.php#subject. You may also want to check out a list of predatory open access publishers maintained by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Unfortunately, a few disreputable OA publishers reinforce the persistent myth that all open access (OA) journals are low quality and have no peer review. In fact, rigorously peer reviewed OA journals with respectable journal impact factors now exist in many disciplines. This post is a follow up to a December post noting that there are many high quality, reputable open access (OA) journals http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/faculty/?p=733.

Not All Open Access Publishers Are Created Equal

There is a persistent myth that all open access (OA) journals are low quality and have no peer review. In fact, rigorously peer reviewed OA journals with respectable journal impact factors now exist in many disciplines. Open access journals are free for all to read. They generally are funded through direct grants or article charges paid by scholars, their institutions, or their research grants. To review open access journals in your discipline, consult the Directory of Open Access Journals maintained by the Lund University Libraries.

Unfortunately, a few unscrupulous publishers have flooded the market place with low quality, minimally reviewed journals. They hope to entice authors to pay significant fees to publish online in what is, in effect, a vanity press title.

So how do you tell the good OA publishers from the bad ones? Some OA titles are published by well-established societies and commercial publishers that you will readily recognize. For example, Wiley, Springer, and the American Physical Society provide options for open access publishing. In some cases, the entire journal is open access. In other cases, authors can choose to make their individual article open access. But what about a solicitation for an article from a publisher you have never heard of?

Feel free to contact your departmental librarian liaison to assist you in evaluating the publisher. I also highly recommend Jeffrey Beall’s (University of Colorado) annual review of the bad actors, Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers, also available as a PDF document. Jeff provides a concise and insightful analysis of each publisher indicating exactly what the shortcomings are of each.

Open access publishing in the right places definitely increases your readership. It also gives researchers in organizations and countries that cannot support expensive subscription titles access to your work. In addition, a number of studies indicate that it may well increase citations to your work.

Get Full-text of Chinese Articles Fast

Chinese research is greatly increasing in quantity and quality. The Sciences Team is seeing increased requests for Chinese articles, often from journals unavailable in the United States. Did you know that 43% of all documents indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 2010 are Chinese, Japanese, and Korean references, up from 22% in 2000?

The East Asian Gateway Service at the University of Pittsburgh provides nation-wide document delivery of Chinese journal articles for academic & non-profit researchers, provided the journal is not held in any U.S. library. Access Services will investigate the feasibility of including this source in processing ILLiad requests. Meanwhile, any patron can fill out a simple form to request a Chinese article at: http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/eal/Gateway-Form.htm.

UB patrons have reported the service is fast and easy-to-use. Chinese articles are increasingly being discovered through some of our databases such as SciFinder, the freely searchable Chinese Academic Journals (CAJ) with over 9,000 titles, and cited references. Note that although we only have full-text access to two sections: Literature/History/Philosophy (F) and Politics/Military Affairs/Law (G), all sections of the CAJ can be searched in English or Chinese. There are English titles, short abstracts, and keywords for the entire file. Ten percent of the full-text articles are English language.