Talking in the Library

Elsevier boycott highlights academic publishing issues

A boycott of an academic publisher, joined by several K-Staters, brings to light scholarly communication issues important across the academic world. The boycott objects to three practices on the part of academic publisher, Elsevier: high prices charged for individual journals, journal “bundles” that require libraries to purchase unwanted journals in order to acquire those their campuses need at a reasonable price, and support of various pieces of legislation that restrict the free exchange of information such as SOPA and PIPA.

A Call to Action

Have you heard of the Berlin Declaration? If you're like me, and hadn't, you might guess it has something to do with World War II. While there is a similarly-named document associated with the war, the Declaration I'd like to talk about today involves freedom of information, the internet, and K-State's support of the idea that the internet should be a "functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection".

The Berlin Declaration arose from a 2003 conference (held in - you guessed it - Berlin) organized by the Max Planck Society and the European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO) project. The declaration asserts that "the Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access."

Recently our provost, Dr. April Mason, put her name to the declaration on behalf of Kansas State University, adding our institution to an international list of some 300 universities, libraries, scientific institutes, and academic associations who pledge support to an open access paradigm. This paradigm asserts that disseminating knowledge is not complete until information is made readily available to society. In real world terms, this means that publishing research in journals that restrict access to only those able to pay increasingly high subscription rates is not enough; that same research must be made available freely and openly to everyone, regardless of their institutional affiliation or ability to pay.

The declaration outlines steps that the signatories intend to take towards ensuring open access, which include:

• encouraging researchers/grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm.
• encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet.
• developing means and ways to evaluate open access contributions and online-journals in order to maintain the standards of quality assurance and good scientific practice.
• advocating that open access publication be recognized in promotion and tenure evaluation.
• advocating the intrinsic merit of contributions to an open access infrastructure by software tool development, content provision, metadata creation, or the publication of individual articles.

You can read the full text of the Berlin Declaration online, of course. For such a powerful and challenging document, it's surprisingly short, and I've actually reproduced much of it in this post. Take a look today; it will help you understand the future of access to information.

Open Access Week 2011: Open Data #oaweek

The internet has opened new potential in many areas of the research and scholarly process:  open access journals, institutional repositories, open source software  – and more recently, open data.  Do you ever stop and think about the datasets that are the foundation of every scholarly journal article?  What happens to all that data?  Is it ever seen or re-used by other researchers?  Is it preserved somewhere? 

Programs like the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet are beginning to address the enormous challenges of managing and sharing research data in order to drive networked, collaborative and innovative science.  The challenges involve building infrastructure and setting standards for storing data, encouraging researchers to deposit their data for others to see and use for new purposes, and creating fewer restrictions on licenses, patents and copyrights that currently forbid re-use of data.

In the past raw data was not considered for publication primarily because it was not affordable or feasible to include in print journals.  But, the predominance of online journals has changed that model.  Also, large federal funding agencies such as the NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are having a tremendous impact on the publication of data. NSF expects that all data will be made available after a reasonable length of time. Each proposal must now be submitted with a Data Management Plan.  Since 2003 the NIH has required applicants seeking $500,000 or more in direct costs to follow the Data Sharing policy  by submitting a plan for sharing their final research data with their application.

Data can be big like the Human Genome Project or small like thousands of datasets created by individual or small group researchers at universities and research institutes each year.  No matter what the size, the potential for sharing and reusing this knowledge is huge.

-Beth Turtle

This is our fourth open access post for the week.  Hope you're enjoying the series.

Open Access Week 2011: K-State Research Exchange #oaweek

The basic of premise of Open Access – that all research should be freely available online – is also a guiding principle of the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx).  In a nutshell, K-REx enables students and faculty to put their scholarly work online and make it available for anyone to view and download.  Sounds simple, but the benefits can be enormous.

Let’s look at the example of Matthew Vanden Boogart, a K-State graduate student who deposited his masters thesis Uncovering the Social Impacts of Facebook on a College Campus in K-REx in 2006.  Since that time, his paper has been viewed or downloaded over 5,000 times and cited in 3 books.  Based on this interest, Matt is planning a follow-up study.  If his thesis had been submitted as a paper copy and placed on the library shelves, rather than freely available through K-REx and discoverable in Google, it’s unlikely it would have generated as much interest and led to further research.

Similarly, faculty use K-REx to facilitate access to and uptake of their work.  Melody LeHew (Apparel, Textiles, and Interior Design) deposited her article Tourist Shoppers’ Satisfaction With Regional Shopping Mall Experiences in K-REx.  Within a few weeks time she received an invitation from a publisher, who had found the article in K-REx, to include it in an anthology.  Although the article was published in the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality, depositing the article in K-REx provided access to readers (and editors) beyond the usual journal subscribers. 

Peter Pfromm and Peter Czermak, both in the Chemical Engineering department, have deposited 36 articles in K-REx, and these papers have been viewed or downloaded from K-REx an astonishing 16,422 times!  The authors submitted these articles to peer-reviewed journals, as scientists have done for centuries, and the articles were published and distributed to the journal subscribers.  But what Drs. Pfromm and Czermak do that vastly expands the reach of their work is to also submit copies of those articles to K-REx.  The goal of K-REx is not to replace traditional scholarly publishing, but rather to take advantage of the Internet and OA to increase the impact of scholarly research.

Want to jump in?  Contact Marty Courtois, 532-4428, courtois@ksu.edu for details on how to add your work to K-REx.

-Marty Courtois

This is our third open access post for the week.  Hope you're enjoying the series.

If it's so easy, why are so many smart people so scared of fair use?

This is the first of many posts about Open Access issues over the next week. Watch for the banner to see more of them. 

Decisions about use of copyrighted materials are made every day on campus - in lectures, conference presentations, and when writing scholarly articles or reports. We don’t give a second thought to some uses. Others, we struggle with: can I stream a video in an online class? can I use an image from the internet in my PowerPoint? can I copy multiple articles to distribute to my class?  According to a recent article by Patricia Aufderheide in Inside Higher Ed, “Academics potentially enjoy some of the greatest benefits of U.S. copyright law’s doctrine of fair use — which lets them use copyrighted material without permission or payment, under some circumstances. Now if only they knew they did.”

Aufderheide goes on to say that most uses go unnoticed and uncontested. “But when the uses are questioned — usually by a publisher, or a librarian, or an IT person, and often because of new media and digital platforms — academics often lack the confidence to defend their choices, because they don’t know the law.”

Fair use has become confusing and controversial, when actually it is clear about allowing users - on a case-by-case basis - to use, repurpose, or transform copyrighted materials in an appropriate amount. Academics have fair-use rights to teach and research using copyrighted materials. But as Aufderheide states, “If it's so easy, why are so many smart people so scared of fair use?”

To help ease the confusion and controversy, Fair Use Best Practices for Academic Libraries are being developed and will be introduced this winter. Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and Aufderheide have both been involved in the 3-year process undertaken by ARL, the Center for Social Media at American University, and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property in American University’s Washington College of Law.

Butler and Aufderheide will conduct a webinar this Thursday, Oct. 20 at 2:00 p.m. in Hale Library’s Hemisphere Room titled Fair Use: How to Leave the Culture of Fear and Doubt.  If the concept of fair use intrigues you or has an impact on your work, or if you want to learn more about your rights, please attend. For more information about the webinar, contact Jenny Oleen.

-Beth Turtle
______________________________
Patricia Aufderheide is a professor of communication and director of the Center for Social Media at American University and co-author, with Peter Jaszi, of Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Brandon Butler is Director of Public Policy Initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries. Prior to ARL, he was an associate in the Media and Information Technologies practice group at the Washington, D.C., law firm Dow Lohnes PLLC, where he worked on copyright issues, trademark prosecution, and corporate transactions involving intellectual property.

How much would researchers pay for scholarly database access?

In the July 26th Chronicle of Higher Education, the ProfHacker column asks independent researchers how much they would pay for access to scholarly databases (off-campus K-Staters, try this link). That made us wonder, too. What dollar value do researchers place on access to databases? Researchers associated with an institution like K-State have access to thousands of articles, ebooks, streaming audio and video, and other resources (including the campus-wide subscription to the online Chronicle).  And, because K-State is a public and land grant institution, anyone who walks into Hale Library can access the vast majority of those databases and resources. AND, through the State Library of Kansas and a statewide consortium, anyone in the state of Kansas can currently access this set of databases.

But what if you didn't have this access (or maybe you don't)? How much would you, or could you, pay to access a database in order to continue your current research? How many databases do you consult when you conduct your research? Would you pay the same for each of them?

News I'm talking about

News you can use...

When public records are less than public: How governments try to use copyright to limit access to data

Terrible News: Court Says It's Okay to Remove Content From The Public Domain And Put It Back Under Copyright (Can you imagine your favorite classics suddenly becoming copyrighted again?)

College 2.0: A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube

A Failure to Communicate: In a lawsuit against Georgia State University over e-reserves, scholarly publishing faces a defining moment

-JO

Open Access Week 2009: Open Data

The internet has opened new potential in many areas of the research and scholarly process: open access journals, institutional repositories, open source software – and now, open data. Do you ever stop and think about the datasets that are the foundation of scholarly journal articles? What happens to all that data? Is it ever seen or re-used by other researchers? Is it preserved somewhere?

New programs like the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet program are beginning to address the enormous challenges of managing and sharing research data in order to drive networked, collaborative and innovative science. The challenges involve building infrastructure and setting standards for storing data, encouraging researchers to deposit their data for others to see and use for new purposes, and creating fewer restrictions on licenses, patents and copyrights.

In the past raw data was not considered for publication primarily because it was not affordable or feasible to include in print journals. But, the predominance of online journals has changed that model. Also, large federal funding agencies such as the NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are having a tremendous impact on the publication of data. Since 2003 the NIH has required applicants seeking $500,000 or more in direct costs to follow their data sharing policy  by submitting a plan for sharing their final research data with their application. Some NSF units also have published policies on data sharing and management.

This trend could accelerate if the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009, S. 1373 (FRPPA) becomes law. This bill would require researchers funded by one of eleven federal departments or agencies to submit an electronic copy of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to a repository for public access. Although this bill does not currently apply to data, many believe it is only a matter of time before other federal agencies develop data sharing policies similar to those at NIH and NSF.

Data can be big like the Human Genome Project or small like thousands of datasets created by individual or small group researchers at universities and research institutes each year. No matter what the size, the potential for sharing and reusing this knowledge is huge.

Wondering what this is all about?  See our four earlier posts on Open Access Week 2009.

Open Access Week 2009: K-State Open Access Success Stories

We’ve been going on all week about the benefits and importance of Open Access (OA), but now we want to give you some real-world success stories from right here at K-State. Here are a few example of how OA has affected students and faculty who have deposited their work in K-REx.

Ann Elliott’s dissertation, Developing accessible museum curriculum: the research, development and validation of a handbook for museum professionals and educators, was discovered on K-REx by a librarian at the Smithsonian Library. The librarian contacted Ann to request permission to share her work with scholars at the Smithsonian by posting the dissertation on their website. On another occasion, a graduate student from the University of Wisconsin contacted Ann to let her know how useful her dissertation was as she worked on her own advanced degree.  Thanks to research in K-REx being open access, Ann's work has been recognized and used by others in the field.

Jana Hawley, head of the Apparel, Textiles and Interior Design department, offers this comment: “My work in textile recycling is rather obscure, but was discovered by colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis and Hansei University in South Korea. Both resulted in invited lectures. The Washington University lecture partnered with Fashion Group International and the keynote lecture focused on the importance of textile recycling as part of the eco-fashion movement. The Hansei University lecture was the keynote lecture at the Eco-Fashion Conference. Without the open access platform through K-Rex, I doubt I would have had this opportunity.”

One of the most heavily accessed items in K-REx is Carcass disposal: A comprehensive review.  Authored by a host of faculty from several different departments at K-State, this book examines food security and economic issues resulting from widespread livestock deaths; certainly a topic of global interest.This is evident in the number of times this book has been viewed online: over 1200 times since it was added to K-REx in May 2008. Even more amazing is that over 950 of these views have been from users outside the US. Many developing countries lack the libraries to provide traditional access to research materials, but OA offers a simple and direct way to obtain essential information. If you're curious about which items in K-REx have had the most downloads, check out the top downloads by month.

By far the most popular item in K-REx has been the thesis submitted by Matthew Vanden Boogart, Uncovering the social impacts of Facebook on a college campus.  Matthew’s 2006 paper has been viewed over 2200 times in K-REx since we started counting in May 2008. On his blog, Matthew mentions his thesis has been cited in three books, and reflects on the impact open access has had on his research: “I’m …excited to see my research is starting to make an impact on society and is being used beyond what I intended it for. This is very exciting in the area of social network research and the sociological and psychological implications it has. I made a few conclusions at the end of my thesis on the impacts Facebook carries, and look forward to seeing that theory expand as others add to the field.”

Congrats, Matthew. We couldn’t have said it better.

Wondering what this is all about?  See our three earlier posts on Open Access Week, and watch for one more tomorrow, and even more information on our Twitter feed.

Open Access Week 2009: Copyright and Creative Commons

Copyright law provides protection against someone stealing your work, but presents formidable obstacles when you want to use the work of others in your articles, presentations, and online courses. The Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law allows for some re-use of materials without permission from the author, but the guidelines for when Fair Use applies are vague. Even the Copyright Office acknowledges that deciding if a particular instance constitutes fair use or a copyright infringement is not easy, and usually needs to be decided in court….ouch!

Is there a better way? Sort of. Copyright law is the law, and there’s no way around it. But, the folks at Creative Commons hope to supplement the law with clearer guidelines on how a particular work can be reused. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution license allows others to reuse your work in any way, even commercially, as long as they give you credit for the original work. Too loosey-goosey? Then maybe the Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license, which allows downloading and sharing a work, but requires a link back to the source and no commercial use, is a better choice. Six different licensing levels are available. Creative Commons grew out of a need to provide clearer re-use guidelines for works available over the web, but can be applied to any sort of original work.

The basic idea behind Creative Commons is the author of a work will go to the Creative Commons site and use the License Your Work tool to select the appropriate license. Creative Commons then provides the HTML code and/or image to add to your work. For example, I selected “Allow commercial uses” and “Allow modifications,” and Creative Commons gave me the code for the Attribution license icon.  I pasted the code into this blog entry, which produced this icon:

So now, someone reading this knows they can copy and paste the whole thing and not have to bother with getting my permission or worrying about the copyright police.  As you find sources on the web, look for the Creative Commons icons and visit the CC site for a full explanation of the difference licenses.

Wondering what this is all about?  See our two earlier posts on Open Access Week, and watch for two more on Thursday and Friday, and even more information on our Twitter feed.