Open Access Resources

I am doing a presentation in one of my classes (Search and Discovery with Cliff Missen) about OA vs proprietary journals. In order to keep all the sources I use in one spot that students can access later on, I've compiled them into this blog post. Another bonus? LIS students (and everyone else) can use this post as a way to learn more about Open Access too!

Here's the article I'm reviewing for the class: 
The Importance of OA, OSS, & Open Standards for Libraries
Basically, the author discusses the benefits of 'open' models (Open Access, Open Source Software, Open Standards) for libraries. I chose it because it covers the basics without being intimidating, and is a good way to nudge those who are scared of giant, wordy research papers toward an understanding of the topic. What I like about it is it's short and to the point (probably as long as most of my blog posts) and gives a great, easy-to-understand overview of how libraries can benefit from implementing OA and OSS into their day-to-day running.

What is OA?
Most of my readers probably know, but for my classmates who may not have spent much time with it I'll give a brief description. Open Access publishing refers to a model that prizes accessibility over profits. Traditional publishing models have a lot of overhead (printing, large staff, advertising, etc) that translates to large subscription costs that are beyond the reach of most individuals and even most libraries. A good anecdote from our instructor: He met some folks from an African library (I can't remember which country) who were excited to win a 2 year subscription to an academic journal database. They were so disappointed after 2 years to discover how expensive it was, because it meant they had to cancel that subscription and were not able to offer those resources to their patrons.
Open Access journals do not charge readers and keep all content online, so it can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection (not everyone has Internet, of course, but it's a useful resource for those who do). Part of the reason this is possible is the lack of overhead associated with printing, and other options to reduce cost and generate revenue vary depending on the journal (B Sides, for example, is a part of the University of Iowa IR so we don't pay for server space or tech support. We also don't pay our editors, so we don't have to generate revenue for salaries. For some other journals, revenue for server space, etc. is generated by charging fees to authors to submit. I personally think this should be avoided at all costs, but there aren't many other options open if you operate outside a large research university). For another discussion of OA, check out Peter Suber's page.

My Experiences with OA
You all know about my editorial experience, but I'm not sure I've talked much about my experience as an author. I have published one article in B Sides, and I have an essay in press at Library Student Journal. LSJ has a *much* larger editorial staff than B Sides, but the process is much the same: submit an article, it's read by reviewers, returned for revisions, and if the revisions are up to snuff it's published. What I love about publishing with OA journals is that I get a *much* wider readership than I imagine I've gotten in my other publications. I get monthly statistics emailed to me about my B Sides article, and it's had almost 200 readers in less than a year. For a journal that's just gotten off the ground and an article that probably 15 people would have read in a print journal, that's pretty impressive. OA journal staff, being a part of a movement to change publishing, also tend to have their fingers in other projects and are open to new ideas. B Sides is throwing a conference on March 25th to teach students about presenting/attendance and to facilitate networking. LSJ tries to provide new resources to students whenever possible (including their recently launched blog). 

Ways for Students to Learn More
Students can get involved in Open Access publishing through already-existing journals (including my perennial favorites, B Sides and Library Student Journal). If your department or school has a student journal, that might be another option. For students who want to publish outside LIS, check out the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) to see what's out there. All journals provide opportunities to publish, although some also have openings for other ways to get involved by peer reviewing or serving on the editorial staff. It's a great way to learn more about OA and it looks good on your resume!

List of Suggested Readings
I'm going to be compiling this over the next few days, so if you have ideas, please feel free to share in the comments! 
100 Extensive University Libraries Anyone can Access
Gives some great resources for those without all the databases of a large research institution (or for those looking for resources not in those databases).
Open...
Blog dealing with Open Source and Open Standards.
Thomas Jefferson and OA
Thomas Jefferson did not know anything about OA, but this awesome quote by him has been circulated by enthusiasts.
The first Open Source American
Interesting article on how Ben Franklin's approach to the creative process mirrors the Open Source movement.

Academia.edu's Journal List

This article was brought to my attention today, and it discusses the creation of Academia.edu's list of journals. For those who've been reading my blog for a while, you probably remember my earlier post where I mention it as a great resource for new LIS students. For those who haven't read the blog for that long, Academia.edu is a site I love because it's a social networking site for academics: I love getting to connect with folks all over the world, and I wouldn't have found them otherwise!
The reason folks are excited about Academia.edu's journal list is that you can follow journals online and receive updates, but you also benefit from the social component (i.e. what are my fellow students/professors reading to stay current?) The article mentions another site (ticTocs) that allows you to search journals in a similar way, although I don't have any experience with it.
I just went through and added a smattering of journals to my list (you can view them here), and I was pretty impressed by the selection. However, there was one big discrepancy I noticed, and that was a lack of Open Access journals! I'm sure there are some OA journals in the list (although I didn't have the time to go through all of the thousands of entries to verify that), but I could not find my favorites, like First Monday, B Sides, and Library Student Journal. I love that they are open to suggestions, however, and so I hit the 'suggest a new journal' button and fired away! As OA becomes a more accepted venue for scholarly publication, I'm excited to see these journals get more recognition and more followers! If you don't have an Academia.edu account, I would definitely recommend getting one. Once you do, just go to   this link and start following! And make sure to suggest journals you don't see, I bet they would appreciate having an even more comprehensive list!

Another article on Scribd

Second time this week! 

I posted my article: "Learning from the Past: Digitization and Information Loss" on Scribd where you can read it for free using this link. It was originally published in B Sides this last May, but since B Sides is awesome and lets authors keep control of rights over their work, I can distribute it as I wish! To see the article on the B Sides site, go here.  

"Learning from the Past" is an article that provides an overview of digitization issues and current solutions to information loss for those who are somewhat new to the subject. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions or noticed anything in the article that piqued your interest!

The Library of Tomorrow...Yesterday!

I ran across this rather lengthy quote while adding to my chapter on libraries from 1914-1916, and was so pleased by it I couldn’t wait to share it with you! It’s from the 1914 annual report, written by Iowa City Public Library’s librarian, Helen McRaith. Unfortunately my Internet was down yesterday (and most of today), so I had to contain my excitement until now:

“The modern idea of the function of a library is this—to study the literary needs of its own community and then to endeavor to meet these needs to the fullest extent, even if tradition must be violated in so doing.

The old-fashioned library was a cloistral place appealing only to the scholar, who moved silently among dust-covered tomes. The modern library possesses a different atmosphere and one more akin to that of a business office; most of the readers have the appearance of seeking information which will be of assistance in their daily problems rather than abstract knowledge.

There is a similar change in the appearance and attitude of the librarians. Formerly they seemed to look on the library as an end in itself and as a collection of interesting curiosities, they were willing to let it remain a stagnant literary pool. Now they must be alert specialists, keen to keep a stream of vital, useful knowledge flowing from the library to all parts of the community.” (Iowa City Public Library 1914 annual report, pg 1).

This reminds me so much of some of the current discussion circulating around the changing field of librarianship, even though it was written almost 100 years ago. Her writing has the same tone of excitement that I feel in my own blog and in reading the posts of other LIS bloggers, about the library as a place of expanding opportunities and of librarians as being people who are redefining the field rather than just participating in it.

There are a couple places in particular where her writing sounds like it could have been lifted out of a modern blog (and then had the language antiquated a bit, of course): there is so much concern right now about justifying the value of libraries, and a lot of that justification comes through pointing out that the library is used for practical purposes, as McRaith says, “…seeking information which will be of assistance in their daily problems rather than abstract knowledge.”

I especially love her last sentence: what a great comparison to the expansion of library science to include (or create) so many information studies-related specialties! Today, the public library is seen as a place where all community members can come in and access information, but there is also a view that access should be protected and increased. The Library Bill of Rights was not adopted until the 1930s, and prior to that there was more of a focus on encouraging ‘good books’ than allowing access to any materials the patron wanted. While her statement could just as easily be talking about guiding the stream of reading through promoting ‘good reading,’ it also sounds a lot like our current discussions of keeping on top of trends, promoting access, and even our discussions of the Internet and libraries (as an Open Access fanatic, it also reminds me of some of the justification we use for OA publication!)

Interesting how history repeats itself! 

Free Resources for Students and Researchers

There are a ton of great free resources out there both for students and for researchers, and I wanted to share some that I've found before the semester kicks into high gear. I know I've mentioned some of these resources before, but I've come across so many more that it's good to keep the list updated. If you know of anything that I missed, please include it--I'd love to make as complete a list as possible!

Open Access Journals
Open Access is something I'm very passionate about, because it lets scholars publish their work in a way that reduces or eliminates overhead and thus allows our work to be available to more people. Two that are near and dear to my heart are B Sides, and Library Student Journal. You already know that I'm an editor for B Sides, but I was just offered a position at LSJ as a member of the Editorial Review Board too, and I'm really excited about doing even more with OA student publishing!
Common Place is a great source for scholarly research from many disciplines that address life in early America. A lot of exciting Internet research is published in First Monday, an OA journal that was recommended to me in my first semester at SLIS. There are so many great journals out there that it would be hard to name them all (and this post would be ridiculously long!) To find hundreds more, spend some time browsing on the Directory of Open Access Journals to see openly accessible journals covering a wide range of disciplines (a hint to LIS students: this is a great place to go when comparing journals for publishing your work!)

Online Collections
More and more institutions are placing their collections (or rather, parts of them) online, and while some are still password-protected, many are available to everyone free of charge. This post from the blog, mary and mac design, is a really outstanding collection entitled "100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access." It's organized by subject, so you can look at everything from law and religious libraries to general collections. I ran across it on Twitter this morning, and it immediately was added to my Delicious bookmarks!
The University of Iowa has the Iowa Digital Library, which not only has a wealth of information related to Iowa history, but also highlights some of their great collections of women's history materials, illuminated manuscripts, and maps.
I think I've mentioned the World Digital Library before, but it's definitely worth a check out. The interface is great and easy-to-use, and makes it simple to constrain your search to certain time periods or geographic areas.
There a a few collections on British history that I think are a lot of fun. The Word on the Street is a collection of broadsides from the National Library of Scotland. Not only is it a useful collection, but it's presented in a fun way that would be accessible to undergraduate and high school students. The British Library's Evanion Catalogue is a great resource for ephemera and other goodies relating to life in the Victorian period. The Bodleian Library is another good resource for ephemera, with their Broadside Ballads collection. 

Reading/Book History
The LUCILE Project is also associated with the UI Libraries by way of the head of Special Collections, Sid Huttner. He has put together this really awesome project for those interested in publishing history, in that the whole site is devoted to uncovering the publishing history of one book (Lucile by Owen Meredith). It's a great way to get an in-depth look at how one title moved through the publishing industry.
The Reading Experience Database seeks to compile instances of reading experiences in the UK from 1450-1945. It's a great first place to look when trying to learn a bit more about how reading operated in a certain time period. Harvard has put together a great site entitled "Open Collections Program: Reading-Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History," which allows you to learn about many different types of reading and many different types of reading materials.
The Index Translationum is a searchable record of books that have been translated and published in UNESCO member states since 1979.

Crowd-Sourcing Peer Reviews

While procrastinating and staring blankly at my Twitter feed a moment ago, I noticed this post by ACRL (ALA's Association of College and Research Libraries):

@ALA_ACRL: RT @chronicle: Open, crowd-sourced peer review works for one humanities journal:http://bit.ly/9HIDJC

As an OA journal editor, I was intrigued. When you click the link above, you're lead to a Chronicle article about Shakespeare Quarterly's new approach to the review process. Basically, a draft of the publication is placed online, and is open for comment by a pool of reviewers with varying specialties. The process is not an anonymous review, so those comments that are made about a submission are attached to the reviewer's name. 

I was pleasantly surprised for a number of reasons. First because SQ is a well-recognized and respected humanities publication, so the fact that they are taking the lead on re-thinking their methods is a good sign that others might follow. Second, I was happy to see positive responses from the authors: Michael Whitmore mentioned getting citations and helpful feedback from 6 people who actively involved themselves in reviewing his work (think of how much more help that would be than the usual 2-3 'experts!') I was also glad that the reviewers included both junior and senior scholars. 

One critique I have is the focus on expertise. I agree, we want people who are knowledgeable in the area in which they review, otherwise it is much harder to create rigorous scholarly publications. However, if we look for expertise alone, we lose sight of the passion of someone who might be less experienced, but who is dedicated to their field and eager to learn and share what they know. I wonder how we can balance these: perhaps through putting out a call for reviewers in addition to inviting those we know we want to work with? For some reason I keep thinking of publicly-created metadata in relation to this, and I think the underlying argument is the same: how much control do we want to give 'just folks' in determining what information is considered 'quality' or how that information is classified? Is an article's intrinsic value lessened if someone outside of the literary field (or someone outside of academia entirely) comments on it? 

This definitely gives me some food for thought to mull over with the other folks involved with B Sides-we've just set ourselves up (and are about to enter our 2nd semester) as a student journal, and part of our purpose is educational (i.e. to teach students and alumni about the publication process). Since, by and large, most journals still do the "submit research>peer review>revisions>publication" thing, I would be really hesitant to let go of peer review for B Sides when we are using it as a tool to help our fellow LIS students!

However, I think that crowd-sourced peer review is an AWESOME idea, because it lets us engage with both the author and other reviewers, provides more feedback (and more varied feedback) from a larger number of people, and allows authors the chance to gauge the reaction of those who would actually be reading their work after it was published (i.e. people in the field but not necessarily people who have been selected as reviewers). 

This sort of reviewing is also an excellent opportunity for us graduate students: I can't speak for every grad student, but I definitely think that the more opportunities we have to get involved with the review and publication process, get our voices heard, and gain expertise the better! It makes me wonder how to construct a place within our department (or even independently, if anyone is interested in working on this with me!) to create a similar model for graduate student publication, or even just to put our work out there for feedback in a less formal setting--fellow students, educators, researchers, what are your thoughts?  I am hoping this model becomes more and more accepted and widely used!