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Category: journals

On “A Good Idea, a Difficult Reality: Toward a Publisher/Library Open Access Partnership,” by Rowland Lorimer

On “A Good Idea, a Difficult Reality: Toward a Publisher/Library Open Access Partnership,” by Rowland Lorimer

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The title of this article by Rowland Lorimer, “A Good Idea, a Difficult Reality: Toward a Publisher/Library Open Access Partnership,” may be a bit misleading. When one reads through the article itself, it seems to argue that libraries should not have a substantive role to play in OA, or at least in the publishing side of OA. (Is that a partnership?) Lorimer rightly acknowledges the complexities of scholarly communication, and the need for objective study into successful models. But its…

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On “Delivering Impact of Scholarly Information: Is Access Enough?,” by Heidi McGregor and Kevin Guthrie

On “Delivering Impact of Scholarly Information: Is Access Enough?,” by Heidi McGregor and Kevin Guthrie

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Heidi McGregor and Kevin Guthrie look beyond open access in their article, “Delivering Impact of Scholarly Information: Is Access Enough?” Their sentiments reflect some of my own, that is, just because you put something online, and its free, doesn’t mean that folks are going to engage with it. McGregor and Guthrie write explicitly from their experience with JSTOR, the not-for-profit organization that negotiates access to scholarly journals and articles and in turn supplies this access to institutions and individuals on…

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On “Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research,” by Gargouri et al.

On “Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research,” by Gargouri et al.

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In “Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research” (2010), Yassine Gargouri, Chawki Hajjem, Vincente Larivière, Yves Gringas, Les Carr, Tim Brody, and Stevan Harnad compare the relative impact of open access and non-open access articles that are archived in a repository because of mandate or due to self-selection. They confront the previously asserted conclusion that the so-called OA Advantage (i.e., the increased citation levels of OA articles) is a self-selection bias rather than a causal…

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On “Open Access Publishing and Academic Research” by Rowly Lorimer

On “Open Access Publishing and Academic Research” by Rowly Lorimer

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Rowly Lorimer begins this chapter by surveying the history of corporate journal publishing as we know it today. It began, Lorimer tells us, shortly after the Second World War by a fellow named Robert Maxwell, whom Lorimer paints as a “scoundrel, thief, probable spy, and publisher” (177). He traces it to the release of the World Wide Web, and the Internet’s gift to scientists of allowing them to share their work online at a much lower cost than publishers charge…

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On Open Access, by Peter Suber

On Open Access, by Peter Suber

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In Open Access, Peter Suber offers a general overview of what open access (OA) to research is. He is rather upfront about his mission: Suber wrote a book that is “… a succinct introduction to the basics, long enough to cover the major topics in reasonable detail and short enough for busy people to read” (ix). He does not go into the significant history of scholarly communication, like John Willinsky might, or the legal precedents for digital rights management, like…

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