Thursday 26 March 2009

Results of ALPSP/Portico Survey on Digital Preservation

Portico offers ALPSP members special discount

One of the most important issues facing publishers and their library customers is long-term preservation of digital content. Against this background, ALPSP recently undertook a survey of its members to enhance awareness of long-term digital preservation issues and to establish the nature and extent of strategies that they have planned. As the results reveal, some publishers are much further along in their understanding and action than others.

The study was co-funded by ALPSP and Portico (www.portico.org), and conducted independently by Sarah Durrant of Red Sage Consulting. The full findings of the survey are freely available to download from the ALPSP website (www.alpsp.org).

Portico is now offering a special 5% discount to any ALPSP members who choose to join Portico, so if you're thinking of using them please mention this. Contact Toni Tracy (toni.tracy@portico.org) for details.

Wednesday 25 March 2009

Evolution or revolution: the future of identity and access management for research

ALPSP member Eduserv is holding a free symposium in London on the 21st of May which you may be interested in attending. Here are the details:

Evolution or revolution: The future of identity and access management for research

Royal College of Physicians, London
Thurs 21 May 2009, 10:00AM - 4:45PM
Free registration - deadline for registrations: Friday 17 April 2009

This symposium will be of value to people with an interest in the impact that the social Web is having on research practice and scholarly communication and the resulting implications for identity and access management. Attendees will gain an insight into the way the research landscape is evolving and will be better informed when making future decisions about policy or practice in this area.

Confirmed presenters include:

James Farnhill, Joint Information Systems Committee; Nate Klingenstein, Internet2; Cameron Neylon, Science and Technology Facilities Council; Mike Roch, University of Reading; David Smith, CABI; John Watt, National e-Science Centre (Glasgow).

If you have any questions about the Symposium, please contact Eduserv at symposium@eduserv.org.uk or phone +44 (0)1225 474328.

Friday 20 March 2009

New PRC study on author rights

The Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) has just published a new report examining the difference between the usage rights that publishers grant authors to different versions of articles and the perceptions that authors have of what they can do.

(ALPSP is a founding member of the PRC and the study made use of data collected for the third running of our Scholarly Publishing Practice study.)

Full press release below:

Publishers' agreements are more liberal than journal authors think, but do not allow self-archiving of the published PDF.

The Publishing Research Consortium has published another in its series of reports: Journal Authors' Rights: perception and reality (Summary Paper 5).

Using re-analysis of the recently published ALPSP report Scholarly Publishing Practice 3 (which looks at the practice of 181 publishers, representing 75% of all articles), and a new survey of 1163 authors, the report compares what publishers actually allow authors to do with the different versions of their manuscript, and what they want to do and believe they are permitted to do.

For both the submitted and the accepted version of their manuscript, the majority of publishers' agreements (as calculated by the number of articles they publish) allow authors to provide copies to colleagues, to incorporate into their own works, to post to a personal or departmental website or to an institutional repository, and to use in course packs; just under 50% also permit posting to a subject repository. However, far fewer authors think they can do any of these than are in fact allowed to do so.

The published PDF version is the version that authors would prefer to use for all the above purposes; again, publishers' agreements exceed authors' expectations for providing copies to colleagues, incorporating in subsequent work, and use in course packs. However, the picture is turned on its head when it comes to self-archiving; more than half of authors think that publishers allow them to deposit the final PDF, whereas under 10% of publishers actually permit this - probably because of serious concerns about the long-term impact on subscriptions.

Why do authors have such a poor understanding of publishers' agreements? The PRC concludes that publishers need to do much more to make sure that their terms are crystal clear, but also suggests that the ambiguous term 'preprint' may mislead authors, and should be dropped in favour of the recommended NISO terminology.

*Full report: Sally Morris, Journal Authors' Rights:
perception and reality (PRC Summary Paper 5), PRC 2009 (PDF) http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/JournalAuthorsRights.pdf
*Summary of findings: Journal Authors' Rights: perception and reality - a preliminary report, PRC 2009 (PPT) http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SummaryforAPE-final.ppt
*Author survey summary: Author Rights Copyright Project, GfK Business 2008 (PPT) http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/PRC2008v2.ppt
*John & Laura Cox, Publishing Practice 3, ALPSP 2008
(PDF) http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200
*Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group, NISO l 2008 (PDF) http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/RP-8-2008.pdf

The Publishing Research Consortium is a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion. Our objective is to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship. Overall, we aim to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Latest ALPSP member

I am pleased to say that DataSalon are the latest organization to apply for membership to ALPSP.

DataSalon provide "flexible and powerful tools for data integration and analysis which are also extremely user-friendly and easy to implement". In practice that means that they are able to take feeds from all of your databases, mash them up, link them together and give you a more complete view of your customers and prospects... it's good stuff!

They have just announced a strategic partnership with Ringgold. It looks to me like a good fit as Ringgold maintains an extensive database of subscribing organizations and DataSalon provide the means to analyze and visualize the data.

DataSalon join:

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
Kaufman-Wills Group LLC
Cadmus Communications Ltd
Oxfam Publishing
Multi-Science Publishing Company Limited
Sydney University Press
Society for the Study of Addiction

as new members of ALPSP so far this year... Welcome to you all!

Wednesday 11 March 2009

2009 ALPSP International Conference Program announced

That's the thing about blog posts; nothing for ages and then three come along at one (at least that's the thing about my blog posts...)

Anyway, I am very pleased to say that the program for the 2009 ALPSP International Conference has just been announced. Precise details of speakers will follow shortly but the outline program has details of the session abstracts and Chairs and - believe me - we have some fantastic speakers lined up.

Mark the dates (9-11 September) in your diaries or better still register now!

www.alpspconference.org

Ian

ALPSP blog gets new skin

Oh no, I am blogging about the blog...

We've had some feedback that our rather sleek blackboard style of white text on black background was difficult to read. I can certainly agree that my attempt to introduce different colours of text for different commentators in a previous posting was a bit optically challenging...

So we're trying this new style. A bit military grey in tone but hopefully legible!

Love it or hate it? Let us know...

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Latest issue of ALPSP Alert just posted

The PDF version of the latest issue of ALPSP Alert - our monthly e-newsletter has just been posted on the ALPSP website, http://www.alpsp.org/.

ALPSP Alert is free to everyone at an ALPSP member organization but you will need to login in order to access it (a username and password can be requested from our website if needed).

Alternatively you can sign up to receive an html version of the newsletter directly to your e-mail inbox.