Competency 9: Internet

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) website contains a plethora of informative and useful material surrounding the crisis in scholarly publishing and is easily the most credible alliance of individuals and organizations, including hundreds of universities, joined together in search of a viable discussion and solution. Some of the resources available include pages on:

• Author Rights
• Industry Roundup
• Journal Pricing
• Open Access
• Open Data
• Public Access to Research
• Repositories

I chose SPARC in the final competency post because I feel it synthesizes the variety of voices in this movement and is the most comprehensive source of information, assistance, and support for all members of the academic publishing community, whether they are concerned about the exorbitant prices of journals or staunch advocates of open access.

This website was found via Google using the keywords "scholarly publishing."

Competency 8: Multimedia

For Competency 8, I used the Creative Commons Search function to search for multimedia content. I did a search for filmmaker Jesse Dylan and used the blip.tv tab to find content. Jesse Dylan recently created a video called "A Shared Culture" which contains portions of interviews with CC board members who each explain some of the theory behind the Creative Commons. I felt that this video would be a fitting multimedia item related to my topic of open access in scholarly publications because it sheds light on the idea of a creative culture being more about community and less about content. I think this is a novel idea when it comes to the academic publishing community, as very often the peripheral content of a published work (namely, the journal title in which it appears) is considered with as much weight as the knowledge within the article itself.

A Shared Culture by Jesse Dylan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA) license.

Competency 7: Image

For the image competency I wanted to select a symbol of the open access movement that illustrates a fundamental premise of open access - the commons. I found the above graphic by using the term "commons" in a Google Image search. The symbol I've chosen represents the Creative Commons copyuse symbol, which may be placed on a webpage containing a work to which the author chooses to exercise their copyright privileges by stating "some rights reserved." Interestingly enough, Google retrieved this image from the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog. You can see from the website that this blog employs an Attribution Share-Alike license, which grants users the right to copy or distribute the work as it is, or create derivative works from its content. However, the authors only permit this use under certain conditions, such as for non-commercial purposes.

Competency 6d: Citation Pearl in BIP

I have a favorite book by Lawrence Lessig to use called The Future of Ideas. I put the title in BIP and clicked on the result. I then clicked on the subject heading that appealed to me the most - intellectual property. I got 2957 results about enforcing copyright in multiple languages, which I find to be counterproductive to my research interest. Clicking on Internet Law and Legislation gave me 313 hits, and the 3rd hit is another book by Lessig. I decide to revise my search by adding a second keyword. I open the advanced search and add culture to the keywords. 10 results and here are my favorite hits:

• Handbook of Internet Politics Author: Chadwick, Andrew et al. Publisher: Routledge ISBN or UPC: 0-203-96254-0 (Active Record) Format: E-Book Date: Aug 2008 Price: N/A Market: United StatesLC Class #: HM851.R6795 2008 Dewey#: 320.0285/4678 ISBN 13: 978-0-203-96254-1
• Cybercrime: Vandalizing the Information Society Author: Furnell, Steven Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional ISBN or UPC: 0-201-72159-7 (Active Record) Format: Trade Paper Date: Dec 2001 Price: $31.99 Market: United States Availability: Available for Order Dewey#: 364.1/68 ISBN 13: 978-0-201-72159-1

I can see using the Citation Pearl growing approach for research or position papers where I'm looking to find a group of authors who share my preferred opinion on an issue or topic. I can also imagine that this method would be very useful for quickly generating sources for an expository paper by choosing a book or an article which I already like quite a bit (such as Lessig's above) and then using a "More Like This" tool. Candidly, I think this method would be a great idea to use for generating a birthday gift idea for someone who is hard to shop for. Simply search for an item which they already own and look for "More Like This!"

Competency 6c: Successive Fractions in ASC

Inverting the specific facet approach above and now starting with a very broad topic to narrow, I begin by searching on academic or scholarly and am able to quickly narrow that down. One of my favorite parts about searching in ASC is the search box hovers in its own frame above my results, making the successive searches very easy.

S1 = Academic or Scholarly = 152432 hits

S1 + information commons = 35 hits (wow)

The results are immediately relevant:
1. Transforming Library Service through Information Commons: Case Studies for the Digital Age. By: Malone, Andrea. Journal of Academic Librarianship, Sep2008, Vol. 34 Issue 5, p456-456, 1/2p; (AN 34609516)

2. Social, Intellectual, and Cultural Spaces: Creating Compelling Library Environments for the Digital Age.Preview By: Dewey, Barbara I.. Journal of Library Administration, 2008, Vol. 48 Issue 1, p85-94, 10p; (AN 34160333)

This particular exercise produced amazing results. I was able to very quickly find a very workable set of results (35 hits) after only two short steps. I would consider it to be the best of both worlds comparing the specific facet first and the building block search methods we've already explored. I can see using this method very frequently in the future and it seems easily applicable to most databases.

Competency 6b: Specific Facet First in LibLit

If you recall from my BB search I used something like (journals OR periodicals) + (academic OR scholarly) +(open access OR free publishing). For my specific facet first, I decided the last group of terms would probably yield the fewest results. I did a quick test with three possibilities: open access yielded 806 results, information commons gave me 452 hits, and free culture gave me 67 records. I decided to narrow the search by placing quotes around "free culture" - and got only 2 hits, both of them nice ones!

• 70% 1 Griffey, J. M. The Perils of Strong Copyright: the American Library Association and Free Culture. 2004. 81 p.
• 70% 2 Coyle, K. [Free Culture]. Information Technology and Libraries v. 23 no. 4 (December 2004) p. 198-9
  

One thing that I did find difficult about the specific facet first is that if all facets of the search are broad, then the specific facet will also be broad. This was my least favorite of the search methods we've used so far.

Competency 6a: Building Block Search in ERIC

This is a Building Block Search I performed in ERIC. I was definitely happy with the quality of the results, especially the item from SPARC. 3-4 more hits down in my search I found less quantitative works and some more subjective or qualitative articles. . .luckily a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions about free content so that helps!

S1: academic or scholar*
S2: journal or periodical
S3: open access or open source or free publi*

S1 + S2+ S3 = (academic or scholar*) AND (journal or periodical) AND (open access or open source or free publi*)

Results in full text found 91 records. Here are my first two hits:

80% 1

Peek, R. SPARC Europe Seal Clarifies Legal Rights on OA Journals. Information Today v. 25 no. 6 (June 2008) p. 19-20

80% 2

Dennis, A. D. The impact of the open access movement on medical based scholarly publishing in Nigeria. First Monday (Online) v. 12 no. 10 (October 1 2007)

The Building Block strategy is incredibly efficient at catching a wide net of workable results for a search. By expanding each facet into similar terms and employing the use of synonyms, I was able to significantly expand my query.