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.

Competency 5: Tagging

The following is the tag cloud that appears at LibraryThing for the book The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access for Research and Scholarship by John Willinsky. This book makes the case for open access as a public good and chronicles the advancement of libraries as an institution for access throughout history, including even the library at Alexandria. Today, online publishing has created exigency for open access and Willinsky argues that the access principle introduces a responsibility in scholarly publishing - a commitment to wide circulation to as many readers as possible. Willinsky also explores the options available in access today and describes different functioning models of open access.

2006(1) @electronic copy(1) @info(1) @pdf(1) academia(1) access(1) archives(1) box 10(1) box 3(1) Chicago(1) copyright(4) Creative Commons work(1) database(1) digital(1) electronic(1) for library school(1) freeculture(2) grad LIS(1) information(2) innovation(1) Journal(2) librarianship(1) Libraries(2) Library(2) library & info science(1) library school(3) library science(1) lis 2000(1) lis2000(2) LIS2000 (Understanding information)(1) loan(1) non-fiction(4) october 2006(1) open access(7) open journals(1) open-access(3) openAccess(1) own(1) owned(1) print(1) professionel open_access open_knowledge(1) profs tomer and alman(1) public knowledge(1) Publishing(2) random(1) read(2) research(2) scholarship(2) school(1) science & technology(1) small tote in closet(1) Technology(1) unsummarized(1) whatisalibrary(1) wishlist(1)

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/30081335

I chose this work because of its specific application to scholarly research. The tagging community seems to indicate that open access (the highest number of tags, 7), scholarship/school, and research are all relevant keywords pertaining to this book. I also like that free culture and Creative Commons were tagged!

Competency 4: RSS

Please see the RSS Aggregator at right for a compilation of feeds related to Open Access. This nifty tool was created by Vedran Vucic of The Linux Center.

I found this feed aggregator by using the search string "library open access rss" into the Google Toolbar. I decided to use the Open Access RSS aggregator because it compiles global feeds and is not narrowed by a singular national view of scholarly publications. It is often easy to isolate the problem to American universities, but I think this feed is helpful to see the impact is global and affects not only institutions, but most importantly it hurts scholars and researchers everywhere, especially in developing countries.

Competency 3: Podcast

My choice for the 3rd Competency is The Right to Research: Student involvement in open access to scholarly communication from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University in Boston. This podcast is given by Gavin Baker (of SPARC Outreach and the founder of University of Florida's Students for Free Culture chapter), discussing his experiences with open access from an undergraduate student and beyond.

The most interesting thing about this podcast to me is his anecdote about reading an article in his campus newspaper about millions of dollars of cuts in the library budget for electronic journals. The cost of scholarly journals is exorbitant and most schools must be extremely choosy with license subscriptions, to the dismay and frustration of many professors, and residually, to students. I feel that it is important to increase awareness of the student impact of the burdens of monopolization of scholarly journal distribution.

This podcast was found by using the search string "library open access podcast" in the Google toolbar.

Competency 2: Related Blog

The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics immediately caught my attention upon reading and digesting its purpose statement, which urges readers to "imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world's scholarly knowledge." Heather Morrison's blog captures news, research questions, and her own perspective on Open Access of scholarly content. IJPE is even more interesting to me knowing that even though Heather is writing from Canada (Vancouver, approximately) her experience is one singularly felt by librarians, professors, students, researchers, and universities all over the world. Consider the following passage from a May 2008 entry which discusses the benefit of free-to-read open access to businesses:

There are many flavors of open access; green, gold, public access, free to read, free to write. One thing that every aspect of open access has it common, is that it brings many benefits throughout our society, what the Budapest Open Access Initiative called "an unprecedented public good".

Consider how making research articles free to read for anyone with an internet connection, opens up new possibilities for the business community. The wealth of knowledge developed by our universities and researchers becomes freely available to everyone from the large corporation, to the budding entrepreneur. And why not? One of the arguments for open access is that taxpayers should have access to the results of research that they have funded. Businesses are taxpayers, too!

I decided to use the Imaginary Journal first of all because the whimsical name immediately caught my attention, but I admire the credentials behind its author, Heather Morrison, and it is certainly a nicely written, intelligent perspective on the issues. Another reason behind my choice is that IJPE, while making its focus on scholarly communications, also blends an understanding of impacts outside the scope of academic libraries, including businesses and special libraries. This is important because it demonstrates that the scholarly journal crisis is far-reaching and can have affects on industry research and advancement. I found IJPE by typing "scholarly knowledge blog" into the Google toolbar.

Competency 1: Introduction and Purpose

This blog has been created to satisfy the requirements of the library science course of "Information Storage and Retrieval" (ISAR) at Texas Woman's University (TWU) and will demonstrate successful completion of the ISAR Competencies.

Its author is a first-year MLS student with a tendency toward academic libraries. Her subject of interest is the scholarly journal crisis affecting the academic library community and scholarly communication in the information age.