Scholarly Communication

DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons Form Working Collaboration
Today two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, the DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons, announced plans to combine strengths to work on joint initiatives that will more closely align their organizations’ goals and better serve both open source repository communities in the coming months. This advance [...]
Published on : Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:06:18 +0000

New Podcast: Professor Dan Ariely on his book “Predictably Irrational” and Scholarly Publishing
The latest in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright is an interview with Dan Ariely, who was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics here at MIT, until very recently, when he moved to Duke University, where he is now James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics. Professor Ariely [...]
Published on : Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:07:02 +0000

JulyAP 2008 Workshop: Publishing Smart: Journal Quality Measures & Publisher Copyright Policies
WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center - DIRC) WHEN: Friday, July 25, noon - 1pm Geared for graduate students, this workshop addresses what copyright means to you as an author, how you can assess a publisher’s copyright policies, and how you can use web-based tools that assess journal quality. Open access publishing models and the use of [...]
Published on : Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:27:48 +0000

Stanford School of Education Faculty Vote for Opening Access to Their Work
The faculty of the Stanford University School of Education voted unanimously “in support of greater openness in scholarly and educational endeavors,” by adopting a policy June 10 that will require all of the faculty’s scholarly articles to be available openly on the web. This move is the first by a School of Education, and follows similar [...]
Published on : Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:34:11 +0000

Harvard Law School Faculty Vote Unanimously for Open Access
The faculty of the Harvard Law School has voted unanimously to make articles authored by faculty members available in an open online repository. This is the first law school to commit to open access for its authors’ work. As reported in the Harvard Law School news, Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan explains the [...]
Published on : Fri, 09 May 2008 16:09:50 +0000

New Podcast: Professor George Stiny on the “Copy” in Copyright
The latest in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright is an interview with George Stiny, Professor of Computation in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Professor Stiny explains the significance of copying in the design process from his unusual perspective - a perspective that blends art and design with calculating. Professor Stiny invented [...]
Published on : Tue, 06 May 2008 14:00:23 +0000

Video Contest: Student Views on Information Sharing
The Second Annual Sparky Awards, a contest that recognizes the best new short videos on the value of information sharing, were announced today. The 2008 contest theme is “MindMashup: The Value of Information Sharing.” Videos of two minutes or less that “imaginatively portray the benefits of the open, legal exchange of information” are due by [...]
Published on : Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:17 +0000

NIH Public Access Policy of 2008: New Guide for MIT Authors Available
The new NIH Public Access Policy of 2008 requires all NIH-funded investigators to submit their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to the NIH’s PubMed Central (PMC) database (the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature) upon acceptance for journal publication.  This policy, created to conform with a new law passed by Congress, applies to all peer-reviewed articles accepted [...]
Published on : Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:07:58 +0000

New Podcast: Hal Abelson on Supporting Our Intellectual Commons
The latest in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright is an interview with Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Professor Abelson has played key roles in fostering educational technology initiatives such MIT’s OpenCourseWare and DSpace. He has a [...]
Published on : Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:01:46 +0000

Following Removal of DRM, MIT Resubscribes to SAE Database
MIT faculty, students, and staff have access to the Society of Automotive Engineer’s technical papers over the web again, because the SAE listened to MIT and other universities when they spoke out against the imposition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Last spring, the MIT Libraries cancelled their web access to the (SAE) technical papers, [...]
Published on : Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:55:27 +0000

Now Open Access: Gutenberg-e History Monographs
In 1999, the Gutenberg-e program made a big splash as one of the first experiments in online scholarly monograph publication. Co-sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Columbia University Press, Gutenberg-e offered a space for new scholars to take advantage of the power of digital media to present their research in innovative ways. Since [...]
Published on : Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:13:38 +0000

Publishing Smart: Video Now Available
The IAP session “Publishing Smart” is now available on video. (MIT on-campus use only) The 51-minute video captures a session for graduate students that covers: use of web-based tools that assess journal quality; copyright and its relation to the publication process; assessing a publisher’s copyright policies; open access publishing models and channels, and impact on citation rate; use of the MIT [...]
Published on : Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:52:49 +0000

New Podcast: Professor Lienhard on his Open Access Textbook
In the new episode in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright, we hear from Professor John H. Lienhard V, Professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MIT. Professor Lienhard’s research interests include Heat and Mass Transfer and Fluid Mechanics, among other areas. He is the recipient of several teaching awards at MIT as well [...]
Published on : Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:28:10 +0000

Harvard Research to be Openly Available
In an effort to share faculty research and scholarship more broadly, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously on February 12 to give the University a license to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles openly available. According to Peter Suber, chronicler of trends in open access, the new policy [...]
Published on : Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:48:56 +0000

New Podcast: John Wilbanks on Barriers to the Flow of Scientific Knowledge
In the latest in the series of podcasts on topics related to scholarly publication and copyright, the Executive Director of Science Commons, John Wilbanks, discusses how and why Science Commons is working to improve the flow of scientific knowledge so that complex scientific, technical, and medical problems can be solved more quickly. Download the audio file [...]
Published on : Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:15:38 +0000

New Podcast: Tracy Gabridge on Assessing the Vulnerability of Conference Proceedings
In the new episode in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright, Tracy Gabridge, Associate Head of the Barker Engineering Library (as well as a graduate of MIT), speaks about a project she is leading in which a group of librarians is determining which conferences MIT Engineering faculty publish in, whether the MIT [...]
Published on : Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:14:08 +0000

Details of Revised NIH Public Access Policy Published
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), as previously reported, was directed by new legislation to mandate open access to all peer-reviewed journal articles published as a result of NIH grant funds, through PubMed Central, the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. NIH has now revised its home page, FAQ, and Public Access [...]
Published on : Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:11:35 +0000

IAP 2008: Publishing Smart: A Hands-on Workshop on Journal Quality Measures and Publisher Copyright Policies
Geared for graduate students, addresses what copyright means to you as an author, how you can assess a publisher’s copyright policies, and how you can use web-based tools that assess journal quality. Open access publishing models and the use of the MIT amendment to alter standard publisher agreements will also be discussed. WHEN: Friday, January 18, [...]
Published on : Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:02:05 +0000

New Model Proposed for Funding Particle Physics Journals
“The next big experiment in particle physics won’t need an accelerator, detector, or other big machine,” says Glennda Chui in the latest issue of Symmetry: Dimensions of Particle Physics. “It doesn’t even involve subatomic particles…instead, it will test a new way to circulate the theories, methods, and experimental results that are the lifeblood of [...]
Published on : Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:26:18 +0000

NIH Research to be Publicly Available Online
On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed a spending bill that requires the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate open online access to all research it funds. This is the first mandate for a major public funding agency in the US that requires research to be openly available; it changes the 2005 NIH Public Access Policy, [...]
Published on : Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:50:43 +0000

New Podcast: Professor Kai von Fintel on the Launch of a New Open Access Journal in Linguistics
The fourth episode in a new series of podcasts on various aspects of scholarly publishing & copyright is now available. In this episode, we hear from Professor Kai von Fintel, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, whose research areas are in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, and the intersections among them. Professor von Fintel discusses the launch [...]
Published on : Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:51:31 +0000

Professor Cheng Addresses DRM Concerns in Latest MIT Faculty Newsletter
Professor Wai Cheng writes about “The Pitfalls of Digital Rights Management” in the November/December issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter. Professor Cheng, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), spoke out last spring against the limitations of digital rights management (DRM) technology being imposed on access to research published [...]
Published on : Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:17:02 +0000

Publishing Smart: A Hands-on Workshop for Graduate Students
This hands-on workshop will help graduate students learn tools that measure journal quality, publisher copyright policies, and their significance to you as an author. Includes concise overviews of: Measures of journal quality, including ISI impact factor and other indicators Copyright law as related to journal publishing (transferring copyright) Publisher copyright policies, including rights for posting your work [...]
Published on : Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:20:23 +0000

Open Science & Scientific Publishing: Presentations & Discussion Nov. 13
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the MIT Libraries, and the nonprofit organization ScienceCommons are co-sponsoring a discussion of open access and the progress of science: WHEN: Tuesday, November 13; 3:15 pm - 5:00 pm WHERE: Kiva (Room 449) — Stata Center With presentations by: John Wilbanks (Vice President, Science Commons) Anna Gold (Head, Engineering and Science Libraries, MIT) and Moderated by [...]
Published on : Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:22:38 +0000

New Podcast: Professor Eric von Hippel on Openness, Innovation, and Scholarly Publishing
The third episode in a new series of podcasts on various aspects of scholarly publishing & copyright is now available. In the new episode, we hear from Professor Eric von Hippel, T Wilson Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. He specializes in research related to [...]
Published on : Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:01:44 +0000

Senate Approves Strengthened Open Access Mandate for NIH
Last night the US Senate approved the Appropriations Bill that strengthens the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Public Access Policy,  requiring NIH-sponsored research to be made openly available on the internet without barriers to access. The new language requires NIH-funded researchers to deposit copies of manuscripts into PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine’s openly accessible archive, where [...]
Published on : Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:22:37 +0000

Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences Considering Open Access For Their Work
Stuart Shieber, Harvard professor of computer science, introduced a motion to the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 16 that would have the faculty uniformly grant a non-exclusive, limited license to Harvard to post their scholarly and research articles openly on the web.    The final version of the motion has not been completed, [...]
Published on : Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:06:07 +0000

Retaining Copyrights to Increase Research Impact: Online Tutorial Now Available
A new MIT Libraries’ tutorial “Scholarly Publication and Copyright: Retaining Rights & Increasing the Impact of Research” is now available online. Part 1 focuses on how copyright law intersects with the publication process. Download part 1 (5:38 min.) Part 2 reviews why you might want to retain rights when you publish and how you can do so. Download Part [...]
Published on : Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:52:57 +0000

Libraries Launch Scholarly Publishing & Copyright Podcast Series
The MIT Libraries are offering a new podcast series on scholarly publishing and copyright. Two episodes are available: In “Transforming Scientific Communication,” Steve Gass, Head of Public Services, describes some problems with the existing model for scholarly publishing and offers his vision of positive changes that could be made. Download the audio file. (6:27 minutes, 6 [...]
Published on : Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:12:27 +0000

New Tools Explore Journal Publishing Policies
Two new tools make finding key information about journals easier, providing authors with support for decisions about where to publish and offering information about what they can do with their work once they publish. Both tools were announced this month and are open for testing and comment. Journal Info The first tool, Journal Info, includes [...]
Published on : Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:43:18 +0000