E-currents

Citation

Falk, H. (2004), "E-currents", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 21 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2004.23921cae.001

E-currents

Howard Falk is an Freelance Author based in New Jersey. (howf@hotmail.com)

Universities take action on journals

The business practices of some journals threaten proper access to scholarly literature according to the University of Connecticut Faculty Senate. The Senate feels that development of library collections is increasingly constrained by the rising costs of journals and databases. The Senate called on tenured faculty to submit fewer papers to such journals, to referee fewer papers for the journals, or to resign from editorial posts at the journals. In contrast, the Senate encouraged support of journals whose practices are consistent with the health of scholarly communication. It called for financial and material support for more sustainable methods of promoting such communication and investment in infrastructure for peer-reviewed publication.

Four North Carolina universities, including North Carolina State had been jointly purchasing a bundle of about 1,300 journals from Elsevier under a contract that gave all faculty online access. University librarians negotiated with Elsevier for almost a year, trying to improve the offered package deal. They were told they could not cancel any subscriptions, and had to accept a fee increase from one year to the next. The North Carolina universities (UNC Chapel Hill. Duke, NC State and NC Central University) found that deal too expensive and decided not to sign the new contract. Instead, each university will subscribe only to the individual journals it needs. With this piecemeal arrangement, each chosen journal will cost more but university libraries will retain control over their journal collections. For similar reasons, Cornell University and the University of Missouri have also decided not to renew contracts with Elsevier.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has refused multi-year subscription packages offered by journal publishers Elsevier and Wiley, but will accept one-year package subscriptions. The aims is to reduce the impact of these publishers on MIT's ability to make responsible decisions in selecting information resources. MIT had offered the publishers a clause that would have allowed the university to amend a multi-year deal in the event of a budget cut, but that offer was refused. Elsevier accounts for roughly 41 percent of MIT journal expenditures. Wiley represents about 9 percent. Overall, the two make up about a third of MIT's serials budget.

Elsevier editorial board resigns

The editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Algorithms (JOA) has resigned, and accuses the publisher of unnecessarily raising prices. Since Elsevier took over JOA in 2001 the price for the journal has risen $100 a year. The board plans to start up a competing journal called Transactions on Algorithms, which is to be published by the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM), a non-profit organization. Elsevier plans to replace the editorial board and to continue to publish JOA.

Institutional memberships pay author fees

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has begun to offer institutional memberships to universities, libraries, research funding groups and other organizations. The memberships provide discounts on PLoS publication fees for authors affiliated with member institutions. Critics have been skeptical about the long-term viability of the open-access publishing that PLoS offers, arguing that while researchers in well-funded biomedical research can afford author fees, those in fields where grants are smaller would be unable to do so. However, PLoS currently waives fees for any authors who say they cannot afford them, and the institutional memberships are designed to sustain PLoS open access journals in fields with lower funding.

BioMed Central, an open-access publisher based in the UK offers institutional memberships and has enrolled more than 300 institutions in 32 countries. The number of memberships continues to increase. For example, starting in 2004, 17 Australian organizations recently became BioMed Central institutional members. Included is the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, and New South Wales, as well as Charles Darwin University, the University of Queensland and Monash University. All processing charges for researchers affiliated with these member organizations are waived when they author articles in the any of the more than 100 peer-reviewed journals that BioMed Central publishes.

Journal prices and availability under investigation

The UK House of Commons is scheduled to hold hearings in March 2004 on scientific publication and whether the government should support open-access journals. The Science and Technology Committee will conduct the inquiry which is slated to explore the idea that research funded by public money should be available to the public for free. The committee has invited evidence on issues such as the effect packaged publishing schemes have on libraries and teaching and research communities and how government might promote a competitive market for scientific publications.

Database Restriction Bill passes committee

The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act has been approved by a 16-7 vote in the US House Judiciary Committee. The bill to pass this database act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Howard Coble (R-NC), Jim Sensenbrenner, Jr (R-WI), W.J. Tauzin (R-LA), Lamar Smith (R-TX), David Hobson (R-OH), and Jim Greenwood (R-PA). The next legislative step for the database bill would be a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Large database producers such as Elsevier and Thomson have aggressively pressed for the database bill, seeking additional copyright protection for databases. A key concern of library and other organizations opposed to the database act is the fact that the legislation would create protection not only for databases, but for the facts they contain. Copyright protection does not extend to facts. The legislation is said to threaten database users who create their own files by taking information from existing databases available at their library. Similarly, library patrons share data, scientific, technical, and business facts with many other people and the legislation can open them to lawsuits and injunctions. For more details, see www.arl.org/info/frn/leg-update.html

In hearings on the database bill, Mr William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, spoke against the draft legislation on behalf of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, as well as the Association of American Universities, the American Library Association, and the Association of Research Libraries. Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive officer of the US Chamber of Commerce also spoke against the bill. Keith Kupferschmid spoke for the bill on behalf of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and the Coalition Against Database Piracy (CADP).

Online text and videos at universities

Internet First Publishing at Cornell University posts works on the Internet where they are freely available to the public. Items submitted to Internet First Publishing are reviewed by an editorial board. Accepted works include many that might not reach the public through conventional publishing procedures. Readers can view the works online, download them, print a personal copy, or pay a fee for a printed copy. The underlying idea is to make as much information as possible publicly available. Internet-First allows authors to retain their copyright but requires writers to grant the Cornell Library unrestricted rights to distribution. Authors receive no advanced royalties, but they can profit from any print-on-demand copies that are sold. It is expected that Internet-First will become an efficient and cost-effective way for new professors to publish their books. When we checked the service (at http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/62) 34 items were offered, including original manuscripts and out-of-print books. Books and articles are displayed in PDF format. Multimedia and videos are presented in RealMedia Player format. Readers have the option of buying printed copies through a print-on-demand system. Digital copies of manuscripts will be routed to a printing facility near the buyer where print on demand copies are produced. The buyers can have their printed copies shipped, or can arrange to pick them up at a nearby bookstore or library.

Professors at the University of Montana are now required to submit their syllabi electronically to the Mansfield Library, where they are made available on the library's Web site. Students can then access the latest syllabus of any class they are taking or may be interested in taking.

Project Gutenberg aims at a million ebooks

Project Gutenberg the first and largest online Internet library now makes more than 11,000 texts available. The next target for Project Gutenberg is to raise that total to a million ebooks. According to Greg Newby, chief executive officer of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, about one million books published from 1923 to 1964 are now in the public domain and potentially available for publication by Project Gutenberg. Copyrights of only about 10 percent of all items published during those years have been renewed.

Public domain expands in Canada

In 2004 every unpublished document whose author died on or before the end of 1948 went out of copyright and into the public domain in Canada. Millions of pages of material, in hundreds of archives became the common property of all Canadians. The Canadian public is free to make use of this heritage by publishing, digitizing, compiling, translating, adapting, dramatizing, the material, treating it in any way they wish. It is theirs to enjoy and share. Also in 2004, published works of authors who died in 1953 have become public domain in Canada and every other country which honors the life+50 rule for copyright expiration.

Library uses e-mail for overdue notices

At the end of January 2004 the Mansfield Library at the University of Montana began sending e-mail notices to patrons about overdue and lost materials, and library fines. Conventional mail notices to patrons are being discontinued and the switch to e-mail is expected to save $8,000 a year in postal expenses. Paper receipts with due dates are still issued with every check-out. Then, one week in advance of the due date, library circulation software automatically sends out e-mail reminders. E-mail notices follow, citing late fees, until a lost material statement is issued. Students and staff members working at the library information center have been trained to inform patrons about the new process.

Roll-up display

Philips Research has produced a flexible plastic display that measures five inches along the diagonal (320 240 pixels). A Philips organization called Polymer Vision has set up facilities to produce 5,000 of these displays per year. The plan is to turn out millions of the displays by 2005. The displayed material remains visible when power to the unit is turned off, and the displays can be updated as often as desired. The display units weigh about three grams and are about three times as thick as a sheet of paper. They are expected to find use as changeable labels for store shelves and for e-mail, emaps, enews, and ebooks.

Foldable ebook

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Ltd announced in February that it has started selling its electronic Sigma Book device in Japan for 37,900 yen (about US$359). The device can operate continually with two AA batteries for three months. It uses an SD memory card. Sigma Book has two 7.2in LCD display panels located side by side, and can be folded as if it was a conventional book. The device measures 292 205 12.7mm when it is opened, It weighs 520 grams without batteries. The Sigma Book displays content in EBI format. Comics, novels and how-to books, 5,000 items in all, are available at the Sigma Book Web site in Japan. Plans are to sell 100,000 Sigma Book units by the end of fiscal 2005.

80 million Chinese Internet users

In the past six years the size of the Internet audience in China has multiplied 128 times. About 11.5 million new users were active in the second half of 2003 and the rate of growth is still going up. There are almost 60 million Web sites in China. The number of Chinese citizens who are Internet users is now second only to that of the USA. However, Chinese users make up only 6.2 percent of that country's total population. Although young people still account for the majority of Chinese Internet users, the makeup of the age groups has been changing. In 1998, 91 per cent of all Chinese Internet users were between the ages of 18 and 30. By the end of last year, that percentage had dropped to 51.3, while the percentage under 18 grew to 18.8. The proportion of male and female Internet users remained at about three to two during the past two years. Surveys indicate that most of these users look for news, e-books and daily life information on the Web. Shopping online or doing other e-businesses accounted for only 0.4 per cent of Internet use. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai about a third of the population uses the Internet, but in poorer areas such as Henan, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia, only 3 or 4 per cent are online.