Biological databases: A new scientific literature

Biology is entering a new era in which data are being generated that cannot be published in the traditional literature. Databases are taking the role of scientific literature in distributing this information to the community. The success of some major biological undertakings, such as the Human Genome Project, will depend upon the development of a system for electronic data publishing. Many biological databases began as secondary literature—reviews in which certain kinds of data were collected from the primary literature. Now these databases are becoming a new kind of primary literature with findings being submitted directly to the database and never being published in print form. Some databases are offering publishing on demand services, where users can identify subsets of the data that are of interest, then subscribe to periodic distributions of the requested data. New systems, such as fordable while offering a powerful search tool to the scientific community. Although many questions remain regarding the ultimate interactions between electronic and traditional data publishing and about their respective roles in the scientific process, electronic data publishing is here now, changing the way biology is done. The technical problems associated with mounting cost-effective electronic data publishing are either solved, or solutions seem in reach. What is needed now, to take us all the way into electronic data publishing as a new, formal literature, is the development of more high-quality, professionally operated EDP sites. The key to transforming these into a new scientific literature is the establishment of appropriate editorial and review policies for electronic data publishing sites. Editors have the opportunity and the responsibility to work in the vanguard of a revolution in scientific publishing.     

Reading behaviour and electronic journals

Studies from 1977 through 2001 demonstrate that scientists continue to read widely from scholarly journals. Reading of scholarly articles has increased to approximately 120–130 articles per person per year, with engineers reading fewer journal articles on the average and medical faculty reading more. A growing proportion of these readings come from e-prints and other separate copies. Most scientists in a discipline now use electronic journals at least part of the time, with considerable variations among disciplines. Evidence suggests that scientists are reading from a broader range of journals than in the past, influenced by timely electronic publishing and by growth in bibliographic searching and interpersonal communication as means of identifying and locating articles. Although the scholarly journals system has changed dramatically in the past few decades, it is evident that the value scientists place on the information found in scholarly journal articles, whether electronic or print, remains high.     

Open Access Publishing in Business Research: The Authors’ Perspective

Open access (OA) publishing is now accepted as an integral part of the emerging trends within scholarly communication. Business librarians, like their subject specialist colleagues in other disciplines, are increasingly called upon to interpret scholarly communication trends to their faculty. This study surveys 1,293 business faculty from American schools of business accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Issues explored include business faculty publishing practices within the discipline and how these affect academic advancement, obtaining articles for their own research, electronic publishing, self-archiving, and their perceptions about OA publishing generally.     

Electronic Books: How Digital Devices and Supplementary New Technologies are Changing the Face of the Publishing Industry

This paper explores the topic of electronic books (e-books) and the effect that these digital devices and other new technologies has on the publishing industry. Contemporary society often claims that the publishing industry is dying and that the innovation of the e-book will eventually sentence the printed book to death. But this study will show that such is not the case. While it is true that the world is undergoing a digital revolution, publishers today have not been left in the dust, because these firms have embraced electronic publishing (e-publishing). The invention of e-books opens a world of opportunities and since the e-book market is still in its growth stage, there is much work left to be done. As with any new venture, the industry faces certain challenges, such as piracy, but with tools like encryption, digital asset management (DAM), digital rights management (DRM), and digital object identifiers (DOI), publishers are well on the way to a solution. While it is safe to say that the digital revolution has forever changed the face of publishing, e-books could actually revitalize the industry. No one knows what the future of e-publishing will hold, but developments affect publishing houses, authors, and consumers alike. And while the ultimate fate of the printed book is yet unknown, for now, it is here to stay.     

An examination of two Indian megajournals

This study analyzes two online open access peer‐reviewed Indian journals that each published more than 2,000 articles in 2013. It examines various characteristics of these journals, including their publishing policies, author profiles, and quality of articles with regard to language and presentation. The paper recommends taking megajournal publishing in the developing world into consideration of an ecosystem of scholarly communities.     

Profiles in Resource Sharing: Tom Bruno

Abstract

Health sciences libraries are expanding services that use online technologies to support teaching, research, and clinical care needs. Saint Louis University's Health Sciences Center (SLU HSC) Library has developed strong, user-centered, online services in interlibrary loan, bibliographic instruction, and electronic reserves. The authors present their successful experiences in using electronic technologies to improve library services.

Journal articles are provided, often the same day as requested through interlibrary loan, and delivered in electronic format using OCLC's ILLiad program. First-year SLU medical students now complete a self-paced, all online, Health Information Resources course that targets the most relevant biomedical resources, reduces student study time, and is viewed as a model for the entire curriculum. ERes, the electronic reserves program, allows faculty to provide course materials that are accessible at the convenience of students 24 hours a day. These online programs are examples of using electronic technologies to better support user needs for excellent library services.     

ISSUES SESSION 2

Abstract

Many people have heralded the emergence of an online world where all the world's citizens can easily and freely access all the world's literature. Alternatively, some authors mourn the death of print and are convinced that paper products and the greatness of civilization are linked. Reality lies somewhere between these poles. In this session Vicky Reich outlines the current state of electronic publishing at High Wire Press. Daniel Jones discusses integrating an online journal program into a full suite of library services. While no single solution is in sight for the future of electronic publishing, this session presents a variety of perspectives and possibilities.     

Indexing the Internet

Describes some of the historical problems and technological advances that make electronic publishing so attractive as an alternative to print. But while the future may be now, it is not without complication. Indexes and the texts to which they point have traditionally been print products; many of the same problems plague both as electronic products. While many of the issues are still unclear, and many of the solutions only tentative, the pattern is unavoidable: electronic publishing is a growth industry and an expanding market; indexers need to adapt their practices to survive.     

Towards a Digital Spine: The Technological Methods that UK and US Publishers are Using to Tackle the Growing Challenge of E-Book Piracy

Despite electronic book (e-book) piracy being viewed by many rightsholders as the greatest contemporary challenge to the publishing industry, there is little research evaluating different anti-piracy methods, and explaining how they work. This paper explores the technological methods that United Kingdom and United States publishers, and their representative bodies, are using to tackle the growing challenge of e-book piracy. Through interviews with industry experts (including consultants, publishers and representatives) and publishing case studies, this paper brings together knowledge previously published and considered separately. The systems considered include The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal, and Digital Rights Management in its various forms. Through these systems, we can reveal a lack of nuanced understanding in the motivations and methods of illegal file sharing, which have led to unsuccessful blanket solutions to a complex problem. By teasing out these problems, this paper will act as a point of reference for current anti-piracy measures, and consider the future options for an industry increasingly using the World Wide Web to distribute content.     

中国科技期刊文档格式标准化任重道远

对于科技期刊的电子文档数据的存储和传输来说,文档格式的标准化是其基石.文章阐述XML作为科技期刊电子数据交换的统一格式的原因和历程,概述美国科技期刊电子文档化标准NISO JATS的发展历程及其组成和结构,介绍我国科技期刊文档标准化状况,并对制订有关标准提出建议.文章呼吁同行能在借鉴美国科技期刊全文标记实践的基础上,开展中文科技期刊文档格式标准化的研究,为中文科技期刊的按需出版、在线发布、全文数据库建设和数据共享打下基础.     

Mediating at the Student–Wikipedia Intersection

ABSTRACT

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is openly edited by registered users. Wikipedia editors can edit their own and others' entries, and some abuse of this editorial power has been unveiled. Content authors have also been criticized for publishing less than accurate content. Educators and students acknowledge casual use of Wikipedia in spite of its perceived inaccuracies. Use of the online encyclopedia as a reference resource in scholarly papers is still debated. The increasing popularity of Wikipedia has led to an influx of research articles analyzing the validity and content of the encyclopedia. This study provides an analysis of relevant articles on academic use of Wikipedia. This analysis attempts to summarize the status of Wikipedia in relation to the scope (breadth) and depth of its contents and looks at content validity issues that are of concern to the use of Wikipedia for higher education. The study seeks to establish a reference point from which educators can make informed decisions about scholarly use of Wikipedia as a reference resource.     

CrossRef and the research experience

CrossRef is an independent membership association for building collaborative publishing technologies. Its mission is to provide services that enable the scholar to reach source material easily; it focuses on methods that are best achieved through collective agreement among publishers. The CrossRef network now covers millions of journal articles and other content items from hundreds of publishers. This article looks at CrossRef's significance for the online research experience, four years after the launch of the CrossRef initiative.     

The Future of Academic Publishing: Application of the Long-Tail Theory

Print academic journals are dead. As we watch large metropolitan newspapers fail (as are many small town newspapers), the same economic forces are driving online scholarly publishing. This phenomenon is more than print journals going online. The options available with new low-cost online publishing software and the rise in the ability to use ratings from user generated content suggest more near-term changes are likely. Many of the outcomes are unsettled: the economics of online publishing; the standards for peer review, rank, and tenure; and the very nature of scholarly publishing itself. What is certain, however, is that the economics of online academic publishing—modeled via Anderson’s Long Tail Theory—will make it possible to provide greater access, more collaboration, and, ultimately, improved research and researchers. Universities acting as publishing centers with their e-reserves will be expected to change their faculty evaluations, providing greater academic rewards for those who act as editors, reviewers, and proofreaders within this new born-online and only-online world.     

Self-Publishing: Opportunities and Threats in a New Age of Mass Culture

Developments in vanity presses, electronic publishing and social media have led to outstanding growth in the publishing industry. Eighty percent of people believe they have a book in them and the opportunities provided by new technologies are responding to their needs. This raises important questions: What effect will these developments have on the industry? In this environment, is quality control feasible? How will potential readers find their treasure? Will book publishing remain a cost-effective activity? We will examine the publishing industry looking for the answers to these questions and may just find that things are not as bleak as we initially thought.     

数字图书馆与网络出版

依据出版的概念,分析了网络出版与数字图书馆的表现形式和特征,认为数字图书馆和网络出版应当在不断延伸和拓展的网络资源概念及相应的知识产权保护法规下,走向内容和组织形式上的共存、互补与共荣。     

The rapid evolution of scholarly communication

Traditional journals, even those available electronically, are changing slowly. However, there is rapid evolution in scholarly communication. Usage is moving to electronic formats. In some areas, it appears that electronic versions of papers are being read about as often as the printed journal versions. Although there are serious difficulties in comparing figures from different media, the growth rates in usage of electronic scholarly information are sufficiently high that if they continue for a few years, there will be no doubt that print versions will be eclipsed. Further, much of the electronic information that is accessed is outside the formal scholarly publication process. There is also vigorous growth in forms of electronic communication that take advantage of the unique capabilities of the web, and which simply do not fit into the traditional journal publishing format. This paper presents some statistics on usage of print and electronic information. It also discusses some preliminary evidence about the changing patterns of usage. It appears that much of the online usage comes from new readers (esoteric research papers assigned in undergraduate classes, for example) and often from places that do not have access to print journals. Also, the reactions to even slight barriers to usage suggest that even high-quality scholarly papers are not irreplaceable. Readers are faced with a ‘river of knowledge’ that allows them to select among a multitude of sources, and to find near substitutes when necessary. To stay relevant, scholars, publishers and librarians will have to make even greater efforts to make their material easily accessible.     

Vocabulary extraction in foreign‐language journals: how natural language processing can help readers

Digital publishing enables new features beyond simple electronic availability and searching. One of these can be helping readers understand articles that are not in their native language by providing word extraction services using natural language processing on publishers' platforms. This would help in both electronic and paper formats. This paper analyzes the feasibility of vocabulary extraction and gives corresponding extraction strategies for ‘normal’ words as well as technical terms.     

Open access developments in France: the HAL Open Archives System

This article presents an overview of open access publishing and open access archiving in France. In natural sciences, most articles are published in international journals; authors must therefore comply with the policies of their publishers, irrespective of their nationality. For humanities and social sciences, where publication tends to be distributed among many small journals, portals have been created to provide electronic publishing, with varied access policies. Open archives repositories have been in existence in France since 2001; from 2006, a proactive policy led the main research agencies and universities to coordinate their actions towards a common archiving platform, HAL (Hyper Articles on Line), operated by CNRS (Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique), with individual portals, either thematic or institutional. HAL stores now the majority of open access records – presently some 10–15% of French output – and is growing almost exponentially.