JISC Collections has published a report on ‘UK Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources’ based on research carried out by Professor Carol Tenopir from the Center for Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee.

The report examines how valuable scholarly reading has become for academics, especially in terms of access to journal articles. It surveyed academic and associate staff at 6 UK Higher Education institutions in 2011.

From the academics’ perspective, the University Library remains the first choice for access to scholarly material because it provides a wide range of high quality articles in a timely and cost-effective manner. In this respect, the University Library can rightly stake its claim to having an integral role in the academic research process, not just a supporting one.

The report includes comments from academics about how they are engaging with library-provided resources and why it is so important that access is maintained. Typical outcomes from these scholarly readings include inspiring new thinking and improving research results.

The research also examined what academics would do if Library resources were not available. The findings suggest that without the library, academics and their departments would not find articles of such quality, that they would find fewer related articles, and that it would be a significantly more costly and time-consuming process.

An examination of searching and browsing habits also shows the value of Library-provided search tools in saving academic time in finding quality material more rapidly.

The report is also encouraging for JISC Collections which is responsible for negotiating journal and database deals for the community as a whole, including the NESLi2, SHEDL and WHEEL consortia. The findings provide further evidence of the value derived from journals included in ‘bundled deals’, both in terms of current journal articles and archival collections.

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections said: “This report provides further evidence about the value and impact of the resources and discovery systems which UK academic libraries make available. This makes it even more important for JISC Collections to continue to work with publishers and libraries to secure affordable and sustainable journal deals for the future.”

Dr Hazel Woodward, Chair of the Electronic Information Resources Working Group and Librarian at Cranfield University said: “At this time of economic constraint, it is important for policy makers and Library directors to provide additional evidence of the value of library-provided resources. Whilst in the past these resources have been regarded as implicitly valuable, this research goes some way to making that value more explicit by focusing on specific benefits and outcomes for academics.”

Although the survey focuses on academics, it is worth noting that the article readings are also used to support teaching, so staff and students alike are benefiting from access to these resources.

The research is part of a wider international Lib-Value project being coordinated by the Center for Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of Making Good on the Promise of ERM: A Standards and Best Practices Discussion Paper. This publication is the outcome of the NISO Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Data Standards and Best Practices Project, a successor to the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI). The project’s primary goals were to perform a “gap analysis” of standards and best practices and make recommendations on the future of the ERMI Data Dictionary.

“Our standards review and findings focused on five categories: link resolvers and knowledge bases; the work, manifestations, and access points; cost and usage-related data; license terms; and data exchange using institutional identifiers,” states Tim Jewell, Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communications, University of Washington, and Chair of the ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Steering Committee. “We did a more extensive review of fourteen of the most relevant standards and mapped the data elements for each to the elements defined in the ERMI report. We also looked at how ERM systems could improve their workflow support-a shortcoming in most existing systems-and we include a detailed workflow best practices bibliography and a list of illustrative workflow diagrams.”

“Our final analysis showed that there is value to updating and maintaining a data dictionary that encompasses ERM functions and evolves with technologies and business models,” maintains Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections, California Digital Library and member of the ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Steering Committee. “However, for practical considerations, we did not recommend that NISO pursue such a project at this time. Instead we identified a number of narrower initiatives targeting specific ERM functional needs and strategies aimed at furthering interoperability.”

“The ERM Steering Committee has produced a valuable analysis and evaluation of the current state of standards and best practices that can be applied to ERM systems,” concludes Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director. “They’ve also identified a number of worthwhile initiatives for NISO to consider that would improve the use and interoperability of ERM.”

Making Good on the Promise of ERM is available for free download from the NISO website at:www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/.

Respondents identified a strong need for better access to scientific publications and scientific data in Europe. 90 % of respondents supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should as a matter of principle be in open access (OA) mode and that data from publicly funded research should be available for reuse free of charge on the internet. Furthermore, 83 % called for policy formulation at the EU level and 86 % agreed on the development of an EU network of repositories.

Asked about barriers to accessing scientific publications the high price of journals/subscriptions (89%) and the limited budget of libraries (85 %) were identified as key issues.  The main barriers to access research data were identified as lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 %); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 %); insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 %) as well as the lack of incentives for researchers (76.4%).

Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways for increasing the number and share of scientific publications available in OA mode. The majority (56% of respondents) prefer an embargo period (that is the period of time during which a publication is not yet open access) of 6 months.

Finally respondents were also concerned that the preservation of scientific information is currently insufficiently addressed.

More information:

The survey on scientific information in the digital age is available at

http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf

(pdf document, 6MB)

and on our open access website under “background documents”

http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1294&lang=1

For any questions feel free to contact the open access team at

RTD-open-access@ec.europa.eu

Faculty of 1000 (F1000) today announces F1000 Research, a new fully Open Access publishing program across biology and medicine that will launch later this year. It is intended to address the major issues  afflicting scientific publishing today: timely dissemination of research, peer review, and sharing of data.

Diverging from traditional journal publishing, F1000 Research will offer immediate publication; open, post-publication peer review; open revisioning of work including ongoing updates; and will encourage  raw data deposition and publication. In addition, F1000 Research will accept a broad range of article formats and will encourage content types that are now routinely rejected such as negative results, case  studies, thought experiments, preliminary analyses, and incomplete datasets.

The problems with current approaches to publishing novel scientific research are well documented. It no longer makes sense to wait months or years to read, comment, or build upon another lab’s work, and the standard closed, pre-publication peer review process has been extensively criticized. Furthermore,there is a growing recognition that the raw data behind novel findings need to be shared (barring any privacy concerns) to enable re-use and ensure reproducibility. F1000 Research will work with the community to address all of these issues, and the initial platform will be a forum to do this.

Commenting on the launch of F1000 Research, Vitek Tracz, Chairman and Founder of Faculty of 1000 Ltd said: “The Open Access model has addressed effectively the issue of inadequate access to research findings. It did not address the major issues around communicating the research finding: the delays inaccess, the inadequacies of peer review, and the complexities of data publishing. It is up to collaboration between researchers and publishers to come up with a solution, and we are determined to be a part of it.”Dr Rebecca Lawrence, who is leading the project at F1000 said: “Many questions remain as we fine-tune F1000 Research to break new ground in scholarly publishing. We therefore invite those working in the bioresearch community, institutions, funders, data centres and repositories, and data mining and informatics groups to join us in open discussion and debate about these many outstanding issues – via the RSS feed or by Twitter: @F1000Research.”