This presentation was given at the 2012 Open Access Week program, “The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations” on October 23, 2012. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone. Many funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, and journal publishers, such as Nature, require researchers to share data produced during the course of their research. When researchers share their data, other researchers can reuse it to answer new questions, opening up new interpretations and discoveries. Sharing data may also lead to sharing research processes, workflows and tools and may make research articles and papers more useful and citable by others.

This presentation was given at the 2012 Open Access Week program, “The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations” on October 23, 2012. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone. Many funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, and journal publishers, such as Nature, require researchers to share data produced during the course of their research. When researchers share their data, other researchers can reuse it to answer new questions, opening up new interpretations and discoveries. Sharing data may also lead to sharing research processes, workflows and tools and may make research articles and papers more useful and citable by others.

The University of Arizona Library is a vital participant in the AgNIC Rangelands project and has contributed to the initiative in many ways. For example, in the mid-to-late 1990â s the Library digitized the backfiles of the Journal of Range Management for open access on the web. Funding and completing digitization projects such as this is a complicated process and requires many decisions along the way. This paper outlines the process taken by the Library to manage a more recent project to scan back issues of the journal Rangelands. It starts with the decision to develop a project plan and request funding from the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It continues on to describe negotiating agreements with project partners, the process for outsourcing of scanning, the design of the technical infrastructure needed to support digitized content, and issues of sustainability that any digital library encounters.

Presented at the 2012 Open Access Week program, "The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations" in the Fall 2012.

Chur, Hochsch. für Technik und Wirtschaft, Diplomarb., 2007.

Diplomarbeit im Studiengang Information Science an der Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Chur.

This presentation was given during Open Access Week in October 2009. Open Access Week is a world-wide event where academic institutions explore Open Access – the ideal of free, full-text, immediate, online access to peer-reviewed scholarship and research results so new ideas and information can be obtained rapidly and freely by everyone.

In an attempt to identify motivating factors involved in decisions to publish in Open Access (OA) journals, individual interviews with biomedical faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a major research university, were conducted. The interviews focused on faculty identified as early adopters of OA/free full-text publishing. Searches conducted in PubMed and PubMed Central identified faculty from UNC-Chapel Hill who have published works in OA/free full-text journals. The searches targeted authors with multiple OA citations during a specified 18 month period. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the most prolific OA authors. Individual interviews attempted to determine whether the authors were aware they published in OA journals, why they chose to publish in OA journals, what factors influenced their publishing decisions, and their general attitude towards OA publishing models. Interview questions were based on a review of the literature and consultation with a scholarly communication working group. The interview results were analyzed to see whether these faculty members made conscious efforts to publish in OA/free full-text journals, and if so why.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the world’s most authoritative list of scholarly, peer-reviewed, fully open access journals, and a “must” for libraries of all types. As of August 2007, DOAJ includes over 2,800 titles, over 10% of the world’s estimated 20-25,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journal titles. This is an impressive list; in terms of numbers of titles, DOAJ compares favorably with commercial journal packages. DOAJ is growing rapidly, at a rate of more than one title per calendar day. DOAJ’s highly functional and aesthetically pleasing interface features a number of search options, including a new search option for authors looking for open access or hybrid journals to publish in. DOAJ is freely available, and working towards economic sustainability through an optional membership / sponsorship program. This article examines the DOAJ membership program in some depth. Membership fees for libraries and library consortia are an incredible bargain. The membership fee for DOAJ’s 2,800 (and growing) title list is less than the average subscription cost for a single journal in any scientific discipline, and DOAJ represents significant staff time savings for libraries. The promotional benefits of DOAJ membership are important to position libraries for leadership in the internet age, and especially in the key emerging area of scholarly communications. DOAJ is a very popular service among libraries, with a strong reputation for quality; membership or sponsorship is likely to be highly beneficial to library service providers. As a free resource, DOAJ is strongly recommended for all libraries. DOAJ titles can be included in A-Z journal lists, library catalogues or websites, and subject-specific URLs can be added to subject guides or pathfinders.

This poster presents the results of an exploratory survey to understand the current publishing behaviours, and open access awareness and attitudes, of faculty at the University of Saskatchewan. The research was conducted in an effort to establish a basis for the potential development of a scholarly communications program at the University Library. / Poster presented at the 2013 Canadian Library Association (CLA) conference in Winnipeg.