Not just acronyms: threats to sharing and public access

Several bills that threaten the ability to share content on the internet are currently being discussed in the US. I won’t pretend to understand the full legal details or legislative process, but thanks to some much better informed commentators, it is clear that PIPA/SOPA and the OPEN Acts really need to be stopped in their tracks. Here is a small selection of comments.

PIPA = ‘Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act’
SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act
‘OPEN’ Act = Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act


PIPA, SOPA and the OPEN Act quick reference guide by the American Library Association - Dates and main points of the Acts (thanks to @copyrightgirl for this tip)

When Even The Librarians Are Against SOPA... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/00563216705/when-even-librarians-are-against-sopa.shtml

Urgent: Stop [U.S.] American censorship of the Internet https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/30375

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-they-must-be-on-this-all.html - reddit will have a blackout on 18 Jan in protest, and other major internet services are considering joining the boycott

UKCORR blog post and comments http://ukcorr.blogspot.com/2012/01/sopa-and-app-dumb-and-dumber-publishers.html

..and if all this is not enough to incite outrage, the US House of Representatives have also introduced the Research Works Act – a bill that will stop public access to publicly funded research…

Top full text content in 2011

Here is a quick round-up of a busy and interesting year for Research@StAndrews:FullText

In June we celebrated reaching the landmark total of 1000 items in the repository. We finished the year with 1247 items. During 2011 we deposited 178 theses, 143 articles, 116 reports and conference items, 15 book chapters and one complete book.


In 2011 there were 33,721 visits to the repository from 164 countries

The most viewed item in every month of 2011 except one was

Retrospective power analysis by Len Thomas
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/679

with 1853 views for the year






The second most viewed item of 2011 was

Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland (PhD Thesis) by Cormac G. Booth
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1701

We began recording downloads in August 2011, and this thesis recorded the most downloads for the year



We had a range of PhD theses from several disciplines represented in our Top 10 'most viewed' and 'most downloaded' lists for 2011, including

• an Art History thesis about Pictorialism, a late 19th and early 20th century artistic movement in photography which was the precursor to Modernism : The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism by William Russell Young
• two Divinity theses: Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922) : an original translation, annotation, and analysis, by Ross M. Wright and All of you are one" : the social vision of Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11 by Bruce Hansen
• two English theses, Infernal imagery in Anglo-Saxon charters, by Petra Hofmann ("This doctoral dissertation analyses depictions of hell in sanctions, i.e. threats of punishments in Anglo-Saxon charters.") and Translation as creative retelling : constituents, patterning and shift in Gavin Douglas' Eneados, by Gordon Kendal ("Aeneid, principally by giving more emphasis to the serial particularity inherent in the story, loosening the narrative structure and involving the reader in its retelling.")
• an International Relations thesis, The consequences of Israel's counter terrorism policy by Pia Jansen
• and a Medicine Portfolio Thesis: The inferior vena caval compression theory of hypotension in obstetric spinal anaesthesia: studies in normal and preeclamptic pregnancy, a literature review and revision of fundamental concepts, by Geoffrey Sharwood-Smith

Top 10 viewed items for 2011

Retrospective power analysis [1853]

Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland [648]

The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism [645]

What is social learning? [470]

Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922) [286]

The consequences of Israel's counter terrorism policy [262]

Asger Jorn and the photographic essay on Scandinavian vandalism (Inferno) [237]

"All of you are one" : the social vision of Gal 3:28, 1 Cor 12:13 and Col 3:11 [229]

Saint Peter and Paul Church (Sinan Pasha Mosque), Famagusta: a forgotten Gothic moment in Northern Cyprus.[227]

The inferior vena caval compression theory of hypotension in obstetric spinal anaesthesia: studies in normal and preeclamptic pregnancy, a literature review and revision of fundamental concepts [209]

Top downloaded* items (Aug-Dec) 2011

Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland [330 downloads]

Retrospective power analysis [243 downloads]

Infernal imagery in Anglo-Saxon charters [131 downloads]

The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism [82 downloads]

Translation as creative retelling : constituents, patterning and shift in Gavin Douglas' Eneados [67 downloads]

Subverting space : Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s [56 downloads]

Karl Barth's academic lectures on Ephesians (Göttingen, 1921-1922) [47 downloads]

WinBUGS for population ecologists: Bayesian modeling using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods [47 downloads]

What is social learning? [45 downloads]

Comparing pre- and post-construction distributions of long-tailed ducks Clangula hyemalis in and around the Nysted offshore wind farm, Denmark [45 downloads]

(*These are downloads recorded from within the repository. In future we will be able to track downloads direct from Google)

UK government publishes commitment to open access

A new policy document published this week shows that the UK government is committed to making publicly funded research outputs available as open access. Para. 6.9 of Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth specifically refers to the RCUK requirements for the outputs of the research they fund to be deposited in repositories, with a suggestion that they will be expected to ensure the practice is enforced.

It was interesting to note that The Guardian article on this aspect of the report suggests that the government wants all publicly-funded scientific research to be 'published in open-access journals'. This somewhat ignores the possibilities that repository deposit or 'green' open access currently offers. It does, however, highlight the focus on challenges to publishers' business models and funding streams that will be the next steps in the government strategy.

"Results of publicly funded research will be open access - science minister" (Guardian 8 Dec 2011)

Government White Paper: Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth  (BIS, Dec 2011)

Download statistics for November

Once again it is encouraging to see a range of content types being accessed from Research@StAndrews: FullText.

 
The list below of our top 10 most downloaded items in November 2011 includes articles, e-theses, a technical report and a book chapter.



Retrospective power analysis (Len Thomas)
Subverting space : Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s (Elisabetta Girelli)
Comparing pre- and post-construction distributions of long-tailed ducks Clangula hyemalis in and around the Nysted offshore wind farm, Denmark (Petersen et al.)
Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland (Cormac Booth)
What is social learning? (Ioan Fazey)
The soft-focus lens and Anglo-American pictorialism (William Young)
The economics of trade secrets : evidence from the Economic Espionage Act (Nicola C. Searle)
The quest for the fictional Jesus (Margaret E. Ramey)
The manual skills and cognition that lie behind hominid tool use (Richard Byrne)

The chart below illustrates the range of full text item types being submitted to the repository.

80% of journals allow self-archiving of peer-reviewed articles

New information has been provided by SHERPA services that shows encouraging statistics for journals in the SHERPA/RoMEO* database. Their blog headline states that 60% of journals allow immediate self-archiving of peer-reviewed articles. When embargoes are taken into account, this rises to 80%.

This means that authors can make their final author versions, or in some cases the publisher's pdf, available online via the 'green' open access route. This can usually be done by depositing in a repository such as Research@StAndrews:FullText - for St Andrews authors that means simply adding an author version to their publication in PURE. The Library will do the rest, including applying any embargo.

See more about open access on our library web pages.

If we consider all versions of an article, including the submitted (pre-print) version, 87% of journals allow immediate open access self-archiving. And if we take into account all versions, embargoes, and restrictions such as special permissions or fees, 95% of journals formally allow self-archiving. These detailed statistics are now possible because RoMEO provides publisher policies at journal level. As of 15 Nov 2011 the database held approximately 19,000 journal titles.

SHERPA Services blog

*RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher's policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.

Open access making a real difference

A new website has been launched to provide real examples of the way that open access can transform scholarship. One of the stories describes the overwhelming response for St Andrews researchers following the decision to publish in an open access journal. The topic of the paper caught the public imagination when described as development of an 'invisibility cloak' in the University press release.

"As a result of the coverage, the paper was downloaded more than 50,000 times in the space of just a few months, and it reached an extremely wide and diverse audience for a technical scientific paper."

Flexible metamaterials at visible wavelengths by Andrea Di Falco, Martin Ploschner and Thomas F Krauss
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/11/113006

Read more open access success stories at http://www.oastories.org/ including:

Professor Tony Doyle, CERN Atlas
Using open access to collaborate on the largest experiment in the world – and inspire the next generation of particle physicists
Open Book Publishers
Cambridge scholars taking monograph publishing into their own hands

Range of content being used in Research@StAndrews:FullText

In our top ten most viewed items this month (Oct) we have published articles, e-theses, a technical report, e-book and article from a hosted University journal. It is great to see such a range of items being used in our repository, Research@StAndrews:FullText.

Our new download statistics are giving us further insight into usage of these research outputs. We will soon be able to display these on new pages at Research@StAndrews:FullText, but in the meantime here is a selection from our first list:

1. Retrospective power analysis (60) - consistently our most viewed article in the repository
2. Subverting space : Private, public and power in three Czechoslovak films from the 1960s and ‘70s (34) - recommended reading for our film Studies students
3. Variation in habitat preference and distribution of harbour porpoises west of Scotland (24) - Biology thesis
4. “Proven patriots”: the French diplomatic corps, 1789-1799 (24) - popular e-book from our St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series
5. Comparing pre- and post-construction distributions of long-tailed ducks Clangula hyemalis in and around the Nysted offshore wind farm, Denmark (21) - Technical report from the Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modelling (CREEM)