JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

This paper presents a case study of an advisory role that librarians successfully developed with faculty editors to increase the visibility and readership of an open access scholarly publication. The study represents an example of how expertise among liaison librarians and other library service professionals can be leveraged in new consultancy roles in support of evolving library service models. It also depicts local application of a hybrid model for librarianship that combines the functional specialist and subject librarian liaison roles in implementing advisory activities and recommendations. The liaison librarians successfully used their knowledge of scholarly communications and applied innovative bibliometric analysis to help enhance the discoverability and user experience of an online journal publication. The librarians made specific recommendations for optimizing journal website content organization, search functionality, metadata standards and marketing opportunities that were subsequently implemented by the editors and platform managers. The faculty editor places a high value on these recommendations, and the librarian advisory role continues to develop. Our study also outlines many of the essential considerations that scholar-editors and librarian advisors can use to help implement open access scholarly publishing projects successfully. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Innovations in scholarly publishing have led to new possibilities for academic journals (e.g., open access), and provided scholars with a range of indicators that can be used to evaluate their characteristics and their impact. This study identifies and evaluates the journal characteristics reported in five databases: Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (Ulrichs), Journal Citation Reports (JCR), SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), Google Scholar Metrics (GS), and Cabell's Periodical Directory (Cabells). It describes the 13 indicators (variables) that are available through these databases-scholarly impact, subject category, age, total articles, distribution medium, open access, peer review, acceptance rate, pricing, language, country, status, and issue frequency-and highlights the similarities and differences in the ways these indicators are defined and reported. The study also addresses the ways in which this kind of information can be used to better understand particular journals as well as the scholarly publishing system.

In this study, we investigate the downloads behavior of readers for two well-known IEEE journals in the field of education, i.e., IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies (TLT) and IEEE Transactions on Education (ToE). In our analysis, we found that articles in both journals are not downloaded rapidly in earlier months. The majority of articles reach to 50 and 80% of their first 12 months downloads' total in later months. Using linear regression analysis, we discovered that the cumulative first 12 months downloads of articles cannot be predicted by earlier months downloads. However, it can be predicted more accurately by using cumulative downloads count of later months. Moreover, we found that average downloads of articles in both journals increases rapidly as soon as they are assigned to an issue. In case of TLT which follows a delayed open access policy, we observed that average downloads after open access increases marginally for 2 months, and then it declines and continues to progress more or less in a consistent manner for 2 years. While in ToE which does not follow such policy, the average downloads decreases persistently.

JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

This study investigates online material published in reaction to a Science Magazine report showing the absence of peer-review and editorial processes in a set of fee-charging open access journals in biology. Quantitative and qualitative textual analyses are combined to map conceptual relations in these reactions, and to explore how understandings of scholarly communication and publishing relate to specific conceptualizations of science and of the hedging of scientific knowledge. A discussion of the connection of trust and scientific knowledge and of the role of peer review for establishing and communicating this connection provides for the theoretical and topical framing. Special attention is paid to the pervasiveness of digital technologies in formal scholarly communication processes. Three dimensions of trust are traced in the material analyzed: (a) trust through personal experience and informal knowledge, (b) trust through organized, internal control, (c) trust through form. The article concludes by discussing how certain understandings of the conditions for trust in science are challenged by perceptions of possibilities for deceit in digital environments.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

This study uses Rutgers University Camden's Local Knowledge Blog as a case study to examine how social media can move digital publishing beyond promotion of academic research to build and amplify voices outside the academy. In doing so, social media can further the civic engagement of universities by changing the focus on service-learning to a focus on co-generating research. This paper argues that social media can blend and expand civic engagement and digital publishing, helping move both to a broader paradigm of co-generating knowledge.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the use patterns of scholarly e-journals by academics for teaching, research and keeping themselves up-to-date. The study also looks at differences in the use patterns across 12 disciplines. Design/methodology/approach - A survey was conducted to explore academics' use patterns of scholarly e-journals in 12 disciplines. The University of the Punjab was used for the sample population. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all regular and contractual academics of Lahore campuses of the University. After follow up, 457 questionnaires were received with a response rate of 54 per cent. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric statistics were used to analyse data. Findings - The results showed that the academics made more frequent use of e-journals, online reference sources and discussion with colleagues for scholarly activities. E-journals were used predominantly for research-related activities rather than for teaching and instruction. Academics obtained e-journal articles primarily from open access sources, i. e. general search engines and Google Scholar as compared to subscribed and other sources of e-journal articles. Disciplinary differences were also found in academics' use patterns of e-journals. However, academics showed just satisfactory skills regarding use of advanced searching techniques and evaluation of the quality of e-journals. Practical implications - Findings will be helpful for information professionals to review their policies and practices in relation to e-journal services for academic community. The needs for e-literacy skills to use e-journals will also be identified and findings will be significant for information professionals in arranging information literacy instruction programmes for targeted disciplines. Originality/value - Most of e-journals use studies focused on specific disciplines-Sciences, Life Sciences, Engineering and Technology and Social Sciences. This research study is valuable that investigated use patterns of e-journals across 12 different disciplines at the University of the Punjab.

LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE RESEARCH

BIBLIOTHEK FORSCHUNG UND PRAXIS

PUBLISSO offers open access as a one stop service: It's a platform which allows publishing scientific results immediately according to scientific standards: as a book, as a journal publication, or as a meeting abstract. Additionally, it offers support and advice to librarians and scientists for digital publishing and open science.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

Open Access (OA) movement in China is developing with its own track and speed. Compared to its western counterparts, it moves slowly. However, it keeps growing. More significantly, it provides open and free resources not only to Chinese scholars, but also to those of China studies around the world. The premise is whether we can find them in an easy and effective fashion. This paper will describe the status of the OA movement in China with a focus on institutional repositories (IR) in Chinese universities and research institutes. We will explore different IR service modules and discuss their coverage, strengths, limitation, and most importantly implications to the East Asian Collection in the US. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Embargoed until October 2017: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/18693

JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

This article explores the cultural characteristics of three open access (OA)-friendly disciplines (physics, economics, and clinical medicine) and the ways in which those characteristics influence perceptions, motivations, and behaviors toward green OA. The empirical data are taken from two online surveys of European authors. Taking a domain analytic approach, the analysis draws on Becher and Trowler's (2001) and Whitley's (2000) theories to gain a deeper understanding of why OA repositories (OAR) play a particularly important role in the chosen disciplines. The surveys provided a unique opportunity to compare perceptions, motivations, and behaviors of researchers at the discipline level with the parent metadiscipline. It should be noted that participants were not drawn from a stratified sample of all the different subdisciplines that constitute each discipline, and therefore the generalizability of the findings to the discipline may be limited. The differential role of informal and formal communication in each of the three disciplines has shaped green OA practices. For physicists and economists, preprints are an essential feature of their respective OAR landscapes, whereas for clinical medics final published articles have a central role. In comparing the disciplines with their parent metadisciplines there were some notable similarities/differences, which have methodological implications for studying research cultures.

The very nature of scientific activity and information, which are meant to be shared, is the starting point in defining a scientific journal, and the criteria according to which its value and role are determined. The authors aim at analysing some criteria that define the quality of scientific journals considering their visibility and impact. The concept of open access for journals is analysed in point of its advantages and disadvantages, since it differs greatly from the subscription-based access, whether we talk about institutional or individual subscriptions. The authors are in favour of the concept of public access, considering that it gives a journal more visibility, on the condition that article processing charges are reduced. The essential condition for a journal to become renowned is to be as visible as possible. The concept of open access is beneficial, supports instruction through and for scientific research, regardless of educational level. The aim of this paper is to emphasise the modalities, specificities and bibliometric performances (percent of citable documents, impact factor and immediacy index) of open access versus subscription-based access, as well as to investigate whether the use of open access concept determines an increase of the journals' quality, study applied to the analysis of Hindawi Publishing Company journals and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) journals.

Embargoed unitl November 2017. Author will archive after embargo period.

Sci-Hub hosts pirated copies of 51 million scientific papers from commercial publishers. This article presents the site's characteristics, it criticizes that it might be perceived as a de-facto component of the Open Access movement, it replicates an analysis published in Science using its available usage data, but limiting it to Latin America, and presents implications caused by this site for information professionals, universities and libraries.

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION PROCESSING

The megajournal is a new form of an academic open-access journal that is peer reviewed for scientific and methodological soundness. Thus, the perceived importance is not assessed, leaving it to the readers to decide whether an article is of interest and importance to them. After the highly successful launch of the PLOS ONE megajournal, other publishers followed this path. The current paper undertakes a review of the articles published internationally on the megajournal criteria defining its concept. It also traces how the new type of scientific publication has been developing and expanding since the PLoS ONE launch in 2006.

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF LIBRARY ARCHIVES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

The status and the prestige of higher education institutions depend on the quality, visibility and accessibility of their research. Globally, research indicates that valuable research output originates from both public and private higher education institutions, but the results of scholarship are often not archived and curated sustainably. Poor scholarship curation and lack of research visibility deter higher education institutions from taking their rightful place in higher education and higher education research communities. This article, reports on investigations into digital scholarship curation trends in a purposefully selected target group of private and public higher education institutions in Southern Africa. Empirical research was triangulated with webometric analysis to derive solutions and best practices to ensure sustainable scholarship curation in institutional repositories. In all, 16 institutions were selected for the study. All the selected 16 institutions were subjected to webometric analysis but only 10 of the institutions completed the questionnaire. The study, reveals a number of gaps affecting the effectiveness of institutional repositories in higher education institutions in Southern Africa. These gaps include true understanding of the nature and the importance of interoperability in open access. Also, collaboration within the higher education institutions, as well as external networks, is lacking. There is lack of awareness and knowledge regarding scholarship curation, and the value that web visibility holds for the entire institutions. The study recommends that institutions should include both social and technical aspects of scholarship curation.

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF LIBRARY ARCHIVES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Twenty-first century academic libraries worldwide have fundamentally transformed in the past two decades. Most traditional library services have been transformed to e-library services. Some of the notable major developments in the academic libraries include online scholarly communication, mobile technologies, social mediation application, digital curation and preservation. To fit into this new information landscape, academic librarians have assumed new roles. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the recent trends in academic libraries, changing roles and skills of academic librarians and discuss the challenges faced by librarians in academic libraries in Africa. The paper also offers recommendations to overcome some of the challenges. This paper is based on desktop review of relevant literature and the authors' views. The findings reveal the major challenges in academic libraries in Africa as: chronic financial constraints and inadequate basic infrastructure, insufficient ICT infrastructure, poor library and information science curricula, slow acceptance of open access resources, resistance to change, and difficulty in the importation of books and journals. It is hoped that the findings of this study would help policy makers, administrators and other key stakeholders to develop effective strategies to address them. In addition, the findings are significant to academic libraries and librarians that are planning to transform to modern academic libraries.

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF LIBRARY ARCHIVES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Plagiarism is a dilemma in higher education. However, it is no longer obscure and has grown easier to expose. This is possible due to the web based e-publication environment where access to and the scrutiny and use of information content is escalating. The authors use their experential knowledge, observation, content analysis; and extant literature to argue that Open Access increases the detection of plagiarism and discourages it in higher education if the stakeholders' roles are known and fulfilled. This presentation is divided into five parts: 1) Conceptualising and contextualising plagiarism; 2) An overview of the Open Access concept; 3) Does Open Access avert plagiarism? 4) The role of stakeholders; and 5) A case study of the University of Zululand (UNIZULU).

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma is viewed within academic circles as one of the most important management books of the last twenty years. Christensen described the impact that disruptive and sustaining technologies had on various industries. Yet no one has investigated disruptive and sustaining technologies by applying Christensen's analytical framework to scholarly journals. This paper begins by discussing Christensen's principles of disruptive and sustaining technologies and the response that other intellectuals have had to their explanatory power and possibility. The paper next discusses how scholarly publishers are being affected by disruptive or sustaining technologies, specifically digital journal operations (e.g., open access, preprints, library publishing operations, and open-resource repositories). What strategies, then, can journal publishers, university presses, or academic societies take to preserve their pivotal role when scholarly journal publishing continues to change in response to sustaining and disruptive digital technologies?

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

This paper introduces the Korean Journal Publishing Service (KPubS), a full-cycle open access (OA) publication model and platform prototype for distributing research outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) in South Korea. The model comprises four phases: creation, digital archiving, Web service, and circulation. The publication platform developed from this model enables usage of different systems for manuscript management and is connected to a workbench available for full-text XML semi-automatic conversion and a digital object identifier, or DOI, service. Responsive Web technology is applied to enable an adaptive approach for various devices such as desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. With new information technologies emerging in the electronic environment, and users' needs becoming more diversified, there is greater demand for more effort from publishers and editors who work for academic journal publication services. Moreover, it is important in OA (especially in the context of scholarly communication) to raise scientists' awareness of the benefits of OA publishing, which include improved knowledge dissemination, visibility, and speed of publishingall of which may lead to an increased impact of outcomes in STEM research.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

The aim of this study was to determine the awareness of open access among the academic staff of a research oriented Spanish university, their use of the institutional repository and their satisfaction with its services. An anonymous survey of 37 questions was sent to all professors, researchers and doctoral students of the University of Navarra. A total of 352 responses (17%) were received. The responses showed statistically significant differences in opinions concerning open access journals and services created on top of the repository. Although there was general agreement on the need for open access, half the respondents adopted open access practices (which included the use of the institutional repository, and other pages and academic platforms). This percentage increased with the older respondents, who were also senior members of staff with tenure and positions of authority at the university. The decision to make publications accessible in open access depends on academic reward and on professional recognition. The services offered by the repository were generally perceived positively, with differences according to the age and subject area of the respondents. The awareness of those differences might help the university library to provide faculty with training and products that suit to their needs and habits. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Universities and the members of their faculties, by means of open access, open education, and social media engagement, contribute to many publicly accessible resources of academic values, i.e., open scholarship. To encourage universities to contribute even more to open scholarship, in a more focused and sustainable way, the methodology of Open Scholarship Ranking (OSR) was constructed after a thorough examination and several adjustments based on the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions (hereinafter referred to as “the Berlin Principles”). The OSR has met most of the Berlin Principles, and new adjustments helped to improve its quality. A significant correlation has been observed between the OSR results of Chinese research universities and the results from existing comprehensive university rankings. The OSR provides an evaluation framework for universities' performance in open scholarship, and can be regarded as an acceptable way of ranking universities.

I argue that Polonioli (Scientometrics, 2016, this issue) provides no new evidence to show that Open Access is beneficial for the social sciences and the humanities. He raises three criticisms against my recent paper (Wray in Scientometrics 106(3): 1031-1035, 2016). Two of these criticisms fail to take account of the data I was working with. On the basis of those data, I could not draw conclusions about (1) the societal impact of research or (2) other publication models besides the traditional model and the Author-Pay Open Access model. He also claims that I do not take account of the costs associated with the status quo. I argue that he fails to take account of the value added by publishers of academic journals. Further, contrary to what he suggests, there is no evidence that Open Access publishing is making it easier for scholars in developing countries to contribute to scholarship.

I challenge a finding reported recently in a paper by Sotudeh et al. (Scientometrics, 2015. doi: 10.1007/s11192-015-1607-5). The authors argue that there is a citation advantage for those who publish Author-Pay Open Access (Gold Open Access) in journals published by Springer and Elsevier. I argue that the alleged advantage that the authors report for journals in the social sciences and humanities is an artifact of their method. The findings reported about the life sciences, the health sciences, and the natural sciences, on the other hand, are robust. But my finding underscores the fact that epistemic cultures in the social sciences and humanities are different from those in the other fields.

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION AND LIBRARY SCIENCE-REVUE CANADIENNE DES SCIENCES DE L INFORMATION ET DE BIBLIOTHECONOMIE

A notable event in the current revolution of the World Wide Web is the open access model of publishing, which promotes freedom of inquiry and full and open availability of scientific information on a global scale. The promise of open access to replace existing scientific information dissemination practices and ethos has been contentious, with the interests of different stakeholders countries, publishers, and open access activists, among others, clashing on an unprecedented scale. With special reference to the emergence of predatory journals, this article examines some of the challenges that have been triggered by the open access movement. Basically, open access is technology heavy, and its economic arrangements benefit mainly the developed world. There exists evidence of open access initiatives in the Africa region, but these initiatives are mainly individually based and are largely underdeveloped and sometimes predatory. The author argues that what is required now is a regional open access policy that spells out how the issues of right and cost, and others, will be viewed and addressed in the region to ensure that the benefits of open access do not bypass Africa.

Purpose - Web-based courses are a practical way to engage in meaningful discussions with learners from a diverse set of communities. By gathering online to learn about a topic, learners can form communities that transcend geographic and political boundaries. This paper aims to investigate a partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and Wisconsin Library Services, which brought open access online learning to thousands of lifelong learners around the state of Wisconsin. “Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region”, a massive open online course the UW-Madison launched in 2015, paired a regional focus with face-to-face discussions at 21 public libraries to deepen learners' personal connections to the subject matter. Through strategic partnership, targeted course development and marketing of events, intimate local discussion sessions and statewide events provided fora in which Wisconsin residents would explore changing weather and climate with university faculty, staff and students. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses a case study approach and firsthand interview feedback from librarians, library staff and university faculty and staff who were leading the effort. Findings - This paper explores the lessons learned and practical implications from the project and offers insight into libraries and universities looking to engage specific communities in non-credit online learning projects into the future. Originality/value - This effort was a first of its kind partnership for the University and the State of Wisconsin.

https://sites.google.com/site/dimplerp/publication (Link on this site leads to a paywalled version)

Purpose - Research data management (RDM) is gaining a lot of momentum in the present day and rightly so. Research data are the core of any research study. The findings and conclusions of a study are entirely dependent on the research data. Traditional publishing did not focus on the presentation of data, along with the publications such as research monographs and especially journal articles, probably because of the difficulties involved in managing the research data sets. The current day technology, however, has helped in making this task easier. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for managing research data at the institutional level. Design/methodology/approach - This paper discusses the significance and advantages of sharing research data. In the spirit of open access to publications, freeing research data and making it available openly, with minimal restrictions, will help in not only furthering research and development but also avoiding duplication of efforts. The issues and challenges involved in RDM at the institutional level are discussed. Findings - A conceptual framework for RDM at the institutional level is presented. A model for a National Repository of Open Research Data (NRORD) is also proposed, and the workflow of the functioning of NRORD is also presented. Originality/value - The framework clearly presents the workflow of the data life-cycle in its various phases right from its creation, storage, organization and sharing. It also attempts to address crucial issues in RDM such as data privacy, data security, copyright and licensing. The framework may help the institutions in managing the research data life-cycle in a more efficient and effective manner.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present results of a survey of Croatian academic libraries' user education about open access (OA)-related issues. The concept of OA literacy will be explained, and the term will be put in the context of information literacy (IL) and scholarly communication. Design/methodology/approach - An anonymous online questionnaire was sent to all the Croatian academic libraries with the aim to find out if libraries are involved in OA and to learn about plans for user education about the aspect of IL that is important for using OA information. Findings - Almost all the libraries are involved in OA publishing, either through OA repositories or through OA journals. However, 22 per cent of the libraries do not educate their users about OA. Two most important IL skills in the context of OA are finding OA information and understanding OA citation advantage. Academic libraries in Croatia mostly recognize the questionable publishers as a threat for OA. However, 40 per cent of libraries do not plan any form of education about OA literacy. Practical implications - The results of this research can be a basis for creating programmes of user education in academic libraries. Some problems are recognized, some skills are identified and further steps could be undertaken to improve academic library users' OA literacy skills. Originality/value - The research results contribute to understanding the importance of academic libraries in developing OA literacy of their users. The paper gives results of a survey of Croatian academic libraries and some new perspectives for authors, readers and libraries on how to evaluate OA sources using OA literacy skills.

The transition from print to electronic for scholarly communications provided an opportunity to explore alternatives to the subscription-based model for academic journals. One alternative that arose in the late 1990s was the hybrid journal. The hybrid journal is one that remains subscription-based, but provides individual authors with the option to pay a fee to have their specific articles made open access (OA) and freely available to everyone. Providing access to these articles is challenging for libraries, as the tools used to facilitate access to journal articles rely on either journal-level metadata and/or are provided by commercial entities. Publishers of hybrid journals provide different and sometimes confusing mechanisms for the identification of these articles, resulting in efforts to recommend a more consistent framework for the description of open access scholarship that will benefit researchers, libraries, and funding agencies.

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to ascertain from academic librarians in Nigeria their knowledge of open access online resources (OASOR), how their libraries manage these resources and how they are used by their readers. This is an alternative source of resource provision which librarians needed to adopt, in view of dwindling budgets. Design/methodology/approach - A survey design was adopted for the study. The study was conducted during an annual general meeting/conference of the Nigerian Library Association in June 2014. Interview and eye witness accounts were also used to complement the questionnaire. Random sampling technique was used to select 312 librarians from the 720 attendees from the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Data were analyzed using the weighted mean on a Likert scale. Findings - The result of the finding revealed that some of the academic libraries sampled have access to limited open access (OA) resources from AGORA, HINARI, OARE and EBSCOhost databases. The management procedure adopted included downloading of relevant resources for their readers; providing hard copies of some of the downloads; and giving their readers access to the databases via their University websites. Others include offering consultancy services to academic departments and organizing training seminars to their users for direct access to the databases. The OASOR received adequate utility rate by users. Originality/value - Dwindling economies and coping with current trends of information management in the contemporary world necessitated the use of information communication technology to avail OA resources to anchor education, research and human capital development in Nigeria. This will enable the country attain the Millennium Development Goal.

PROGRAM-ELECTRONIC LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report the benefits of scientific communication model of open access (OA) repositories to e-theses. Specifically, the study focusses on the benefits of accessibility, dissemination, visibility and impact of PhD e-theses deposited in repositories. Design/methodology/approach - The study analysed a random sample of 125 PhD e-theses deposited in an OA repository, specifically in the institutional repository (IR) of the University of Salamanca (Gredos). It tracked the sample for analysing on one side the visits and downloads of the e-theses, whose data are obtained from the statistics module of the repository, and on the other side the data citation provided by Google Scholar Citation on these e-theses. To analyse the differences between the indicators (visits, downloads and citations) in different knowledge areas, the Kurskall-Wallis test has been used. Findings - The results indicate that OA IRs become an advantageous channel of scientific communication to grey literature like dissertations and PhD theses, because it increases visibility and use and also produces a significant citation rate. Originality/value - The paper uses metrics that are used in IR to measure the visibility and impact of a type of grey literature that is very difficult to track because it is unpublished. The dissemination of the grey literature through OA repositories makes it possible. The value of the work lies in the empirical evidence obtained from the analysed PhD e-theses of Gredos repository.

Discovery systems are important tools that libraries use to connect patrons to the multitude of open access resources and subscription databases. Whitaker Library is a small academic library with a small staff that serves a large population of first-generation college students. Time is a valuable commodity. This article expands on a presentation made at the 2016 North Carolina Serials Conference about how Whitaker Library's collaboration with EBSCO Support helped to create a better user experience for our students and allowed library staff more time to focus on other student needs.

In her keynote, librarian and professor Dorothea Salo challenged attendees at the 2016 North Carolina Serials Conference to consider how the profession and work of librarianship would be impacted if scholarly output were universally online and available as open access. The scope of her supposition was global and comprehensive, encompassing born digital and digitized materials and scholarly information of all types. What about libraries and librarianship would be different? What work would librarians still be doing, and what work would librarians stop doing?

Purpose - The main purpose of this paper is to measure the status and quality of library and information science (LIS) open-access (OA) journals in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Design/methodology/approach - The study selected 86 source journals of LIS in the SSCI as a sample and measured their status of open access. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to analyze 36 OA journals of 86 source journals, especially their production capability, academic influence and network communication ability. Findings - The results indicate that OA journals have become an increasingly important part of LIS journals. Production capability, academic influence and network communication ability are important factors affecting the quality of OA journals. These three evaluation indicators of LIS OA journals are high, but many still have room for improvement. Research limitations/implications - As the paper is limited by collecting data, the indicators of OA journals' quality are not all-around. So, they cannot reflect the quality of LIS OA journals. In the selection of the evaluation method, the evaluation results are limited because only one AHP method is used. Practical implications - The research on evaluation of OA journals can help library and scientific research personnel use OA journals effectively. Identifying key factors on evaluation can help researchers to construct OA journals better. Social implications - The research on OA journals' quality can also promote the study on OA process in academic circles and promote the communication, development and utilization of academic information. Such research can also enrich the theory of OA, and provide some new perspectives for the study of journals' evaluation. Originality/value - This paper measures the quality of LIS OA journals by analyzing production capability, academic influence and network communication ability. Rather than the traditional research methods, the focus of this study is on the value of the Web as a source of impact indices. It contributes to the scholarly impact measurements of OA journals.

Purpose - The study aims to monitor the status of open access (OA) journals published in Developing 8 (D-8) countries, i.e. Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. Design/methodology/approach - The authors' web-based data sources for journal-based metrics were the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Thomson Reuters (Journal Citation Reports [JCR], which provided journal impact factors [JIF]) and Scopus (source normalized impact per paper [SNIP] and SCImago journal rank [SJR]). The authors obtained information about journals published before 2000 to 2014. From the JCR, JIF, Rank in Category, Total Journals in Category, Journal Rank in Category, and Quartile in Category were used. Findings - The authors' identified 1,407 OAJ published in D-8 countries. Egypt published the most journals (490) and Bangladesh the fewest (29). Egypt, Iran and Turkey accounted for approximately 73.5 per cent of all journals. At the time of study, 10,162 journals were registered in DOAJ, and 13.8 per cent of them were published in D-8 countries. The mean JIF for all journals from individual countries was highest for Pakistan (0.84), followed by Iran (0.74) and Turkey (0.57). The mean SNIP for all journals from each country was highest for Nigeria (0.57), followed by Egypt (0.57) and Pakistan (0.51). Practical implications - The widespread use of OA publishing models in D-8 countries will boost accessibility of their journals' content and ultimately impact research in D-8 states. Originality/value - Journals published in Egypt, Iran and Turkey account for approximately three-fourths of all OA journals published in D-8 countries. More than one-third (38 per cent) of the journals the authors studied used a Creative Commons (CC) BY license, a hallmark of OA research findings. Most of the journals with a JIF were in the JCR Medical Sciences category (60 per cent). As the number of journals in D-8 countries increases, publishers should attempt to make their journals eligible for indexing in-citation databases. The authors recommend efforts to improve the quality of journals in other subject categories, so that as many as possible become eligible for indexing in JCR.

JOURNAL OF LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION

Gold open access (OA) journals are multiplying at a high rate across many disciplines as major publishers launch new titles to complement their traditional subscription-based titles. This is on top of the many independent Gold OA titles which are being produced by higher education, societies, and many other special interest groups. The number of Gold OA journals covered in abstracting and indexing (A&I) and aggregator databases has shown substantial penetration in these services. This coverage varies widely by discipline but the inclusion of OA content into traditional library services means that quality OA content can be more easily found using the products and services licensed and promoted by libraries and consortia.

BIBLIOTECAS-REVISTA DE LA ESCUELA DE BIBLIOTECOLOGIA DOCUMENTACION E INFORMACION

The objective of this article consisted in proposing a methodology to evaluate qualitatively the design, development and implementation of portals infomediaries for distribution and efficient dissemination of resource access in higher education institutions. This considering that these academic areas currently produce large quantities of digital material. From a literature review on evaluation web sites and infomediation, as well as a descriptive analysis of the information obtained after the review, set out the methodology for the assessment of infomediaries portals of open resources in institutions of higher education. The methodology includes six indicators: content, community, virality, services, need and knowledge management. Each indicator is qualified with a series of criteria that allow to verify its compliance through a summary evaluation that assesses them in efficient, partially efficient or inefficient scale.

Purpose - This study aims to assess open access (OA) repositories in the field of the health and medicine (H&M) available in the Directory of the Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) by analysing their various facets like geographical distribution, language diversity, collection size, content types, operational status, interoperability, updating policy and software used for content management. Design/methodology/approach - To achieve the objectives of the study, the OpenDOAR was selected as a source for identifying the H&M repositories. The required data were manually collected from 1 to 30 April 2014 and analysed using various quantitative techniques to reveal the findings. Findings -The results reveal that the OpenDOAR lists 254 repositories in the field of the H&M contributed by the 62 countries of the world, topped by the USA (15.4 per cent), followed by Japan (7.9 per cent) and the UK (7.5 per cent). The majority of the repositories are institutional (187, 73.6 per cent) in nature, having less than 5,000 items (161, 63.4 per cent) in the collection and mostly consisting of articles (76.0 per cent), theses (49.6 per cent), unpublished documents (33.1 per cent) and books (31.9 per cent). The linguistic assessment shows that the majority of the H&M repositories accept content written in English language (71.3 per cent), followed by Spanish (16.1 per cent) and Japanese (7.5 per cent). The updating policy of these repositories is not up to the mark, as only 67.0 per cent of the H&M repositories have been updated from 2008-2012, but the majority are still operational (91.7 per cent) and are compatible (67.3 per cent) with the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). About 30 software brands, both commercial and open source, have been used by administrators for creating these repositories and managing their content. DSpace is the most popular software used by 88 (34.7 per cent) repositories, followed by EPrints (43, 16.9 per cent) and Digital Commons (18, 7.1 per cent). Research limitations/implications - The scope of this study is limited to the health and medical repositories listed in OpenDOAR, and hence the generalisation is to be cautioned. Practical implications - This study is useful for library and information professionals and health and medical professionals across the globe. Originality/value - This study is the first attempt to analyse the health and medical repositories in OA sites.

INTERLENDING & DOCUMENT SUPPLY

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to describe a unique service offering by UK public libraries that provides access to over 15 million academic articles for free. Design/methodology/approach - The approach is descriptive. Findings - The service has been a success with users, but more training for staff, as well as promotion, is needed. Social implications - The study will be potentially important for enabling access to a vast amount of published academic articles for a wide section of UK citizens. Originality/value - The first article on this service is aimed specifically at the LIS community.

https://zenodo.org/record/803351#.WTbSGOvytaR

INTERLENDING & DOCUMENT SUPPLY

Purpose - This paper aims to describe the transition of EThOS, the British Library's E-Theses Online service, from its original role as a transactional document supply service to the service seen today where it forms part of the UK's network of institutional repositories, open access and still-developing research funder mandates. Design/methodology/approach - The constituent parts of the EThOS service are described, and an analysis is given of the development of open access repositories, electronic theses and the way that PhD theses have become an important resource for cutting-edge research content for researchers worldwide. Findings - The value of doctoral theses for researchers continues to grow and be recognised. Many UK institutions have moved to mandatory open deposit of electronic theses, and many are digitising their older print thesis collections. Public funders are starting to track open deposit of the theses they fund; and research organisations are analysing the full UK metadata collection to understand trends in PhD research areas.

PROGRAM-ELECTRONIC LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Purpose - India occupies second position among the countries that have adopted DSpace open source software for institutional repositories (IRs)/digital libraries (DLs). The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons for DSpace being preferred over other software. It inspects various instances of Indian web-based DSpace systems including the nature and growth of collection, the geographical distribution of DSpace systems and the types of institutions that adopt and maintain DSpace. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from the official website of DSpace, Google search and from online discussion forums during July 2013 to January 2014. The 132 Indian DSpace links provided in the official DSpace website were examined. Further search was carried out on Google to identify Indian IRs and DLs that are not listed by the official website. A list of Indian DSpace websites prepared by the authors was sent to the online discussion forums for further updating. An online directory of Indian DSpace websites was created using WordPress which provided for the adding of comments. The study is limited to the web-based DSpace IRs and DLs in India. Findings - The majority of the Indian IRs and DLs listed on the official website of DSpace are not visible on the internet. Many links lead to institution websites, commercial websites and personal pages of authors. Out of 132 DSpace links, only 55 are visible on the internet to search and use. Indian libraries prefer DSpace over EPrints, Fedora and Greenstone. Many institutions could not maintain continuity of their DSpace systems in the online environment. Institutions having more funding are maintaining web-based DSpace systems. The size, economic conditions, rate of literacy and number of universities in an Indian state do not influence the maintenance of digital systems. Academic institutions involving universities, technical institutions and colleges lead in the adoption and maintenance of web-based DSpace in India. Private universities and colleges have adopted DSpace for IR/DL. Public libraries constitute a minimum percentage of web-based DSpace instances. Indian courts and Parliament have adopted DSpace. Shodhganga, the Indian ETD project, is running on DSpace. Originality/value - This is the first paper examining the adoption of DSpace by Indian libraries with a focus on online visibility and the strength of collection. It can be used to understand the pattern of technology adoption by Indian libraries over the years.

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION QUARTERLY

Current literature on open government data has uncovered a wide range of challenges related to these important initiatives. The problems encountered include: insufficient data quality and interoperability, problems regarding governance and motivation, lack of capabilities, and heterogeneous political and ideological agendas. A common open data infrastructure might resolve some of these problems, however, implementing such an infrastructure is a highly complex task. This longitudinal case study of the Danish Basic Data Program (BDP) is intended to improve our understanding of the challenges related to providing open access to government data through open data infrastructure. The BDP aims to improve the quality of selected government data, make them more coherent, and improve accessibility through the implementation of a common data distribution platform. The program is expected to increase government efficiency and stimulate innovation. This case study describes the evolution of the BDP and identifies the main structural elements of an open data infrastructure. Data analysis uncovered four tensions, which are identified as key challenges of an open data infrastructure implementation. These tensions are presented with four suggested governance strategies that were used in the BDP case. The main contribution of the paper is a process model where the main phases and mechanisms of an open data infrastructure implementation, use and impacts are identified and explained. (c) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Due to the vast array of fields that use or have used institutional repositories, and the varying degrees of technology used, it is important to identify the development of the field, institutional repositories, in order to understand the breadth and depth of studies involved. This longitudinal study of the subject terms associated with published journal articles allows for a clearer understanding of the field of institutional repositories as it developed, evolved, and changed over time. This study's uniqueness lies in its longitudinal nature, and its use of information visualization, multidimensional scaling, and parallel coordinate analysis provide information regarding the field of institutional repositories. The multidimensional scaling and parallel coordinate analysis in conjunction with temporal analysis reveal that institutional repositories transitioned through several development phases. Future studies of institutional repositories will most likely discover evaluation tactics and potential guidelines, resulting in a need for additional case studies. Observations from the parallel coordinate analysis reveal three major themes. The first theme is the maturity of institutional repositories as a field over time, the second is the fluctuation and developmental status of institutional repositories until 2010-2013 (Period IV), and the third theme is the emergence of the discipline information science and library science as the strong generator of institutional repository research. Through the visualization and temporal analysis, information was gained regarding the history, development, and future studies within institutional repositories.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

In the last five decades, a great deal has been written about the serials crisis,' library budget shortfalls, the growth of various commercial scholarly publishers, the response from various academic library associations to the serials crisis, and the emergence of open access publications. Yet very little has been written about the economics of scholarly publishing. In this article, the growth of universities and the academic community's never-ending need for prestigious scholarly publications are explored, along with substantive economic theories used by scholarly publishers, including portfolio theory, product differentiation, economic rent, and perfect price discrimination. A series of recommendations are made to ameliorate the clash' between academia and the scholarly publishing community.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

This study focused on librarian authors of open access articles in the field of library and information science (LIS). Of 19 LIS OA journals and 1819 research articles published between 2008 and 2013, half of the authors (55.6%) worked in libraries and approximately one third were researchers (33.5%). No appreciable changes were observed in the annual distributions of authors' occupations. Regarding the types of collaboration, 53.7% of all articles were coauthored and primarily resulted from collaborations among librarians. The coauthored articles written by librarians and researchers accounted for the second-most prevalent type of collaboration; the highest increase was identified in the annual percentage of articles resulting from collaboration between librarians and researchers. This confirms that librarians engage in increasingly frequent interaction with researchers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.

In the scientific publication world, there are an increasing number of open access (OA) journals. Many OA journals are financed by the article processing charges (APCs) that they charge authors. There is considerable interest in the funding source of such APCs. In 255 health and life sciences OA journals that charge APCs (APC OA journals) and 183 health and life sciences OA journals that do not charge APCs (free OA journals) that are indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, this study uses a bibliometric method to examine the relationship between two journal characteristics during 2009-2013: APCs and the percentage of published articles based on work that is supported by grants (grant-funded articles). According to the data collected, the percentage of grant-funded articles increases as the associated APCs increase. Average APCs of APC OA journals are higher in Europe and North America than elsewhere. The study also investigated the top ten countries in the number of scientific publications in the OA journals investigated. All ten countries had lower percentages of grant-funded articles in free OA journals than in APC OA and subscription journals. Of the ten countries, six in Europe and North America have higher percentages of grant-funded articles in APC OA journals than in subscription journals. The other four countries that have lower percentages of grant-funded articles in APC OA journals than in subscription journals are in Asia and South America, which are places where APC OA journals have low average APCs.

http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/download/8494/4983

DESIDOC JOURNAL OF LIBRARY & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service for open access e-books. It provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed e-books published under an open access business model, with links to the full text of the publications at the Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library, publisher's website or repositories. The present study aims to assess the current trends of the open access e-books in the field of science and technology available through DOAB. The data was collected online regarding the science and technology e-books in March 2014 for analysis. The results reveal that 307 e-books are available on science and technology through DOAB falling in three categories-monographs (209, 68.08 %), book series (93, 30.29 %) and conference proceedings (5,1.63 %). These e-books deal with eight major subject areas of Science and Technology having 36 sub-fields. The maximum number of e-books is available on General Science (95), Technology & Engineering (54), Earth & Environmental Sciences (50) & Health & Medical Sciences (47). In sub-fields most of the e-books cover Computer Sciences (24), Information Theory (24), General Medicine (20), Mathematics (17), Biology (13) & Geography (11). The authorship trends show that the maximum contribution is by single author (51.14 %) followed by two authors (74, 24.10 %) and three authors (36, 11.73 %). The linguistic assessment shows that 57.98 % (178) of these e-books have been published in English followed in German (88, 28.66%) and Italian (18, 5.86 %) respectively. The publishing trends reveal that 59.93 % (184) e-books have contributed by university presses whereas 40.07 % (123) by other publishing houses around the world. The maximum number of e-books (245, 79.80 %) is available through the Creative Commons (CC) license, whereas 20.20 % (62) e-books are available through comparable institutional licenses.

AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIC & RESEARCH LIBRARIES

This study examines the ongoing changes within Australian university libraries to support research. After establishing the reasons for focusing so strongly on research support, this study gives an overview of the adjustments made to libraries' service portfolios and the changes in the roles and responsibilities of subject or liaison librarians. Throughout the study, in-depth comparisons are drawn to the developments in Europe, in particular to the situation in the UK, Switzerland and Germany. This study identifies and discusses five research support services: institutional repositories, open access, bibliometrics and enhancement of research impact, support for research students and research data management. It then examines how these services are resourced and embedded in the library. The study reveals three measures or approaches that were taken by senior management to build up and sustain efficient and effective research support services: (1) rationalisation of student services, (2) focusing activities of liaison librarians on research support and creation of subject-specific teams to achieve better effectivity and efficiency gains, and (3) definition of new positions responsible for research support. In the `Conclusion' section, the author asks to what extent Australian libraries are influenced by government and university policies, or whether Australian librarians are free to set their own priorities.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

This essay explains the background of open-access monograph publishing as developed principally by university presses, often in association with libraries. It begins with discussions at Princeton University Press in the early 1970s about how to deal with the crisis of scholarly monograph publishing and moves on to describe a joint library/press project in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) in the early 1990s. The failure of that project to be funded led the library and press at Penn State to launch a jointly operated Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing in 2005, which supported one of the pioneering programs in open-access monograph publishing. The CIC project, in particular, anticipated the proposal by the Association of American Universities / Association of Research Libraries, announced in June 2014, to subvent the publication of first monographs using an open-access model.

DESIDOC JOURNAL OF LIBRARY & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The present paper is based on the survey conducted to assess the status of application of open source software (OSS) in India. The analysis of the study revealed that 91 institutions in India using OSS for library management and OPAC of these institutions are accessible in public domain. There are 96 open access repositories created by using OSS which are accessible in public domain. The study also discloses that 8 institutions in India have two open access digital repositories each which are created by OSS and 14 institutions are using OSS for library automation as well as for digital library.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the difference between Open Access and accessibility, to argue that accessibility is the most crucial feature, and to suggest some ways in which Open Access militates against accessibility. Design/methodology/approach - Analysis of best practice by journals and monograph publishers is used to highlight the degree to which accessibility is enhanced by input from readers and editors. The expense of this, both real and hidden, is shown to be compatible only with difficulty with publishing methods where keeping costs low is essential, and Open Access alternatives that make available manuscripts “as submitted” are shown to make available less accessible scholarship. Findings - Scholarship is markedly improved by referees and editors; the emphasis needs to be put on making available the most accessible scholarship, not on making more scholarship available. Practical implications - Journals and publishers should concentrate on, and research councils and similar bodies insist upon, ensuring high quality critical review and editing, not cost-free access. Originality/value - The debate on Open Access has put its emphasis in the wrong place. Rather than easier access to more scholarship, increased resource devoted to pre-publication review, revision and editing is the most important development to ensure the greatest advances in research and scholarship.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand individual academics' perception, attitudes and participation in Open Access Publishing and open scholarship and revisit some principles and designs of openness in academic publishing from the perspective of creative end-users, which helps to increase the sustainability and efficiency of open models. Design/methodology/approach - This paper draws on a case study of China and empirical data collected through semi-structured interviews with a wide range of academics and stakeholders. Findings - A separation between the communication and certification functions of publishing is identified: open initiatives are valued for efficient and interactive communication while traditional publishing still dominates the legitimacy of research publications, which leads to the quandary of individual academics operating within the transitional landscape of scholarly communication. Practical implications - Practical recommendations for sustainable and efficient openness are derived from discussions on the difficulties associated open/social certification and the shifting maxims that govern academics from “publish or perish” to “be visible or vanish”. Originality/value - “Openness” is defined in broad sense integrating Open Access and open scholarship to comprehensively reflect individual academics' views in the transitional landscape of academic publishing. The research findings suggest that new open approaches are needed to address the evolving tension and conflicts between communication and certification.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent of visibility of researchers in African countries, in the Open Access (OA) arena and aims to identify main causes of reduced uptake in OA in Africa. Design/methodology/approach - Extent of visibility is explored by quantitative analysis of institutional repository and OA journals data sets followed by qualitative analysis of OA foundation documents and literature on OA in Africa published mainly between 2003 and 2013. Findings - Visibility in institutional repositories or OA journals for African researchers remains low. Causes include insufficient educational support for librarians and administrators in required new roles; inability of national, organisational and technological infrastructures to support OA; impracticality of western-based and costly publishing models; and disincentives relating to intellectual property and researcher perceptions. Complex language and literacy issues also inhibit engagement. Recommendations include strong OA advocacy, development of support initiatives, integration of international knowledge for local conditions and vice versa, sensitive preservation of indigenous knowledge and development of mechanisms of funding and research assessment mechanisms, which are economically and technically viable. Originality/value - Earlier attempts were made to raise awareness about the lack of uptake of OA in Africa. This paper shows that the situation has hardly changed and now requires urgent attention. Otherwise OA will not “become the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and country” by 2022 (BOAI, 2012).

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the type and implications of user-generated content posted by users of an open access institutional repository (DSpace) on Facebook. Design/methodology/approach - The identified user-generated content was organised into three categories: personal; professional; and social information. It encompassed all content from the members of the “DSpace” Facebook group, posted during the seven-year period (2007-2014). The posts were read and analysed to identify and categorise user-generated content posted by users to determine how Facebook is used by open access repository users. Findings - The results of analysis demonstrate the importance of social information posted by users over personal and professional information. Major types of user-generated content posted by users in the social information category were request, greetings, status-update, and announcement. Further, there has been a threefold increase in the number of user postings in the last two years (2013-2014), when posts were analysed over a seven-year period. Research limitations/implications - This study contributes to the theory on the implications eventuating from user-generated content posted by users of an open access institutional repository. An analysis of user-generated content identified in this study implies that users of DSpace open access repository are primarily using Facebook for information seeking, relationship building, and knowledge dissemination. Practical implications - By analysing the findings, administrators and policy makers of open access repositories could identify the extent of user support in the form of technical assistance, improved sustainability of supported projects, user community development, marketing and communications required to sustain open access scholarly communication. Originality/value - Previous studies examined how social networking sites have been used for a different purpose (interaction, collaboration, and discussion), but to date there has been very little research into the use of Facebook, a public social networking site, by open access repository users. Hence, this study addresses this gap in the literature by an interpretive analysis of user-generated content posted by users on the “DSpace” Facebook group.

INTERLENDING & DOCUMENT SUPPLY

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to describe the current situation at the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) the French document supply centre after their difficulties with open access articles during 2013. Design/methodology/approach - A narrative and analytical explanation by the director of INIST. Findings - That INIST will no longer service the commercial sector and will provide documents to researchers in CNRS for free and priced to French higher education establishments. The growth in open access will mean that INIST is ceasing to be an industrial scale operation and will be concerned primarily with “long tail” requests. Originality/value - Certainly, the only account in English of the difficulties that INIST has faced in the past three years and how they have been dealt with.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to be concerned with the motivations and resistance among an institutional repository (IR) stakeholder - the Library and Information Science (LIS) academicians with respect to Green Road open access publishing in an inter-institutional repository. Design/methodology/approach - The answers were identified from 47 LIS faculty from three library schools in Malaysia who reported awareness of what an IR is and having had experience in contributing resources to digital repositories. Data were collected using survey and interviews. Findings - The results highlighted the LIS faculty on their motivation to share their intellectual profile, research and teaching resources in an inter-institutional repositories and why the reluctance in contributing. The study reveals that the major motivation to share resources for those practicing self-archiving is related to performance expectancy, social influence, visible and authoritative advantage, career benefit and quality work. The major resistance to share scholarly research output through self-archiving in institutional repositories for those practicing self-archiving is concern on plagiarism, time and effort, technical infrastructure, lack of self-efficacy and insularity. Practical implications - Knowing what conditions predict motivation and resistance to contribute to IRs would allow IR administrators to ensure greater and more effective participation in resource-sharing among LIS academic community. If this resistance is addressed aptly, IRs can be of real benefit to their teaching, scholarship, collaborations, and publishing and to the community that they serve. Originality/value - The first study that has explored the ways LIS academics respond to a situation where knowledge sharing in academe has now been made mandatory through an IR and what makes them resist to do so.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the file formats of the digital objects stored in two of the largest open-access repositories in Spain, DDUB and TDX, and determines the implications of these formats for long-term preservation, focussing in particular on the different versions of PDF. Design/methodology/approach - To be able to study the two repositories, the authors harvested all the files corresponding to every digital object and some of their associated metadata using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) protocols. The file formats were analyzed with DROID software and some additional tools. Findings - The results show that there is no alignment between the preservation policies declared by institutions, the technical tools available, and the actual stored files. Originality/value - The results show that file controls currently applied to institutional repositories do not suffice to grant their stated mission of long-term preservation of scientific literature.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is an audit of information technology (IT) skills set of librarians in some Nigerian university libraries with the aim of examining their relevance and adequacy to the digital environment. Nigerian universities as knowledge creators and their libraries as gatekeepers of knowledge are rapidly witnessing the introduction of various IT. One of the challenges facing IT/digital library projects in Nigeria has been the readiness of the university libraries in terms of knowledge and skills to implement the digital and electronic library services. Design/methodology/approach - This paper used the survey approach. The sampling technique for the selection of the universities was stratified and for the librarians (respondents), census. The sampling frame was the approved list of universities released by the National Universities Commission as of the time of this study. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Findings - The findings of this paper revealed that many of the respondents do have knowledge and skills of email use and word processing tasks but lack knowledge of search engines and directories other than Google and Yahoo, respectively. Many of them do not know how to evaluate and catalogue e-resources; have no knowledge of subject gateways, specialised databases and some open-access library databases; have no knowledge of database management; are not skilled in Web design; and are equally not familiar with Web design applications. Originality/value - The study recommends management support for IT skills training and/or continuous professional development to improve the librarians. Librarians are also challenged and encouraged to explore the range of training resources available over the Internet for self-development.

Purpose - The present study aims at determining the most accredited free English electronic journals (EJs) in Medical Sciences, as finding free scholarly EJs including medical ones is difficult in the web environment. Design/methodology/approach - The research population consisted of 700 free EJs of Medical Sciences, which were collected from two reputable websites, namely, Directory of Open Access Journals and Free Medical Journals. After first screening, 269 free EJs including 76 journals in health, 4 journals in nursing, 175 journals in medicine and 14 free EJs in dentistry remained for final investigation [...]. Findings - The most accredited journals in four medical disciplines studied here are health: New South Wales Public Health Bulletin, PLoS Biology and Environmental Health Perspectives - National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; nursing: Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care and Online Journal of Nursing Informatics [...]. Originality/value - This research can be treated as an addition to the webometrics literature.

Purpose: The goal is to identify the features of top-rated gold open access (OA) journals by testing seven main variables: languages, countries, years of activity and years in the DOAJ repository, publication fee, the field of study, whether the journal has been launched as OA or converted, and the type of publisher. Sample: A sample of 1910 gold OA journals has been obtained by combining Scopus SJR 2012, the DOAJ, and data provided by previous studies (Solomon, 2013). Method: We have divided the SJR index into quartiles for all journals' subject areas. First, we show descriptive statistics by combining quartiles based on their features. Then, after having converted the quartiles into a dummy variable, we test it as a dependent variable in a binary logistic regression. Contribute: This work contributes empirically to better understanding the gold OA efficacy of data analysis, which may be helpful in improving journals' rankings in the areas where this is still a struggle. Findings: Significant results have been found for all variables, except for the types of publishers, and for born or converted journals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

This interpretive and descriptive study examines the development of the U.S. National Institute of Health's (NIH) public access policy which requires NIH funded research to be made publicly available through an open access depository, the PubMed Central database. Using elements of Kingdon's (2003) multiple streams framework, Stone's (2012) challenges to the theory of free market efficiency, and her rhetorical characterization of “good weak interests” vs. “bad strong interests,” this work explores the rationale behind the development of the NIH open access policy. Based upon this rationale and the current structure of the scholarly publishing system, future implications for other federally or publicly funded research are proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

LIBRARY COLLECTIONS ACQUISITIONS & TECHNICAL SERVICES

This study was conducted to examine advocacy issues in open access institutional repositories in Nigeria. A descriptive survey research design was adopted to study 150 librarians from six government-funded academic institutions in South East Nigeria. The article identified 12 local content materials as relevant for publication in institutional repositories. It was found that advocacy is very critical in attracting funds and creation of awareness for institutional repositories in Nigeria. Major advocacy strategies are the use of institutions Websites, face-to-face interaction with target groups, seminars, and workshops. The study identified the National Universities Commission, Federal Ministry of Education, and institutional administration as major targets of the advocacy. Library associations, librarians, and management of the institutions are identified as very important groups to spearhead advocacy programs. The problems associated with institutional repositories advocacy were also identified. This study will serve as a useful guide on advocacy issues for institutional administrators and librarians who are interested in developing their institutional repositories using local content available to them. The originality lies in the ability of the article to survey professional librarians who gave their opinions on the questions raised which were used to generate data that addressed the objectives of the study.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

This study explores PhD faculty members' current awareness of open access (OA) and perceptions of OA publishing, focusing on demographic characteristics to understand whether these variables correspond to specific perceptions and behaviors. The majority of respondents taught in Art, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines. Results point to a growing trend in self reported knowledge of OA across all age groups but OA publishing activity is relatively limited. The younger age brackets reported higher percentages of publishing history than older age brackets, but these younger groups tended to also be tenured. Credibility of OA journals was the top concern of respondents. Results suggest that faculty authors cannot be prejudged by their age, seniority or rank as to their perception of, or experience with OA, because these indicators no longer appear to be strong predictors. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Using Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure as the data resource, this paper searched some papers about open access (OA). Some Visual Basic for Applications programs were developed to generate the co-word matrix, compute the E-index value of keywords as well as the density and centrality of thematic clusters. Callon's clustering method was also used to generate keywords clusters. Then, co-word analysis method and strategic diagrams were utilized to detect the main research themes as well as explore the development situation and status of these research themes. Furthermore, author-themes coupling network was mapped with the help of Netdraw in order to detect the relationship between core authors and research themes of OA as well as the core authors' influence on these themes. Based on this, some conclusions were got in the end.

This year's panel discussion, moderated by Beverly Dowdy, offered three perspectives on the current and future trends in open access (OA) from David Crotty, a senior editor from a prominent university publisher; Beth Bernhardt, an assistant dean for collection development and scholarly communications at an academic library; and Dr. Paige Hall Smith, an associate professor at a large state university. Each discussed different opportunities and challenges that open access presents. A question-and-answer period followed, prompting further discussion of the points brought up during the presentations, as well as related issues.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

The authors ask how far the open access movement has come in meeting its initial goal of making scholarly research freely available to all potential users immediately upon publication through open digital repositories (green OA) or open access journals (gold OA). In 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative named the movement and examined the new opportunities that technology made possible. In 2012, the same group declared partial success: `We're solidly in the middle.' The main challenge has been economic sustainability. The authors argue that gold OA has fared better and has more potential for economic stability than green OA. As commercial publishers have found ways to live with and even profit from open access, the movement has not yet achieved its goal of reducing costs for libraries. The future remains uncertain for OA as the means to meeting its goals need more critical evaluation and revision.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

To learn about the current situation of open access (OA) in Chinese social science journals, 714 journals listed in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) in 2012 to 2013 were chosen to investigate, and search engines were used to analyze the OA status of these journals and their articles. The results showed that 13.73 per cent of journals in the CSSCI are OA, their OA format is mostly PDF, and 84.69 per cent of their OA resources are gathered from the publishing years 2004 to 2012. The level of OA journals focusing on different subjects is unbalanced in China. Articles from each journal published in 2007 were selected according to different standards to study the relationship of OA and citation. The results showed that the OA level of highly cited articles is higher than that of low-and non-cited articles. Factors that may restrict OA development in China were analyzed.

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE

The institutional repository is a major means of providing open access to academic output and is changing academic communications. As use of the institutional repository is spreading, research advancing its management policy and technology has been conducted in the library and academic communities. This study has undertaken a co-word analysis of author keywords in articles from the SCOPUS database from 1997 to 2012 and found 8 clusters that represent the intellectual structure of Institutional Repository Research, including `Metadata', `Open Access', `Institutional Repository', `digital Library', `dSpace', `Copyright','Preservation' and `Sematic Web'. To understand these intellectual structures, this study used a co-occurrence matrix based on Pearson's correlation coefficient to create a clustering of the words using the hierarchical clustering technique. To visualize these intellectual structures, this study carried out a multidimensional scaling analysis, to which a PROXCAL algorithm was applied.

Purpose - The growing dominance of Google Scholar (GS) as a first-stop resource for scholars and researchers demands investigation of its influence on citation patterns, freedom of information, and scholarly communication. The purpose of this paper is to break new ground in understanding the various versions GS indexes, correlations between the number of GS versions and citation counts, and the value of institutional repositories for increasing scholarly impact. Design/methodology/approach - GS listings for 982 articles in several academic subjects from three universities were analyzed for GS version types, including any institutional repository versions, citation rates, and availability of free full-text. Findings - First, open access articles were cited more than articles that were not available in free full-text. While journal publisher web sites were indexed most often, only a small number of those articles were available as free full-text. Second, there is no correlation between the number of versions of an article and the number of times an article has been cited. Third, viewing the “versions” of an article may be useful when publisher access is restricted, as over 70 percent of articles had at least one free full-text version available through an indexed GS version. Originality/value - This paper investigates GS versions as an alternative source for a scholarly article. While other articles have looked at GS through various lenses, the authors believe this specific aspect of the topic has not been previously explored.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to collect the global status data of digital repositories automatically and analyzed it by building a database. For analysis criteria the following were utilized: first, China, Japan and Republic of Korea (CJK) repository operational status; second, language of the repository content; third, repository type, fourth, repository of CJK by subject area; fifth, the amount of repository content; and sixth, repository software. Design/methodology/approach - OpenDOAR and ROAR services were used as the sources to obtain the information on the digital repository. Those sources are representative services that provide the digital repository registration services and are used as sources in a variety of studies. A six kinds of data analysis criteria: first, CJK repository operational status; second, language of the repository content; third, repository type; fourth, repository of CJK by subject area; fifth, the amount of repository content; and sixth, repository software were utilized. Findings - First, CJK is operating 288 repositories (8 percent compared to the world, 42.2 percent compared to Asia). Second, the repositories that provide Japanese, Chinese and Korean contents are 5.57 percent, 4.14 percent and 0.72 percent, respectively. Third, the repository operated by the government is inadequate in Asia. Fourth, in Korea and Japan, the repositories in the field of humanities and social sciences appeared all in the top 10. Fifth, Korea provides 1,342,845 cases of contents (0.81 percent compared to the global). Sixth, the “DSpace” software is most widely utilized as a repository system and it is the same in CJK. Originality/value - This results of this study can be used to identify the repository status in Korea compared to global and to CJK, and can be utilized as a basis to determine the direction of the repository promotion and policy in Korea and also to administer the national R&D budget.

Purpose - This paper aims to analyse the impact of open-access (OA) journals in engineering and technology institutions, if libraries are not subscribed to the journals through the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) mandatory packages. In India, many engineering colleges do not subscribe to journals through business subscription models or consortia and invariably a majority of them depend on OA journals to fulfil their users' needs. Design/methodology/approach - The paper identifies the impact factors of mandatory journals made in big-deal subscriptions with the impact factors of OA journals available to access in Directory of OA Journals pertaining to engineering and technology. Findings - The study reveals that journals subscribed through big-deal subscriptions have better impact in the scholarly communications than the OA journals. Research limitations/implications - The results of this study cannot be generalized to all disciplines. Impact factors of journals can also be calculated by use of SCImago Journal Rank indicator, which uses the Scopus database. Publish or Perish can also be used to analyse Google Scholar rankings to identify the individual journal's impact. Originality/value - The result of the study is useful for selection of e-journals in big-deal subscriptions and it highlights the implications and impact of OA journals in engineering and technology.

INTERLENDING & DOCUMENT SUPPLY

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the arguments for the survival of interlibrary lending (ILL) in an open access environment. Design/methodology/approach - Viewpoint - a brief narrative. Findings - That ILL will survive! Originality/value - Useful in being one of the few (only?) articles to counter the widespread assumption `that everything is free on the web', thus leading to the demise of ILL.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report results of a study which investigated the growth of open access (OA) journals across the world with reference to the Asian region. Details of 117 OA journals were collected from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to determine the geographic distribution, language of publication and growth of periodical year-wise. The study makes detail analysis of four OA periodical published from India, Iran, Pakistan and Taiwan. Pattern of authorship and contribution according to nature of professional work were analyzed. The study reveals that most contributions were made by teaching professionals in comparison to working library and information officers. Single-authored contributions dominated (44 per cent) in all periodicals of the Asian region, indicating low amount of teamwork/collaborative contributions to library and information science (LIS) research by the authors of this region. To know the subject distribution of articles, the study was limited to 27 subfields within the broad spectrum of LIS. Annals of Library and Information Sciences (ALIS) published in India carried the highest number of articles (165) followed by Journal of Library and Information Sciences (JLIS) from Taiwan. The findings of the study also indicate that there is varied distribution of topics within the Asian LIS literature published in OA journals. Most popular areas of writing among authors in OA journals have been found to be bibliometics, webometrics, research productivity or research methods besides information seeking pattern, information need of users and digital libraries. Design/methodology/approach - To gather data for the present investigation, survey of OA e-journals was made across the Web. The collection of data from OA journals and content was accompanied by searching the DOAJ. After selecting the OA journals, these were analyzed using the descriptions on their content page and key words chosen from each contribution. Selection of additional key words, i.e. words not in the title, was also made. Analysis of this data is discussed in this paper. Findings - OA removes restrictions that exist on access to scholarly information and knowledge, it empowers the readers to read, download, distribute and make use of relevant literature, besides giving authors and their work fairly good visibility, readership and impact. The OA movement is gaining importance and the scholarly community is now realizing that tolled or subscribed access is creating a barrier and preventing their work from wider accessibility and readership. A number of journals across the world are now being published in OA mode. The present study attempts to map the growth of LIS literature in OA journals with special reference to periodicals published from Asian countries. The finding of this sample study suggests that many counties are promoting OA journals. While USA ranks first in publication of OA journals in the world. Taiwan publishes the highest number of articles in Asia. Majority of OA journals are published in English, and English appears to be most popular language for communicating research information. Of the four OA LIS journals analyzed in detail, it is observed that single-authored contributions are most popular. Collaborative contributions to LIS research were not so evident among authors of the Asian community. The teaching professionals or LIS teachers contributed the greatest number of articles, except for the Indian journal ALIS, demonstrating that working professional are more actively involved in writing and they outnumber the teaching community. Contributions from research students in all OA journals have been fairly significant. Research students may be encouraged to publish their master's and doctoral research work in OA periodicals for better visibility, readership and impact. The study further reveals that ALIS from India and JLIS from Taiwan carried the highest number of articles. While areas like bibliometrics, webometrics and e-resources and OA are most popular areas of writing among Indian authors, information-seeking pattern, information need, digital and virtual libraries have been popular among authors from Taiwan. Webology from Iran has predominant articles on Web study or evaluation and social networking. Universities and LIS need to come forward to take a need-based approach to LIS research, suggesting ways for improving existing LIS services in their respective countries. To get the correct picture of growth of OA journals in the Asian region, more exhaustive and extensive study may be required. Researchers interested to carry further investigation will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome the limitations mentioned in the study, for example, the source of data DOAJ may not be very extensive to give correct picture of OA journals. It is likely that some journals may not have been included in this directory. Researchers interested to carry further investigations will have to adopt appropriate measures to overcome these constraints. Research limitations/implications - Scope and limitation access to data and timely completion are the two vital factors for the success and accomplishment of the objectives of any investigation. Hence, considering the vast range of literature from every geographical region and limited time to complete research, the present study adhered to the following limitations. The study covers in its scope literature published in the period of five years (accessed from March 28 to May 25, 2011, only). The study includes only those publications/journals contributed by authors in English. The study includes four OA journals having full-text articles in English, abstracts not included. It considers those publications primarily inclined and relevant to library and information services. The study includes only those OA LIS journals listed or included in DOAJ. Originality/value - The present study has been taken with view to analyze the growth of OA journals in LIS with special reference to Asian countries. While several studies have been conducted on growth and publishing of traditional LIS journals, the present study is perhaps an interesting attempt to make a comprehensive review of the phenomena. The finding of the recent study will be of interest to many LIS professionals, researchers and academicians as it demonstrate the growth of OA journals.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present the institutional repository (IR) named DRUGG (Digital Repository of the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering) of the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering (UL FGG), just from its beginnings in 2011, and using the statistics of visits to present its merits for higher visibility of scholarly publications on the web. The role of all stakeholders involved in the construction of this IR is highlighted. Design/methodology/approach - The historical overview of the awareness of researchers on the UL FGG on worldwide scientific communication through web sites is showed from beginning in the 1990s. Using Google Analytics the statistics of visits and downloads after a year of operations is showed, as well as the statistics of access from different networks from all over the world. Findings - In the DRUGG repository mainly theses are archived which are usually not published elsewhere. They are very interesting for professional engineers working in practice. The statistics showed that 89 per cent of all visits come from public domains, while only 11 per cent are from the home domain of the University of Ljubljana (UL). Research limitations/implications - This paper is a case study and limited only to IR DRUGG. It describes the steps taken in implementing the IR considering the technological infrastructure, human resources and collaboration of the library staff with other professional and administrative faculty units. Practical implications - The repository is to a large extent used by the professional public and that the use is not limited only to the home institution - UL. Originality/value - This paper helps in planning to build an IR. It also presents an overview of worldwide research and analysis about the influence of IRs on citations of scholarly publications to convince the sceptical research policy makers.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine academics' awareness of and attitudes towards Wikipedia and Open Access journals for academic publishing to better understand the perceived benefits and challenges of these models. Design/methodology/approach - Bases for analysis include comparison of the models, enumeration of their advantages and disadvantages, and investigation of Wikipedia's web structure in terms of potential for academic publishing. A web survey was administered via department-based invitations and listservs. Findings - The survey results show that: Wikipedia has perceived advantages and challenges in comparison to the Open Access model; the academic researchers' increased familiarity is associated with increased comfort with these models; and the academic researchers' attitudes towards these models are associated with their familiarity, academic environment, and professional status. Research limitations/implications - The major limitation of the study is sample size. The result of a power analysis with GPower shows that authors could only detect big effects in this study at statistical power 0.95. The authors call for larger sample studies that look further into this topic. Originality/value - This study contributes to the increasing interest in adjusting methods of creating and disseminating academic knowledge by providing empirical evidence of the academics' experiences and attitudes towards the Open Access and Wikipedia publishing models. This paper provides a resource for researchers interested in scholarly communication and academic publishing, for research librarians, and for the academic community in general.

PROGRAM-ELECTRONIC LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore various types of research materials in Indian institutional repositories. Design/methodology/approach - The repositories are identified from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). The repository sites were visited to collect the data necessary for the study. Findings - The present study reveals that barring a few repositories the collections of most of the repositories are very low. The percentage of archived materials is high for journal papers, and moderate for conference papers/thesis. However it is very low for preprints/working papers, teaching resources and patents. Originality/value - The study provides an overview of archived material in institutional repositories in India.

This article reports a 2013 study on the percentage of Open Access (OA) journal articles. Following the 2009 Bjork et al. (2010) model, this study generated 2,655 random sample articles published in 2012 from Scopus. It found that 37.8% of Scopus samples have free full text on the Internet, a significant increase from 20.4% recorded by the Bjork et al. study. Because the vast majority of the 9,900 OA journals listed by DOAJ are not indexed by Scopus, this study projects with caution that human history is reaching a milestone; either the percentage of OA articles published in the previous year is very close to 50% or it has passed that mark.

Purpose - The paper aims to focus on the current state of open access (OA) initiatives in Zimbabwean universities. The paper specifically reports the initiatives at Zimbabwean universities regarding institutional repositories that promote OA and other digital OA collections. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative research methodology was adopted. Questionnaires were used as the primary data collection method for this research. The research sought to address the following specific areas: the state of institutional repositories and open access in Zimbabwe, the discoverability of content, open access policies and mandates, the benefits of open access in Zimbabwe, and future plans for institutional OA. A total of eight out of 12 universities responded to the questionnaire. The data provided by the universities involved in the research were summarised to give a general picture of the open access landscape in Zimbabwe. Findings - The current initiatives in the universities involved in this survey indicate that most universities in Zimbabwe are going to have institutional repositories that promote open access to information. Most institutions in Zimbabwe are already working on putting open access policies in place in a bid to promote open access. Originality/value - The research will shed more light on the status quo of open access initiatives in Zimbabwe, particularly with regards to institutional repositories, open access policies and open access mandates.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The author analyzes retracted biomedical literature to determine if open access and fee-for-access works differ in terms of the practice and effectiveness of retraction. Citation and content analysis were applied to articles grouped by accessibility (libre, gratis, and fee for access) for various bibliometric attributes. Open access literature does not differ from fee-for-access literature in terms of impact factor, detection of error, or change in postretraction citation rates. Literature found in the PubMed Central Open Access subset provides detailed information about the nature of the anomaly more often than less accessible works. Open access literature appears to be of similar reliability and integrity as the population of biomedical literature in general, with the added value of being more forthcoming about the nature of errors when they are identified.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Many authors appear to think that most open access (OA) journals charge authors for their publications. This brief communication examines the basis for such beliefs and finds it wanting. Indeed, in this study of over 9,000 OA journals included in the Directory of Open Access Journals, only 28% charged authors for publishing in their journals. This figure, however, was highest in various disciplines in medicine (47%) and the sciences (43%) and lowest in the humanities (4%) and the arts (0%).

ZEITSCHRIFT FUR BIBLIOTHEKSWESEN UND BIBLIOGRAPHIE

ZEITSCHRIFT FUR BIBLIOTHEKSWESEN UND BIBLIOGRAPHIE

ZEITSCHRIFT FUR BIBLIOTHEKSWESEN UND BIBLIOGRAPHIE

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

The open-access (OA) journals among the 1003 journals sponsored by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) were identified. Information about the following aspects of the journals were collected and analysed: when each journal was established, its publication cycle, its system model, its region, its discipline, the time between an issue's publication and the posting of the online version, the number of issues that have been made OA, and length of time that it has had an OA policy. On the basis of these results, problems associated with OA journals sponsored by CAST were found and relevant approaches that can promote OA publication in China were recommended.

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of open access (OA) repositories that have embraced Web 2.0 technologies. The main focus of the paper is to explore the occurrence of Web 2.0 tools used in the open repositories. Design/methodology/approach - Repositories having English as one of the interface/content languages and indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) were selected and analyzed under different parameters. Findings - A total of 1,499 open access repositories having English as one of the interface/content languages (75.82 percent of total OA repositories) are developed from 81 nations and only 61 countries have most of their repositories Web 2.0 enabled. About 57 percent (804) repositories make use of Web 2.0 tool/s, 43 percent (608) have yet to avail benefits of Web 2.0 tools while 5.8 percent remain inaccessible (87) during the study period. Though the USA leads in terms of OA repositories, the percentage of Web 2.0 enabled repositories is higher for the UK (7527 percent) as compared to the USA (51.08 percent). Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a syndication tool, is found in the majority of repositories (736, 91.54 percent) followed respectively by Social Bookmarking and ATOM (syndication tool) in 228 and 160 repositories Research limitations/implications - Repositories have to develop a more productive Web 2.0 outlook in order to converge with an interactive learning model. A follow-up study can explore the use of Web 2.0 tools in open access repositories. The impact of Web 2.0 tools on the associated activities of the users as well as repository administrators can also be carried on. How Web 2.0 tools have helped to improve the services of the repositories and how they have influenced the information seeking behavior of users in the open access repositories can also be researched. Originality/value - The research is the first of its kind and can act as an opener to the issues related to use of Web 2.0 in open repositories.

Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to present the influence open access initiatives (OAIs) have on journal cancellations in university libraries in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is based on part of a doctoral research project which examined the crisis in scholarly communication and its effect on university libraries in South Africa that was carried out at the University of KwaZulu-Natal from 2005 to 2009. Part of the investigation focused on open access (OA) and how it influenced journal cancellations. The survey methodology was adopted and the study used a quantitative approach to collect data on the influence of OA. Findings - The findings revealed that OAIs had a very limited influence on journal cancellations in South African university libraries. Practical implications The study presents data that can be used by university libraries to develop, support and facilitate access to local research. Originality/value - The study provides data on which future developments in OA as a solution to university library journal cancellations could be based.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-ApbldlfNY4b2hCSUotRFM1S1U

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

Economists have built a theory to understand markets in which, rather than selling directly to buyers, suppliers sell through a platform, which controls prices on both sides. The theory has been applied to understand markets ranging from telephony, to credit cards, to media. In this paper, we apply the theory to the market for scholarly journals, with the journal functioning as the platform between submitting authors and subscribing readers. Our goal is to understand the conditions under which a journal would prefer open access to traditional pricing and under which open access would be better for the scholarly community. Our new model captures much of the richness of the existing economic literature on journal pricing, and indeed adds some fresh insights, yet is simple enough to be accessible to a broad audience. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Inc.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

The open access (OA) movement is working to transform scholarly communication around the world, but this philosophy can also apply to metadata and cataloging records. While some notable, large academic libraries, such as Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Cambridge, released their cataloging records under OA licenses, this is not the prevailing standard for libraries as a whole. In order for OA metadata to benefit users, libraries must release their cataloging records and metadata under an open access license. This OA metadata can reside locally or globally, both of which will be discussed in this article. Three main stakeholders can foster this process: libraries, vendors, and publishers. Working as a cataloger in a vendor's technical services department affords me a unique perspective on the potential role of vendors creating, promoting, and working with OA metadata to help libraries make their collections more discoverable and user-friendly. No matter what role vendors and publishers play, though, libraries and their catalogers must lead the charge in OA metadata and cataloging records in order to provide better information to users, while easing the burden of record upkeep through a collaboration of shared OA information. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

We have identified and examined the 685 online journals that offer some form of open access (OA) among the 8,814 scholarly journals indexed by the Chinese National Knowledge Information (CNKI) database in China. Data concerning each journal's organizer, discipline, region and/or province, publishing cycle, and first date that content was offered free of charge were analyzed, together with the journals' Web site construction, the way full text was accessed, and the delay between the print and online publication of the journal. On the basis of the survey results, we identified key problems associated with OA journals in China and outlined strategies to address these issues, including radically reforming the current publication system and mechanism for scholarly journals, actively promoting the transition of scholarly journals from print to OA, speeding up network construction and promoting full-text availability, and building a national open access journal platform. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study examines the publishing for 1,437 Korean journals classified by publisher types and disciplines. The aim of the analysis is to understand the status of the journal publishing and the level of open access in Korea. The results show that society publishers are the majority in Korea, commercial publishers predominating in most advanced countries. More than half of the Korean journals for science, technology and medicine (STM) are open access. The study explains why open access is widespread particularly in Korea and suggests the STM journals be published in English for international recognition and impact. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SCIENCE

We identified and analysed the 147 journals offering open access (OA) among the 2960 scholarly journals indexed by the Chinese National Knowledge Information (CNKI) database in the humanities and social sciences. Data were analysed concerning each journal's organizer, discipline, publishing cycle, areas, regions or provinces covered, and first date that content was offered free of charge, together with the journal's website construction, the way full text was accessed, and the time delay in publication. On the basis of the survey results, we identify key challenges and problems associated with OA journals in the humanities and social sciences in China, and we outline development strategies to address these issues, including actively promoting the transition of scholarly journals from print form to OA, speeding up network construction of OA journals, and enhancing the functionality of the OA journals' websites.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review the software and content features of the Google Scholar Metrics (GSM) service launched in April 2012. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reviews GSM, examining the software, browsing, searching and sorting functions, citation matching and content. Findings - The paper reveals that the service can offer a better alternative than the traditional Google Scholar service to discover and judge the standing of journals through the prism of their citedness. GSM could become a potentially useful complementary resource primarily by virtue of its brand recognition, and the convenience of not requiring the installation of additional software, but currently its bibliometric indicators are often inappropriate for decision making in matters of tenure, promotion, grants and accreditation. Originality/value - The paper provides a good understanding of the GSM service.

Purpose - The main purpose of the present study is to examine the availability and persistence of URL citations in two LIS open access journals. It also intended to calculate the half-life period of URL citations cited in journal articles. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 2,890 URL citations cited in 689 research articles published in LIS journals spanning a period of 14 years (1996-2009) were extracted. In order to check the accessibility of URL citations, W3C link checker was used. After the initial check, inactive URL citations were listed. Domains and HTTP errors associated with inactive URL citations were identified for further analysis. The half-life period was calculated using the formula t(h) = [t ln(0.5)]/[ln W(t) - ln W(0)]. Findings - The research findings indicated that 57.61 percent (397 of 689) of articles have URL citations and percentage of URL citations increased from 5.98 percent in 1996 to 2739 percent in 2009. It was found that 26.08 percent of all citations were not accessible during the time of testing and the majority Of errors were due to HTTP 404 error code (not found). The domains.net and.gov were more stable compared to the domains.com/.co,.org, and.edu. The half-life was computed to be approximately 115 years, which compares favorably against earlier research works. Originality/value - This is a comprehensive study on the availability and persistence of URL citations cited in LIS journals articles spanning a period of 14 years. The findings of the study will be helpful to authors, publishers and editorial staff to improve existing URL citation conventions and to promote URL use to ensure that URL citations are accessible in future.

INTERLENDING & DOCUMENT SUPPLY

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current status of open access initiatives in Turkey. Design/methodology/approach - The author has conducted extensive research on the subject, which is supplemented by his own professional experience with resource sharing activities in Turkey. Findings - Turkish libraries first ventured into the open access arena in late 2005 and have since made great strides by implementing dozens of institutional repositories and a national thesis center as well. Open access has a bright future in Turkey because of its promise for eliminating barriers to scientific information and reducing the costs of scholarly publication. Originality/value - The author is one of a small cadre of experts on resource sharing and open access efforts in Turkey.

Purpose - This research seeks to examine the relationship between the open access availability of journal articles in anthropology and their citation conditions. Design/methodology/approach - The paper applies a statistical logistic regression model to explore this relationship, and compares two groups of articles, those published in high-ranked journals and those in low-ranked journals based on journal impact factor, to examine the likelihood that open access status is correlated to scholarly impact. Findings - The results reveal that open access articles in general receive more citations. Moreover, this research finds that articles in high-ranked journals do not have a higher open access rate, and articles in lower-ranked journals have a greater increase rate of citations if they are freely accessible. Originality/value - The findings are contrary to the existing theory that a higher citation rate of open access articles is caused by authors posting their best articles online. It is hoped that the research discoveries can help electronic publishers and digital project managers to adjust their strategies in open access advocacy.

Purpose - This article aims to explore the geographic distribution of open access practices in the world from a diffusionist perspective. Design/methodology/approach - The article applies a tempo-spatial analysis to examine the diffusion movement of open access practices from the West to the entire world during the past several decades. Both maps and tables are used to support the analysis. The diffusionist theory is reviewed and applied to the understanding of open access. Findings - The paper discovers that technology is not the only factor determining the diffusion pattern of information systems as discussed in the literature. Cultural dissimilarities across countries have played a significant role in open access development. Open access can only be effectively established after it meets local standards. Practical implications - The findings help understanding of why open access has a disproportionate growth among developing countries, and even among developed countries, where the ICT infrastructure has been in place. Originality/value - Few studies have taken a transnational view to analyze open access geography at the global level, and few have been able to synthesize models to interpret diverse discoveries. Furthermore, a chronological evaluation tracing the history of open access spatial expansion is absent in the literature.

JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

The revolt against the ever-increasing costs of postsecondary texts has begun. No one can deny that reselling texts, sharing texts, e-book reserves, and free copies that are resold have forced the commercial publishers to take action. But at what cost to higher education? Just as the cable monopolies are beginning to lose. ground to other delivery systems of broadcast content, so too are textbook companies losing ground to other forms of delivery. Most commercially developed e-textbooks are little more than enhanced print editions and have limited access and restrictions on printing and downloading the content. Open-access texts solve many of these problems, but, as many now realize, `open' does not equal `no cost.' This article will explore some of the forces that are driving the open-access phenomenon, and describes the joint effort by the University Press of Florida and the University of Florida Department of Mathematics project for open-access calculus texts.

JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP

The Open Access movement of the past decade, and institutional repositories developed by universities and academic libraries as a part of that movement, have openly challenged the traditional scholarly communication system. This article examines the growth of repositories around the world, and summarizes a growing body of evidence of the response of academics to institutional repositories. It reports the findings of a national survey of academics which highlights the conflict between the principles and rewards of the traditional scholarly communication system, and the benefits of Open Access. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which academic libraries can alleviate the conflict between these two paradigms.

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF LIBRARY ARCHIVES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Open Access (OA) has been heralded as a key strategy for promoting the electronic dissemination and access to quality scientific knowledge by researchers in developing countries. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions and reactions of academic librarians in Nigerian private universities to OA publishing as a medium for disseminating quality scientific knowledge and for assessing the contributions of scholars to global knowledge improvements. Ten of the seventeen private universities in Southwestern Nigeria were randomly selected, and 42 academic librarians from the ten universities were surveyed. A questionnaire adapted from Palmer, et al. (2009) was used to collect data. The findings showed that academic librarians in Nigerian private universities have positive perception of OA scholarly publishing. However, their level of involvement in creating awareness and contributing to the development of OA at the time of the study was low. It needs to be improved in view of the potential benefit of OA for promoting the visibility of the research output of researchers in the universities.