{"id":32,"date":"2008-09-25T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caveatquaestor.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/25\/digital-scholarship-and-libraries-essay"},"modified":"2008-09-25T21:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T21:19:00","slug":"digital-scholarship-and-libraries-essay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2008\/09\/digital-scholarship-and-libraries-essay\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Scholarship and Libraries – Essay"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This isn’t part of my essay, but I like to state my biases: I work in an engineering and science library, and the journal costs are debilitating. I also signed away rights to papers I wrote as an engineer and regret it.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Changes in scholarly communication–particularly in scholarly publishing–are challenging libraries in unprecedented ways. In the past libraries bought books or subscribed to journals and kept physical copies on the shelves in perpetuity. With the advent of electronic journals and researchers’ demand for 24\/7 access, libraries are moving away from an ownership model and are now effectively leasing access to electronic content, with indexing and preservation done by the publishers (Borgman 68). Unfortunately, because publishers own the content, libraries are forced to pay ever-increasing subscription fees to maintain access, sometimes paying multiple times for the same content, due to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bundling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Borgman 112). <\/p>\n

This is particularly concerning in the sciences: to gain tenure, one must be published in established journals, but to do so, one must give the publishers all rights to her content; campus libraries then pay dearly for the right to provide that content to other faculty and students. Aaronson describes the economic side of the problem both briefly and bitingly, claiming that most of the writing, typesetting, reviewing, editing, and even archiving and distribution of papers is done by academics with no charge to the publishers, while a single journal subscription might cost a library as much as $3000 a year (2007). Willinsky, addressing the greater picture, refers to this closed access to scientific findings as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153human research capacity … being wasted or going unrealized because of … unnecessarily restricted access to the circulation of knowledge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (34). <\/p>\n

Happily, the open access movement is gaining ground outside of the library community: last year’s ruling requiring that NIH-funded research be made public within a year of first publication (Albanese 9\/5)–to give the public access to research their tax dollars had funded–was slated to be challenged in Congress this month. The issue proved more contentious than expected, with \u00e2\u20ac\u015333 Nobel Prize-winning scientists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u015347 copyright experts and professors of law\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writing in support of last year’s ruling, while representatives of certain publishers continued pushing Congress to overrule it (Albanese 9\/19). Ultimately, Congress postponed making a decision (Albanese 9\/18). The publicity given to cases like this will help publicize and gain support for the open access movement.<\/p>\n

As Lesk points out, governmental protection of intellectual property was intended to foster innovation but has often stifled it (294). Unfortunately, a clear path out of this morass eludes us; academics are reticent to change their methods (Aaronson), despite the success of over 1500 open access journals (Willinsky 26) and various \u00e2\u20ac\u0153open science\u00e2\u20ac\u009d initiatives. Journal publishers add some value, but the question of how much–and whether we are willing to continue trading away open scientific dialog–is difficult to answer.<\/p>\n

Aaronson, S. (2007, December). \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Review of The Access Principle by John Willinsky,” MIT press, 2005. SIGACT News 38 (4), 19-23.<\/p>\n

Albanese, A. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After Hearing, Sweeping Anti-NIH Bill To Be Shelved\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfor Now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Library Journal, 9\/18\/2008. Available online: http:\/\/www.libraryjournal.com\/article\/CA6597267.html?nid=3285 <\/p>\n

Albanese, A. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In Blunt Terms, Copyright Lawyers, Researchers, Librarians Blast Anti-NIH Bill,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Library Journal, 9\/19\/2008 Available online: http:\/\/www.libraryjournal.com\/article\/CA6597446.html?nid=3603 <\/p>\n

Albanese, A. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153NIH Public Access Policy To Face Copyright Challenge in Congress?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Library Journal, 9\/5\/2008 Available online: http:\/\/www.libraryjournal.com\/article\/CA6593398.html?nid=3310<\/p>\n

Borgman, Christine. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. MIT Press, 2007. # ISBN-10: 0262026198; ISBN-13: 978-0262026192.<\/p>\n

Lesk, Michael. Understanding Digital Libraries . Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 2004. 2nd Edition, ISBN: 1-55860-924-5.<\/p>\n

Willinsky, John. The Access Principle: the Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT Press, 2005, ISBN: 0262232421.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This isn’t part of my essay, but I like to state my biases: I work in an engineering and science library, and the journal costs are debilitating. I also signed away rights to papers I wrote as an engineer and regret it.) Changes in scholarly communication–particularly in scholarly publishing–are challenging…<\/p>\n

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