[Taxacom] Blackwell Publishing Journal News - July 2006 - Number 15 ; shut down our archives?

[Donat Agosti]

Please check out this release by Blackwell regarding open access. 

As much as it is advantageous to have more and more digital journals, the
more the divide between those having something and those having nothing
widens, since hardly any of the content is free. Furhtermore, having access
to 3,000 years of journals means, that in fact Blackwell opened for
themselves another stream of income, this time not claiming copyright but
the effort spent to digitize the content. In fact, this has the same effect
as copyright.

Since Blackwell asks individual societies for paying the costs of scanning,
if they want to have their journals open access, one could argue at the same
time, that Blackwell ought to pay each society a royalty if they sell an
article. All the content has not been generated by Blackwell, and thus this
is not a fair deal. It might be there is more language hidden in contracts,
but this is not to be found in the release below.

I would also argue, that this development is undermining the success of the
Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Finally, the advantage of open access is only on a very short time access to
pdfs: the real impact will yield tools such as open text mining, which are
prevented by Blackwell's behavior.

An additional comment regarding open access is on
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Donat Agosti


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BLACKWELL PUBLISHING JOURNAL NEWS
July 2006 – Number 15

Bookmark the Journal News website:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journalnews

To download the entire July issue as a PDF for printing, click here


Editorial

The open access interest is now focused on mandated posting of articles on
Institutional and Subject Repositories and we have reported developments in
the United States and UK.  The Online Open trial which now covers 98
journals is attracting around 8-10 articles a month.

The other main news this month is the launch of our Journal Digitization
Program. The first 158 journals in the program represent 2.6 million pages
and almost 3000 years of content.  We shall be reporting on the expected
increased usage of these titles.
 
There are also descriptions of our new services for authors and editors, and
the Blackwell Executive Seminars.  We have run five of these seminars, aimed
at journal editors and society executives, in the United States and are now
extending the series to Europe.  Spaces are still available for the seminar
to be held in London in September.

Bob Campbell
President, Blackwell Publishing


Contents of this issue:

The UK Research Councils Break Ranks
Research Councils issue their own policies on OA.

Where Next for the NIH’s Public Access Stance? 
NIH debates recommending versus mandating.

Blackwell Launches 3000 Years of Digitized Journal Backfiles
158 journal backfiles are now available and orders are already coming in.

Funding and Bureaucracy, not Access to Journals, are Chief Obstacles to
Scientific Productivity
New study finds that the culture of research funding is the main block to
science.

Impact of Self-Archiving on Subscriptions
Institutional and subject repositories not yet replacing library journal
collections.

Impact Factors 2005 Released
2005 Impact Factors look good but must be interpreted with caution.

Annual Seminar of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Committee aims to provide practical advice to scientific editors.

New CME Accreditation for Medical Journals
Continuing Medical Education credits offered for a selection of journals.

Extended Online Services for Authors and Editors
Online tracking of articles extended to journal editors.

Providing an Exemplary Publishing Experience for Authors
Overview of the services and surveys offered for authors.

Blackwell Executive and Editorial Seminars
Strategy seminars held in Europe for the first time this year.


Dr. Donat Agosti
Science Consultant
Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum der
Burgergemeinde Bern
Email: agosti at amnh.org
Web: http://antbase.org
Blog: http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/
Skype: agostileu
CV: http://antbase.org/agosticv_2003.html
Dalmaziquai 45
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