From the Introduction:

This guide focuses on Open Access scholarly journals publishing. By “Open Access journals” we refer to the publication of peer reviewed scientific manuscripts under the umbrella of a specific journal title.

The Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing is a web-based, living document that allows users to navigate quickly to specific areas of interest. Each chapter contains links to additional resources on the same topic in the form of: other documents and websites, tools and templates that can be adapted for your own use, and examples and best practices from other editorial teams to illustrate how the information can be implemented. Wherever possible, tables, charts, figures and checklists have been used in place of lengthy text.

This is a living document. Users are asked to please submit their own best practices and experiences by using the “Share your best practices” function available at the bottom of each page. Your experiences can bring insight to others! We also request that users bring inoperable links to the attention of the developers by clicking on “Contact” in the menu to the left and filling in the form.

Sources: Co-Action Publishing, Lund University Libraries Head Office, National Library of Sweden, Nordbib

From the Announcement:

Three new student films on information sharing have been voted the best by a panel of new media experts, students, and librarians in the third annual Sparky Awards. Organized by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and adopted by campuses everywhere, the Sparky Awards contest calls on entrants to creatively illustrate in a short video the value of openly sharing ideas.

The winning videos offer another glimpse of the compelling student perspective on how open sharing fosters creativity, innovation, and solves problems. This year’s winners are:

* GRAND PRIZE WINNER: Share what you’ve got (http://www.vimeo.com/8006296). Produced by Kazuyuki Ishii; sound and music by Jesse Cook (Savannah College of Art and Design).

* RUNNER UP: Ideas come together (http://www.vimeo.com/7921707). Produced by Danielle Johnson (Savannah College of Art and Design).

* HONORABLE MENTION: Grow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp3JM5JyUkY). Produced by Lyle Hawthorne; music, “Colors all around me” (2009) by Hillary Chase. (Goucher College).

The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 along with a Sparky Award statuette, a copy of Apple Final Cut Studio, and an iPod Nano (courtesy of Campus MovieFest). The Runner Up will receive $500 plus a personalized award certificate. These award-winning videos will be screened in conjunction with the Campus MovieFest 2010 Southern Regional Grand Finale.

“Having open access to find and share information is critical for my own inspiration and improvement as a student,” said Grand Prize Winner Kazuyuki Ishii. “We all learn from one another to gain knowledge, and a lot of amazing, unpredictable, and productive outcomes are born as a result of people sharing information. Sharing information openly is the key to surfacing new ideas, enhancing personal progress, and enriching all of our lives in the ways that we should in this day and age.”

[Snip]

The organizers now invite students, faculty, librarians, and others on campus to weigh in for their favorite in the first installment of the Sparky People’s Choice Award. The People’s Choice Award highlights all of the 2009 entries, including dozens from campus-based contest hosts at Penn State, Brigham Young, the University of Pennsylvania, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and others. The winner will receive $500 plus a personalized award certificate. To vote, visit http://www.sparkyawards.org. The deadline to vote for the People’s Choice Award is March 7, 2010.

Source: SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

From the News Release: (PDF)

Access the Report

The center’s final report on this multi-year research project, Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines, brings together the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

“Our premise has always been that disciplinary conventions matter and that social realities (and individual personality) will dictate how new practices, including those under the rubric of Web 2.0 or cyberinfrastructure, are adopted by scholars,” says Principal Investigator and Director, Higher Education in the Digital Age Project, Diane Harley, Ph.D. “That is, the academic values embodied in disciplinary cultures, as well as the interests of individual players, have to be considered when envisioning new schemata for the communication of scholarship at its various stages.”

The report’s executive summary concludes that scholarly communication traditions, “which rely heavily on various forms of peer review, may override the perceived ‘opportunities’ afforded by new technologies, including those falling into the Web 2.0 category.”

In addition, the report targets five key topics in the current scholarly communication system that require attention: the development of more nuanced tenure and promotion process; a reexamination of peer review; competitive high quality and affordable journals and monograph publishing platforms; new models of publication that can accommodate material of varied length, as well as rich media and embedded links to data; and support for managing and preserving new research methods and products.

Access the Report

Source: Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), UC Berkeley