Open Access

Enjoy a wonderful video called "Scientist Meets Publisher" by Alex Holcombe.
This is for anyone who has ever tried to negotiate with an academic publisher.

Rupert Murdoch, a socialist of the publishing world? You had better believe it. It is good to see that the Guardian has reported who the real pirates and racketeers are in the publishing arena, namely the academic publishers. In his article “Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist” George Monbiot reports that the monopolistic racket that the academic publisher run make “Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist”. According to Monbiot, the late Robert Maxwell made most of his profit from academic publishing! and not the gutter press and page three girls.

The case that many academic publishers push in relation to their high costs is that they “add value”, however according to research carried out by Deutsche Bank the actual value add is very little. This is something that authors have known for a long time. The control the academic publishers wield over academic and research institutions is astounding. Even now that the open access movement is well underway we are still standing at the edge of the moat and the drawbridge to the academic publisher’s castle is still up. Throw someone a fiver (or £31.50) and they may lower it just for you, but only you.

Perhaps as the article suggests, someone should take this to the ACCC - Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. At least there is still one difference between Murdoch and the academic publishers, they are not in the business of phone hacking; yet.

Take the time to watch Professor Gary Hall author of Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now speaking on “Radical Open Access in the Humanities” and why it is a revolutionary idea and also viable.

The conclusion to this lecture, which was delivered at Columbia University in 2010 as part of their OA week activities, is very interesting. He asks us to think differently about the book, not as something that is physically defined or fixed but rather as “liquid”, something that is open to annotation and update. We should see the book more as a node. Interesting thought!

This was found on YouTube. It is an interesting comparison of the DIY ethos of the Punk music scene and that of Open Access Scholarship. Enjoy, but if you are sitting in your office don’t turn up the sound too loud.
A D.I.Y Punk Scene and Open Access Scholarship

The Library has now streamlined the authentication and submission process making it easier for you to submit material to the Sydney eScholarship Repository.
All you need is :
• your UniKey name and password
• permission from the publisher or copyright owner, if you do not own the rights (remember – Don’t sign your rights away)
• a digital copy of the work

To start submitting material go to http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/mydspace and log in using your UniKey. Select the appropriate collection and follow the screens.

What Are The Benefits?
Some benefits of contributing content to the Sydney eScholarship Repository are:

• An immediate worldwide audience
• Quick and extensive distribution of research results
• Organized access to the body of a researcher's work for students and others
• A long-term stable URL that can be used in a citation to link to items in the repository
• Long-term preservation for a variety of digital formats including text, audio, video, images, datasets, and more

The Library is continually improving its service and assisting researchers and staff at the University in making their material available on open access. Over the coming months the Library, through the Sydney eScholarship initiative, will:
• Simplify the submission process to the Sydney eScholarship Repository in a way the researchers will be able to easily and quickly deposit material into the repository
• Develop Sydney Research Online (SRO) an internal access only repository of research material (articles, book chapters and conference papers) of University of Sydney staff that has been reported for HERDC and ERA purposes
• Work with the Research Office to manage the “Publish my research” website by providing information about Open Access publishing.

Yes! The University of Sydney has a policy on Open Access, which notes that the University “... wishes to ensure the widest communication of its research and scholarship to other researchers and to the community.” and states that “The University supports open access to research publications.”