PAM Bulletin: Vol. 31, No. 4

PAMnet News

Debra Bailey
dbailey@sparta.rice.edu

More threads from the past quarter can be found in the PAMnet Discussion Archive at http://listserv.nd.edu/archives/pamnet.html.

MIT, Harvard, Cornell—Elsevier

Randy Reichardt posted a query concerning the impact from the cancellations of Elsevier packages and/or journals, by MIT, Harvard and Cornell. Randy wanted reactions from faculty at these universities and institutes regarding the loss of access to Elsevier titles and asked if any alternatives were being discussed? He posted a collection of responses:

"MIT's decision last year to move from a multi-year commitment to a one-year contract with Elsevier has not yet impacted the breadth of access our faculty have to Elsevier titles, because we have not yet gone to the Limited Collection model. That probably explains why there has been as yet little if any fallout in terms of faculty response here. There have however been discussions here in the faculty committee, and articles in the Faculty Newsletter, on the general problem we face with some publishers. Also, our decision to cancel Wiley titles effective this year (described on the same Website, http://libraries.mit.edu/about/journals/packages.html has not, yet, resulted in significant complaints from faculty. Our sense is that many faculty here are well aware of the issues and choices libraries face, and the statement on that web site from the Chair of the Faculty Committee on the Library System, reflects their understanding and concern. Now that we are in a one-year contract with Elsevier, we are in the process of engaging the faculty more broadly in discussions about our next steps, which could involve moving to the Limited Collection model. This would result in a significant reduction in the total number of Elsevier titles to which MIT subscribes, but it's too early to say what the faculty response to or support for that option might be..."
"Here at Cornell we have had many discussions with faculty over the past few years about the serials crisis. We solicited their input and made every effort to keep the journals that they felt they needed. Several faculty have approached us for help in deciding where to publish, including some alternatives to the traditional model. The Cornell University Faculty Senate passed a resolution encouraging the library to: "seek in the near term, in consultation with the faculty, to reduce its expenditures on Elsevier journals to no more than 15% of its total annual serials acquisitions expenditures (from in excess of 20% in 2003). The entire faculty senate resolution is available at http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html."
See Stanford's faculty resolution http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/04/journals225.html.

"Being able to point to MIT, Harvard, & Cornell is a huge reassurance for both our library/univ. administration and faculty. It is difficult to find anyone here with a good word for Elsevier. As the largest commercial publisher, the years of well above general inflation increases, the reported "obscene" profits, etc. have made Elsevier the lightning rod for a growing backlash... The pioneering "just say no" actions of these major research institutions is only the start. If I had one word to describe the situation, it is momentum. It is building and bursting forth."
"We are also cancelling many Elsevier titles this year. Some professors are upset, but many are very supportive and are encouraging their fellow faculty members to publish in the less expensive titles so we won't need to rely on overpriced publishers."
"Although we've had faculty ask us why we don't subscribe, when we tell them how much Elsevier wanted to charge us and what it did and didn't have, they immediately understand our decision. We usually do add something like "But if you really want an Elsevier journal we can see about subscribing to that title alone." Haven't had any takers on that one."
"We dropped ScienceDirect this year at Small Potatoes University...Most seem surprised, but understanding or resigned, when they hear what it would have cost. A few have wondered aloud how Elsevier manages to sell its product at all. None of our faculty seem to have gotten SPARC/OAI/whatever religion as a result."

Scopus : Elsevier

Joseph Kraus posted, "I got a call from another Librarian whose brother works/studies at the U of Toronto. The U of T appears to be beta testing something called 'Scopus' from Elsevier. I had never heard of this, and about the only meaningful information I could find on the web was from FreePint http://web.freepint.com/forum/bar/ read.php?i=26704. Has anyone out there heard anything about a new Elsevier product called Scopus? I hear it may be the next generation of ScienceDirect and/or an effort to compete squarely with ISI Web of Science. Any details would be appreciated." Someone else responded and gave the URL that the beta testers use http://www.scopusnet.com/scopus/standard/login.url. B.-C. Kämper responded with a quote from Nature 426, 744 (18 December 2003); doi:10.1038/426744b, "Elsevier is expected to focus its Internet efforts on sophisticated search tools to complement ScienceDirect. The company is said to be developing an application known as Scopus, which will allow users to probe the network of citations that link related papers. Such a service would be a rival for ISI Web of Science, a tool marketed by Philadelphia-based Thomson ISI." Brian Simboli added, "The providing of cited/citing links is a burgeoning, though somewhat unnoticed, trend among suppliers of bibliographic databases. See the webpage http://www.lehigh.edu/library/guides/ Citing/citations.html." Bob Michaelson posted, "It is difficult to tell from this description what will be included in Scopus. If the 'estimated 80% of peer-reviewed scientific literature' is only Elsevier-owned titles, excluding the more important society-published titles, then Scopus will be completely inadequate to replace or compete with ISI." Barbara Chu confirmed that the University of Toronto is in beta-testing for Scopus, and commented, "Scopus [is] to be a new, all-science library service offering:

Broad coverage of more than 14,500 journals from all publishers (including societies) covering (1) an estimated 88% of peer-reviewed scientific literature, and (2) citation and reference browsing across over 26 million abstracts and 10 years of references
A simple, single entry point for users
The shortest way to full-text
Federated searching: web and local sources
Citation searching and author analysis tools

More information is at the Scopus website http://www.scopusinfo.com/. The demo looked very good, very powerful searching. The federated searching is very attractive and a big plus. The downside is the 10 year limit for citation and reference browsing and am sure it will be improved in time. I hate to find out how much this would cost."

Journal of Algorithms—Editorial board

Eric Merkel-Sobotta, Director, Corporate Relations, Elsevier, posted: "My colleagues in the Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science & Astronomy publishing group at Elsevier have asked me to ensure that the subscribers to your listserv receive the following message, and I would be grateful if you would please post it. Thank you very much in advance."

The Managing Editors and the Publisher announce that the Editorial Board of the Journal of Algorithms has resigned per January 1 of this year because of an unresolved dispute concerning the commercial aspects of scientific publishing. Papers which have been submitted prior to this date will be refereed in the usual way and published in the course of this year and next year. Papers submitted after this date will be forwarded to the new Editorial Board, which will be appointed shortly. It is expected that this transition will not result in any additional publication delay. For further information on the Journal of Algorithms, please contact Arjen Sevenster at a.sevenster@elsevier.com

Carol Hutchins posted, "If you take a look at the home page of Donald E. Knuth, he has a section called Crisis in Scientific Publishing and a link to a 14 page letter, http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf,he wrote to his colleagues on the board of Journal of Algorithms. This tells his personal history with the journal, its publisher, and then leads his colleagues through options, and ultimately a decision. While he is too busy, I guess, to write an update to the letter, the outcome is that the board will establish a new title of the same scope with ACM, to be called ACM Transactions on Algorithms." George S. Porter contributes, "Hal Gabow has posted brief blurbs about the resignation of the JoA editorial board and the formation of ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG) http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~hal/Home.html. On a subsidiary page http://www.cs.colorado.edu/ ~hal/jalg.html, Gabow includes links to Knuth's letter, a statement from the former editors of JoA which will appear in SIGACT News in March 2004, and a link to Peter Suber's collection of journal declarations of independence http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#declarations." Mel DeSart had the following comments to add, "As Gabow mentions on his Web page, he will be the Editor-in-Chief of the new ACM title, and Galil, Johnson and Knuth, the editors of JOA, will be part of the board of the new journal. Information I received yesterday indicated that it is apparently a standard Elsevier contractual obligation for editors-in-chief (as opposed to members of editorial boards) that they must give six months notice, so while the ed board was free to resign as of 12/31, Galil, Johnson and Knuth will continue to be obligated to the existing title until that six month period is completed. Don Knuth's letter, while quite long, is a very interesting read. Would that all of our faculty had done as much homework on scholarly publishing and related topics AND cared about the issues involved as much as Knuth obviously does. Although I don't agree with every point in his letter, he and the other researchers editorially affiliated with Journal of Algorithms are to be congratulated for following through with what they believed to be the right thing to do." Dana L. Roth posted a passage from Knuth's letter that he found intriguing, and commented, "He (Knuth) is complaining about a jump from about 30 cents/page to 60 cents/page. Where is the outrage, for example, from a physicist for the much higher cost/page of physics journals??" George S. Porter posted, "Lance Fortnow (University of Chicago) maintains a computational complexity Weblog wherein he noted the gathering furor over the emigration of the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms http://fortnow.com/lance/complog/archive/2004_02_08_archive.html. Michael Nielsen (University of Queensland) makes a brief mention in his quantum information blog http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/archive/000049.html. Nielsen, in turn, cites Crooked Timber http://www.crookedtimber.org/ archives/001300.html, as the source of his information. Crooked Timber attributes the news to Ed Felten's (Princeton) Weblog (of DMCA/RIAA opposition fame) http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000514.html, where a great deal of discussion has taken place. Suffice it to say, the computer science community is experiencing heightened sensitivity to scholarly communication issues at the moment, thanks to Donald Knuth and the editorial board of JoA, the ACM, and the forthcoming ACM Transactions on Algorithms. This is an outstanding outreach opportunity for librarians to engage an interested audience in a dialog, while the relevance of the issues is directly apparent. To quote a bumper sticker: Think global, Act local!" John M. Saylor wrote, "I totally agree with George's statement that this is an excellent time for outreach. With the full support of the CS and Math communities at Cornell University I am cancelling the Cornell subscription to JoA in support of the editorial move," George Porter posted further, "Maybe I have a morbid fascination with the resignation of the Journal of Algorithms (Academic Press/Elsevier) editorial board as a result of a subscription pricing dispute, but I just can't let it go. Donald Knuth's analysis http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf of the price trends and his rationale for abandoning Elsevier as a publisher is heady (and occasionally heavy) reading. Walt Crawford provides a nice overview of Knuth's letter and the JoA situation in the April 2004 issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i4.pdf pp.3-4. The (sci-tech) Library Question http://stlq.info/ has been providing some ongoing documentation of the evolving situation. The latest bit that I've seen is that Bernard Chazelle (Princeton) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/pubs/shortcv.pdf has already updated his resume to reflect the end of his affiliation with JoA and the beginning of his service on the editorial board of the forthcoming ACM Transactions on Algorithms."

Copyright controversy

Liz Bryson posted, "We are being harassed by a site called Spirit Daily, http://www.spiritdaily.com/, who have requested permission to use one of our telescope's images on their internet site. We politely turned down the request principally because CFHT does not endorse any form of spirituality or religion. The webmaster has countered that if taxpayer dollars were used in the photography (i.e. the telescope, etc.), they have to be granted equal right (access) to the image. I have never heard of this and think he is trying to call our bluff. What can any of you tell me about this ruling? My stance is we reserve the right to refuse granting the images to whomever we wish." Sarah Stevens-Rayburn answers, "As you might imagine, we have investigated this fairly thoroughly and your requestor is mostly right, at least for publicly funded images. Much, however, depends on who actually created the image." Liz posted again, "If there's one thing I have learned, we need to 'tighten' our copyright information as it is written on the web site. Thank you all for your extremely informative and helpful responses." Liz posted the many responses, and included comments from Laura Gasaway, SLA's "copyright guru and lawyer." Gasaway commented, "Only if you are a U.S. government agency is the photograph public domain. You probably need to explain that section 105 of the Copyright Act covers only U.S. Government agencies and not nonprofits"..."equipment is used for many purposes, but that does not put the work of the person or organization behind the equipment in the public domain.You may want to consult with a lawyer for your own peace of mind..."

Summary of links

MIT, Harvard, Cornell—Elsevier

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? 2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=8580

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=8432

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=10523

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=8832

Scopus from Elsevier

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0403&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=8832

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0402&L= pamnet&F=&S=&P=4676

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0402&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=4776

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0402&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=4984

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind0402&L=pamnet&F=&S=&P=5099