MIT Libraries News

Kai von Fintel, Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences has announced a personal open access policy. He sets requirements for openness for his journal articles, book chapters, and books.

For journals, he “will only publish in, review for, and serve on editorial boards for journals that allow authors to deposit at least the final manuscript version (“postprint”) in an open access repository (such as MIT’s Dspace or the Semantics Archive), without any embargo (such as having to wait for 24 months before making the OA version available).”

His publishing policy for book chapters is the same as for journals, but he “will consider reviewing books or book chapters that are not OA-friendly, because books are a different business from research journals,” though he “wish[es] that there was more movement towards OA books.”

As for books, Professor von Fintel will limit his publishing to books that “have a significant open access component, such as making at least the final manuscript freely available…”

Professor von Fintel has been taking action for more open access to research and scholarship for many years. In 2007, he launched an open access journal in his field, Semantics & Pragmatics, with a colleague, David Beaver. In 2009, he participated in the faculty committee that crafted the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy. He decided to post his personal open access policy publicly now because, as he tells it, “I had noticed that some of my publication and reviewing decisions were made in a rather unprincipled way that I later regretted. Having a clear personal policy will guide me towards making deliberate decisions in these matters.”

The passage of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy makes it possible for faculty research to be shared openly on the web, von Fintel says, but a personal manifesto is still important because “faculty still have to make principled decisions such as choosing a journal that does not impose an embargo or exerts pressure to opt out of the OA Policy.”

Director of Libraries, Ann Wolpert, recently announced the appointment of Dr. Micah Altman to the position of Director of Research, Head/Scientist, Program for Information Science in the MIT Libraries. Altman will be responsible for leading and growing the Libraries’ active research program in applied information science.

He joins MIT after 15 years in a variety of research positions at Harvard University, most recently as the Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Quantitative Social Science, the Archival Director for the Murray Research Archive, and the Associate Director (through 2009) of the Harvard-MIT Data Center.

“Micah has deep experience in a broad range of research-oriented activities in the areas of information science, research data management, digital preservation, and scholarly communication – all areas that have great importance to the MIT Libraries,” said Wolpert.

Altman earned his undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Ethics and Political Philosophy from Brown University, and his PhD in Social Sciences from the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Government at Harvard University. In addition to an extensive background in quantitative social science and computer science, Altman has notable expertise in archiving, librarianship, research methods, and scholarly communication through his professional roles at Harvard. He is widely recognized for his writing and presentations on topics that are of considerable relevance to research libraries. Altman’s appointment will begin in March 2012.

Wikipedia and other websites are going dark Wednesday January 18th to protest the legislation known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and its Senate counterpart, PIPA, PROTECT IP Act (PIPA, S. 968).

SOPA is said to be drafted in a draconian manner that protects content providers while taking away reasonable “safe harbor” protections for internet site operators, with significant implications for universities and sites like Wikipedia and Facebook. The bill reportedly would shift liability for copyright piracy from the infringer to the host website and makes no provision for Fair Use.

In explaining the reason for the blackout, Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, indicated that if passed, the legislation “would seriously damage the free and open Internet…. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States — don’t advance the interests of the general public.”

For more information, see:
TED talk by Clay Shirky explaining the unintended consequences of SOPA and PIPA
Wikipedia article on the legislation
SOPA Strike
Video on PROTECT IP

The Graduate Student Council voted unanimously on December 7 to submit an official response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Request for Information (RFI) on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research.

The GSC draft response affirms that “Open access allows all educational institutions, regardless of size or funding, to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers,” and calls for the federal government to mandate “that scholarly publications that result from federally funded research are available to the U.S. tax payers.”

The RFI, which asks for comments on 8 questions, is intended to allow “interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and broad public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Responses to the RFI are being accepted until January 2, 2012.

More information:
RFI Details

Starting in 2013, authors can reclaim copyrights they transferred in 1978 (e.g. through an agreement with a publisher). Copyright law permits authors to reclaim their copyrights 35 years after transferring rights for purposes of publication. Authors interested in reclaiming copyright need to file a notice in advance, according to a designated timetable.

Reclaiming copyright allows the author to make new publishing arrangements, including making the work openly available on the web.

To evaluate whether you can reclaim a copyright, or to initiate the required notice to the Copyright Office, use a form developed by Creative Commons.

For more information:

• Wording of section 203 of US copyright law
• Summary from the copyright office

In the wake of the Harvard and MIT faculty open access policies, many other US universities have adopted similar policies, including the two most recently announced at Princeton and Bucknell.

In discussions leading up to the creation of their Open Access Policy the MIT faculty expressed a commitment not only to making MIT’s research more widely available, but also to encouraging such openness at other universities.

Since the faculty policy was put in place, MIT has had conversations about open access with many other universities. A partial list includes Cornell, Duke, Georgia Tech, Indiana University, Penn State, UMass Medical, University of Barcelona, University of Kansas,
University of Michigan, University of North Texas, University of Pittsburgh, University of Washington, Washington University, Wellesley, and Yale. MIT is also participating in the new Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI).

This news is being reported in celebration of the second anniversary of the Open Access Articles Collection, which houses papers under the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, and International Open Access Week, which runs from October 24 through 28.

For more information:
MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

By the end of September, 2011, papers from the MIT Open Access Articles Collection were being downloaded at a rate of 20,000 times per month.

The collection has seen nearly 250,000 downloads since its creation.

This news is being reported in celebration of the second anniversary of the Open Access Articles Collection,
which houses papers under the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, and International Open Access Week, which runs from October 24 through 28.

For more information:
MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

By the end of September, 2011, the Open Access Articles Collection, containing papers made available under the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, included 4,155 papers:

The consistent growth demonstrates the faculty’s commitment to making their work available to the world.

This news is being reported in celebration of the second anniversary of the Open Access Articles Collection, which houses papers under the Policy, and International Open Access Week, which runs from October 24 through 28.

For more information:
MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Recent data on use of the papers made available under the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy shows that the faculty’s goal of making their research more broadly accessible is clearly being achieved: most countries around the world have downloaded papers made available under the Policy.

Eighty-five percent of the use is concentrated in 20 countries, but downloads in FY11 were requested from most countries in the world. For a collection that was just over 3,000 papers at the time, this wide impact is remarkable evidence of the Policy’s success in making MIT research more widely available.

This good news is being reported in celebration of the second anniversary of the Open Access Articles Collection, which contains the papers under the Policy, and International Open Access Week, which runs from October 24 through 28.

For more information:
MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

In a new video, MIT faculty speak about the scholarly publishing environment and the goals and impact of the Open Access Policy they put in place in March 2009.

The video includes appearances by Professors Hal Abelson, Eric von Hippel, Richard Holton, and JoAnne Yates.

We are releasing the video in celebration of International Open Access Week, and the second anniversary of the launch of the Open Access Articles Collection in Dspace@MIT, where articles are made available under the faculty policy.

For further information:
Other videos & podcasts
The MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Gregg Gordon, President and CEO of The Social Science Research Network (SSRN), will offer a presentation at MIT during Open Access Week. All members of the MIT community are invited to attend his talk, “The Scholarly Communication Collider,” on Wednesday, October 26 from 11:30-12:30 in 3-270.

Using data from the SSRN and other sources, Gregg Gordon’s presentation will provide a brief history of how scholarly communications have changed in recent years; discuss the need for article level metrics to help identify what we don’t know we don’t know; and outline an approach for using online communities to produce innovative results.

Mr. Gordon will reflect on how searching and accessing the right content, in the right place at the right time, has become the primary issue in our era of overabundance of scholarly research, and on the need to increase the efficient use of scholarly content and provide user-focused search tools.

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a leading multi-disciplinary online repository of working and accepted paper research in the social sciences and the humanities. The SSRN eLibrary has delivered 46 million downloads and grown to over 346,000 documents and 164,000 authors.

The Libraries are offering a new guide for Using Images: Copyright & Fair Use with suggestions for how you can appropriately use and cite images (and other content) to avoid copyright infringement or plagiarism.

The guide explains fair use and offers hints on identifying images that are available for reuse without any permission needed.

If you have questions that are not answered by the guide, please contact copyright-lib@mit.edu.

The MIT Libraries have been working hard during your summer vacation. Here are some of the new things you can look forward to this fall:

New resources

• Have a smart phone? Now you can go to the MIT Mobile Web to search for and request books and more.
• Find out how to use and cite images (and other content) with a new guide on copyright & fair use.
• Need help managing your data? Get assistance, attend workshops, or schedule an individual consultation on the guide for finding and managing data.
• Download new ESRI ArcGIS 10 software and improved MIT Geodata Search Tool for ArcGIS. Find GIS lab hours, workshops and more.

Library hours & study space

• The Hayden Library group study room (14E-311) is now equipped with a touch-screen reservation system and new video conferencing equipment.
• Study under the Dome: new group study rooms on the 8th Floor of  Barker Library open soon.
• Longer hours have returned!  See hours for all library locations.
• Get answers to all your questions about borrowing with helpful new FAQs: Circulation FAQ and Course Reserves FAQ.
• Questions? Ideas or Comments?

Upcoming Events

• We’re offering a wide variety of events throughout the fall.  Find out about scheduled readings, talks, workshops, exhibits and more.

View the What we did on your summer vacation flyer (pdf).

Mendeley, a free reference manager that helps researchers organize and discover research articles, has announced a prize of $10,001 for the best new open source application to use with their large crowd-sourced open database of research papers.

Mendeley, whose database includes 70 million documents, allows researchers to import papers, generate bibliographies, track and tag documents, view usage statistics, and find and read papers from anywhere.

Mendeley has launched the contest because they want to “make science more open,” and to support a “world in which science is mashed up… with anything.”

Judges of the “Mendeley API Binary Battle” include Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, John Wilbanks of Creative Commons, and Werner Vogels, CTO of amazon.com.

A recent study that assessed the impact of the publisher’s copyediting on open access manuscripts of scholarly articles concludes that the manuscript versions “are probably ‘good enough’ for use by scholars … and by teachers.”

Sanford Thatcher, Director Emeritus of Penn State University Press, designed the study out of concern that archiving “less-than-final versions of articles carried a risk of corrupting scholarship” through use of “imperfect versions.” His team examined manuscripts of scholarly journal articles in the humanities and social sciences which had been made openly available through Harvard’s repository.

Thatcher expected to find the open access manuscripts deficient in comparison with the final copyedited and published articles, but found instead that “By and large, the copyediting did not result in any major improvements of the manuscripts” and that “the vast majority of the changes made were for the sake of enforcing a house formatting style and cleaning up a variety of inconsistencies and infelicities, none of which reached into the substance of the writing or affected the meaning other than by adding a bit more clarity here and there.”

While it did not evaluate a statistically significant number of manuscripts, the study provides support for the MIT faculty’s approach to sharing their articles through their Open Access Policy. Under this Policy, the author’s final manuscript is made openly available through MIT’s repository, DSpace@MIT.

The study is reported in “Copyediting’s Role in an Open Access World,” Against the Grain, vol. 23, no.2, April 2011, pp. 30-34.

DSpace@MIT is featured in the latest issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter.  Director of Libraries, Ann Wolpert, shares the latest facts and figures about MIT’s growing digital repository.

Did you know that collections in DSpace@MIT are accessed from nearly every country in the world at an average rate of over 30,000 downloads a day?  In 2010 alone there were 11.2 million total downloads.  Read the article About DSpace@MIT.

The MIT Libraries have recently joined HathiTrust, a partnership of over fifty academic libraries that share the ambitious goal of building a comprehensive digital library of their shared collections.

Started in 2008, the HathiTrust digital library currently contains over 8.5 million digitized volumes representing the collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust’s collections include both copyright and public domain materials digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft, as well as partner institutions.  Founded by twelve universities from the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system and the University of Virginia, the partnership has now grown to include fifty-five institutions.  MIT and Harvard are two of the most recent universities to join.

Through the HathiTrust website, the public can search the full-text of 8.4 million digitized volumes, and get full online access to 2.2 million volumes that are in the public domain.  With the MIT Libraries membership, the MIT community will have the added benefit of being able to download full volumes of public domain works in PDF format, and also build and share collections using the Collection Builder feature.  Access will be provided to MIT users, with authentication through Touchstone, later this year.

Joining HathiTrust is one of several steps the MIT Libraries have recently taken to expand access for MIT faculty and students to print or digitized resources beyond the holdings of MIT.  In January, the Libraries announced their membership in Borrow Direct, a partnership with Ivy Plus libraries that gives the MIT community access to nearly 50 million print items. In February, MIT and Harvard libraries jointly announced an expanded alliance to explore collaborations for sharing library materials, advancing digital preservation collections practice, and developing future off-site storage facilities and services.

“In today’s interdisciplinary learning environment, it’s essential for our faculty, students and researchers to have access to an even wider array of information resources than ever before.  By collaborating with other outstanding research libraries, we can offer the resources necessary to support the cutting edge research and education that is MIT’s hallmark,” said MIT Director of Libraries, Ann Wolpert.

Wolpert added that it is important for universities to take a leading role in shaping digital libraries. “Libraries have been stewards of the scholarly record for centuries,” she said.  “We’re committed to the long haul.”

The MIT Libraries are actively involved in open access initiatives that support MIT’s mission to make scholarly knowledge openly available to the world.  Partnering with HathiTrust, an organization committed to collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge, is in line with the Libraries principles of supporting the long-term curation of the cultural record, and furthering global scholarship and research.

In January 2011, the IEEE changed a key author policy, discontinuing the right authors had to post the final published version of their IEEE articles on the web. This alters what authors can do with their work and how the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy can be implemented for these papers.

The policy change is not retrospective: papers posted before January do not need to be taken down from the web. But from January on, authors may post only their accepted manuscripts, not the final published version of their articles.

As a consequence of this policy change, the MIT Libraries can no longer copy the final published articles from IEEE’s database and post them in MIT’s research repository, Dspace@MIT, as we have been doing since the faculty passed their Open Access Policy.

Instead, the Libraries are now requesting that authors submit their final accepted manuscripts of IEEE papers for deposit under the Policy. Papers can be uploaded through a simple web form and will appear in the Open Access Articles Collection.

For more information:

• IEEE’s policy
• MIT Faculty Open Access Policy: http://libraries.mit.edu/oapolicy

Since its launch in October 2009 to support the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, articles in the MIT Open Access Articles collection have been downloaded from nearly every country in the world.

The collection now contains 2,500 articles, downloaded over 100,000 times, at a recent rate of over 13,000 downloads per month.

Faculty may contribute articles by uploading the author’s final manuscript, post peer-review, via a web form, or sending it to the OA Policy Submission list.

If an author has already submitted the final manuscript to a preprint server or repository (e.g. arXiv), the author may email the paper’s identifying repository number, or the URL, instead of the paper.

For more information, contact copyright-lib@mit.edu.

A large-scale survey of researchers across the globe has found that lack of funding is the most common reason authors do not publish in open access journals. While 89% of those surveyed believe open access publishing is a benefit to their field, 39% of authors who had not yet published open access articles said it was because of funding limitations.

“]

Last spring, the MIT Libraries launched an open access publishing fund that directly addresses this need. The fund was designed to reimburse article processing fees of up to $1000 per article for MIT faculty articles which have been accepted for publication in eligible open-access, peer-reviewed journals, to cover fees when funds from other sources, such as grant funds, are unavailable.

The fund is a pilot project, carried out in cooperation with the Faculty Committee on the Library System. We encourage faculty authors to explore using the fund. Professor Lionel Kimerling and Doctor Jurgen Michel benefited from it when publishing in Optics Express:

“We welcome the new program because it encourages publication in open-access journals that have high impact ratings by defraying the publication fees,” Michel said.

More information:

• FAQ on the purpose, scope, and use of the fund
• MIT news story
• MIT Libraries’ support for open access publishing

If you have any questions about eligibility for or use of the fund, please contact copyright-lib@mit.edu.

Image Used with Permission From: Salvatore Mele. See: Suenje Dallmeier-Tiessen, et al, “Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing”, Jan. 28, 2011. arXiv:1101.5260v2 [cs.DL]