What Then Must We Do? (Part 1)

I was recently asked to talk to the UNC library staff about open access & copyright issues. Why was I, who am neither a lawyer nor a scholar whose research focuses on publishing and OA, invited to talk about this? Because of my recent run in with Taylor & Francis. Truly, I have achieved internet fame through my blog: I am famous to 15 people. Also, apparently the way to.. Read More

In which Pomerantz responds to his loyal fans

I’ve gotten a lot of love and kudos from the interwebs from my recent post, in which I document in nauseating detail my taking a principled stand on retaining copyright to an article I and a colleague wrote, and ultimately telling the publisher Taylor & Francis to kiss my shiny metal ass. I haven’t done any data analysis to back up this claim, but my sense is that this was.. Read More

My Copyfight

Actually it’s our copyfight, but my had a better ring to it. Here’s the backstory. Lorri Mon, a friend and colleague, is the guest editor of a special issue of the journal The Reference Librarian, on topics around the future of reference and library education. Since I have a thing or two to say about those topics (as my students have heard ad nauseam), Lorri asked me to contribute a.. Read More

The Table of Contents I’d Like To See

Maybe I’m just having a bad week, but I’m starting to find that the journals that I regularly browse (that is, the journals for which I subscribe to an RSS feed or an email table of contents service) are not as interesting to me as they once were. Which is being generous. To channel Lemony Snicket for a moment, “not as interesting to me as they once were” is a.. Read More

Nitpicking the Google Book Search agreement

Today’s big news: Google and the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers have come to an agreement on the lawsuit that was brought against Google in 2005 about the Google Book Search project. As usual, Jessamyn West has collected and posted an excellent set of links about this. Two sentences in particular from the Google blog post about this caught my attention: The agreement gives public and university libraries.. Read More

JASIST Going Green

From the latest issue of JASIST: As of January 2008, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) will follow the green road open-access model, whereby authors publishing in the Journal are granted self-archival rights for preprints, with linking to the final article and to the online journal, as detailed next. Full text here.

Open access potential Catch-22

I’ve written here before about open access, though it’s been a while. And way back in 2005 I wrote about the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development’s office offering small grants to cover author fees. This is great, and the maximum award of $5,000 is generous… more than enough to cover my current needs. Which brings me to… my current needs. I just had a paper accepted with minor.. Read More

Peer review and institutional repositories

“Now you have two problems…”: On mandating Open Access, from Open Access Anthropology So, you might ask yourself: what in the world is the [scholarly society that publishes its own journal] providing authors who seek to publish in their journals? It certainly isn’t the article… The answer, to my mind is actually simple: prestige; high quality peer review; creative, path-breaking editorial vision; promotion and marketing; public policy relevance and creative.. Read More

La biblioteca digital com a lloc

This is a new post… not one of my backlog. Written in full this very day. Back six months ago or more Gary and I got an email from the Director of the Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya, asking if we would give permission for our paper The Digital Library as Place to be translated into Catalan. Well, why not? As long as the author agreement says it’s ok,.. Read More

Intellectual debates in public forums

In the latest issue of JASIST is an article by Marcia Bates, which is a response to an article by Birger Hjørland, which is a response to an article by Marcia Bates. Bates’ first article was published in 2006; Hjørland’s article was published in 2007; Bates’ second article was published in 2008. First of all, let me say that I love these sorts of exchanges. First, in a schadenfreude kind.. Read More