Tuesday, May 27, 2014

June 3rd guest speaker Michael Felczak: the Public Knowledge Project

The in-person class on Tuesday, June 3rd will begin with guest speaker Michael Felczak - all are welcome, 5:30 p.m. Desmarais 111-61 - details:

Academic-Led Scholarly Publishing, Technical Representation, and the Public Knowledge Project

This short talk will provide an introduction to the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), a university-based research and development effort focused on academic-led scholarly publishing. Through the development of freely available online publishing platforms, including Open Journal Systems, Open Monograph Press, and Open Conference Systems, the PKP provides software and support services to academics and scholarly associations seeking an alternative to existing commercial publishing models. I will also outline the political significance of open source software with reference to concrete examples drawn from Canadian academic journals that publish using PKP software.

Michael Felczak is the online editor at the Canadian Journal of Communication and a PhD candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. His research examines the production and consumption of new communication technologies and he has recently published and presented work on the history of network neutrality, communication rights and e-government, and the practices of free/open source software.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Two major open access policy announcements from China

May 15, 2014, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) both issued their Policy on Open Access to Research Articles from Publicly Funded Research, during a briefing on the coming Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council to be held in May 26-28, 2014, in Beijing, China.

CAS requires its researchers and graduate students to deposit the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts of their research articles resulted from any public funding, submitted and consequently published since the issuing of the policy, into the open access repositories of their respective institutes, to be made open access within 12 months of their official publication. CAS also encourages researchers to deposit previously published articles into their respective institutional repositories as well. CAS will also support its researchers to publish in open access journals with good quality control and affordable APC.

NSFC requires the researchers funded by it to deposit the final, peer-reviewed manuscripts of research articles resulted from its funding,  submitted and consequently published since the issuing of the policy, into the NSFC open access repository, to be made open access within 12 months of their official publication in academic journals.

The Chinese and English versions of the CAS OA Policy can be found in the following reports (see the attachments):

Chinese version: http://www.cas.cn/xw/yxdt/201405/t20140516_4121375.shtml

English version: http://english.cas.cn/Ne/CASE/201405/t20140516_121037.shtml

The news from NSFC can be found at:

http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/publish/portal0/tab88/info44456.htm


thanks to Kathleen Shearer, Confederation of Open Access Repositories

Monday, May 12, 2014

May 20th guest speaker Jeanette Hatherill: all welcome

Everyone is welcome to join the class for our next guest speaker, on Tuesday, May 20th, 5:30 p.m. in Desmarais 111-61. Details:

Jeanette Hatherill will be presenting on the scholarly communication services and supports offered by the Library to students, faculty and researchers at the University of Ottawa. She will be discussing the uOttawa Open Access program as well as current and future directions for scholarly communication at the Library.

Jeanette Hatherill has been the Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of Ottawa since 2013. Prior to that, she worked as Management Librarian at the Telfer School of Management. Her research interests focus on the intersection of information literacy and changing modes of scholarly communication. Jeanette received her Master of Information Science degree from Université de Montréal in 2011 after completing her B.A. in History at Concordia University.

The presentation will be in English. Discussion and questions are welcome in English or French.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Generation Open: theme for Open Access Week 2014

Open access week is October 20 - 26, 2014. The theme for this year is "Generation Open", focusing on the next generation of scholars. Details and a link to a May 19th planning kickoff webinar available here: http://www.sparc.arl.org/initiatives/openaccessweek/2014/announcement

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

ISI 6314 OJS journal

The class journal has now been set up, thanks to the University of Ottawa Library and Scholar's Portal and can be found here. So far it's looking pretty bare and basic; adding the looks, bells, whistles, and content is the major class project.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Syllabus and resources of interest

The Syllabus is now available here.  Thanks to the generous support of the University of Ottawa library the class will have the opportunity to use Open Journal Systems to create a class journal. More details will be provided at a later date.

Directory of Open Access Journals (2014). Press release on new application form for DOAJ journals. Retrieved March 20, 2014 from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dr3jnOygvuDlONSBv8lho4McQsEPFd0a5gtxjCmKd9k/edit

Tools for book self-publishing

Following are some tools that appear to be promising if you are interested in book self-publishing. Note that I haven't checked into this in any depth and haven't actually self-published a book myself (at least, not yet). Comparing the options could be an interesting term paper topic.

PressBooks developed on WordPress platform. Free to use, or can pay from $10 for ebooks Pro (to remove PressBooks watermarks and covers some storage).  

Smashwords free publishing for authors / marketing system with revenue sharing with authors (you can make your books available for free as well). You can upload a book developed into Word for conversion into epub format.

Feedbooks based in France - supports multiple platforms.

Kobo - free to publish.  Converts files to epub format.

Lulu - free. Any format.

Calibre - free open source e-book management tool. Self-publishing option. 

ibooks author - Apple's free app for self-publishing books "for the ipad". I gather that books created with this tool are not available for non-ipad users.

Book Creator - tool for ipad. Free to create one book, cost to create more. Books published are optimized for ipad, may be available on other e-book readers such as Kindle and Nook.

Articles and items of interest

Canadian Urban Libraries Council / Conseil des Bibliothéques Urbaines de Canada work on ebooks and public libraries.

Leong, M. (2012). Self-publishers can't afford humility. The National Post. Retrieved May 2, 2014 from  http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/12/14/self-publishers-cant-afford-humility/
(alternative title: how my self-published book became a Canadian bestseller in six months)

Canada Council for the Arts. n.d. Writing and publishing. Retrieved May 2, 2014 from http://www.canadacouncil.ca/writing-and-publishing.aspx  - describes grant program and awards for Canadian writers and publishers; blog may be of interest.

The Canadian Authors' Association. FAQS: publishing.  Retrieved May 2, 2014 from http://canadianauthors.org/national/faq/

Magazines Canada. How to start a magazine. FAQ for new and would-be publishers. Retrieved May 2, 2014 from http://www.magazinescanada.ca/resources/start_a_magazine