Communications / PSP...Links
PSP . . . Links
A periodic alerting service leading you to information relevant to the professional and scholarly publishing industry
No. 20, June 30, 2009
Table of Contents
1. What’s New on the PSP Web Site
2. PSP Education and Training Programs
3. Other Programs of Interest
4. New Job Postings
5. Suggested Reading
1. What’s New on the PSP & AAP Web Sites?
New on the AAP Web Site
An Open Letter from Tom Allen, President and CEO of The Association of American Publishers
Dear Industry Colleague:
In the countdown to the October 7 court hearing on the Google Book Settlement we are encountering heated rhetoric from opponents, much of it hyperbolic and misleading. My job at AAP’s helm is not only to shepherd our membership through the coming months but to remind the industry at large that the Settlement offers enormous benefits and represents our best hope of remaining competitive and vibrant in the digital environment.
To read more . .
http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2009%20June/TomAllenOpenLetterGoogle.htm
2. PSP Education and Training Programs
Guest Speaker Vikram Savkar to Address PSP Books Committee
Friday, July 17th
12:00 – 1:00pm
AAP Offices
71 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor (@15th Street)
New York, NY 10003-3004
The PSP Books Committee will hear from guest speaker, Vikram Savkar on July 17 at the AAP New York office, from 12:00-1:00 p.m. Mr. Savkar, Senior Vice President & Publishing Director of Nature Publishing Group, will discuss Scitable, a free, online educational resource for undergraduate students and educators. The initial focus is on genetics but Nature Education plan to expand the service to other subject areas in future. Combining authoritative scientific information with social media functionality, it provides students with free online access to more than 180 overviews of key genetics concepts. If you or a colleague would like to attend or call in to hear Mr. Savkar contact Sara Pinto at spinto@publishers.org. Seating is limited and on a first-come first-served basis.
Citation Analysis & Evaluating Research Performance:
The Impact Factor, h-index and Beyond
Thursday, July 23rd
11:00am - 3:00pm
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2000 Florida Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC 20009-1277
The session will look at the current environment where a number of metric tools are available to measure research performance and trends.
Course Information
Registration Form
PSP Journals Boot Camp
September 23rd - 26th
Grand Hyatt Denver
1750 Welton Street
Denver, CO 80202
The AAP/PSP Journals Boot Camp is an intensive four-day course on journals publishing offered every two years (on every odd calendar year) by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (AAP/PSP) division of the Association of American Publishers. The purpose of the boot camp is to expose participants to all aspects of journals publishing.
Course Information
Registration Form
All details will be posted on the PSP website as they become available. For more information contact spinto@publishers.org.
3. Other Programs of Interest
International Symposium on Processing XML Efficiently
August 10th
Montreal, Canada
http://www.balisage.net/Processing
4. New Job Postings
- The American Society for Microbiology, a leading publisher of scientific journals, has an immediate opening for a Managing Editor who will be responsible for startup and maintenance of all operations required to publish a new online-only journal.
Visit http://www.pspcentral.org/jobOpenings/jobsOpenFrame.cfm to view these and other exciting career opportunities.
5. Suggested Reading (Please note: some links may require passwords)
Web Sites Worth Visiting
Google Books Settlement Agreement with Authors and Publishers
Video, Google
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J16juV1acCI
CCC and QUOSA Accelerate Literature Management Workflows via Integrated Rights Management.
http://www.copyright.com/ccc/viewPage.do?pageCode=au182
Recently launched at the ELPUB meeting, the 'Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook' (OASIS), seeks to provide information on the 'concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving Open Access.'http://www.openoasis.org
National student organizations call for Open Access to research. A coalition of national and regional college student associations today issued a “Student Statement on the Right to Research,” calling on universities, research funders, and researchers to take action in support of Open Access to research.http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/09-0610.shtml
Articles of Interest
Copyright & Intellectual Property
High Court Clears Way for Cablevision DVR Service
WSJ (subscription) – 6/29/09
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider a legal challenge by television networks and Hollywood studios to Cablevision Systems Corp.'s (CVC) next-generation digital video recorder, clearing the way for the cable company to offer the new service this year.
US Trade Officials Say China Web Filter Breaks WTO Rules
Wall Street Journal – 6/25/09
BEIJING -- Senior US trade officials have called on China to revoke an order for all personal computers in China to be shipped with Web-filtering software.
China defends export policies against WTO complaint
Reuters – 6/24/09
BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Wednesday rejected US and European charges that its restrictions on raw materials export.
China's export restrictions are target of US complaint to WTO
Los Angeles Times – 6/24/09
Those talks were largely conducted by the Bush administration, which had decided not to file a formal complaint with the WTO, which governs global trade among member nations.
US expected to launch WTO case against China
Reuters – 6/22/09
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is expected to launch a WTO case against China on Tuesday when he holds what his office called a major news conference regarding US-China trade.
Germany Builds Infrastructure to Block the Internet
Intellectual Property Watch – 6/19/09
The German Parliament on Thursday evening passed legislation that obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to filter websites allegedly containing child abuse material, by a vote of 389 to 146.
PA says Digital Britain report 'falls short' on combating piracy
Bookseller.com – 6/17/09
Publishers Association (PA) has warned that the Government's proposals for combating illegal file sharing fall short of what the publishing industry urgently needs. The PA said that if effective action was not taken piracy could "suffocate" the nascent digital publishing market.
Scribd, the YouTube of e-books, signs major new deal
Christian Science Monitor – 6/12/09
E-book sales haven't made much of a dent in the publishing world yet (though e-book sales in 2008 hit $113 million, up from $67 million in 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers), but the struggling publishing industry is looking to Scribd as a potential new revenue booster.
eBooks
AAUP announces cooperative agreement with iPublishCentral
Knowledge Speak – 6/23/09
The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) has announced a cooperative agreement with iPublishCentral, a self-service e-content delivery platform from Impelsys, to support its 130 members in pursuing electronic publishing.
Kindle DX: Looks Good, Works Fine, Costs Too Much
Publishers Weekly – 6/22/09
The Kindle is a popular device—it's easy to use, works like a charm, looks good and, to the ongoing chagrin of book publishers, has set a popular standard for e-book pricing with its $9.99 price point for Kindle editions.
Google
***Important Reading***
Publishers: stand up and defend the Google settlement
PW – 6/15/09
Tom Allen writes . . . Before authors and publishers filed their groundbreaking lawsuits, Google was on a path to scan millions of copyrighted books without compensating authors or publishers, or even considering their interests as the creators of this vast repository of intellectual property. The lawsuits derailed the Google Express and brought it to the negotiating table. The result is the historic class action settlement, which, if approved by the court, offers the best opportunity for book publishing to confront the digital world without suffering the fate of the newspaper industry.
Congress pressed to act on Google book settlement
Financial Times – 6/30/09
The world’s largest university press has called for immediate action by the US Congress to prevent Google gaining exclusive rights to exploit the “orphan works” made available through its book search initiative.
Saving Texts From Oblivion: Oxford U. Press on the Google Book Settlement
Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription) – 6/29/09
At a focus group in Oxford University Press's offices in New York last month, we heard that in a recent essay assignment for a Columbia University classics class, 70 percent of the undergraduates had cited a book published in 1900, even though it had not been on any reading list and had long been overlooked in the world of classics scholarship.
Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big
New York Times – 6/28/09
Google is on a mission to persuade the world — and federal regulators — that even given its size, it remains vulnerable to competition.
In Defense of Google Books
Reuters – 6/24/09
In the dystopian vision of the Google critics, Google Books threatens to leave human knowledge at the mercy of a dark power that will ratchet up the price of digital editions of books while running roughshod over the rights of authors and publishers . . .
Roy Blount: Let's Not Lose Our Heads Over a "Monopoly" of Orphans
Authors Guild: Open Letter – 6/24/09
I'd like to talk to you about orphans. Recently, regarding our settlement with Google, some dissent has been voiced that centers on so-called "orphan books." I am all for dissent. I would generally rather be a dissenter, myself, than not. It was the Guild's dissent from Google's scanning of copyrighted books that led to this settlement. I can't see any reason to dissent from the settlement over the matter of orphan books.
Healy speaks up for Google
Book Brunch – 6/23/09
Michael Healy, formerly of Nielsen and now head of the Book Industry Study Group, is expected to be Executive Director of the proposed Book Rights Registry, set up as a result of the Google Books Settlement. Not unnaturally, he is an enthusiast of the Google Books project.
How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?
New York Times – 6/21/09
Years after cracking the very code of the Web to lucrative ends, Google may be in the midst of trying to conjure the most complicated algorithm yet.
Librarians Fighting Google's Book Deal
TIME – 6/17/09
The agreement, which must still get federal court approval, was aimed at ending two lawsuits filed in 2005 against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.
Library associations release guide to Google Book Search amended agreement
ALA Dispatch – 6/17/09
The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announce the release of “A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement.” The amendment represents important additions and this guide provides an overview to help librarians better understand the revised terms.
Amazon’s Bezos’s ‘Strong Opinions’ on Google Settlement
WSJ—6/16/09
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticized Google’s settlement with book publishers, saying that the online retailer has “strong opinions” on the subject and that the settlement bears further scrutiny.
Podcast: How Google Book Search Affects Academe
Chronicle of Higher Ed – 6/15/09
Depending on whom you ask, Google’s Book Search book-scanning project lays the foundation for a universal, digitized library or creates a dangerous monopoly on information. The Chronicle sat down with Adam Smith, director of product management at Google, to talk about Book Search, the proposed settlement in the authors-and-publishers lawsuit against it, what it means for academic authors and researchers and so-called orphan works, and fears of a Google monopoly.
Higher Ed
***Important Reading***
U.S. Push for Free Online Courses
Inside Higher Ed – 6/29/09
Community colleges and high schools would receive federal funds to create free, online courses in a program that is in the final stages of being drafted by the Obama administration.
The Kindle Factor
Inside Higher Ed – 6/15/09
The average timeframe for college textbooks, from proposal to printing and distribution, is five years. No viable business organization would attempt to operate on the basis of contemporary information five years out-of-date.
California eyes digital textbooks
Washington Times – 6/13/09
“Schools need to know the difference between digital and open-source texts before making the switch,” said Jay Diskey, executive director of the school division at the Association of American Publishers Inc.
Open Access & Institutional Repositories
***Important Reading***
Access for Tax Funded Research Bill in Senate
Genome Web Daily – 6/29/09
The US Senate will consider a bill that would require that researchers funded by a number of government agencies submit electronic versions of their papers within six months after they have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
KU Becomes First US Public University to Pass an Open Access Policy
Kansas City infoZine – 6/30/09
Scholarly articles — the method by which a professor presents original research results — normally are published in peer-reviewed journals and available only through paid subscriptions.
Beyond Institutional Repositories
SSRN – 6/25/09
The current system of so-called institutional repositories, even if it has been a sensible response at an earlier stage, may not answer the needs of the scholarly community, scientific communication and accompanied stakeholders in a sustainable way. However, having a robust repository infrastructure is essential to academic work. Yet, current institutional solutions, even when networked in a country or across Europe, have largely failed to deliver.
Physics Papers and the arXiv
Scholarly Kitchen – 6/17/09
Some myths never die. They are propagated by those who see their rhetorical utility. Rarely does anyone stop to check their validity, since checking involves real work.
Harvard Ed School Joins the 'Open Access' Movement
Education Week News (subscription) – 6/17/09
... electronic journals, most education studies can only be accessed by subscribers of pricey academic journals. But, as influential as Harvard's new policy is bound to be, the ed school isn't the first to jump feet first into "open access" publishing.
Student Coalition Forms to Back Open Access
Inside Higher Ed – 6/15/09
Several student groups have issued a statement to jointly back the open access movement in which scholarly research is shared online and free. Some journals and researchers are moving to this model on their own, and others have been forced to do so by federal requirements.
Fallout from the Hoax Article: Editor Resigns, OA Publishers Respond
Library Journal – 6/15/09
News last week that a hoax article was accepted by a purportedly peer-reviewed Open Access journal published by Bentham Science has led to a resignation by the journal's editor-in-chief as well as a call for ethical practices by the Open Access community.
The death of scholarly journals?
Harvard Law Blogs – 6/8/09
One of the frequent worries I hear expressed about open-access policies such as the ones at Harvard is that they will lead to the death of journals (or of scholarly societies, or of peer review).
General Interest
Kathleen Keane takes charge as AAUP President
Knowledge Speak – 6/29/09
Association of American University Presses (AAUP) has announced that John Hopkins University Press Director, Kathleen Keane, has assumed leadership of the Association, effective, June 20, 2009.
Groups Sue Ariz State, Say Kindle Use Hurts Blind Students
WSJ (subscription) – 6/29/09
Two groups representing the interests of the blind sued Arizona State University to stop it from using Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN) Kindle DX electronic reading device as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students.
Spoken-Word Audio Market Holds On
Publishers Weekly – 6/29/09
Much as book publishers are looking for ways to cope with the slow but steady move from print to digital
Two-Up Publishing & the Erosion of Print
The Scholarly Kitchen – 6/18/09
Kent Anderson comments . . . the ACS' new "rotated and condensed" printing model will give readers a new angle on print.
ACS shifts to condensed print format for journals
Knowledge Speak – 6/17/09
The American Chemical Society (ACS) has announced plans to begin publishing the print editions of most of its journals in a 'rotated and condensed' format that will fit two pages of content on one printed page.
How Tweet It Is
Inside Higher Ed – 6/17/09
Is microblogging the shortcut to generating buzz for university press books? Scott McLemee works up the attention span to find out.
Thomson Reuters, Research4life in deal to bring scientific research information resources to developing nations
Knowledge Speak – 6/17/09
The Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced that it is joining Research4Life to provide the developing world with access to critical scientific research.
The AAP Pushes for Expansion of "Libel Tourism" Legislation
Publishers Weekly – 6/15/09
“We hope that serious and thoughtful attention will be given to adding such a cause of action and other aspects of our preferred approach to HR 2765 before the bill is considered in the full House,” the AAP wrote in the letter signed by Allan Adler.
Group Of Countries To Back Proposal For WIPO Treaty On Blind ...
Intellectual Property Watch, Switzerland – 5/25/09
Representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Jamaica, Peru, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, plus nongovernmental organisations met from 13-14 May in Montevideo to discuss a World Blind Union proposal for a treaty negotiation
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PSP Contributing Staff:
Sara Pinto, Director
Kate Kolendo, Project Manager
John Tagler, Executive Director