News: Report on "The Facts about Open Access"

The first full-scale study of the effects of alternative business models for scholarly journals was published recently. The report entitled "The Facts About Open Access" was commissioned by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). Its objective was to determine the impact of open access on scholarly journals and to establish a baseline of comparison with traditional subscription publishing.

The comparison was based on a survey of almost 500 journals. The survey covers the full spectrum of business models being used in scholarly publishing – from traditional access provided primarily via subscriptions (Paid Subscription Access) through Delayed Open Access ( NIH) to Optional (author's choice of payment) and Full Open Access (no fee). Some findings were surprising and some not so surprising:

• More subscription-access journals break even or produce surpluses than do open-access journals.
• More than half of all journals, whether traditional or openly accessible, were considering changing their business models within three years.
• A larger percentage of subscription-access journals than open-access journals charge authors fees to publish.

The report states it is impossible to yet draw any firm conclusions as to whether Open Access publishing is a financially viable business model for scholarly journals. The ALPSP report does recognize "we all need to find a better model (or models) to provide wide and speedy access to research findings in the interests of science".

Data and analysis of peer review practices for the study journals was also published as part of this report.

Carol Hoover, hoover@lanl.gov

New product feature: Limit catalog search to available items

In the new library catalog interface, you can now limit to just books that are not checked out. This handy feature works like this:

• Do a search for a topic, title, author, report number, etc.
  
• On the "Brief Results Display" page, there is an option to "Filter within results"
  
• Click on "Filter within results"
  
• Click on "Available items (not checked out)"
  
• Now you have a list that shows just items that are currently available
  
• If you choose not to use this feature, be sure to click on the location link (the call number) to check the status of a book
  
• Coming soon: the ability to put holds on books yourself. For now, call us at 667-5809 or send email to library@lanl.gov.
  Posted by lpray at 01:01 PM

New resources: New electronic journals at the Research Library

The following new electronic journals have been added to the library collection and are available from your desktop:

• Emerging Infectious Diseases
  
• Mechanical Engineering
  
• Axiomathes AXIO
  
• InFocus
  
• Journal of Machine Learning Research (Open Access)
  
• Chinese Journal of Physics
  
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters
  

New resources: Physics content back to 1898 via SearchPlus

Inspec®, the leading English-language citation database for the world's literature on all aspects of physics, electronics, and computing, is now available back to 1898 via SearchPlus.
Inspec digitised the entire collection of Science Abstracts Journals (back to volume one) dating from 1898 to 1968. The Science Abstracts Journals were the precursor to the Inspec database. Includes:

• All aspects of physics (originally published as Physics Abstracts)
  
• Electrical and electronic engineering (introduced as a separate journal in 1903, and originally published as Electrical and Electronic Abstracts)
  
• Computing and control engineering (introduced as a separate journal in 1966, and published initially as Control Abstracts, later renamed to Computer and Control Abstracts)