publishing

Scholars call for boycott of Elsevier over high prices and copyright maximalism [Updated]

Mega-publisher Elsevier has been garnering some negative publicity of late. Last month it was revealed that its political action group funded the re-election campaigns of Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), one of the authors of the controversial Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) that would prohibit open access to articles resulting from government-funded research. [Update: On 2/27/2012, Elsevier announced it no longer backed the Research Works Act, and the sponsoring legislators subsequently announced they will not pursue the bill further.] Now, thousands of scholars are signing an agreement to boycott Elsevier in protest of its high subscription prices, its practice of bundling journals (so libraries are forced to subscribe to titles they don’t want), and its support of restrictive legislation like SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act. Although members of the library community have protested such practices by Elsevier and other large publishers for years, this marks the first occasion that members of the research community–the people who write the articles and serve as peer reviewers or editors–have taken a large-scale stand. Timothy Gowers, a prominent mathematician, wrote a blog post on January 21, 2012, in which he discussed the issues outlined above and asked, “Why can’t we just tell Elsevier that we no longer wish to publish with them?” A reader took up the challenge and created a website where scholars could register their dissatisfaction and refusal to provide free labor for Elsevier in the form of research, peer review, and editorial duties. Within its first ten days of existence, the website has collected the signatures of over 2,700 scholars worldwide. The boycott has received a lot of media attention, perhaps especially because it has grown so exponentially in such a short period of time. And many writers are asking: because scholars are both producers and consumers of research journals, do they have the ability to disrupt the scholarly publishing system and effect lasting change? Further reading:

Open-access publishing by NU researchers in 2011: Part 1, journal articles

Researchers at Northestern University published 29 articles in open-access scholarly journals in 2011. By choosing open access journals over those that are restricted to readers with subscriptions, our researchers are helping to increase knowledge on a global level. In fact, more Northeastern authors published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE than in any other journal, open or subscription-based, in 2011. Watch for my next post on open-access books produced by Northeastern authors in 2011! For more information about Open Access and why it’s important, check out our research guide on the topic. Complete list of articles: (NU authors are listed in bold.) Altaboli, Ahamed, and Yingzi Lin. 2011. Investigating effects of screen layout elements on interface and screen design aesthetics. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction 2011, 659758. Published online: 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/659758 Bagrow, James P., Dashun Wang, and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. 2011. Collective response of human populations to large-scale emergencies. PLoS ONE 6(3), e17680. Published online: March 30, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017680 Bellon, Marc, Enrique F. Moreno, and Fidel A. Schaposnik. 2011. A note on holography and phase transitions. Advances in High Energy Physics 2011, 917127. Published online: 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/917127 Benson, Ryan W., Matthew D. Norton, Ida Lin, William S. Du Comb, and Veronica G. Godoy. 2011. An active site aromatic triad in Escherichia coli DNA pol IV coordinates cell survival and mutagenesis in different DNA damaging agents. PLoS ONE 6(5), e19944. Published online: May 17, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019944 Carneiro, Katia, Claudia Donnet, Tomas Rejtar, Barry L. Karger, Gustavo A. Barisone, Elva Diaz, Sandhya Kortagere, Joan M. Lemire, and Michael Levin. 2011. Histone deacetylase activity is necessary for left-right patterning during vertebrate development. BMC Developmental Biology 11, 29. Published online: May 20, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-213x-11-29 Combosch, David J., and Steven V. Vollmer. 2011. Population genetics of an ecosystem-defining reef coral Pocillopora damicornis in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. PLoS ONE 6(8), e21200. Published online: August 9, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021200 Dauth, Stephanie, Ruxandra F. Sirbulescu, Silvia Jordans, Maren Rehders, Linda Avena, Julia Oswald, Alexander Lerchl, Paul Saftig, and Klaudia Brix. 2011. Cathepsin K deficiency in mice induces structural and metabolic changes in the central nervous system that are associated with learning and memory deficits. BMC Neuroscience 12, 74. Published online: July 27, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-12-74 DeMaso, Christina R., Ismar Kovacevic, Alper Uzun, and Erin J. Cram. 2011. Structural and functional evaluation of C. elegans filamins FLN-1 and FLN-2. PLoS ONE 6(7), e22428. Published online: July 25, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022428 Diaz-Gonzalez, Rosario, F. Matthew Kuhlmann, Cristina Galan-Rodriguez, Luciana da Silva, Manuel Madeira Saldivia, Caitlin E. Karver, Ana Rodriguez, Stephen M. Beverley, Miguel Navarro, and Michael P. Pollastri. 2011. The susceptibility of trypanosomatid pathogens to PI3/mTOR kinase inhibitors affords a new opportunity for drug repurposing. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 5(8), e1297. Published online: August 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001297 Evans, James D., Suresh Peddigari, Kathy R. Chaurasiya, Mark C. Williams, and Sandra L. Martin. 2011. Paired mutations abolish and restore the balanced annealing and melting activities of ORF1p that are required for LINE-1 retrotransposition. Nucleic Acids Research 39(13), 5611-5621. Published online: March 26, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkr171 Fiamegos, Yiannis C., Panagiotis L. Kastritis, Vassiliki Exarchou, Haley Han, Alexandre M. J. J. Bonvin, Jacques Vervoort, Kim Lewis, Michael R. Hamblin, and George P. Tegos. 2011. Antimicrobial and efflux pump inhibitory activity of caffeoylquinic acids from Artemisia absinthium against gram-positive pathogenic bacteria. PLoS ONE 6(4), e18127. Published online: April 4, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018127 Hasson, Christopher J., Ross H. Miller, and Graham E. Caldwell. 2011. Contractile and elastic ankle joint muscular properties in young and older adults. PLoS ONE 6(1), e15953. Published online: January 11, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0015953 Hryshko, Dmytro, María José Luengo-Prado, Bent E. Sørensen. 2011. Childhood determinants of risk aversion: The long shadow of compulsory education. Quantitative Economics 2(1), 37-72. Published online: March 8, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.3982/QE2 Iacob, Roxana E., Jianming Zhang, Nathanael S. Gray, and John R. Engen. 2011. Allosteric interactions between the myristate- and ATP-site of the Abl kinase. PLoS ONE 6(1), e15929. Published online: January 10, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0015929 Kemper, Kathi, Sally Bulla, Deborah Krueger, Mary Jane Ott, Jane A. McCool, and Paula Gardiner. 2011. Nurses’ experiences, expectations, and preferences for mind-body practices to reduce stress. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 11, 26. Published online: April 11, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-11-26 Kranzer, Katharina, Nienke van Schaik, Unice Karmue, Keren Middelkoop, Elaine Sebastian, Stephen D. Lawn, Robin Wood, and Linda-Gail Bekker. 2011. High prevalence of self-reported undiagnosed HIV despite high coverage of HIV testing: a cross-sectional population based sero-survey in South Africa. PLoS ONE 6(9), e25244. Published online: September 28, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025244 Krieger, Nancy, Pamela D. Waterman, Anna Kosheleva, Jarvis T. Chen, Dana R. Carney, Kevin W. Smith, Gary G. Bennett, David R. Williams, Elmer Freeman, Beverley Russell, Gisele Thornhill, Kristin Mikolowsky, Rachel Rifkin, and Latrice Samuel. 2011. Exposing racial discrimination: implicit & explicit measures – the My Body, My Story study of 1005 US-born black & white community health center members. PLoS ONE 6(11), e27636. Published online: November 18, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0027636 Lin, H., Tanmoy Das, L. A. Wray, S.-Y. Xu, M. Z. Hasan, and A. Bansil. 2011. An isolated Dirac cone on the surface of ternary tetradymite-like topological insulators. New Journal of Physics 13, 095005. Published online: September 9, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/13/9/095005 Milane, Lara , Zhenfeng Duan, and Mansoor Amiji. 2011. Therapeutic efficacy and safety of paclitaxel/lonidamine loaded EGFR-targeted nanoparticles for the treatment of multi-drug resistant cancer. PLoS ONE 6(9), e24075. Published online: September 8, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0024075 Onnela, Jukka-Pekka, Samuel Arbesman, Marta C. Gonzalez, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2011. Geographic constraints on social network groups. PLoS ONE 6(4), e16939. Published online: April 5, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016939 Pantazopoulos, Harry , Hamid Dolatshad, and Fred C. Davis. 2011. A fear-inducing odor alters PER2 and c-Fos expression in brain regions involved in fear memory. PLoS ONE 6(5), e20658. Published online: May 31, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020658 Pei, De-Sheng, Xiao-Jie Yang, Wei Liu, Jeroen E. J. Guikema, Carol E. Schrader, and Phyllis R. Strauss. 2011. A novel regulatory circuit in base excision repair involving AP endonuclease 1, Creb1 and DNA polymerase β. Nucleic Acids Research 39(8), 3156-3165. Published online: December 20, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkq1142 Robinson, Elizabeth M. , Delbert L. Smee, and Geoffrey C. Trussell. 2011. Green crab (Carcinus maenas) foraging efficiency reduced by fast flows. PLoS ONE 6(6), e21025. Published online: June 7, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021025 Shulman, Maria , Merav Cohen, Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, Hiroshi Yagi, Hongyun Wang, Jonathan Goldwasser, Carolyn W. Lee-Parsons, Ofra Benny-Ratsaby, Martin L. Yarmush, and Yaakov Nahmias. 2011. Enhancement of naringenin bioavailability by complexation with hydroxypropoyl-beta-cyclodextrin. PLoS ONE 6(4), e18033. Published online: April 6, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018033 Sohn, Yunkyu, Myung-Kyu Choi, Yong-Yeol Ahn, Junho Lee, and Jaeseung Jeong. 2011. Topological cluster analysis reveals the systemic organization of the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome. PLoS Computational Biology 7(5), e1001139. Published online: May 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1001139 Sternad, Dagmar, Masaki O. Abe, Xiaogang Hu, and Hermann Mueller. 2011. Neuromotor noise, error tolerance and velocity-dependent costs in skilled performance. PLoS Computational Biology 7(9), e1002159. Published online: September 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002159 Wang, Y. J., H. Lin, Tanmoy Das, M. Z. Hasan, and A. Bansil. 2011. Topological insulators in the quaternary chalcogenide compounds and ternary famatinite compounds. New Journal of Physics 13, 085017. Published online: August 31, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/13/8/085017 Whelan, Donna R., Keith R. Bambery, Philip Heraud, Mark J. Tobin, Max Diem, Don McNaughton, and Bayden R. Wood. 2011. Monitoring the reversible B to A-like transition of DNA in eukaryotic cells using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Nucleic Acids Research 39(13), 5439-5448. Published online: March 29, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkr175 Zerebecki, Robyn A. , and Cascade J. B. Sorte. 2011. Temperature tolerance and stress proteins as mechanisms of invasive species success. PLoS ONE 6(4), e14806. Published online: April 26, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014806

Apply Creative Commons Licenses to Your Work with These Tools

Next time you’re writing a paper, putting together a presentation, uploading a video to YouTube, or updating your website, why not tell your audience that you’ve decided to expand access to your work? With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify.

If you have a PC and use Microsoft Office products like Word and PowerPoint, you can get a free add-in that makes it easy to include a Creative Commons license. Read more about it and download the add-in here: To include CC licenses elsewhere (anywhere!), the Creative Commons license chooser offers the ability to select the criteria you want your license to include and then provides you with the relevant text and an image to use (including HTML for use on the web). In addition, Creative Commons offers best practices for marking your work as CC-licensed in a variety of formats, including images and video. Sites like YouTube and Flickr also offer the option of applying a Creative Commons license when you upload your stuff. For even more info about Creative Commons, check out their website.

Announcing BioMedCentral Institutional Membership

The Northeastern University Libraries are pleased to announce a new institutional membership in BioMedCentral, effective March 1, 2011. Northeastern joins over 350 institutions worldwide who support BioMedCentral, an online publisher with a pioneering policy of providing free and open access to the peer-reviewed research papers they publish. All research articles published in BioMedCentral’s 213 biomedical and clinical journals are freely and universally accessible online with no barriers to access. And authors keep the copyright to their articles, allowing them to freely reuse and redistribute their research in print and online. Northeastern’s institutional membership helps sustain this publishing model through direct support of BioMedCentral as well as providing to its affiliated authors a 15% discount on the article processing fee paid upon acceptance of their submitted articles. As well as securing Open Access to research, publishing in BioMedCentral’s journals brings many additional benefits, including: • Immediate publication upon acceptance • No extra charge for extensive datasets, comprehensive methods, color figures, and video footage • The ability to track how many people have viewed a paper on BioMedCentral’s website • A large number of journals to choose from, covering all subjects in biology and medicine with different levels of selectivity For more information about BioMedCentral, visit http://www.biomedcentral.com/. For more information about Northeastern’s BioMedCentral membership and how it can benefit you, please contact me at h.corbett@neu.edu.

Publishing Workshop with Gordon Hutner, Editor of American Literary History

Students in the humanities should consider attending this event on Thursday, January 27th. Even if you’re not an English major or grad student, if you’re considering a career in research and publishing in the humanities, I recommend hearing what Dr. Hutner will share about what goes into publishing a scholarly journal! Here are the full details of the event, from the NU calendar: 440 Egan Research Center Thursday, January 27, 2011, 12 – 1:15pm Professor Gordon Hutner, a distinguished scholar of American literature and founding editor of the journal American Literary History, will be conducting a publication workshop to discuss how to publish work in a journal such as ALH. This is an incredible opportunity for students to meet an important figure in the field and to receive an inside view of the publication process. Prof. Hutner will also deliver a talk the same afternoon as part of the Barrs Lecture Series. The talk is titled “The 21st Century American Novel: A History” and will be held at 5:30 p.m. in 340 Egan. Please plan to attend both of these events, and come prepared for lively and valuable discussions. Type of Event: Workshop/Training Audience: Faculty/Staff, Students, Public Cost: None Sponsor: Department of English, Co-Sponsored by the Humanities Center Contact Name: Department of English Contact Phone: 617-373-4540 Contact Email: m.daigle@neu.edu More info: www.english.neu.edu