NEWS
OPF lands new Chief executive
JULIE Allen is the new Executive Director of the Open Preservation Foundation. She joins the OPF and will work with the board as the organisation looks to move to the next phase of its work. The OPF was created to deliver a long-term solution to digital preservation, by developing shared standards and exchanging knowledge. Julie will develop new strategic goals for OPF as well as helping to evolve the OPF reference toolset. l
https://openpreservation.org/
National Library of Wales strategic plan
National Library of Wales strategic plan The National Library of Wales’ new five- year strategic plan was launched by Dawn Bowden MS, Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport, in November.
The strategy aims to “unlock social and economic wealth for the people of Wales”, by opening access to collections and ser- vices for more people.
She said: “I am delighted to see that the new strategic plan positions the national library as an aspirational, influential, pos- itive and, most important of all, a relevant organisation.”
Ashok Ahir, the library’s interim pres- ident, said: “Our new strategic plan will unlock social and economic wealth for the people of Wales by ensuring that all can benefit from our extensive collections and range of professional services and support.”
Plan early for Health Info Week
HEALTH Information Week (HIW) will run from 4 to 10 July 2022.
The aim is to raise awareness of the role of information and knowledge manage- ment in the health sector and to celebrate the work of the profession. Each year during Health Information Week, the pro- fession is encouraged to hold events to help showcase the services they provide. A range of resources and ideas for events are available at
https://bit.ly/3y1m82L
6 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL
Springer Nature backs Gold OA model with new research
PUBLISHER Springer Nature has released a research paper that claims Gold Open Access provides the best publishing route for authors and researchers.
The Gold OA model generally relies on article processing charges (APCs), paid by the author or funder. The most common alternative is Green OA, which does not rely on APCs and can be free for authors, but raise income through subscription models and costs to libraries. The research docu- ment Going for Gold: exploring the reach and impact of Gold open access in hybrid journals shows that articles published under the Gold OA model have a number of benefits for researchers and authors.
The main findings are: l Gold OA articles achieve greater impact compared to subscription articles with earlier versions available e.g. via Green OA routes. On average, the latter type only achieves 1.07 times higher citations than non-OA articles, compared with 1.64 times higher achieved by Gold OA articles;
l Gold OA articles achieve far greater attention and awareness with nearly five times higher Altmetric Attention Scores compared to non-OA articles, while subscription articles with earlier versions available e.g. via Green OA routes only have two times higher Altmetric scores than non-OA articles in hybrid journals;
l Gold OA articles continue to be used more with results showing that they are downloaded over six times more than non- OA articles;
l Variations by discipline are seen but Gold OA exceeds the reach and impact of both non-OA articles and subscription articles with earlier versions available.
Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing
and Solutions Officer at Springer Nature, said that the findings confirm the pub- lishing stance taken by Springer Nature, adding: “All our research undertaken to date point to a very clear conclusion: having the final VOR article immediately available from the moment of publica- tion to be discovered, shared, used and reused, not only provides greater benefit for authors with demonstrable higher reach, attention and impact, it is over- whelmingly the version researchers want to use. By acting as an integrated hub for all of the elements necessary for open sci- ence including data and code, immediate access to the VOR article benefits science and the scientific process. “Therefore, policies that seek to place subscription-tied Green OA versions of articles on a par with full Gold OA articles are misleading authors. Not only is Green OA not a sustainable OA option, with its continued reliance on library subscription payments, it is less desirable to researchers by offering less utility and reliability, and less beneficial to authors. It’s critical that we continue to invest in a Gold OA future, and con- tinue to invest in enabling authors to select Gold OA in the journals of their choice.” Read the full report at
https://bit.ly/3lx6fvH.
‘Big Five’ e-book pricing investigated
THE big five book publishing houses – Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Macmil- lan – have been questioned by a powerful US Senate committee about the pricing of their e-books for libraries.
Publishers were asked to give their prof- it margins for physical books to consumers and to libraries and their profit margins for e-book licenses to consumers and to libraries. In a press release the committee said:
“The exorbitant costs and burdensome restrictions of these e-book contracts are draining resources from many local libraries, forcing them to make difficult choices to try and provide a consistent level of service and get books – print or electronic copies – in the hands of their patrons. However, with e-book contracts eating up ever larger portions of librar- ies’ budgets, the same level of service appears untenable.”
December 2021
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