Tag Archives | open access

IDEALS: Disseminating and Preserving Illinois Scholarship

What is IDEALS?

The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship, known as IDEALS, is a service at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign that preserves and provides access to a wide body of faculty, staff and student publications and research.  The mission of IDEALS is to provide access and preservation of the works of U of I members, and to give those works the “maximum possible recognition.”  IDEALS was created in 2004 to address the problem of how to archive and preserve the work of the university’s members in light of the massive shift toward digital publishing that was taking place.

Benefits of Institutional Repositories

When scholarship is deposited into IDEALS, the descriptive information (metadata) that is provided by the depositor is not only used in the IDEALS repository for searching and retrieval but is made available to outside services, such as Google Scholar. By making U of I scholarship openly accessible to outside users, IDEALS hopes to increase the impact of the scholarly work taking place at Illinois, which not only furthers the university mission of the dissemination of knowledge but brings professional benefits to the individuals who produce the work.

Another benefit that IDEALS provides is the commitment to preserve the scholarly works that are part of its collections.  The process of digital preservation is extremely important in the swiftly changing technological world that today’s scholarship exists within.  In order to maintain the viability of the digital files that make up the repository, IDEALS adheres to a complicated digital preservation policy, which must remain compliant to accepted standards for digital preservation, the most important of which is the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model.  Because of IDEALS’ strict observance of the international standards for digital preservation, the creators that submit their work to the IDEALS repository can be confident that their work will be available and accessible for many years to come.

Copyright Issues

There are two main types of open access publishing for research articles.  “Green” OA refers to publishing in open access repositories; “gold” OA refers to publishing in open access journals. The main difference between these two types of open access publishing is that “gold” OA is a more structured process involving peer review and the traditional editing process found in journal publishing.  Some OA journals require the author to pay a fee in order to publish, and others use subsidies from their host institution. “Green” OA, on the other hand, does not involve a peer review process, and might contain peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed work.

Since IDEALS is an open access repository (an example of “green” OA), it allows individual creators to retain the copyright of their deposited works.  But what if the article being deposited has already been published in a copyright-protected journal?  When scholars publish in most journals, they must sign over their copyright to do so.  This is a complicated issue, and can definitely be an obstacle for making work available in an institutional repository.  Many journals allow authors to publish their “pre-print” work to an IR, which is essentially the author’s first draft of a work before it has been peer-reviewed and edited.   Some journals, however, support “green” OA and will allow authors to deposit their work into and OA repository.

IDEALS describes its purpose as “a complement to traditional scholarly publishing.”  In other words, it does not aim to inhibit the process of traditional journal publishing, but rather wishes to provide a secondary option to authors that allows them to make their work openly available.  For instance, IDEALS informs authors that they may have the option in their contract when publishing in a journal to retain rights for the depositing of the work into an institutional repository.  Just by educating authors about their options, IDEALS is helping to make sure that Illinois scholarship is made available and disseminated as widely as possible.

Now you know what IDEALS is – go check it out! 

You can use IDEALS to find scholarship about topics you might be interested in, or maybe you have some of your own work you’d like to deposit.  You can find out how at Getting Started with IDEALS.  Either way, all members of the University of Illinois community should take advantage of the opportunity to take part in the community of scholarship available through IDEALS.

Further information about Open Access and Institutional Repositories

International Open Access Repositories and Directories

Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO) – a directory of open access scientific repositories focusing on developing countries and regions.

OpenDOAR – Listings of open access repositories around the world.

Websites

Open Access Overview – Peter Suber (Includes great explanation for “green” vs. “gold” OA)

PLOS – The Case for Open Access

SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) – Open Access

Sherpa/RoMEO – a database of copyright information for journals.

Scholarly Articles (Accessed through UIUC E-Journals)

Casey, A. M. (2012). Does Tenure Matter? Factors Influencing Faculty Contributions to Institutional Repositories. Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication1(1), 1-11.

Cullen, Rowena, Chawner, Brnda. (2011). Institutional Repositories, Open Access, and Scholarly Communication: A Study of Conflicting Paradigms. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. 37(6), 460-470.

Kennison, R., Shreeves, S. L., & Harnad, S. (2013). Point & Counterpoint: The Purpose of Institutional Repositories: Green OA or Beyond? Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication(4), 1-7.

Books at UIUC Libraries

Crawford, Walt. (2011). Open access: what you need to know nowChicago : American Library Association.

Jones, Catherine. (2007). Institutional repositories: content and culture in an open access environment. Oxford : handos.

Nabe, Jonathan A.. (2010). Starting, strengthening, and managing institutional repositories :a how-to-do-it-manual. New York : Neal-Schuman Publishers.

Suber, Peter. (2012) Open access. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.

 

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Copyright Week Sparks Discussion of Copyright in the Digital Age

This week, in a campaign spearheaded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, numerous organizations including the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries are participating in Copyright Week. The campaign calls attention to the main challenges of copyright in the digital age, focusing on a different principle each day. These principles include “Transparency”, “Building and Defending a Robust Public Domain”, “Open Access”, “You Bought it, You Own it”, “Fair Use Rights”, and “Getting Copyright Right.” The goal of the campaign is to allow for the exchange of ideas and opinions on how to adjust copyright law for the digital age without infringing upon the free and open nature of the Internet.

These concepts have garnered an increasing amount of attention since the widespread internet protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) two years ago, and are still being debated by lawmakers in the US and around the world. While the public’s massive show of opposition against SOPA and PIPA in 2012 led legislators to reject the bills, the issues are far from settled. Dialogues such as the EFF’s Copyright Week are important in finding a way to regulate online piracy and protect copyrighted works without infringing on users’ rights or encumbering the Internet’s immense potential for spreading ideas and knowledge. This year will bring renewed efforts at passing anti-piracy laws, including a chapter in a huge international trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is reported to include new legislation on the subject. A robust and active discussion of copyright and its implications in the digital age is integral to ensuring that legislation remains transparent, fair, and productive for the future.

Stay informed about copyright law! These sources are a great starting point.

Websites:

Copyright Week Official Website

Electronic Frontier Foundation

World Intellectual Property Organization

ALA Washington Office Official Blog

IFLA on Copyright

Books from UIUC Libraries:

Brousseau, Eric., Marzouki, Meryem.Méadel, Cécile. (Eds.) (2012). Governance, regulations and powers on the Internet. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Burri, Mira,Cottier, Thomas. (Eds.) (2012). Trade governance in the digital age: World Trade Forum. New York : Cambridge University Press.

Seiter, William J., Seiter, Ellen. (2012). The creative artist’s legal guide: copyright, trademark, and contracts in film and digital media production. New Haven : Yale University Press.

Travis, Hannibal. (Eds.) (2013). Cyberspace law: censorship and regulation of the Internet. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge.

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