SCONUL Study Tour
Blake Library
University Of Technology,
Sydney
Thursday 8th September
2005
Program
9.00am – 9.30am Welcome, overview, IFLA’s interest in
scholarly communication (Alex Byrne)
9.30am – 10.00am Increasing return on investment in
information resources (Ann Flynn & Carol Scott)
10.00am – 10.30am Changing the dynamics of scholarly
communication - UTSePress & Systrum (Fides Lawton)
10.30am – 10.45am Introduction to UTS Structure & Library
Managers
10.45am – 11.15am Morning tea with Library Managers
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Program
11.15am – 12.00pm New models of information services
(Sally Scholfield & Pamela Leuzinger)
12.00pm – 12.30pm Exposing Australian and New Zealand
Postgraduate Research: ADT (Tony Cargnelutti & Andrew
Wells)
12.30pm – 1.00pm Challenges at UNSW (Andrew Wells)
1.00pm – 1.45pm
Managers
Lunch with UTS & UNSW Library
1.45pm – 2.30pm
Staffing for the future
(Fides Lawton, Alex Byrne & Andrew Wells)
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Dinner
 7.00pm Dinner with Unison members
(University Librarians in NSW & ACT) at
 Waterfront Restaurant, 19 Hickson Road, The
Rocks
 Suggest walk to Darling Harbour, take a ferry to
Circular Quay, then visit the Rocks before dinner
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High impact scholarly literature
 Historically has mostly been published in
northern Europe and the United States
 Others benefit because of affinities of
language or history (Australia, Canada) or
efforts to participate (Japan)
 Many virtually excluded
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Exacerbated through
commodification
 Control of high impact journals by major
commercial publishing houses
 Surrender of control and intellectual property
by scholars
 High costs and continuing price increases
for libraries
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Consequences
 Frustration
 “Brain drain”
 Revenue flows to ‘North’
– Research funding immeasurably better in ‘North’
 Research from ‘South’ only validated if published
in ‘North’ and usually peer reviewed in ‘North’
 Capture of knowledge from ‘South’ by ‘North’
Alex Byrne -SCONUL TOUR - 8
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Scholarly publishing system
 Self reinforcing system:
 Research
 Peer review
 Journals
 Databases (especially ISI)
 Research money
 Scholarship
 Research
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The criterion
 If scholarly publishing is to work it must work
for scholars and researchers – and peoples
– across the world
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Current scholarly publication
system - advantages
 Significant levels of expertise and
investment
 High levels of quality assurance despite
some concerns about peer review system
 Advanced services such as Web of
Knowledge, SciFinder
 Secure systems
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Scholarly publication - broader
issues
 Surrender of intellectual property by
researchers and scholars
 Weakening of public domain under current
trends in IP law
 Exacerbated in the digital environment
thorough licensing
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Scholarly publication – broader
issues
 Archiving & preservation have not been solved
– Cannot rely on publishers – preservation is our
responsibility
 Many integration issues not resolved – interfaces,
standards, etc
 Standards (eg Z39.50, HTML, XML, OpenURL)
not fully observed
– Difficulty in using portals
 Instability in both content and presentation
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What is to be done?
 How can we ensure that our faculty and students
will have the access they need to the world’s
scientific, technological and other literature?
 How can we work together to create the conditions
for successful implementation of digital libraries
and the preservation of scholarly literature and
research documentation?
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The open access movement
 Enabling the academy to reclaim its scholarly
literature and challenge the commercialised
publishing paradigms that have arisen over the
last thirty years.
 Gained force due to advocates esp. Stevan
Harnad
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/intpub.html
 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge
in the Sciences and Humanities 2003,
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccessberlin/berlindeclaration.html
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IFLA
 IFLA Statement on Open Access to
Scholarly Literature and Research
Documentation, The Hague, IFLA, 2003
– http://www.ifla.org/V/cdoc/open-access04.html
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IFLA Statement

Supports open access publishing

But in a broader context …
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IFLA Statement

Acknowledgement and defence of moral
rights of authors

Adoption of effective peer review
processes to ensure quality
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IFLA Statement
 Protection of to the public domain –
IFLA/CLM
 Opposition to governmental, commercial or
institutional censorship – IFLA/FAIFE
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IFLA Statement
 Implementation of measures to overcome
information inequality – IFLA/ALP
 Implementation of mechanisms to ensure
preservation and perpetual availability –
IFLA/PAC
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UTS initiatives
 UTSePress and Systrum
(http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au)
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UTS initiatives
 Australian Digital Theses Program
 Institutional repository
 Portal: a multidisciplinary journal of
international studies
(http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/portal)
 New titles in the humanities and IT
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Systrum
 An inclusive, collaborative e-publishing initiative
 Scaleable and open to large and small institutions
 Federated searching
 Builds on expertise and infrastructure of
UTSePress
 Advice and assistance during the establishment phase
 Consultancy on major projects
 Joint applications for funding
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Other Australian Initiatives
 ARROW – http://arrow.edu.au
 APSR (Australian Partnerships for
Sustainable Repositories) –
http://apsr.edu.au
 Australian Scholarly Publishers' Roundtable
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Thank you
Alex Byrne
alex.byrne@uts.edu.au
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