The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

The African Journal of Information and Communication has published a special issue on scholarly communication and opening access to knowledge.

Here's a selection of articles:

• Access to Africa's Knowledge: Publishing Development Research and Measuring Value
• Research Productivity-Visibility-Accessibility and Scholarly Communication in Southern African Universities
• Copyright and Education in Africa: Lessons on African Copyright and Access to Knowledge
• 'Dazzling Technologies': Addressing the Digital Divide in the Southern African Universities
• Open Access and Open Knowledge Production Processes: Lessons from CODESRIA

Version one of the Open Access Journals Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. Open access journals publish articles (typically peer-reviewed articles) that are free of charge and, depending on the journal, may be able to be reused under an open license (e.g., a Creative Commons license). This bibliography presents selected English-language scholarly works that are useful in understanding open access journals. It does not cover works about e-prints or works that include open access journals in a treatment of diverse types of research materials. Most sources have been published from 1999 to the present; however, a few key sources published prior to 1999 are also included. The bibliography primarily includes books and published journal articles. A limited number of magazine articles and technical reports that are deemed to be of exceptional interest are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works.

The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may also be of interest:

1. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, version 78
2. Digital Scholarship 2009 (paperback and open access PDF file)
3. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition (paperback, Kindle version, and open access PDF file)
4. Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, version 1

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

The Research Information Network has released If You Build It, Will They Come? How Researchers Perceive and Use Web 2.0.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the past 15 years, the web has transformed the way we seek and use information. In the last 5 years in particular a set of innovative techniques—collectively termed 'web 2.0'—have enabled people to become producers as well as consumers of information.

It has been suggested that these relatively easy-to-use tools, and the behaviours which underpin their use, have enormous potential for scholarly researchers, enabling them to communicate their research and its findings more rapidly, broadly and effectively than ever before.

This report is based on a study commissioned by the Research Information Network to investigate whether such aspirations are being realised. It seeks to improve our currently limited understanding of whether, and if so how, researchers are making use of various web 2.0 tools in the course of their work, the factors that encourage or inhibit adoption, and researchers’ attitudes towards web 2.0 and other forms of communication.

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Version 78 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,750 articles, books, and other digital and printed sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

Dedication
1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management and User Authentication
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Dan S. Wallach, Associate Professor at Rice University's Department of Computer Science, has made an eprint of "Rebooting the CS Publication Process" available.

Here's an excerpt:

Many computer science academics have been grousing about failures in our publication process. This paper catalogs many of the specific complaints that are raised and proposes some radical new solutions based on the assumption that, by eliminating physical paper entirely and going with a centralized system to manage papers, we can rethink the entire process: paper submission, revision and publication. Furthermore, having all of the metadata standardized and easily available, ranking algorithms can be easily conceived to aid in tenure cases and departmental rankings.

In June 1989, I launched PACS-L, a LISTSERV mailing list. PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was unusual in that it had a broad subject focus (public-access computer systems in libraries, such as online catalogs) rather than a narrow focus on a specific library automation system. Although PACS-L's greatest contribution may have been in raising librarians' awareness of the importance and potential of the then fledgling Internet, it was also the platform on which my initial scholarly digital publishing efforts were based.

In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. This journal, if it was published today, would be called a "libre" open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use.

Aside from Public-Access Computer Systems News (also "libre" open access), my subsequent digital publications, such as the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, were "gratis" open access until 2004, when all new versions of existing publications and new publications became "libre" open access under various versions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

To date, my major open access publications have been:

• The Public-Access Computer Systems Review, founder and Editor-in-Chief, 37 issues, 1989-1996.
• Public-Access Computer Systems News, co-founder and co-editor, 39 issues, 1990-1992.
• Library-Oriented Lists and Electronic Serials, 25 versions, 1990-1994.
• "Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works: A Selective Bibliography," 26 versions, 1995-1996.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, 77 versions, 1996-present.
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, over 500 posts, 2001-present.
• DigitalKoans, over 3,000 posts, 2005-present.
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, 4 versions, 2005-present.
• Google Books Bibliography, 6 versions, 2005-present.
• Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, published by the Association for Research Libraries, 2005.
• Tout de Suite Series, (Author's Rights, Tout de Suite and Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite) 2008-present.
• Institutional Repository Bibliography, 2 versions, 2009-present.
• Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, 1 version, 2010.

Here are some use statistics for selected publications:

• There were over 4.2 million Gopher or Web file requests for The Public-Access Computer Systems Review files from January 1994 through December 2006 (LISTSERV use data is not available. Neither is Web data after December 2006.)
• There were over 9.5 million Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Web file requests from October 30, 1996 though December 31, 2009.
• There were over 399,000 Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals Web file requests from March 3, 2005 though December 31, 2009.
• There were over 25.6 million Digital Scholarship Web file requests from April 20, 2005 though December 31, 2009 by over 5.1 million visitors from 225 countries. This includes over 3.2 million Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Web file requests and over 370,000 Open Access Bibliography Web file requests.

For a chronology of my open access publishing efforts, see "A Look Back at 21 Years as an Open Access Publisher."

Digital Scholarship has released a freely available PDF version of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2008 Annual Edition. The paperback and Kindle versions continue to be available on Amazon for $15.95 and $9.99 respectively.