Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through Open Access: A Bibliography

Abstract

Charles W. Bailey Jr. is well known in librarian circles for his compilations and commentary on open access publishing, digital copyright, and repositories for digitized scholarship and collections, among other areas of interest. Bailey has been a frequent contributor to various library and scholarly email discussion lists with links to his digital bibliographies and brief introductions. In 2005, he founded Digital Scholarship with the purpose of publishing and distributing his work in both paper and digital formats, as well as a related blog, DigitalKoans. Perhaps his most well-known bibliography, the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, has been updated more than seventy-five times and now appears in an annual print edition as well as the electronic format, according to the appendix “About the Author.” Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through Open Access is another in a growing list of Bailey's self-published works. The paperback edition is sold for $15.95, and it is available free in open-access digital format through www.digital-scholarship.org. Bibliographers perform a critical role by compiling and bringing order to the world of knowledge, with careful consideration for what is most important and seminal in a subject. Bailey is a master of compiling lists of articles, web pages, white papers, and books on a particular topic and distributing them to a wide audience. However, Bailey does little to help readers understand his selection criteria and his understanding of the significance of these citations. This bibliography, like the others, is extensive and well organized with topical subheadings. A preface helps readers understand what “open access” means and what models are available. The publication is divided into twelve parts. “Section 1: General Works” gives a list of publications discussing overviews, critiques, and debates, as well as economic issues. Nearly all sections also contain a list of research studies related to the section theme. Section 2 contains citations discussing copyright. Section 3 includes discussions of open access journals, including PubMed Central, Public Library of Science (PLoS), and others. Section 4 deals with electronic prints, while section 5 features disciplinary archives. Institutional repositories are the focus area of section 6, and it is the most extensive section. Section 7 includes the open archives initiative, and section 8 is titled, “Library Issues.” A list of publications addressing traditional publisher perspectives is in section 10, and section 11 lists publications discussing open access in emerging economies. Finally, section 12 is for Google Books, a subject that just became a bibliography in itself at the time of this writing. Much can be learned by reviewing the citations alone, but this can be done conveniently online without purchasing a print copy. Readers of the print version will want to locate the digital version anyway for the convenience of accessing the links to web-based articles. The publication's value would be greatly increased with annotations to selected citations and written overviews of each section. Highlighting what he considers the “most important” and discussing selection criteria would also be helpful and of interest to the reader. This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing.