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On April 7, 2008 a new reporting requirement goes into effect that affects researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Principal investigators must ensure that electronic versions of any peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH funding and accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008 are deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH’s digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

Specifics:

• The manuscript must be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.


• Beginning May 25, 2008 researchers submitting an application, proposal, or progress report to NIH must include the PMC or NIH Manuscript Submission reference number when citing applicable articles that arise from their NIH funded research.

The policy applies to you if your peer-reviewed article meets the following criteria:

• Directly funded by an NIH grant or cooperative agreement active in FY2008 (October 1, 2007-September 30, 2008)


• Directly funded by a contract signed on or after April 7, 2008


• Directly funded by the NIH Intramural Program


• If NIH pays your salary

Important information on researcher rights:

• Some publishers will deposit your manuscript for you: they are listed here.


• Before you sign a publication agreement or similar copyright transfer agreement, make sure that the agreement allows the article to be submitted to NIH in accordance with the Public Access Policy.

The NIH estimates approximately 80,000 published articles arise yearly from NIH funds. Temple University researchers are one group of investigators who contribute to this scholarship, and as per the NIH, were awarded 119 research grants totalling $42,157,757 in 2006.

Additional Information:

• NIH Public Access Policy Overview


• NIH Frequently Asked Questions


• SHERPA/Romeo: Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving information. Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.


• Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research


• NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for Research Universities (Association of Research Libraries [ARL] )


• Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy: Copyright Considerations and Options (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition /Science Commons/ARL joint white paper)

-Katherine Szigeti, Science Librarian

A recent study by the University of California's Office of Scholarly Communication provides interesting insights into faculty perspectives and behavior on a range of issues within the scholarly communications arena. The study examines UC faculty members' sense of the overall health of scholarly communication systems and their perspectives on tenure and promotion processes, copyright, alternative forms of publication, and key services that the University does or could supply (including those of eScholarship publishing). With 1,118 respondents the study is one of the largest surveys of faculty attitudes and behaviors regarding scholarly communication.

Some key findings from the report include:

*Faculty are strongly interested in issues related to scholarly communication.

*Faculty generally conform to conventional behavior in scholarly publication, albeit with significant progress on several fronts.

*The current tenure and promotion system impedes changes in faculty behavior.

*Faculty tend to see scholarly communication problems as affecting others but not themselves.

*The disconnect between attitude and behavior is acute with regard to copyright.

*Scholars are aware of alternative forms of dissemination but are concerned about preserving their current publishing outlet.

*Scholars are concerned that changes in the system might undermine the quality of scholarship.

*Outreach on scholarly communications issues and services has not yet reached the majority of faculty.

While the librarians at the Temple University Libraries acknowledge all these listed issues as important findings, we are particularly interested in the final one that concerns outreach on scholarly communications. As the study indicates, we need to do more to create awareness about these issues. The study found a striking lack of faculty knowledge about the potential for change in the scholarly communications system. One of our priorities is to create greater awareness about these issues among the Temple University faculty and the larger campus community. To that end we will be working to share information about challenges and change in the scholarly communications system, and promote activities and initiatives that we can undertake as an institution to create change.

Read the report and get more information about it.

--Steven J. Bell
Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services

What more do you need to know about Wikipedia? It’s the sometimes controversial online encyclopedia of the people, and its content dwarfs that of conventional encyclopedias. What we also know is that college students all too often rely on Wikipedia entries without fully evaluating the accuracy of the content. Then perhaps there is something new to learn – how to leverage Wikipedia as an instructional technology to better equip students to read and gather information with a critical eye.

To help educators and librarians to better understand the issues related to the use of Wikipedia by students, EDUCAUSE has focused the latest addition to the "Seven Things You Should Know" series on Wikipedia (pdf). The series introduces web and learning technologies and identifies how they might be best used for better pedagogy. The new Wikipedia document identifies how it can be used in this way:

In higher education, wikis have been put to use in courses ranging from humanities to science to business. With Wikipedia, students can take part in a collaborative process of creating and revising content in a global context, moving the opportunities for learning beyond the walls of the classroom or the university. An important part of academic training is seeing how knowledge is created and understanding that it is dynamic, evolving over time based on the contributions of many individuals.

Rather than banning the use of Wikipedia, faculty and librarians are working together to develop creative assignments and research exercises that engage students in the information creation process by having them create or edit Wikipedia pages. Through these learning experiences students come to understand that anyone can add to or edit Wikipedia and what the consequences are for those who base important decisions on this information. Faculty who would like to further explore how Wikipedia can be used to help students become more effective researchers should contact their Temple University Libraries subject specialist to begin the discussion.

-Steven Bell

Three candidates for the position of Curator of the Blockson African American Collection have been invited to campus for interviews. You are cordially invited to attend each candidate's public presentation on The Future of Special Collections: What is Special About Special Collections and Archives, from 10:45 a.m. – 12:00 noon in the Paley Library Lecture Hall (ground floor) on the following days. Click on each candidate's name to view a curriculum vitae (in pdf format).

May 18 Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney
May 31 Kimberly Camp
June 4 Dr. Diane Turner

For more information about the search, consult the following Temple Times articles.

October 20, 2006
December 20, 2006

-- Carol Lang

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research Information Sessions.

The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research was established to encourage the use of Library resources, to enhance the development of library research techniques, and to honor the best research projects produced each year by Temple University undergraduate students.

The deadline for submissions for this year's Prize is April 6, 2007. Please come to one of these four info sessions with your questions and for information about the submission process and requirements.

Location: Paley Library Mezzanine, room 130

Tuesday, March 13
12 noon - 1 p.m.

Wednesday, March 21
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28
2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 3
11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

For more information, click here.

--Gretchen Sneff

Net neutrality is the principle that companies providing access to the Internet cannot discriminate between customers. For instance, consumers get the exact same service from their homes as ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, HBO, Disney, and Dreamworks. Telecom companies claim that they cannot build the advanced Internet of the future unless they are able to charge extra for premium access. Net Neutrality advocates argue that the Internet was originally developed and built with taxpayer monies and should be seen as a public utility and that it has become, in essence, the public square of the twenty-first century. A multi-tiered system of access would not only limit free speech but also limit important new technologies. What would have happened if YouTube, MySpace, and Flikr had had to pay for premium service? What about the blogosphere?

In order to win approval for its $85 billion merger with BellSouth, AT&T has agreed to observe net neutrality for two years, a window of opportunity for advocates to lobby Congress for a law enshrining net neutrality as a guiding principle of the Internet. It will also put pressure on other telecom companies to follow AT&T's lead. See: AT&T-BellSouth deal called "breakthrough" for consumers.

Below are some podcasts and web sites concerning net neutrality that you might find interesting.

Video from Save the Internet Coalition

Commercial from the Cable and Telecommunications Association

Don't Regulate coalition that includes AT&T and BellSouth

Robert McChesney on COPE Bill working its way through Congress (on Democracy Now, May 8, 2006)

NetCompetition.org coalition that includes AT&T, BellSouth, and other cable and telecommunications firms

---Fred Rowland

With the help of our excellent student workers in the Reference and Instructional Services Department, I carried out a small study of Google Book Search (GBS). Curious to know just how deep it was with regards to philosophy, I took a random sample of 381 titles out of the 4244 philosophy titles Temple bought between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2005. It turns out that 35% of the philosophy books sampled are contained in GBS, including the following percentages from a number of top academic publishers:

• 39% of Oxford (21/54)
• 66% of Routledge (25/38)
• 70% of Blackwell (7/10)
• 76% of SUNY (13/17)
• 88% of Cambridge (28/32)

None of the books in my sample from Harvard (5), Cornell (8), MIT(5), Princeton (3), Stanford (3), or Yale (4) university presses were found, although books from all these publishers do show up in GBS (the Advanced Search allows a publisher search). Sample books from the large European academic presses Ashgate (9), Brill (3), Continuum (5), and Palgrave MacMillan (7) also did not turn up. With the exception of Brill, this latter group does not appear to be participating in GBS.

According to Google, books make it into GBS through two different routes, as part of the Partner Program or the Library Project. With the Partner Program, publishers (or authors) provide GBS with the full-text of books. Presumably, most are using this service as a means of marketing their books. By contrast, for the Library Project GBS scans in books from a number of major research libraries like those at Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Oxford, and the New York Public Library.

Depending on the copyright status of a book and on the agreements between publishers and Google, there are four different views of books that users see--the Snippet View, Sample Pages View, and Full View, and No Preview Available (which I ran into a number of times but for which Google gives no explanation).

• The Snippet View shows your keyword(s) in a few sentences of context. Books showing this view come from the Library Project and are still under copyright.
• All the books in my sample presented the Sample Pages View. These books come from either the Partner Program or the Library Project. On the search results screen, books showing the Sample Pages View will contain the label Limited Preview. In either case, the publisher has given permission to display only a certain portion of the work. Many of the pages in this view will either require a login (free to set up), or will be inaccessible. For instance, when I searched inside the book Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief for "wagner", six pages required login and six were inaccessible. (Of course, you are only asked to log in once per session.)
• Full View books are entirely accessible. And whereas you can't print pages out from the Snippet View or the Sample Pages View, you can print out pages from Full View books. You can also limit your search to just Full View books. These works either come from the Library Project and are in the public domain, or the author or publisher has given permission to view an entire copyrighted work.
• No Preview Available books look a lot like the Snippet View except without the snippet. These probably come in as part of the Library Project and, appropriately, look a bit like library catalog records.

It is important to remember that despite which view you're given, your search is querying the full-text of these books, not just the the book record as you would with, say, a library catalog. It's also important to remember that Google intends this as a search service that will allow users to identify books that they will eventually borrow from libraries or buy in bookstores. It's not meant as a provider of electronic books. Clearly, there are enough philosophy books in Google Book Search to make it a useful tool of discovery. Among its many uses are citation searching, identifying an obscure person, place, thing, or event, or just plain old full-text searching. Next time you're doing philosophy research (or any other kind of research), try it out.

BTW, Temple has quite a few subscription databases of full-text searchable books that might be of interest to the student of philosophy, some of which are listed below:

• ACLS HIstory E-Book Project
• Earlty English Books Online
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• NetLibrary
• NetLibrary Reference Center
• Oxford Reference Online.