Abstract

Against the background of the recently announced European Commission FP7 post-grant Gold open access pilot, this note addresses the increasingly relevant role that gold open access (OA) is playing in the scholarly communications landscape and argues that the “gold vs green” controversy is of little use for increasing worldwide OA implementation. The text highlights the role played by funding agencies in developing the OA landscape and analyses the role that libraries may play in supporting researchers for managing their article processing charges (APCs) at institutional level. Some challenges posed by the gradual expansion of gold OA are also examined, including the transition in business models that journals are undergoing.

Abstract

This paper advocates the advantages of centralized repositories against the spread of institutional projects. The continuing emergence of new resources, open archives and digital libraries affects both academia and institutions that house ancient collections. The current “ribbon-cutting culture” should be subject to safeguards for the preservation and provision of good services. This paper lists some cooperative services in the academic world and a concrete example of digitization of an early collection of Spanish journals at the University of Connecticut.

Abstract

Global access to knowledge is one of the most interesting challenges for librarians at the moment. Network cooperation at the local, regional, national and international level is essential to achieve this goal. The Ministry of Culture’s library policy in recent years has allowed for the creation of the needed cooperation structures so that all administrations and all types of libraries can collaborate together in projects and initiatives targeted at the joint development of their networks and systems, which provides for the acknowledgement of libraries as key democratic institutions in education, cultural, social and research and development policies.

Abstract

The open access model for publishing monographs by the members of the Spanish Universities Publishers Association (UNE) is analyzed. The study focused on production data from 2015-2017, as well as the positioning and arguments of the editors in relation to the open access movement, publication, related policies, and financing modalities. Data was collected by a questionnaire (with a response rate of 58% of the publishers associated with UNE) and includes in-depth interviews with seven of them. The results show that 75% of UNE members publish titles in open access, most consider open access a good way to increase the dissemination of monographs, and that there are no differences in content quality with non-open access works. Publishers do not see that publishing in open access is compatible with the commercial exploitation of printed copies. Publishers consider the most effective financing channels to be institutional payment (i.e., the university), followed by publisher’s self-financing, and payment by the author.

Abstract

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in European Journal of Operational Research. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V. This study discusses a decision support framework that guides policy makers in their strategic transportation related decisions by using multi-methodology. For this purpose, a methodology for analyzing the effects of transportation policies on environment, society, economy, and energy is proposed. In the proposed methodology, a three-stage problem structuring model is developed. Initially, experts’ opinions are structured by using a cognitive map to determine the relationships between transportation and environmental concepts. Then a structural equation model (SEM) is constructed, based on the cognitive map, to quantify the relations among external transportation and environmental factors. Finally the results of the SEM model are used to evaluate the consequences of possible policies via scenario analysis. In this paper a pilot study that covers only one module of the whole framework, namely transportation–environment interaction module, is conducted to present the applicability and usefulness of the methodology. This pilot study also reveals the impacts of transportation policies on the environment. To achieve a sustainable transportation system, the extent of the relationships between transportation and the environment must be considered. The World Development Indicators developed by the World Bank are used for this purpose.

Abstract

Policy makers have proposed various incentive programs to curb consumption-related problems, such as traffic congestion and carbon emissions. While experts consider such programs effective in reducing those problems, consumers are more skeptical. Although this "effectiveness skepticism" is currently viewed as an important cause of public opposition, the authors argue that it may also arise as a consequence of opposition. Specifically, consumers oppose policies they consider personally unattractive or unfair. This opposition motivates them to also be skeptical about the potential effectiveness of such policies. Three studies that include a variety of methods, policies, and samples provide empirical support for this reasoning: perceptions of expected effects can be biased by consumers' perceptions of personal attractiveness and fairness. In line with this causal ordering, the authors find that offering optimistic effectiveness estimates, although successful in reducing effectiveness skepticism, did not boost policy support. Policy makers aiming to boost support prior to implementation should thus not only communicate a policy's effectiveness, but also address other causes of opposition.