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Scholarly Publishing Issues

MLA Scholarly Publishing Resources
Position statements, FAQs, and other resources

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The following CE courses are listed in the MLA Educational Clearinghouse.

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To top of page Links to Scholarly Publishing Initiatives

  • AAHSL Scholarly Communication Initiative
    The Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries Scholarly Communication Committee addresses issues related to scholarly communications and open access, including the NIH Public Access Policy, and maintains a web page of resources on these issues.
  • Association of Research Libraries (ARL) / Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Institute on Scholarly Communication Freely Accessible Institute Resources (FAIR) Website
    Includes SPEC Kit 299, which provides a survey of outreach activities among ARL member libraries and gathers examples of documentation from respondents in the form of proposals for education initiatives, scholarly communication and copyright Web
    pages, job descriptions, and education materials. The site also includes example position descriptions with scholarly communication outreach responsibilities, and institutional repository and authors' rights resources.
  • BioMed Central
    Independent publishing house that provides immediate free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research.
  • BioOne
    Non-profit corporation that focuses on biological, ecological and environmental sciences, and helps societies convert existing print journals to electronic format.
  • Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)
    The BOAI aims to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research article in all academic fields freely available on the Internet.
  • The Charleston Conference
    "An annual gathering of librarians, publishers, and vendors of library materials in Charleston, SC, to discuss issues of importance to all."
  • Creative Commons
    Website dedicated to making scholarly material, music, literature, film, and science widely available to the public. Site offers model licenses for free sharing of scholarly material.
  • Information Access Alliance (IAA)
    MLA has joined with the American Association of Law LIbraries, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, and Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition to form the IAA to address the impact of publishing mergers on access to research information. The IAA website provides information such as a white paper analyzing antitrust issues and the impact of publishing mergers on libraries, fact sheets and background information for librarians to use in addressing this issue, and press releases and statements issues by the IAA.
  • National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
  • Public Library of Science (PLoS)
    "PLoS is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource."
  • PubMed Central
    The National Library of Medicine's digital archive of life sciences, journal literature.
  • The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
    MLA is a member of this worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries, and organizations that encourages competition in the scholarly communications market. SPARC provides several e-resources, including SPARC E-News, a bi-monthly publication on scholarly communications issues, the SPARC Open Access Letter which provides monthly open access updates, and the Open Access News Blog which provides daily open access updates.
  • The Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science
    Forty-eight representatives from the nation's leading not-for-profit medical/scientific societies and publishers announce their commitment to providing free access and wide dissemination of published research findings.

To top of page MLA Scholarly Publishing Task Force

For further information, contact Mary Langman, 312.419.9094 x27, langman@mlahq.org.

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