Image source: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
“Carpet of Poppies” by Tina Phillips

All of our libraries have decided to open after 11 a.m. on Remembrance Day, Monday, November 11. The eleventh hour on Remembrance Day is significant because it is the time Canadians are asked to pause in memory of the thousands of men and women who sacrificed their lives in military service. There are also many Remembrance Day services happening around HRM at 11 a.m., and by delaying our opening time we hope more people will be available to attend these services.

From Today @ Dal: 11 ways to remember on November 11

Changing our hours to open after 11 a.m. was a recent decision, so please see the hours of the libraries below. Please note, no hours have been lost as a result of this change, each library is still scheduled to be open for same amount of hours, we’ve just delayed opening by an hour or two in some cases. We’ll be open later into the evening to make up for the change.

The Remembrance Day hours for the Dalhousie Libraries are as follows:

Sir James Dunn Law Library: Noon-10:45 p.m.

W. K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library: Noon-8 p.m.

Killam Memorial Library: 1-9 p.m.

MacRae Library: 1-10:30 p.m.

Sexton Design & Technology Library: 1-9 p.m.

Food Services Hours in the Killam atrium from Friday, November 8-Tuesday, November 12:

click to enlarge

Over the past few weeks, students and faculty have provided a lot of valuable feedback regarding library cuts. We appreciate your concerns, and we understand the important role that the Dal Libraries plays in your academic work.

To recap, this is the current situation: The acquisitions budget has sustained a 1% cut this year. In addition to the cut, external factors have put additional pressures on the acquisitions budget, making the cut feel larger. The cost of electronic resources is inflating at a rate of 4-8% annually and many of the resources are purchased in American funds, resulting in an unfavourable exchange rate on the US dollar.

Yesterday, Dr. Carolyn Watters, Vice-President Academic and Provost of Dalhousie, announced the University will provide funds to cover the urgent shortfall this year and that they will work with the Library to review the acquisitions budget to ensure that it is sustainable over the longer term. This funding will help to ensure all course-related and student research-related library needs are being met.

Here is the memo:

MEMORANDUM

To:                   The Dalhousie University community

From:   Carolyn Watters, Vice-President Academic and Provost

Date:   October 28, 2013

Re:                  Dalhousie Library budget

I am writing to update you on the Dalhousie Library’s budget situation, of which there has been some significant discussion recently among both students and faculty.

The University Library has a $5.7 million acquisitions budget. The purchasing power of the acquisitions budget has been reduced this year due to a combination of factors: the decrease in the value of the Canadian dollar, inflationary costs and a one per cent budget cut. Because of this, the acquisitions budget has ended up in shortfall.

The University will provide funds to cover the urgent shortfall this year. At the same time, we will work with the Library to review the acquisitions budget to ensure that it is sustainable over the longer term.

Carolyn Watters
Vice-President Academic and Provost

How important to you is the future of libraries and archives? You are invited to join a discussion on Friday, November 8 from 2-4 p.m. in University Hall, in the MacDonald Building.

This event is sponsored by the Royal Society of Canada. Join the conversation! RSVP to janice.slauenwhite@dal.ca

Today’s post for International Open Access Week focuses on some of the common myths about open access (OA).

Myth: Articles published in OA journals are lower quality.

Truth: OA journals are no more likely to contain low-quality content than for-profit journals. The success of any journal depends on authors submitting their content to that journal so that their findings will be scrutinized by their peers and recognized. If any journal has a reputation for publishing low-quality content, authors will not submit their research.

Myth: OA will make my content easier to plagiarize.

Truth: Making your work more widely and publicly available does not promote plagiarism. Plagiarism is most commonly committed at institutions where access is available to traditional subscription journals and OA journals. Academic integrity has nothing to do with the business model of the journal that you publish in.

Myth: OA publications are not protected by copyright.

Truth: The business model of the journal has nothing to do with the intellectual rights practices of that journal. Most OA journals encourage authors to use Creative Commons licensing with their works. Creative Commons licensing gives authors much greater flexibility when it comes to educational use and attribution related to their work. Very few OA journals ask authors to sign over their copyright to the journal but this does not mean that the works are not protected by copyright. It simply means that the author retains his or her full rights in the work and is authorizing unpaid access  to that work. In fact, most non-OA journals ask authors to give up their copyright to the publisher. This diminishes the rights of individual authors with respect to their own work.

Myth: Scholarly societies will collapse without money from subscriptions to support operations and events.

Truth: The purpose of a scholarly journal is to communicate research findings and encourage feedback. Scholarly journals can support themselves with a variety of fundraising mechanisms but their primary purpose is not to fund other activities. OA journals can support themselves by taking advantage of the in-kind support of any of the hundreds of academic libraries that support OA by hosting journals on an Open Journal Systems platform at their affiliated institution. Dalhousie University Libraries provides journal publication services.

Myth: Open Access journals are not peer reviewed.

Truth: Most Open Access journals include a peer review process much like that used by their subscription peers. The strengths and weaknesses of peer review processes are similar whether the content is submitted to an Open Access journal or to a subscription journal. A recent, non-peer reviewed article that appeared in Science  suggested that the peer review process is flawed in Open Access journals. The findings of this article are controversial and have been been refuted.

Myth: The only way to make research open access is to pay unaffordable author fees.

Truth: Most Open Access journals do not charge author fees. Roughly 30% of Open Access journals charge author fees while roughly 75% of conventional journals charge author fees for page charges and colour illustrations. The least expensive way of making research available is to upload it to either a public repository such as arXiv, SSRN, or PubMedCentral or an institutional repository such as DalSpace. Many publishers will allow articles to be uploaded to repositories at some point in the publication cycle. Most publishers’ open access policies can be located in the Sherpa-Romeo database. If you would like to deposit your research in DalSpace, contact dalspace@dal.ca