Dear Readers, Welcome to the Christmas issue of ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication

Abstract

We start with the evaluation of our financial supporter Nordbib http://www.nordbib.net/Frontpage.aspx Nordbib is a four year funding programme for R&D within the area of Open Access to scholarly information in the Nordic countries. As the four-year period was coming to an end, an official evaluation was commissioned. Here the evaluators Jon Duke and Andy Jordan summarize their evaluation report:” Nordbib – a success story.” Now we are waiting to see if the “success story” will result in a Nordbib.2. 

The hot topic of OA business models is discussed in three articles. 

Mikkel Christoffersen, project manager of Nordbib, presents “The Danish experience of the Houghton studies: costs and benefits of alternative publishing models” and highlights the startling results of the studies as well as the basic method and assumptions made to achieve them and the potential implications for Denmark.
In his provocative piece “ ”Free” Open Choice – beware of Greeks bearing gifts” the economist Jan Erik Frantsvåg, University of Tromsø,  raises important questions regarding the economic consequences of hybrid journal solutions Frantsvåg points at two major problems one has to be aware of if pursuing this kind of strategy. Reflect on his conclusions and feel free to comment.
Jörgen Eriksson follows up on a previous article announcing the establishment of a central fund for OA publication fees at Lund University. The fund is managed by the Libraries Head Office. In his article “Lund University supports publishing in OA journals: an examination” Eriksson analyzes the usage of the fund from January to late September 2009. He shows the actual costs for the university with the current model, and draws conclusions for the near future.
 
A new important Nordic institutional mandate - The Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Open Access Mandate - was adopted in June 2009, and covers publication of peer-reviewed journal articles and contributions to conference proceedings. Leif Hansen, senior adviser at the CBS, presents background, decision process, and experiences of the implementation.  “Greater access to scholarly publications from Copenhagen Business School- The CBS Open-Access Policy – 2009”. 
With more and more mandates in place, it becomes increasingly important to inform researchers about the implications of OA. Peter Linde, Aina Svensson, and Helena Stjernberg have taken active parts in a series of meetings with researchers at Swedish HE-institutions. They present their experiences from these meetings, discuss the changed roles of research libraries, and give us good practical advice. ”Open Access at Swedish Universities and University Colleges: From Headwind to Tailwind?”
In 2008, Finland’s universities of applied science created a digital repository for theses and research publications. The Theseus project was founded by Finland’s Ministry of Education and the country’s 26 universities of applied sciences. It had two parts: an open access web journal and a repository for publications. In their article “Theseus.fi: Open Access Publishing in the Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences” Herkko Hietanen and Anna-Kaisa Sjölund describe the project, legal issues, and the challenges involved in its implementation.

Finally, we are happy to present two comprehensive conference reports:

Insights into the current situation for Open Access in the Baltic countries and the Ukraine are given by Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access program manager, in her report on a seminar held at the University of Latvia in October 2009. It was attended by a mixture of researchers, research managers, policy-makers, journal editors, publishers, librarians, and ICT specialists. “At the event.  Open Access: Maximising Research Quality and Impact seminar” 
Kristoffer Holmqvist reports from the NOAP conference “Nordic Scientific and Scholarly journal publishing – interesting times (NSSJP)”, held in Uppsala 25 November.  NOAP is funded by Nordbib to aid scientific journals towards OA publishing. Representatives from various Nordic countries and with different professional backgrounds were invited. Perspectives discussed included Business Models, Journal Support Tools, and Copyright Issues as well as new publishing concepts.


As always, your comments and ideas are very welcome
  Ingegerd RabowEditor-in-chief