This is a preprint of a paper published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology volume 58, issue 8, pages 1148-161, June 2007. The well-documented limitations of journal impact factor rankings and perceptual ratings, the evolving scholarly communication system, the open access movement, and increasing globalization are some reasons that prompted an examination of journal value rather than just impact. Using a single specialized journal established in 1960, about education for the Information professions, this paper discusses the fall from citation grace of the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS) in terms of impact factor and declining subscriptions. Journal evaluation studies in Library and Information Science based on subjective ratings are used to show the high rank of JELIS during the same period (1984-2004) and explain why impact factors and perceptual ratings either singly or jointly are inadequate measures for understanding the value of specialized, scholarly journals such as JELIS. This case study was also a search for bibliometric measures of journal value. Three measures, namely journal attraction power, author associativity, and journal consumption power, were selected; two of them were re-defined as journal measures of affinity (the proportion of foreign authors), associativity (the amount of collaboration), and calculated as objective indicators of journal value. Affinity and associativity for JELIS calculated for 1984, 1994, 2004 and consumption calculated for 1985 and 1994 show a holding pattern but also reveal interesting dimensions for future study. A multi-dimensional concept of value should be further investigated wherein costs, benefits, and measures for informative and scientific value are clearly distinguished for the development of a fuller model of journal value.

This paper examines important artifacts of scientific research, namely models. It proposes that the representations of scientific models be treated as works. It discusses how bibliographic families of models may better reflect disciplinary intellectual structures and relationships, thereby providing information retrieval that is reflective of human information seeking and use purposes such as teaching and learning. Two examples of scientific models are presented using the Dublin Core metadata elements.

This article provides an overview of academic blogs in general and introduces, ASC Online, an advising and mentoring blog for graduate students in LIS at the University of Arizona. Other types of academic blogs are highlighted along with brief information about blog directories, search engines, and rankings.

This is a preprint version of a paper submitted to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. A study of ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n=52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals towards self-archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works, preferably in an OAI-compliant open access repository. Results show that 62 % (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open web; 38 % (20) do. Of the 38 % that have CTAs available, two are open access journals. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available a high level of ambiguity exists. Of the 62 % that do not have a public CTA, 40 % are silent about self-archiving. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self-archiving, and author instructions, reveals that only five, 10% of the ISI-ranked LIS journals, actually prohibit self-archiving by publisher rule. Copyright transfer agreements are a moving target and publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co-exist in the scholarly journal publishing arena. Given the ambivalence of journal publishers, the communities might be better off by self-archiving in open access archives and strategically building an LIS information commons through a society-led global scholarly communication consortium. The aggregation of OAI-compliant archives and development of disciplinary-specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility besides ameliorating its own scholarly communication and publishing systems, and serving as a model for others.

This paper has been published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (. A study of Thomson-Scientific ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n=52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals, towards self-archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works in an OAI-compliant open access repository. 62 % (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open web; 38 % (20) do. Of the 38 % that do make CTAs available, two are open access journals. Of the 62 % that do not have a publicly available CTA, 40 % are silent about self-archiving. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available there is a high level of ambiguity. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self-archiving, and instructions to authors, reveal that only five, 10% of the ISI-ranked LIS journals in the study, actually prohibit self-archiving by publisher rule. Copyright is a moving target but publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co-exist in scholarly journal publishing. The ambivalence of LIS journal publishers provides unique opportunities to members of the community. Authors can self-archive in open access archives. A society-led global scholarly communication consortium can engage in the strategic building of the LIS information commons. Aggregating OAI-compliant archives and developing disciplinary-specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility. It may also ameliorate its own scholarly communication and publishing systems and serve as a model for others. Author's addendum: This preprint incorrectly states that ISI-SSCI was source (p. 9-10). Actual final source was JCR 2004 with SSCI serving as a cross-check.

This is an unpublished and longer version of a short paper that was submitted (and not accepted) to JCDL 2003. In this paper we describe our initial goals for DLIST, a digital library for Library and Information Science Research and Practice and for Information Technology as it relates to LIS. DLIST is built upon the open access eprints model, but extends materials in the collection beyond the formal, scholarly literature to include other types of content created by researchers and practitioners. DLIST is intended to promote resource sharing in LIS and IT and to attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice. The notion of open access is briefly discussed as a central tenet for the development of the intellectual commons as an interactive space for learning.