Message from the Grassroots

Librarians have responded to the decades-long “serials crisis” with a common narrative and a range of responses that have failed to challenge the ideology and structures that caused it. Using Walter Rodney’s theory of a guerilla intellectual, we critically examine the dominant understanding of this so-called crisis and emphasize the role that capital plays within it. The imperial nature of scholarly journal publishing and some of its many contradictions are discussed. “Transformative” agreements receive special attention as a hyper-capitalist manifestation of these contradictions at the heart of commercial publishing.The politics of refusal are one response to the commercialism, prestige, and power imbalances that drive the academic publishing system. Highlighting the differences between refusal and reform, this paper explores the protagonistic role that librarians can play in a protracted struggle within and beyond the confines of our profession. Select open access efforts are identified at the end as examples of different forms of refusal. This paper is intended to move beyond the traditional discourse of laying blame solely at the feet of the academic publishing oligopoly and also expounds on the bourgeois academy’s use of knowledge production for capital accumulation.

Advances and Limitations in Open Source Arabic-Script OCR: A Case Study

This work presents an accuracy study of the open source OCR engine, Kraken, on the leading Arabic scholarly journal, al-Abhath. In contrast with other commercially available OCR engines, Kraken is shown to be capable of producing highly accurate Arabic-script OCR. The study also assesses the relative accuracy of typeface-specific and generalized models on the al-Abhath data and provides a microanalysis of the “error instances” and the contextual features that may have contributed to OCR misrecognition. Building on this analysis, the paper argues that Arabic-script OCR can be significantly improved through (1) a more systematic approach to training data production, and (2) the development of key technological components, especially multi-language models and improved line segmentation and layout analysis./Cet article présente une étude d’exactitude du moteur ROC open source, Krakan, sur la revue académique arabe de premier rang, al-Abhath. Contrairement à d’autres moteurs ROC disponibles sur le marché, Kraken se révèle être capable de produire de la ROC extrêmement exacte de l’écriture arabe. L’étude évalue aussi l’exactitude relative des modèles spécifiquement configurés à des polices et celle des modèles généralisés sur les données d’al-Abhath et fournit une microanalyse des « occurrences d’erreurs », ainsi qu’une microanalyse des éléments contextuels qui pourraient avoir contribué à la méreconnaissance ROC. S’appuyant sur cette analyse, cet article fait valoir que la ROC de l’écriture arabe peut être considérablement améliorée grâce à (1) une approche plus systématique d’entraînement de la production de données et (2) grâce au développement de composants technologiques fondamentaux, notammentl’amélioration des modèles multilingues, de la segmentation de ligne et de l’analyse de la mise en page.

Editors’ Note

We are honored to introduce our inaugural issue as editors of the Israel Studies Review. For just over a decade, the journal was in the most competent hands of Yoram Peri and Paul Scham and their team at the University of Maryland. Under their leadership, the journal changed its name, transitioned to three issues per year, and enhanced its status as a leading scholarly journal in the area of Israel Studies, providing a scholarly platform to a diverse array of perspectives from multiple disciplines. Yoram and Paul themselves built on the foundations laid by Ilan Peleg, who transformed the journal from a newsletter to a full-fledged, peer-reviewed academic periodical. We are fully cognizant of the very big shoes we have to fill!

Publisher’s Note: Physiologia—A New Open Access Journal

One of the top four scholarly journal publishers in the world [...]

Geotechnics: Welcome to A New Open Access Journal for A Growing Multidisciplinary Community

On behalf of the editorial board and MDPI Publishing, may we extend a very warm welcome to this first editorial of Geotechnics—a new and international, open access, scholarly journal aimed at showcasing and nurturing high-quality research and developmental activities in soil and rock engineering and geo-environmental engineering, worldwide [...]

Publisher’s Note: Rheumato—A New Open Access Journal

As one of the top four scholarly journal publishers in the world [...]

Negotiating Open Access Journal Agreements: An Academic Library Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity for academic libraries to advance open access (OA) to scholarly articles. Awareness among faculty on the importance of OA has increased significantly during the pandemic, as colleges and universities struggle financially and seek sustainable access to high-quality scholarly journals. Consortia have played an important role in establishing negotiation principles on OA journal agreements. While the number of OA agreements is increasing, case studies involving individual libraries are still limited. This paper reviews existing literature on publisher negotiation principles related to OA journal negotiations and reflects on recent cases at an academic library in Pennsylvania, in order to identify best practices in OA journal negotiations. It provides recommendations on roles, relationships, and processes, as well as essential terms of OA journal agreements. This study’s findings are most relevant to large academic libraries that are interested in negotiating with scholarly journal publishers independently or through consortia.