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BMJ launches a hybrid OA journal program
BMJ Journals has launched a new OA initiative called Unlocked. From Thursday's announcement:
Comments.
Update (October 1, 2006). BMJ has responded to my comments, making clear that authors do retain copyright and that BMJ will reduce its subscription prices in proportion to author uptake. BMJ itself still allows no-embargo self-archiving, even for authors who don't choose the Unlocked option, but the BMJ specialty journals only permit no-embargo self-archiving for authors who pay the Unlocked fee. Beyond OAI interoperability for OA repositories
Jeroen Bekaert and Herbert Van de Sompel, Augmenting Interoperability Across Scholarly Repositories. The final report of the meeting of the same title co-sponsored by Microsoft, the Mellon Foundation, CNI, DLF, and JISC (New York, April 20-21, 2006). Undated by apparently released this week. (Thanks to Stuart Weibel, who participated in the meeting for OCLC.) Excerpt:
Under guidance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the digital Library Federation (DLF), the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Microsoft, a meeting was held aimed at identifying concrete steps that could be taken to augment interoperability across heterogeneous scholarly repositories. The specific goal of the meeting was to try and reach a common understanding regarding a data model and a limited set of core, protocol-based repository interfaces that would allow services and downstream applications to interact with heterogeneous repositories in a consistent manner. Such repository interfaces include interfaces that support locating, identifying, harvesting, obtaining and depositing compound digital objects.
PLoS ONE is open for business. From the PLoS blog announcement:
It is a bit late here in the UK for blogging but this can�t wait. PLoS ONE is now accepting submissions. The site is now updated with all the necessary �Guidelines for Authors�, �Editorial Policies� etc. as well as links to our online submission system. There isn�t much else to say but for me to thank the web-designers who put the site together and welcome everyone to the next step in this exciting project. PS: The site now contains full descriptions of PLoS ONE's features and policies. If you haven't visited since the preview in June, you should visit again and spread the word. This is a bold and interesting departure from other OA projects and I wish it every success.
Meredith Farkas is blogging a series of notes on Wikimania (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4-6, 2006).
Over at the CC wiki, Margot Kaminski has started a page of books with CC licenses. Help enlarge the list if you can.
More on OA to Indonesia's avian flu data
Helen Branswell, With Indonesia's say so, WHO to share bird flu data with scientific community, CBC News, August 4, 2006. Excerpt:
New server to meet new demand at SciELO Brazil
The SciELO Brazil collection of OA journals has a new server to meet sharply increasing demand. (Thanks to Jean-Claude Guédon.) From the announcement in the VHL Newsletter (August 2006):
The SciELO Brazil collection has a new connectivity and server platform providing access to articles of over 160 titles of quality journals in all fields of knowledge. This change of platform aims to meet the increasing demand of access to the SciELO Brazil collection and render quality services with high availability.
Results of CIHR survey on its evolving OA policy
In April the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) called for comments on its evolving OA policy. It has now released the results --dated June 2006 but apparently released today. (Thanks to Heather Joseph.) Excerpt:
HarperCollins is digitizing all its books
Mokoto Rich, HarperCollins Steps Up Its Presence on the Internet, New York Times, August 3, 2006. Excerpt:
In an effort to widen its marketing reach on the Internet significantly, HarperCollins Publishers will let readers see excerpts of its authors� books on its own Web site as well as those of the authors themselves. Comments
OA database of avian flu info for medical personnel and travelers
MEDEX Assistance Corporation has launched an OA database of avian flu data and information. From today's press release:
Provosts should support institutional OA policies, not just national OA policies
Stevan Harnad, Putting Provost Principles into Practice: II, Open Access Archivangelism, August 3, 2006. Excerpt:
Twenty-one more US university provosts have now joined the first pride of 25 twenty-five provosts to register their support for the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) Moving Australia's OA repositories to the next level
Australia's ARROW project (Australian Repositories Online to the World) has released ARROW Stage 2 Public description, August 2006. Excerpt:
Over the past three years the ARROW project has progressed from being an exercise in understanding the potential of institutional repositories to a project supporting and developing live repository software at a number of Australian institutions. As the project has progressed it has become evident that many new challenges will result from the establishment of repositories.... Indonesia OKs OA for avian flu data
James Simpson, Indonesia opens access to bird flu data, Earth Times, August 4, 2006. Excerpt:
PS: Kudos to Siti Fadilah Supari for this breakthrough decision. For background, see my earlier posts on hoarding v. OA for avian flu data.
More on the two provost letters
More Universities Push for Passage of Open-Access Legislation in Senate, Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, August 3, 2006.
Libraries applaud provosts for supporting FRPAA
Nine major library associations issued a press release today commending the provosts (set 1, set 2) who have supported FRPAA. Excerpt:
Just one week after more than two dozen leading universities declared their strong support for the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S.2695), provosts from an additional 23 universities added their backing in a letter issued by the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and in individual correspondence. This brings the total to at least 48 universities that have gone on record as favoring the measure. The press release is signed by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL), Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), Medical Library Association (MLA), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Special Libraries Association (SLA). 22 more provosts support FRPAA
The Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) has publicly released its July 31 letter to Sen. John Cornyn in support of FRPAA. The letter is signed by 22 university provosts --above and beyond the 25 who signed the July 28 letter organized by the ATA. Excerpt from the new letter:
As chief academic officers, we are writing to you in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, representing 21 of the 30 member universities of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). With campuses in 16 states in the western and mid-western U.S., GWLA universities enroll more than 600,000 undergraduates and 200,000 graduate students. Our aggregate full-time faculty ranks exceed 50,000. The letter is signed by the chief academic officers of Arizona State University, Baylor University, Iowa State University, Kansas State University, Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, Oklahoma State University, Oregon State University, Rice University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, University of Arizona, University of Arkansas, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Kansas, University of Missouri at Columbia, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of Oregon, University of Utah, University of Washington, Utah State University, Washington State University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Comment. The news gets better and better. This is the second large wave of provost support for OA and FRPAA. See my comments on the first wave in yesterday's issue of my newsletter. Budget cuts for a publicly-funded OA journal
Chandra Shekhar, Environment Health Perspectives faces cuts, The Scientist, August 3, 2006. Excerpt:
Environment Health Perspectives (EHP) appears to be facing hard times. After nixing plans to privatize due to strong public opposition, the publication faces cuts in funding, forcing it to trim the news and commentary sections, and axe translations and free shipping to developing countries. More on U of California's talks with Google
Scott Carlson, U. of California Is in Talks to Join Google's Library-Scanning Project, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 3, 2006. Excerpt:
Calculating an institution's contribution rate under the NIH policy
Philip J. Kroth, Erinn E. Aspinall, and Holly E. Phillips, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on Enhancing Public Access: tracking institutional contribution rates, Journal of the Medical Library Association, July 2006. Excerpt:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) enacted its Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research on May 2, 2005. The policy requests that authors of peer-reviewed publications resulting from NIH-funded research voluntarily submit a copy of their final manuscript to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for archiving in PubMed Central (PMC), the NLM's open access electronic repository for life sciences journals. Evolution and impact of the OA movement
Karen M. Albert, Open access: implications for scholarly publishing and medical libraries, Journal of the Medical Library Association, July 2006. Abstract:
Purpose: The paper reviews and analyzes the evolution of the open access (OA) publishing movement and its impact on the traditional scholarly publishing model. Update. Greg Schmidt has written a summary of this article, October 26, 2006.
Manfred Dworschak, How Google Earth Is Changing Science, Spiegel Online, August 1, 2006. Excerpt:
Google Earth wasn't really intended for scientists....But now the scientific community is discovering how useful the software is for their own work. PS: The basic version of the software is free of charge and researchers who choose to do so can easily share their layers and placemarks online.
Carolyn Gramling, Open Access Advancing, Geotimes, August 2006. Excerpt:
Obstacles to an OA database of UK speed limits
Charles Arthur, Would a speed limit database lead to fewer road deaths? The Guardian, August 3, 2006. Excerpt:
One of the Department for Transport's (DfT) principal aims is to cut road deaths by 40% by 2010. And since excess speed is a known contributor to accidents, would a database of national speed limits, available for free, help achieve that aim? The answer is not as obvious as it might seem, according to Professor Frank Kelly, the outgoing chief scientific adviser to the DfT. It's not just a question of whether data should be "free"; just as important is the question of who should contribute to the data, and whether it needs to be "owned". More on data sharing at the Gates Foundation
David Robinson, Bill Gates: Is he an IP Maximalist, or an Open Access Advocate? Freedom to Tinker, August 1, 2006. Excerpt:
Comments.
User-unfriendly restrictions at the SAE digital library
Users and librarians are complaining about the access restrictions the Society of Automatic Engineering imposes on its digital library.
Ray Cha reviews John Willinsky's book (The Access Principle, MIT Press, 2005, print edition, OA edition). Excerpt:
Steve Hitchcock, Provosts and consumers support FRPAA, Eprints Insiders, August 2, 2006. Excerpt:
Repository managers everywhere may be reassured by statements of consumer support for public access to research findings, as framed in the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA). Of more significance, especially to IR managers in the US, is the Open Letter from the provosts of 25 top US universities in support of the FRPAA. Authoritative OA list of authoritative OA resources in every field
The Digital Universe is building an authoritative OA list of authoritative OA resources in every field. From the site:
PS: This list has already begun and is already useful. Help the cause by suggesting resources in your field. Open source software for academics
Four teachers and programmers have launched OpenAcademic, which offers free software support for "learners, teachers, and institutions". (Thanks to Academic Commons.) From the site:
The OpenAcademic project is about options. We strive to provide a broad selection of tools that meet an array of needs within an institution. People learn and work differently, and the software that supports that work needs to be flexible enough to match each user. People shouldn�t need to adjust to a machine.
Some time in the third trimester of 2006 (which starts next month), the Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physics, currently published by Norbert Euler at the Department of Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, will move to Atlantis Press. The journal is OA now and will remain OA after the transition. (Thanks to Ahmed Hindawi.)
Hindawi launches five more OA journals
Hindawi Publishing has added five more OA journals to its collection. From today's announcement:
Hindawi Publishing Corporation is pleased to announce the addition of five new titles to its growing collection of open access journals. The launch of these new titles is an important step in Hindawi's effort to provide high-quality open access journals in all major areas of science, technology, and medicine. PS: Three of these journals are new launches (first, second, fourth), and the other are acquisitions that Hindawi has converted to OA. Kudos to Hindawi on its steady, relentless progress.
I just mailed the August issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue --my 100th-- takes a close look at 10 lessons drawn from five major funder OA policies or proposals (NIH, Wellcome Trust, RCUK, CURES, and FRPAA). The Top Stories section takes a brief look at the OA practices of the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance, the OA-oriented Rice University Press and MediaCommons, the new Gates Foundation data-sharing requirement, the provost letter in support of FRPAA, and continuing news and comment on the new RCUK policy.
Google Library may add U of California's 34 million volumes
Larry Gordon, UC May Join Google's Library Project, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2006. Excerpt:
Comment. This is significant for many reasons. UC has the world's largest collection. It's not waiting for the lawsuits against the Google Library project to be resolved. If it joins, it will be the first since the lawsuits were filed, which may open the door for other institutions to join. Its lawyers think Google may lawfully scan copyrighted books, not just public-domain books. It will be the first institution to participate in both Google Library and the Open Content Alliance. And it may negotiate for a cut of Google's revenues from the program. Another scientific society launches an OA journal
The Journal of the European Optical Society: Rapid Publications is a new peer-reviewed, OA journal from the European Optical Society. (Thanks to Yan Feng.) From the editorial in the inaugural issue:
[I]n contrast to most other journals, the copyright of the published paper remains with the author. This is in line with European law that favours the rights of authors. The only requirement of JEOS:RP is the consent of the author not to publish the paper in another journal, book or other publication means within the first twelve months after publication in JEOS:RP....A second point I would like to bring to your attention is the author fee system. For an open-access journal like JEOS:RP, a fee from the author is indispensable to cover the cost of editing the journal. The European Optical Society has been able to fix this fee at a very low level. The basic fee is 400 [Euros]; full members and branch members of EOS receive a discount of 50 . The length of a submitted paper does not play a role. PS: Congratulations to the European Optical Society, which joins the small but growing list of scientific societies with OA journals. Connnecting open source with open data
Jo Walsh, Why open geodata in an open source software foundation? Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog, August 1, 2006. Excerpt:
Help an OA digitization project
The Society for General Microbiology is digitizing the back issues of its four journals for open access, but can't find copies of all of them. Look at its list of missing issues and help this OA project if you can.
SHERPA is hiring for two positions. From today's announcement:
Help us to open access to the world's research. Two motivated self-starters are required to work in the highly successful SHERPA consortium developing open access web projects. These are high-profile posts and the successful candidates will learn from, and contribute to, national and international developments in the Open Access movement. They will be primarily involved in the DRIVER project, developing a European infrastructure for Open Access to research. The work will involve analysis of funding bodies, universities and research institutions across Europe, identifying stakeholders and producing advocacy strategies and materials to help promote Open Access repositories. These posts will involve some travel within the UK and abroad.... Version 63 of Bailey Bibliography
Charles W. Bailey Jr. has released version 63 of his monumental Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. The new version cites and organizes over 2,730 print and online articles, books, and other sources on scholarly electronic publishing.
Nature's society journals will open back issues
NPG journals to open access to online archives, a press release from the Nature Publishing Group, August 1, 2006. (Thanks to Gary Price.) Excerpt:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce that its academic and society journals will be opening access to all online content published before January 2003. The archives will be accessible from January 2007. A new prize for OA archaeology
Eric Kansa, Open Archaeology Prize, Digging Digitally, July 31, 2006. Excerpt:
Comment. This is a great way to stimulate good scholarship, bring OA to the attention of young scholars, and (above all) mix the two and ensure that some of the best new scholarship is also OA. Organizations in other disciplines should adapt the idea to their own fields. Kudos to the AAI. Special issue on institutional repositories
The new issue of Program: electronic library and information systems (vol. 40, no. 3, 2006) is devoted to institutional repositories. All nine articles should be useful to IR maintainers, but the four below are the most germane to my focus here (more on OA to research, less on preservation and technical topics). The journal only provides abstracts free online, though in her editorial in this issue, Lucy Tedd encourages authors to self-archive. (Thanks to Stuart Lewis.)
Eight consumer groups have joined the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and pledged their support for FRPAA. From today's announcement:
Eight consumer groups have announced their support for the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S.2695)....Consumer groups add their voices to those of universities, libraries, researchers, publishers, and patients � together representing thousands of individuals and institutions � that support the bill. New issue of Information Services and Use
The new issue of Information Services and Use (vol. 26, no. 1, 2006) is now online. Here are the OA-related articles --only abstracts are free online, at least so far.
Library of Congress lowers expectations for World Digital Library
LC Union Warns About Google, Restates Core Mission, Library Journal, July 31, 2006. A short, unsigned news story. Excerpt:
Public interest v. publisher interest
Stevan Harnad, Optimality, Inevitability, and Conflicts of Interest, Open Access Archivangelism, July 30, 2006.
Summary: There is undeniably a conflict of interest today between what is best for both the research community and the public that funds it, on the one hand, and what is best for the publishing community, on the other. Nor is there any doubt about how this conflict of interest can and will be resolved: Open Access. The only thing at issue is how long the optimal and inevitable can and will be delayed, and how to reach it as soon as possible. Australia increases funding for six e-research projects
Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) has announced a $15 million enhancement to six collaborative e-research programs. From today's press release:
The six participating projects are:
Contract to run UKPMC announced
From a press release issued today by the British Library:
Scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research at the touch of a button thanks to a major new initiative that aims to promote the free transfer of ideas in a bid to speed up scientific discovery. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences. Comments.
Update. JISC has issued a press release (August 1) on its own role as one of the nine funders of UKPMC.
Les Carr has used Rollyo (Roll your own search engine) to create a search engine for the 25 most populated UK institutional repositories.
Luis Ibáñez, Rick Avila, and Stephen Aylward, Open Source and Open Science: How it is Changing the Medical Imaging Community, in Biomedical Imaging: Macro to Nano, 2006: 3rd IEEE International Symposium, IEEE, April 6, 2006, pp. 690-693. (Thanks to Ahmed Hindawi.) Not even an abstract of the version published in the volume of conference proceedings is free online, at least so far, but here's the abstract of the version presented at the conference:
The Open Science movement advances the idea that the results of scientific research must be made available as public resource. Limiting access to scientific information hinders innovation, complicates validation, and wastes valuable socio-economic resources. Open Science is an efficient way of overcoming the nearsightedness of the contemporary obsession with intellectual property. The practice of Open Science is based on three pillars: Open Access, Open Data, and Open Source. Given that the practice of medical image research pertains to a field that affects the health condition of the public, it is of paramount importance to introduce the concepts of Open Science in domains such as animal research, drug discovery, clinical trials, computer assisted diagnosis and computer assisted treatment. From the body of the paper: Open Source, Open Access and Open Data make possible to restore the openness that must characterize the endeavor of scientific research but that unfortunately has been lost in the ambitious quest for ownership of intellectual property. This openness brings both ethical and technical advantages to the practice of scientific research, which is of foremost importance in the domain of medical imaging, where public funds are commonly invested with the purpose of improving the health care delivered to the population.
More on OA podcasts of lectures
Obadiah Tarzan Greenberg has blogged some notes about OA lecture podcasts, primarily at UC Santa Cruz but also at a few other institutions in California, Taiwan, and Australia.
Stevan Harnad, CERN's Historic Role in Open Access, Open Access Archivangelism, July 29, 2006.
Summary: CERN has been one of the scholarly/scientific world's leaders in designing and implementing one of the first, and still the biggest and most successful institutional self-archiving policies: an institutional self-archiving mandate. As a result, CERN’s Institutional Repository (IR) is well on the way to housing -- and thereby providing Open Access to -- 100% of CERN's own current published research article output (and soon its past output too). CERN has also designed CDS Invenio, a software package for creating Open Access Institutional Repositories. CERN is promoting its software (for "digital library management") but not promoting its exemplary self-archiving policy: Instead of first making sure that the rest of the research world follows CERN's own sterling example by self-archiving 100% of each institution's own respective research output, so as to make 100% of research worldwide OA, CERN is busy promoting the conversion of the world to Open Access publishing! Charity may begin at home, but it does not end there! CERN should be helping to convert the world to 100% OA before trying to reform publishing. If and when CERN does put its considerable weight and energy behind propagating its self-archiving policy to the rest of the world, then CERN and its CDS invenio software too will have earned for themselves, alongside the University of Southampton and its GNU EPrints software, the status of "World’s Best Practice" infsofar as OA IRs are concerned. PS: Don't forget that Tim Berners-Lee developed the the world wide web standards and technologies at CERN in 1990 and with CERN's permission and support released them to the public domain in 1991. Without that, OA today would be limited to USENET, BITNET, or Gopher. For the provosts: beyond the open letter to institutional policies
Stevan Harnad, Putting Principled Support Into Practice: What Provosts Need to Mandate, Open Access Archivangelism, July 29, 2006. Excerpt:
Long-standing members of the American Scientist Open Access Forum will recognize some exceedingly familiar themes voiced (at long last) in the...2006 Open Letter by 25 US University Provosts in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). But having now expressed their support for the federal self-archiving mandate, there is absolutely no need for the provosts to wait for the Act's adoption to act! This would be an excellent time for each to put their support into practice by adopting an institutional self-archiving mandate of their own, at their own institution (and registering it in ROARMAP for other institutions to emulate). Annotation tool for OA scholarship
Textensor has announced the first beta release of Notate. Excerpt:
Notate is a web-based tool for annotating and tagging words and phrases within documents. It creates a searchable index of all the annotations you make and displays the annotations against the text they refer to when you revisit a site. Annotations can be kept private or can be shared within a group such as a lab or journal club.... |