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Another journal converts to OA The British Journal of Healthcare Computing & Information Management has moved to a new publisher (Birchley Hall Press) and converted to OA at the same time. For more details, see the June 18 announcement. Birchley Hall Press also publishes the OA journal, Medical Technology Business Europe. Measuring the "added value" of copy editing Alma Swan, What a difference a publisher makes, Optimal Scholarship, July 7, 2007. Excerpt;
The US National Library of Medicine (NLM) has joined the Digital Library Federation (DLF). For details, see the blogged announcement by Peter Brantley, the Executive Director of the DLF. Excerpt:
Do recent OA journals last longer than recent TA journals? Heather Morrison, Are open access journals ten times more likely to survive? Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, July 6, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For some data on the mortality rate of the first generation of OA journals --those launched between 1994 and 2004-- see Walt Crawford's two-part study (Part I, Part II) from October 2006 (or my blogged excerpt). New OA journal of social sciences The International Journal of Social Sciences is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. Its first issue isn't out yet, but it already has a general call for papers and a specific call for papers for a special issue to appear in Vol. 2 (February 2008). New OA journal of physics students The Journal of Physics Students is a new peer-reviewed OA journal. It hasn't yet published its inaugural issue but is now circulating a call for papers. From its Open Letter to Supervisors:
More on the pricing crisis and the OA alternative Steffan Heuer, Mash-ups f�r Professoren, Technology Review, July 6, 2007. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) Read the German original or Google's English. Attitudes toward OA journals in South Africa Allison Fullard, South African responses to Open Access publishing: a survey of the research community, South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science, 73, 1, (2007) pp. 40-50. Self-archived, July 7, 2007.
More on OA and the new German copyright law Monika Ermert, German Parliament Reforms Copyright Law, Leaves Unfinished Work, IP Watch, July 6, 2007. This is a very detailed, English-language account of the new bill. Here's what she says about its implications for OA:
Draft Kronberg declaration on knowledge sharing The UNESCO High Level Group of Visionaries on Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing met in Kronberg/Taunis, Germany, on June 22-23, 2007. One result of the meeting is the draft Kronberg Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing, which focuses more on education than research. (Thanks to John Daly.) Excerpt from the current draft:
Also see the meeting's working document, program and participants, and the home page the group established for The Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing. Comments.
South African bill would change IP rules for publicly-funded research Eve Gray, A new draft bill on IP rights in publicly funded research, Gray Area, July 5, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. Eve is right that the bill focuses on patents and doesn't directly regulate public access to publicly-funded research. However, it does regulate the copyright on works reporting patentable discoveries and appears to assign such copyrights and the associated patents to the discoverer's institution. This could well affect public access to articles reporting the discoveries. Report on London OA conference Evelyn Harvey, Momentum and meritocracy: Open Access as a model for the future? Nature Network, June 25, 2007. Excerpt:
German society signs the Berlin Declaration Germany's Gesellschaft f�r Informatik e.V. has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. Upgrade for mixed open/closed pharma database Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) has launched an upgrade to its pharma database with both free and priced datasets. From yesterday's press release:
Download milestone for BMC article Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Open access article on consensus definition of acute renal failure has been accessed more than 100,000 times, BioMed Central blog, July 6, 2007. Hrynaszkiewicz is BMC's in-house Editor of Critical Care. Excerpt:
New German copyright law impedes research access Stefan Krempl, German parliament passes new Copyright Act, Heise Online, July 6, 2007. Excerpt:
Open content licensing for govt info The Queensland government in Australia has released a major new report, Government Information and Open Content Licensing: An Access and Use Strategy Government Information Licensing Framework Project prepared by the Queensland Spatial Information Council. Although it's dated October 2006, it was not released until June 2007. Excerpt:
More on momentum for OA mandates Ted Agres, 'Open access' opening wider, The Scientist, July 5, 2007. Excerpt:
New OA journal of Marxism and interdisciplinary inquiry New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry is a new peer-reviewed OA journal sponsored by the University of British Columbia Library and Department of Anthropology. The inaugural issue appeared in May. Also see its blog. (Thanks to antropologi.info.)
Presentations from Rome OA conference The presentations from the conference, Institutional archives for research: experiences and projects in Open Access (Rome, November 30 - December 1, 2006), are now online. All are OA-related and most are in English. (Thanks to Paola De Castro.) Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has released report summarizing its Internet & Society 2007 Conference (Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 31 - June 1, 2007). Excerpt:
Registry of open-knowledge projects The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) has officially launched its Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN). From yesterday's announcement:
The state of OA in the Nordic countries Turid Hedlund and Ingegerd Rabow, Open Access in the Nordic Countries: A State of the Art Report, Nordbib, undated. The authors' preface is signed February 28, 2007, but the report was announced today. From the report summary:
Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education has officially announced its conversion to an OA journal. From the announcement:
Society publishers should embrace OA Chris Armbruster, Society Publishing, the Internet and Open Access: Shifting Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to Certification and Navigation Services? A preprint, self-archived July 5, 2007.
From the body of the paper:
Language Documentation & Conservation is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the National Foreign Language Resource Center and the University of Hawai'i Press. The inaugural issue is now online. (Thanks to Language Log.) Also see Paul Newman's article from the inaugural issue, Copyright Essentials for Linguists:
Comment. Newman makes a good point, but leaves a false impression, in answering Question 10: "If I take an article from a free, open-access online journal, is it fair to assume that I can use the material for whatever academic purposes I want?" He correctly says that OA journals are still under copyright and that, in the absence of a CC license or equivalent, users will be limited to fair use. What he could have added is that most OA journals do use a CC license or equivalent. Hence, it usually is safe to assume that OA journals expressly permit scholarly uses beyond fair use. The presentations (abstracts and/or full texts) for the upcoming First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference (Vancouver, July 11-13, 2007) are now online. More than 20 explicitly address OA. Elsevier invites Google and Google Scholar to index its journals Peter Brantley, Science Direct-ly into Google, O'Reilly Radar, July 3, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA textbooks, esp. in India Frederick Noronha, Now obtain free textbooks - online! India eNews, July 5, 2007. Excerpt:
Higher impact factors for Hindawi's OA journals The impact factors for Hindawi's OA journals increased by an average of 14% last year. From today's announcement:
Progress toward OA for Indian ETDs Anup Kumar Das, B. K. Sen, and Chaitali Dutta, ETD Policies, Strategies and Initiatives in India: a Critical Appraisal, a presentation at ETD 2007 (Uppsala, June 13-16, 2007).
Plain-text access to Google-scanned PD books Bethany Poole, Greater access to public domain works for all users, Inside Google Book Search, July 3, 2007. Excerpt:
Comments.
New OA journal of choice modelling The Journal of Choice Modelling is a new peer-reviewed no-fee OA journal. (Thanks to Decision Science News.) It hasn't published its inaugural issue yet, but has released a launch announcement and call for papers. John Dupuis, Interview with Timo Hannay, Head of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Confessions of a Science Librarian, July 3, 2007. Excerpt:
Access levels for ecology articles in Google Scholar Marilyn Christianson, Ecology Articles in Google Scholar: Levels of Access to Articles in Core Journals, Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Winter 2007.
American Physiological Society launches hybrid journal program The American Physiological Society has launched a hybrid OA journal program called Author Choice. From the June 29 announcement:
From the Author Choice FAQ:
The FAQ doesn't indicate the average author fees, but the copyright transfer agreement for Physiological Genomics requires page charges of $70 per printed page and color charges of $400 per figure. No waivers are allowed. Hence a 10 page paper with two figures would incur page and color fees of $1,500, and an Author Choice fee of $2,000, for a total of $3,500. Comment. Like other hybrid OA journal program, this one is welcome to the extent that it enlarges the body of peer-reviewed OA literature. Unfortunately I'm not optimistic. Author Choice meets none of my nine criteria for a hybrid journal policy:
Update. Also see the short article on Author Choice in Library Journal Academic Newswire for July 10. Excerpt: The option is also a necessary move for APS, which relies heavily on income from its journals. In a report published in its newsletter, The Physiologist, APS officials noted that subscription revenue accounted for 58 percent of all revenue and "publication revenue," accounted for 83 percent, revenue streams that have been under increasing pressure recently. "This revenue was seen to be at risk because of the activities of advocates of the OA movement," the report states. Offering an OA option will "diversify" APS's publishing revenue streams. CMAJ editors congratulate OM editors The editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) have published Congratulations to our colleagues at Open Medicine, July 3, 2007. Excerpt:
The editors at Open Medicine have published a response:
Comment. The CMAJ editorial is a strong argument for OA to medical research. It's also a gracious olive branch to the editors of OM, especially in light of the past friction between the principals. I wish the OM response had acknowledged the olive branch, and not just the argument for OA, before making the correct and important point that OA removes permission barriers, not just price barriers. Update. Also see Chris Surridge's post on the PLoS Blog. OA to the author's peer-reviewed manuscript v. OA to the published edition David Goodman, Sarah Dowson, and Jean Yaremchuk, Open access and accuracy: author-archived manuscripts vs. published articles, an OA (self-archived) edition of an article that appeared in July 2007 issue of Learned Publishing.
Special issue of Encontros Biblio on open archives The Brazilian journal Encontros Biblio has published a special issue on Tecnologia da Informa��o e Arquivos Abertos [Technology of information and open archives]. Although all but one of the articles are in Portuguese only, I'm using their English titles here. The exception is the Harnad interview, which is published in both English and Portuguese:
Ronald Bailey, News Ages Quickly: Scientific publishing moves into the 21st century at last, Reason Online, July 3, 2007. Bailey opens with some historical perspective:
Then he reviews some major OA initiatives (arXiv, PubMed Central, BioMed Central, SPARC, DOAJ, the NIH policy, and Nature Precedings) and concludes:
Michael Barton of Bioinformatics Zen has launched a wiki on open science. (Thanks to Frank Gibson.) How well are mass digitization projects serving scholars? Peter Brantley, Scholarship and Mass Digitization, O'Reilly Radar, June 28, 2007. (Thanks to DigitalKoans.) Excerpt:
Update. For more on CLIR's Mellon grant, see the short write-up in CLIR Issues for July/August 2007. From the same issue, also see CLIR's call for comments on its forthcoming white paper (available August 22, 2007) on preserving the digital results of mass-digitization projects.
Indian OA journal and Nature discuss a partnership Divya Gandhi, Current Science, Nature in tie-up, The Hindu, July 3, 2007.
Comments.
Update. I asked Timo Hannay (Director of Web Publishing at Nature) whether I missed any of Nature's OA projects or experiments in my list above. He replied:
Miriam Drake, "Open Access: The Yellow Brick Road, Its Walls, and Speed Bumps," Searcher, July/August 2007. Only this blurb is free online, at least so far:
Brian Kelly, Scott Wilson, and Randy Metcalfe, Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access, a paper presented at ElPub 2007 (Vienna, June 13-15, 2007).
More on the Science Commons and SPARC author addenda Tracey Caldwell, Commons copyright targets scientists, Information World Review, June 5, 2007. Excerpt:
Publishers oppose strengthening the NIH policy, again The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has released a June 25 letter from a group of society publishers to members of Congress. The letter opposes appropriations bills now before Congress that would strengthen the NIH public access policy by converting it from a request to a requirement. The publisher arguments are old, tired, and weak, and Congress now sees through them: an OA mandate at NIH will kill peer review; it will violate copyright; there's no need to compromise since publishers provide all the added value here and taxpayers none of it; European countries are not really adopting similar policies; researchers don't want it; the compliance rate with the current voluntary policy is not as dismal as it looks; and bad as the proposal is, it duplicates what publishers are already doing. I won't write a detailed rebuttal to this letter. But for detailed rebuttals to very similar past letters, see my March 30, 2007, response to a March 26 AAP letter opposed to strengthening the NIH policy, or my May 10, 2006, response to a May 9 AAP letter opposed to FRPAA . Note to researchers: If your society signed this letter and didn't discuss the question first in an open forum with members, then ask your leaders why not. Make your views known now --in blogs, discussion lists, emails to colleagues, society meetings, and society publications. Elect leaders who consult the membership on important policy questions, who want the society to act more like a research organization than a commercial publisher, and who will stop spending society funds to lobby Congress to thwart the public interest in public access to publicly-funded research. NIEHS re-commits to its OA journal NIEHS vows "full support" of journal; skeptics wait for check to clear, Society of Environmental Journalists WatchDog TipSheet, June 29, 2007. (Thanks to Mike Lotz.) Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my earlier blog posts on Environmental Health Perspectives. Legal guide to data access and reuse Australia's Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project has released a major (258 pp.) new report by Anne Fitzgerald and Kylie Pappalardo, Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse In Collaborative Research: An Analysis of the Legal Context (June 2007). From the Executive Summary: This Report examines the broad legal framework within which research data is generated, managed, disseminated and used. The background to the Report is the growing support for systems that enable research data generated in publicly-funded research projects to be made available for access and use by others in the research community.
New OA journal on infection in developing countries The Journal of Infection in Developing Countries (JIDC) is a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by Open Learning on Enteric Pathogens. (Thanks to Afrihealth Optonet Association.) Notes on the Bloomsbury e-publishing conference Chris Armstrong has blogged some notes (Day 1 and Day 2) on the First Bloomsbury conference on E-Publishing and E-Publications (London, June 28-29, 2007). Excerpt from his notes on Day 2:
Pushing for OA to law in the UK and Ireland The state of Open Access to Law in the UK and Ireland, TwitchGamer.net, July 2, 2007. Excerpt:
OA publishing in the life sciences William H. Walters and Esther Isabelle Wilder, "The Cost Implications of Open-access Publishing in the Life Sciences," BioScience, July/August, 2007. I link to the journal, not the article, because not even a TOC or abstract is free online, at least so far. Update (7/18/07). The article is now OA from the publisher. German UNESCO Commission endorses OA The German UNESCO Commission (Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission or DUK) adopted a resolution in support of OA on June 28. The resolution calls for OA to publicly-funded research. (Thanks to the Informationsplattform Open Access.) Read the resolution in the original German or in Google's English. PS: Also see the DUK's OA Handbook published earlier in June. I just mailed the July issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at the problems OA solves, the opportunities it seizes, and the importance of remembering the difference. The round-up section briefly notes 110 OA developments from June.
Rector of U of Oslo supports OA Geir Ellingsrud, B�r forskningen demokratiseres? A presentation (in Norwegian) supporting OA at Forskerforbundet (Oslo, June 13, 2007). Ellingsrud is the Rector of Oslo University. Here's a short summary of the conference presentations, also in Norwegian. Thanks to Caroline Sutton for the alert and for this English translation of the summary of Ellingsrud's talk:
Richard Poynder interviews Stevan Harnad Richard Poynder, The OA Interviews: Stevan Harnad, Open and Shut? July 1, 2007. Even by the standard of Poynder's rich, detailed interviews, this one is unusually long and comprehensive (53 pages). Since I can't capture its detail in an excerpt, I'll just capture the introduction. Read the rest for Harnad's thoughts on OA strategy, his argumentative style, criticism of OA and criticism of his style, his concrete contributions to OA beyond advocacy, and how OA fits into his wider academic interests on the evolution of language and cognition. Excerpt:
Two new reports on OA to public info in the UK Michael Cross, Government on the back foot over policies for pricing data, The Guardian, June 28, 2007. Excerpt:
Open source biology in our future Freeman Dyson, Our Biotech Future, New York Times Review of Books, July 19, 2007. An important and wide-ranging essay. By focusing on the OA connection, I'm regrettably truncating it:
OSTI E-print Network mirrored to Internet Archive Trudy Walsh, OSTI archives scientific data on the Web, GCN, June 29, 2007. Excerpt:
OA abstracts create demand for OA full-texts John Willinsky and Mia Quint-Rapoport, How Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners Use PubMed, Journal of Medical Internet Research, June 29, 2007. From the abstract:
From the body of the paper:
Trashing of EPA libraries may be halted, reversed Norman Oder, Senate Committee Funds Restoration of EPA Library Network, Library Journal, June 29, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my earlier posts on the gutting of the EPA libraries. Heather Morrison, Dramatic Growth of Open Access June 2007 Update, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, June 30, 2007. Excerpt:
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