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Blog notes on repository workshop
Ian Stuart, Understanding Organisational Cultures, the workshop, The thoughts of a Code Gorilla, September 10, 2008. Blog notes on Understanding Organisational Cultures: Impact on Repository Growth and Development (Cranfield, England, September 9, 2008).
Survey on repository copyright policies
The University of East Anglia is conducting a survey of copyright-related practices at institutional repositories. The survey will be open until September 30, 2008. (Thanks to Mark Jones.)
25 years of GNU, and what it means for OA
Glyn Moody, The Real Reason to Celebrate GNU's Birthday, open enterprise, September 11, 2008.
Videos from Repository Fringe now online
Videos of the presentations from Repository Fringe (Edinburgh, July 31-August 1, 2008) are now available. (Thanks to Philip Hunter.)
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access added a new section to its site on September 5. The Perspectives page was launched with 4 patient advocates:
SHERPA/RoMEO announced some new features on September 11, 2008:
Wellcome and DBT launch Indian research program with OA mandate Indian biomedical research gets British funding, Times of India, September 11, 2008. (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.) Excerpt:
PS: Also note that the Wellcome/DBT India Alliance is looking for a grants manager. Joseph J. Esposito, Almost Open Access, Publishing Frontier, September 9, 2008. Excerpt:
Update. Also see Stevan Harnad's comments. Excerpt:
Jens Lubbadeh, Monopoly des Wissens, Spiegel Online, September 9, 2008. How the PLoS journals compare favorably to Nature. Read the German original or Google's English. Update. Also see the comments by Klaus Graf, in German or Google's English. OA book series from Co-Action Publishing Co-Action has published its second dual-edition (OA/TA) book, Gloria Gallardo's From Seascapes of Extinction to Seascapes of Confidence, showing a commitment to a series. Its first OA/TA book appeared in May 2008. From the press release for Gallardo's book:
Lea Shaver (ed.), Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development, Yale Information Society Project, September 2008. A new book in dual editions (OA/TA), and the first in a series of similar OA/TA books on A2K in different countries. It's published under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. From the announcement:
The book was announced at the A2K3 Conference in Geneva on September 10. The OA edition is available for downloading now, and the print edition will be available for sale on Open Access Day (October 14, 2008). More on filling your institutional repository Dorothea Salo, Feeding Mr. Blue, Caveat Lector, September 9, 2008. Excerpt:
The University of Zurich has posted Open Access und ZORA, a 10 minute video (in German) on ZORA, the university's OA repository. (Thanks to Technik Forschung.) Stevan Harnad, Too Much Ado About PDF, Open Access Archivangelism, September 12, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. I agree, as far as this goes. But I'd draw one distinction and then go further. We should distinguish the final text from the final file format. When possible, we should self-archive the final text. But even then, when possible, we should not self-archive the PDF. If publishers have their reasons for producing PDFs of their published articles, they could (as many do now) at least offer alternate formats as well, such as HTML, ODF, or XML. Hj�lmar G�slason has launched Opin g�gn, a wiki on open data in Iceland. (Thanks to Jonathan Gray.) PS: For background, see G�slason's article from last month, The Case for Open Access to Public Sector Data (and my blog post about it). Richard Poynder interviews Annette Holtkamp Richard Poynder, The Open Access Interviews: Annette Holtkamp, Open and Shut? September 12, 2008. Another of Poynder's far-reaching and detailed interviews, ranging from the the prehistory of OA, and how SPIRES evolved into INSPIRE, to SCOAP3, open data, the affinities of physicists for OA, and Holtkamp's speculations on the future of open science. (Also see Poynder's August 2008 article about INSPIRE and my blog post about it.) Excerpt:
Transcript of OKF chat meeting The Open Knowledge Foundation has posted the transcript of its IRC meeting on September 10, 2008. The topics (from the email announcement):
Update (9/15/08). OKF's Jonathan Gray wrote to tell me that the meetings are every Wednesday and open to everyone. (Thanks, Jonathan.) Blog notes on Science21 conference
Cathy Bogaart, untitled blog post, my life, by webgoddesscathy, September 9, 2008.
Right now I'm sitting in a session about Open Access in science at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo [Science in the 21st Century: Science, Society, and Information Technology, Waterloo, Canada (September 8-12, 2008)]. CanLII, OA law database, the most-used resource for Canadian lawyers
Michel-Adrien Sheppard, CanLII Survey, Library Boy, September 9, 2008.
According to a survey earlier this year commissioned by the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII), the open access legal database is the electronic legal resource most frequently used by lawyers across Canada. Anthropology museum to provide OA to entire collection
Wake Forest University's Anthropology Museum to unveil online database of entire collection, press release, September 9, 2008. (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)
Open Journal Systems has been translated into Farsi. A plugin for the Persian calendar is also available.
Study recommends OA for patent info
Toward a New Era of Intellectual Property: From Confrontation to Negotiation, report of the International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property, September 2008. (Thanks to Michael Geist.)
... Recommendation 15: Industry and patent offices around the world should collect patent-related information in a standard form and make this available to the public for free. Data should include information that will assist in assessing patent landscapes in targeted areas of technology, such as essential medicines. Patent databases should be linked so that a user can identify not only the patents in one country but related patents in other countries. These databases should be easily searchable. ... Unintended consequences of the publishers' anti-OA bill Michael Carroll, Attacking Public Access Through the Copyright Act, Carrollogos, September 12, 2008. Carroll is a Visiting Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law, and a member of the Board of Creative Commons. Excerpt:
Comment. This is very helpful. But it raises some new questions. Did the Judiciary Committee intend to amend public procurement law or any other federal law unrelated to public access for publicly-funded research? Who will gain and who will lose by the amendment to procurement law, and do the losers know about this bill? Labels: Hot More on the Conyers bill to overturn the NIH policy Greg Piper, "Open-Access Research Helps Public Without Hurting Publishers, House IP Hears," Washington Internet Daily, September 12, 2008 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
Comment. Some valuable detail not reported elsewhere. Just one quibble: "The public's right to government-funded health research online was weighed against publishers' intellectual-property rights...." This would be more accurate if it referred to publishers' IP interests, or financial interests, rather than to their IP rights. Publishers don't have any IP rights in NIH-funded research except the rights that NIH-funded authors voluntarily transfer to them. Publishers want those rights, but they don't already have them and they don't have a right to demand them. Turf politics and the fate of the NIH policy Andrew Noyes, House Judiciary chairman slams Appropriations panel over jurisdiction, Government Executive, September 12, 2008. Excerpt:
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Update. Not only has Berman not endorsed the Conyers bill, but he publicly opposes it. See Andrea Gawrylewski in TheScientist (September 12, 2008):
Labels: Hot AAUP also wants to overturn the NIH policy The American Association of University Presses has released its September 10 letter to the Congressional sponsors of the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. Excerpt:
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Labels: Hot More on the arguments to overturn the NIH policy Jocelyn Kaiser, Congressional Committee Moves to Block NIH Public Access Policy, Science Magazine, September 11, 2008. Excerpt:
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Labels: Hot The ACS supports the bill to overturn the NIH policy The American Chemical Society also supports the Conyers bill to overturn the NIH policy. No surprise there. Susan R. Morrissey has details in the September 11 issue of Chemical & Engineering News:
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Labels: Hot More on the publishing lobby's rejection of compromise Jennifer Howard, Congressional Hearing Over Public Access Filled With High Drama, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 2008 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
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Update. Here's an OA version of the article. Labels: Hot APA finalizes its no-fee green policy The American Psychological Association has finalized its self-archiving policy after a two-month re-examination. If you remember, on July 15, 2008, the APA announced a policy to charge NIH-funded authors $2,500 to deposit their articles in PubMed Central, and to prohibit authors from depositing manuscripts on their own in PMC or any other repository. Even after paying the fee, the APA would not deposit the published version of the article, would not allow OA release for 12 months, would not not allow authors to deposit in any other OA repository, and would not allow authors to retain copyright. After immediate and widespread protest, the APA announced an interim policy on July 19, rescinding the fee, reaffirming the APA's long-standing green policy, and promising to re-examine the policy before making it final. The key paragraph of the final policy is identical to the corresponding paragraph of the interim policy of July 19:
Comment. The new policy is very conservative, but much better than the July 15 original. I'm happy to repeat my response to the July 19 interim policy: "I applaud the APA for reaffirming its green policy for all APA authors, including NIH-funded authors, and I applaud it for dropping the deposit fee." Labels: Hot
International participation in Open Access Day
The Open Access Day blog has a post on How can international folks get involved?:
More on today's hearing in the Judiciary Committee Library Journal Academic Newswire has two stories on today's hearing on the Conyers bill to overturn the NIH policy: New Bill Would Forbid Copyright Transfer as a Condition for Federal Funding. Excerpt:
At Hearing, Witness Says NIH Policy Will �Destroy� Commercial Scientific Publishing. Excerpt:
Cory Doctorow's "Content", includes essays on free books
Cory Doctorow's latest book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, was released on September 9, 2008. An OA edition is available for download. The book includes essays on topics including OA books.
More coverage the Access to Knowledge 3 (A2K3) Conference (Geneva, September 8-10, 2008):
Australian govt report recommends OA, CC
The Australian government on September 9 released the final report of its Review of the National Innovation System. (Thanks to Creative Commons.) The official title is VenturousAustralia but most Australians are calling it the Cutler Report. The report includes this recommendation:
... Australian governments should adopt international standards of open publishing as far as possible. Material released for public information by Australian governments should be released under a creative commons licence. ...See also this article about the report from Australian Life Scientist. See also our past posts on Senator Kim Carr, Australia's Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, who commissioned the report. Update. See also Stevan Harnad's comments. Update (PS). See these specific recommendations from the report (thanks to Glen Newton):
And some of these reflections:
Also see the transcript of a speech given by Kim Carr on September 9. Excerpt:
Also see coverage and comment by Michael Geist, Michael Jubb, and Kate McDonald. Labels: Hot
Donna Wentworth, Toward a global platform for open science, Science Commons blog, September 8, 2008.
See also our past posts on the NeuroCommons project. OA advocate wins $250,000 Heinz Award
Molecular biologist honored with $250,000 Heinz Award, press release, September 9, 2008.
... Dr. Joseph DeRisi, 38, of San Francisco, Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the world's foremost researchers in the application of molecular genomics to the study of infectious disease, is among five distinguished Americans selected to receive one of the $250,000 [Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment] awards, presented by the Heinz Family Foundation.See also Jonathan Eisen, who gives DeRisi his Open Access Pioneer Award. See also our previous post on DeRisi. Two public statements from the anti-OA lobby The DC Principles Coalition (DCPC) and the Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released their joint letter to the House sponsors of the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (FCRWA), September 10, 2008. This came out before today's hearing on the bill. One of the letter's co-authors, Martin Frank, was a witness at the hearing. Excerpt:
Also see the Statement on the FCRWA from Patrick Ross, Executive Director of the Copyright Alliance, September 10, 2008. Excerpt:
Comments
Update. Also see the AAP/PSP press release on the new bill, and the DCPC press release on Martin Frank's testimony, both September 11, 2008. Update (9/19/08). The American Institute of Physics also supports the Conyers bill. See the summary of its position, its arguments, and its September 11 letter to the Judiciary Committee. Labels: Hot Publisher simplifies contract for NIH employees
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has revised its journals' publication agreements to automatically include the cover sheet used by authors employed by the National Institutes of Health, for authors so employed. The change does not affect NIH grantees. (Thanks to George Porter.)
Google Scholar starts to flag gratis OA content Klaus Graf points out (by email) that Google has started to mark some gratis OA resources with a right-pointing green triangle. I've run some tests of my own. It's true. Google doesn't come close to marking all the gratis OA resources, but at least it's marking some. Perhaps the coverage will improve with time. I haven't found any explanation of the new feature at the site. Here are some sample searches:
Note the first item on the return list for this search: The green triangle points to a version of an article with a Google address. Is Google also entering the OA archiving business? Update (9/15/08). Also see Stuart Lewis' comments:
Update (11/21/08). Also see John Willinsky's comments. Excerpt:
Dramatic Growth of OA series now in Japanese
Heather Morrison's Dramatic Growth of Open Access series is now available in Japanese. See the blog post here.
Most of the presentations from the A2K3 Conference (Geneva, September 8-10, 2008) are now online (see bottom half of the left sidebar). The rest will be put up shortly. More on attempts to undo the NIH policy
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a hearing on the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, H.R. 6845. The text of the legislation was introduced on September 9. The legislation would overturn the National Institutes of Health's mandatory public access policy.
The witness' written testimony is now available:
Comment.
Labels: Hot
Google to digitize newspaper archives
Punit Soni, Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time, The Official Google Blog, September 8, 2008.
... Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. ...See also the article in the New York Times. Update. See also this article in Information Today: [T]he company has offered free digitization to any newspaper publisher willing to put all or any part of its archives onto the web for access through Google News Archive. ...
Contemplating the impacts of OA on journals
Michael E. Smith, What if the Society for American Archaeology were to make its journals Open Access?, Publishing Archaeology, September 7, 2008.
What would be the positive and negative impacts if the [Society for American Archaeology] were to transform its scholarly journals ... from Toll Access to Open Access (�OA�)? This entry is a thought experiment whose purpose is to stimulate thinking about OA issues. ...
Aaron Lercher, A Survey of Attitudes About Digital Repositories Among Faculty at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, September 2008. See also the author's self-archived version. Abstract:
This paper gives the result of a 2007 survey of faculty at eight academic departments at Louisiana State University, asking them about the usefulness for their needs of an extension of the scholarly communication system by digital repositories. New OA journal of emerging health threats
Emerging Health Threats Journal is a new peer-reviewed OA journal on emerging threats to human health. The journal is published by the Emerging Health Threats Forum. Authors retain copyright, and articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence.
See the inaugural editorial:
... Open access journals have become increasingly popular, with a number of professional associations and organisations making their journal article collections either partially or fully available on the Internet. As one of our journal partners, the Wellcome Trust, notes, �the benefits of research are derived principally from access to research results�, and publishing in an open access journal is an effective way to achieve that access for a global audience. A number of authors and funding authorities are taking this further, arguing that ethically all biomedical research should be published open access. Although this is not the forum to have that debate, there is good evidence that open access journals do provide the approach required to get emerging health threats and potential solutions to a wide audience, many of whom may have only limited access to other biomedical journals. There is also a clear citation advantage for open access articles, which should make publishing in the journal attractive to future authors and reviewers. ... Digitization stops at Yale after Microsoft pull-out
Derek Tam, Library digitization efforts stall, Yale Daily News, September 4, 2008.
Talis' Paul Miller has posted a podcast interview with Herbert van de Sompel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory discussing the Open Archives Initiative and repositories. The recording is about an hour long.
New version of Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
Charles Bailey has released Version 73 of his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. See this blog post for information on what's been updated.
Lynch on copyright and academia
The Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland University College has posted OA a chapter from its Handbook. The chapter Cliff Lynch's Copyright Law, Intellectual Property Policy, and Academic Culture, based on a presentation he delivered at UMUC in 2005. (Thanks to Georgia Harper.)
This paper ... examines the interplay between copyright law and academic values. While it identifies a number of areas in which copyright law as currently shaped presents serious barriers to academic inquiry and the research and teaching missions of our universities, the paper also focuses on policy choices that the academic community makes about various rights that are granted under copyright and the very significant ways in which these choices can influence, facilitate, or impede the academic mission within the existing framework. The academy is not simply a victim of current copyright laws and their consequences, however convenient and comforting it may be to fall into that role, and I argue here that it needs to do much more than simply advocate for legislative change and relief; universities can and must take a key leadership role in helping to alleviate many�though certainly not all�of the problems that the current copyright law creates for scholarship by making explicit policy choices that are consistent with fundamental academic values, and they can lead (and, hopefully, help to shape) the broader public thinking about these issues by their example. Some of these choices are difficult, in that they involve renouncing the possibility of enjoying certain (usually in reality nominal) revenue streams in favor of remaining true to fundamental mission imperatives. In this sense, the paper offers an agenda for reflection and self-examination by institutional communities within higher education about intellectual property policy choices and their relationship to fundamental academic values. ...
Scholarly Research Exchange is a new peer-reviewed OA journal publishing work in all areas of science, technology, and medicine. The journal is published by Hindawi. Authors retain copyright, and all articles are published using the Creative Commons Attribution License. There are no article processing charges.
Blogging the third Access to Knowledge conference Several people are live-blogging the Access to Knowledge 3 (A2K3) Conference (Geneva, September 8-10, 2008), which started just a couple of hours ago. The event is sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Follow the talks and comment on them through the conference blog.
The September 3 issue of Nature is a special issue on Big Data.
Community cleverness required, editorial. Excerpt: ... Researchers need to be obliged to document and manage their data with as much professionalism as they devote to their experiments. And they should receive greater support in this endeavour than they are afforded at present. Those publicly funded databases that have taken on preservation responsibilities, such as GenBank and UniProt, are only a small part of the data landscape. Universities and funding agencies need to provide and support curation facilities, tools and training.The next Google. Excerpt: Esther Dyson: I'm on the board of 23andMe of Mountain View, California, which makes genetic information accessible to its owners � and lets them share it for research if they want to. ...David Goldston, Data wrangling. Excerpt: ... Even without a [Bureau of Environmental Statistics], the US government releases a lot of environmental data. Much of this is information to determine compliance with regulations, but increasingly just making data available is seen as a way to encourage companies to clean up their operations. The model for such efforts is the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), established by Congress in 1987, which requires companies to publicly report their annual emissions of certain chemicals. The TRI has resulted in substantial cutbacks in emissions as companies try to 'green' their reputations. ...Mitch Waldrop, Wikiomics. Description: Pioneering biologists are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data, reports Mitch Waldrop. But will the wider research community go along with the experiment?Clifford Lynch, How do your data grow? Excerpt: ... Because digital data are so easily shared and replicated and so recombinable, they present tremendous reuse opportunities, accelerating investigations already under way and taking advantage of past investments in science. ... Blog notes on Rights and Repositories event
Owen Stephens has posted a series of blog notes on JISC's Rights and Repositories Programme Meeting (London, September 5, 2008):
Launch of Bergen Open Access Publishing The University of Bergen has launched Bergen Open Access Publishing (BOAP), a new service to publish OA journals, publish OA monographs, and facilitate OA archiving for several Bergen-area research institutions. It starts life with a list of three OA journals. Read the BOAP home page in Norwegian or Google's English. (Thanks to the OpenAccess.No wiki.) Update (9/16/08). Here's some additional information from Jan Erik Frantsv�g, by email. (Thanks Jan Erik.)
On September 4, the NIH updated the FAQ on its OA policy for the first time since May 2, adding these six important questions:
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