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Survey of electronic publishing trends and practices The Society of National Association Publishers (SNAP) is hosting an online survey of Electronic Publishing Trends and Practices. It would be nice if some OA journals and OA publishers could add their input. Karlin Lillington, University researchers delve into world of digital archiving, Irish Times, March 16, 2007. Excerpt from the OA copy at News for Medievalists:
Explaining low deposit rates at institutional repositories Stevan Harnad, Why Cornell's Institutional Repository Is Near-Empty, Open Access Archivangelism, March 17, 2007. Excerpt:
Stevan Harnad, Don't Count Your (Golden) Chickens Before Your (Green) Eggs Are Laid, Open Access Archivangelism, March 15, 2007. Excerpt:
The right cure for what ails us depends on what ails us Stevan Harnad, Gold Fever and Trojan Folly, Open Access Archivangelism, March 15, 2007. Excerpt:
Backfile of Sino-Japanese journal now OA Konrad Lawson has digitized and provided OA to the entire backfile of Sino-Japanese Studies. From his announcement:
PS: Kudos to Fogel for the permission and kudos to Lawson for the idea and execution.
OA and TA journal pricing models Maggie Wineburgh-Freed, Scholarly E-Journal Pricing Models and Open Access Publishing, Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, March 15, 2007. Only this abstract is free online for non-subscribers, at least so far:
Hindawi Publishing, the OA journal publisher, has joined the group of co-sponsors of ChemRefer, the search engine for OA research in chemistry. Integrating OA content with catalogs, portals, and metasearch tools
Index Data has launched an Open Content service to integrate OA content with library catalogs, information portals, and metasearch systems. From yesterday's announcement:
Microsoft v. Google on copyright I never blogged the speech by Microsoft lawyer, Thomas Rubin, blasting Google for massive copyright infringement. Now that I'm catching up after a long period offline (forced by a double-whammy of hardware and connectivity problems) I won't go back to blog it from scratch. But I've been following the controversy and am happy to recommend excellent comments by James Boyle, Lawrence Lessig, Fred von Lohmann, Jack Schofield, and Danny Sullivan. Richard Poynder, Open Access: The War in Europe, Open and Shut? March 15, 2007. This is another detailed and wide-ranging (32 pp.) Poynder investigation. Focusing primarily on the EC's February Communication on OA, Poynder also discusses the Brussels Declaration, the AAP hiring of Eric Dezenhall, the journal pricing crisis, the financial outlook for full and hybrid OA journals, the CERN project to convert particle physics journals to OA, the HHMI-Elsevier deal, prices charged for gold (and now green) OA, and the imminent re-introduction of FRPAA. I excerpt only Richard's preface:
English translation of French agreement to use HAL for OA archiving Memorandum of understanding for a coordinated approach on a national level to open archiving of scientific output, translated from the French original (July 2006) by INIST-CNRS (March 15, 2007). Excerpt:
How national OA policies will affect libraries The presentations from the SPARC-ACRL forum at the ALA midwinter meeting, Public Access: Federal Research Access Policies and How They'll Change Your Library (Seattle, January 20, 2007), are now online. (Thanks to Adrian Ho.)
OA support at SUNY Stony Brook Lynn Hsieh, Open Access Debate Gains Momentum, The Stony Brook Statesman, March 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Research dissemination policy in South Africa Eve Gray, The State of the Nation 2: Clashing paradigms in South African research publication policy, Gray Area, March 15, 2007. Excerpt:
This post is Part 2. Eve posted Part 1 on February 22, 2007, and I blogged it here on February 24. Met + ARTstor = free scholarly use of images Metropolitan Museum and ARTstor Announce Pioneering Initiative to Provide Digital Images to Scholars at No Charge, a press release from the Met, March 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Catalan Physical Society supports OA
The Catalan Physical Society has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.
Ignasi Labastida Juan tells me that the Society publishes an OA journal, Revista de F�sica, with both a print and online edition. New OA journal on internet research ethics The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) is a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by the Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The first issue is expected in October 2007. More on the trashing of the EPA libraries Glenn McGee has a good update in the March issue of The Scientist on the appalling destruction of the libraries at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Another kind of public funding for public access In yesterday's issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Susanna Ashton offers an appreciation of the public subsidies that allow interlibrary loan to be free of charge for library patrons in the US. Swiss presentations on OA in the humanities and social sciences The presentations from the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences meeting, Open Access: Vom Prinzip zur Umsetzung (Bern, March 1, 2007), are now online. (Thanks to Donat Agosti.) A book publisher's OA manifesto Polimetrica, a publisher of OA monographs, has released an Open Access Manifesto, March 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. Kudos to Polimetrica and especially to Giovanni Sica, its CEO. There's enough evidence now that full-text OA stimulates a net increase in sales, at least for monographs (not necessarily for books of useful snippets like encyclopedias or cookbooks), that I expect to see more monograph publishers follow the lead of the National Academies Press and Polimetrica and commit themselves to OA. Publishers who don't believe that the economics will work for them should experiment --as the American Association of University Presses (AAUP) recommended just last month. Stevan Harnad, US and EU Both Have Petitions for OA Mandates, Open Access Archivangelism, March 14, 2007. Excerpt:
More on the HHMI-Elsevier deal Stevan Harnad, Double-Paying for Optional Gold OA Instead of Mandating Green OA While Subscriptions Are Still Paying for Publication: Trojan Folly, Open Access Archivangelism, March 13, 2007. Excerpt:
Oncologists need better access Time-Starved Oncologists Still Not Receiving Crucial Medical Information, a press release on a recent survey by VerusMed, March 7, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. What is cause and what is effect here? If more clinical oncology information were OA, would more oncologists look online for the information they need? An open online infrastructure for archaeology Eric Kansa, Archaeoinformatics Lectures, Digging Digitally, March 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Laura Smith, Wiki man joins EC OA campaign, Information World Review, March 5, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For more on how OA to peer-reviewed science can help Wikipedia, see John Willinsky's article in the current issue of First Monday. Repository managers helping one another SHERPA has launched UKCoRR (UK Council of Research Repositories). From the announcement:
More details on CERN's plan to convert TA journals to OA CERN has released its Proposal to establish a Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, March 9, 2007. (Thanks to Jens Vigen.) Excerpt:
CERN presented the proposal at a meeting today in Geneva. The Universit� de Li�ge has adopted an OA mandate, thanks to its exemplary rector, Bernard Rentier. From Rentier's announcement:
Comment. Not only is this a university-level OA mandate --roughly the 12th worldwide, depending on how you count. It's the first pure example of what Stevan Harnad calls the immediate deposit / optional access (ID/OA) policy, or what I call the dual deposit/release strategy. Kudos to all at Liege, especially Rector Rentier. 2006 annual edition of Bailey bibliography Charles W. Bailey Jr. has released the 2006 Annual Edition of his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. From his announcement:
More on the AAUP statement on OA Jennifer Howard, University Presses Try to Straddle the Battle Lines in Open-Access Debate, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
My hardware problem seems to be solved. But now I'm facing an unrelated failure of my internet connection. (I'm writing from a cafe.) The two problems together have kept me essentially offline for five days --with a few brief and unpredictable exceptions when I could borrow equipment and my connection blinked on rather than off. I'm much further behind than usual, both with the blog and email. Please bear with me while I climb out of this hole. How peer-reviewed OA research can help Wikipedia John Willinsky, What open access research can do for Wikipedia, First Monday, March 2007.
Update. Here's a good comment by Glyn Moody: One of the central ideas behind openness is re-use - the ability to build on what has gone before, rather than re-inventing the wheel. And yet, as [Willinsky] demonstrates, there is sometimes surprisingly little sharing and re-use between the various opens....I can't help feeling that there is a larger lesson here, and that all the various opens should be doing more to build on each other's strengths as well as their own. After all, it's partly what all this openness is about. Perhaps we need a meta-open movement? Update. Also see the comment by Matt Cockerill, publisher of BioMed Central. Randy Dotinga, Open Access Launches Journal Wars, Wired News, March 14, 2007. Excerpt:
The March/April issue of D-Lib Magazine is now online. Here are the OA-related articles:
PS: D-Lib is an OA journal, and in this issue announces the D-Lib Alliance to provide financial and advisory support. Please consider asking your institution to help the cause.
Petition for OA to publicly-funded research in the US Eight non-profit organizations have launched a Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States. From the site:
Please sign it as an individual, encourage your institution to sign it as an institution, and spread the word. Your support will be critical in persuading Congress to adopt FRPAA. Please sign it even you have already signed the European petition. The European petition called for strong OA policy in Europe, and the new US petition calls for strong OA policy in the US. The European petition welcomed signatories from around the world, but especially encouraged them from European researchers and research institutions; the US petition welcomes signatories from every country, but especially encourages them from the US researchers and institutions. The organizations sponsoring the petition are the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), American Library Association (ALA), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), FreeCulture, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), Public Knowledge (PK), and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). Update. Also see the SPARC press release, March 14, 2007.
I'm having hardware problems (and writing this on a friend's machine). I expect a fix on Tuesday, March 13, and will start to catch up after that. Sorry for the involuntary hiatus.
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