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More on the 10 administrators who oppose FRPAA Here are a few responses I've seen to yesterday's public statement by 10 university administrators who oppose FRPAA.
PS: I blogged my own response yesterday. More on DRIVER: Using OA content to "encourage...service providers"
Kate Worlock, DRIVER: Repositories take to the road, EPS Insights, September 21, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
Comment. The DRIVER approach, highlighted by Worlock here, is not only one of the best ways to pay for OA but one of the best ways to structure the cooperation of OA initiatives and commercial interests. Here's the recipe: Provide OA to the basic data and peer-reviewed literature, and then earn money from services that make the OA layer more useful (i.e. "value-added" services). Many of these services will themselves be free and open, but the sky's the limit and there's plenty of room for commercial players to create services so useful that they are worth paying for. OA Encyclopedia of Earth launches
The open-access Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE) is now online. (Thanks to Yong Liu.) From the site:
Draft CWB statement open access and open source science
Chemists Without Borders has publicly released the July 27 draft of its Position Statement on Open Access and Open Source Science. Excerpt:
CWB will vote on the statement at its next meeting, probably in mid-October. Richard Poynder interviews Richard Jefferson
Richard Poynder has posted his interview with Richard Jefferson, a leader of open-source biology and the founder and CEO of CAMBIA. This is the latest installment of The Basement Interviews, Poynder's blog-based OA book of interviews with leaders of many related openness initiatives. Excerpt:
Comment. I hate to quarrel with someone whose work I admire without reservation, but Jefferson has a truncated view of open access. In its fullest sense, for example, as articulated in the BOAI, OA provides both free online access to research articles and permission to use and reuse them. That is, it removes both price and permission barriers. Nor does anyone claim that this is everything or that, after achieving it, nothing remains to be added. Where using knowledge requires tools, OA doesn't itself provide the tools or pretend to. It's one key part in an ecology of mutually supportive initiatives, much needed and very useful on its own but even more useful in conjunction with complementary innovations. SPARC and PKP partnership for OA publishing
SPARC and the University of British Columbia Public Knowledge Project have formed a partnership to support PKP's open-source publishing tools. From Thursday's announcement:
Susanne Dobratz and Frank Scholze, Certification and beyond : DINI open access activities in Germany, a presentation at OAI 4, the CERN workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (Geneva, October 20-22, 2005). Self-archived September 22, 2006. Excerpt:
Another TA journal converts to OA
Mats Forsberg, Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica � now an open access journal, Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, May 2006. An editorial. Excerpt:
The case for distributed over central OA archiving
Stevan Harnad, Central versus institutional self-archiving, Open Access Archivangelism, September 21, 2006. Excerpt:
10 university administrators oppose FRPAA It had to happen. After 125 university presidents and provosts have publicly endorsed FRPAA, the DC Principles Coalition found 10 who oppose it. From today's announcement:
Comments.
Self-archiving FAQ, now in Russian Sergey Parinov has made a Russian translation of the BOAI Self-Archiving FAQ. (Thanks to Sergey Parinov via Stevan Harnad.) Nine questions for hybrid journals, now in French Sandrine Avril and Catherine Gunet have made a French translation of my article, Nine questions for hybrid journal programs (from SOAN for 9/2/06). Many thanks, Sandrine and Catherine.
The October issue of Walt Crawford's Cites & Insights is now online. This issue contains a detailed, two-part series on pioneering OA journals (Part I, Part II). Excerpt:
Comment. This is the best work to date on the early history of OA journals and should be the point of departure for future histories.
Eprints version 3 is on the way. A beta should appear next month, a release candidate before Christmas, and the formal release in January. (Thanks to Christopher Gutteridge.)
Making the case for OA to California-funded stem-cell research California citizens who want open access to California-funded stem-cell research present their case today before the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency overseeing the research. The OA advocates have publicly released the background materials for their presentation. (Thanks for California Stem Cell Report.) PS: For background on today's meeting, see my blog post on Tuesday. Self-archiving advice for authors
Stevan Harnad, Cornell's Copyright Advice: Guide for the Perplexed Self-Archiver, Open Access Archivangelism, September 20, 2006. Excerpt:
European Digital Library struggles with copyright
Helena Spongenberg, Old books only in European Digital Library, EU Observer, September 19, 2006. Excerpt:
Open courseware at Yale and Notre Dame
Jeffrey Young, Yale U. Plans to Offer Some Course Materials, Including Lecture Videos, Free Online, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
Access to scientific data in China
Paul F. Uhlir and Julie M. Esanu (rapporteurs), Strategies for Preservation of and Open Access to Scientific Data in China:
Summary of a Workshop, National Academies Press, 2006. A book-length (152 pp.) report on the workshop, International Workshop on Strategies for Preservation of and Open Access to Scientific Data (Beijing, June 22-24, 2004). Like all books from the National Academies Press, this one is available in an OA edition as well as a priced, printed edition.
Mixed OA/TA journal increasing its OA content
Peter Huijbregts, Now who says you always have to pay for peer-reviewed literature? Evidence in Motion, September 19, 2006. Huijbregts is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Manual and Manipulative Therapy. Excerpt:
Sharing the load for the knowledge commons
Paul Hartzog, The Knowledge Commons: Getting It Right, On the commons, September 19, 2006. Hartzog is the Information Architect at Knowledge Commons. Excerpt:
Dan Tonkery, Editorial: Key issues facing the industry, Serials Review, September 2006. Tonkery is Director for Business Development at EBSCO Information Services. Because the editorial is not OA and I don't have access, I'll borrow (with thanks) the excerpt blogged this morning by William Walsh.
The broadcasting treaty would limit access to knowledge
Marcia Aribela and Viviana Munoz, The Proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty: What Implications for Access to Knowledge? A2K Brasil, September 19, 2006. Excerpt:
The versatility of OA archiving software
The folks at Eprints have put together a page of exemplary Eprints repositories, Celebrating Our Diversity. It collects sample repositories showing how to use Eprints to help brand an institution, serve institutional consortia or entire regions, archive data or ETDs (as opposed to journal preprints and postprints), accompany a journal, support multi-lingual deposits, fit an archive into a larger portal, or capture the work of a project or discipline.
Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital University/Library Presses, Part 11: Other Digital Presses, DigitalKoans, September 19, 2006. Excerpt:
Stimulating the economy with OA data
Gervase Markham, Free data � a valuable commodity, Times Online, September 18, 2006. (Thanks to Free Government Information.) Excerpt:
More on OA books stimulating sales of TA books
John Joseph Adams interviews Cory Doctorow in Sci Fi Weekly for September 20, 2006. Excerpt:
Support for OA to EU geospatial data The Commission to the European Parliament has come out in favor of open access to publicly-funded geospatial data. (Thanks to Public Geo Data.) Excerpt:
A study in permission barriers
Kristin R. Eschenfelder, Access and Use Rights Restrictions in Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources Protected by Technological Protection Measures, a preprint.
Abstract: This is a submission to the "Interrogating the Social Realities of Information Systems" Preconference Symposium at ASIST 2006. This abstract describes an investigation of the changing access and use rights of licensed scholarly digital resources, particularly the rights associated with digital works protected by technological protection measures (TPM � also known as digital rights management systems or DRM). Six more provosts support FRPAA The provosts of six New England land-grant colleges have released their September 6 letter to Senator John Cornyn in support of FRPAA. From yesterday's press release:
ALPSP/STM white paper on scientific publishing Mark Ware Consulting, Scientific publishing in transition: an overview of current developments, a white paper from ALPSP and STM, September 2006. See esp. pp. 16-26, which are devoted to OA, including the OA citation advantage, OA journal business models and their viability, and OA archiving. From the executive summary:
Anestis Sitas, CDSware (CERN Document Server Software), Library Hi Tech, 24, 3 (2006). From the abstract:
More on Yale's OA course videos
Scott Jaschik, The Next Level of Open Source, Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2006. Excerpt:
Free same-day transcripts of Supreme Court arguments
Timely Transcripts at Last, Washington Post, September 17, 2006. An editorial. Excerpt:
Four more OA journals from Hindawi join Web of Science From Hindawi's announcement earlier today:
OA "opens new perspectives on peer review"
Georgii A. Alexandrov, The purpose of peer review in the case of an open-access publication, Carbon Balance and Management, September 15, 2006. An editorial.
From the body of the paper:
More on the Cambridge hybrid journals
Tracey Caldwell, CUP dips 15 toes in the open access publishing water, Information World Review, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
Comment. The 15 Cambridge journals are not full OA but hybrid OA, which means that some of their articles are OA and some TA, at the author's choice. For my comments on Cambridge's implementation of the hybrid model, see my article in the September SOAN. More on OA to California-funded stem-cell research UC Officials Call for Open Access to Taxpayer Financed Stem Cell Research, California Stem Cell Report, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
Leader in open-source science wins MacArthur Fellowship
Among the 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2006 is Victoria Hale, founder and CEO of the Institute for OneWorld Health (iOWH), a leader in open-source science and the first non-profit pharmaceutical company in the US. iOWH uses donated intellectual property to develop patent-free drugs for neglected diseases in developing countries. Congratulations to Dr. Hale.
The trouble with medical journals: bias, fraud, and lack of OA
Amazon is now taking pre-orders for Richard Smith's book, The Trouble with Medical Journals (Royal Society of Medicine, October 2006). See this unsigned review in today's issue of Life Style Extra:
Medical journals have become "creatures of the drug industry" rife with fraudulent research and packed with articles ghost written by pharmaceutical companies, an ex British Medical Journal editor has claimed. Evaluating DSpace, Eprints, and Fedora Richard Wyles and others, Technical Evaluation of selected Open Source Repository Solutions, version 1.3. A report from the OARINZ project (Open Access Repositories in New Zealand). Undated but apparently released September 15, 2006. Excerpt:
The project initially screened DSpace, Eprints, Fedora, ARNO, CDSWare, and i-TOR. Then it picked the first three for closer study. In the end, it recommended Fedora and gave honorable mention to Eprints. Another subscription journal converts to OA
The journal Oral Tradition, published since 1986, converted to open access on September 15, 2006. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) OT is published by the University of Missouri's Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. From the site:
With the advent of eOT we aspire to remove many of the natural barriers created by print-based and subscription media. With the conviction that academic contributions should be as democratically available as possible, we are from this point onward offering the journal as a pro bono, gratis contribution to the field. Anyone with a connection to the internet will be able to read and redistribute its contents � for the moment, the current issue and four years of back issues, but eventually the entire contents of the journal.
Stevan Harnad, Submitting one's own published work for assessment is Fair Use, Open Access Archivangelism, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
Summary: CrossRef and Publishers Licensing Society have come to a "gentleman's agreement" with RAE/HEFCE to "license" the papers that are submitted to RAE for assessment "free of charge." No such licensing agreement was necessary, however. The RAE's insistence on authors submitting the publisher's version of each paper for assessment, rather than the author's peer-reviewed final drafts (postprints) is arbitrary and serves no useful purpose. Moreover, the RAE needs no special permission for its individual authors to submit their work for assessment: that is merely Fair Use on the authors' part. The RAE restriction to only four submissions per author is likewise needless and counterproductive. Once the unnecessary and wasteful "peer-re-reviewing" by the RAE panels is at last abandoned in favour of metrics, there will be no need for either a 4-item cap or any attempt to get the "originals" to the panel. The authors' self-archived postprints in their own institutional OA IRs will suffice. What will moot all of this is the OA self-archiving mandates by RCUK and the UK universities themselves, which will fill the UK universities' IRs, which will in their turn -- with the help of the IRRA (Institutional Repositories and Research Assessment) -- mediate the submission of both the postprints and the metrics to the RAE. A new institute will self-archive its research output
Tomorrow De Montfort University will launch its Institute of Creative Technologies, whose web site is already online for browsing. There's a promising line on its publications page:
The IOCT's publications will be archived in the Institutional respository of De Montfort University. PS: Does this suggest an OA mandate at IOCT? An OA expectation? Correction: Nature hasn't made up its mind about open review
Timo Hannay set the record straight at Nature's Nascent blog this morning:
PS: Thanks, Timo. I stand corrected. Profile of Wisconsin's Parallel Press
Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Digital University/Library Presses, Part 10: Parallel Press, DigitalKoans, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
William New, A Wikipedia Architect Plans A �Better� Open Source Online Encyclopedia, IP-Watch, September 19, 2006. Excerpt:
OA textbook publisher buys OA textbook portal
Freeload Press, Inc Purchases Textbook Revolution, a press release from Freeload, September 18, 2006. (Thanks to William Walsh.) Excerpt:
Comment. I've called Textbook Revolution "the best single site on OA textbooks" and again, the only "searchable portal [for OA textbooks] that tries to be comprehensive." If this buy-out ensures its longevity, I'm all for it. New NEH funding guidelines favor OA projects
Scott Jaschik, Harming the Historical Record, Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
Here's the exact language from the new NEH guidelines (August 20, 2006):
Also see the ADE's full statement at the ADE site. Comments.
In June, Nature launched a three-month experiment with open review (to accompany its debate on open review). After digesting its experience, the verdict is in: Nature will adopt a version of open review. To be more precise, it's adopting a form of two-track review in which one track is closed, internal, and prospective and the other is open, external, and retroactive. Two-track review was pioneered by Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and since adopted e.g. by PLoS ONE. Nature itself does not seem to have made the announcement yet, so we have to rely on the press. See Matt Whipp, Nature journal puts blogging into peer reviews, PC Pro, September 15, 2006. Excerpt: The scientific journal Nature is to adopt an open peer-review system to judge papers submitted for publication. Comment. This news is about open review, not open access. I'm blogging Nature's decision primarily because I blogged the launch of the experiment itself. Here's what I said at the time:
Update. This story is inaccurate. Nature hasn't yet made a decision one or the other about open review. See my correction posted 9/19/06. Ray English on liberating research through OA
Caroline Russell O'Shea, Ray English Presents Second Annual Couper Library Lecture, Hamilton College, September 18, 2006. Excerpt:
OA momentum from CERN and US university administrators
Susan Brown, Coalition Works to Secure Open Access to Published Research, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2006. Excerpt:
"OA as dialogic, polyphonic and carnivalistic reaction"
Robert Vaagan, Open Access and Bakhtinian Dialogism, a PPT presentation at Elpub 2006 (Bansko, Bulgaria, June 14-16, 2006). (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)
From Stevan Harnad's blog:
Update. The poem has now been translated into Hungarian by Tamas Somogyi (PDF or PPT). Citizendium, a progressive fork of Wikipedia Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has announced The Citizendium Project, a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia that should launch in a few weeks. Citizendium will be an OA wiki starting with Wikipedia articles but revising them under the guidance of qualified experts. From the site:
Update. There's now a Slashdot discussion of the project. |