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Interview with Matthew Cockerill and Chris Leonard Anna Winterbottom, BMC branches out: an interview with Matthew Cockerill and Chris Leonard, First Author, undated but c. January 6, 2007. Excerpt:
Corey Murray, Curriki offers new world of course content, eSchool News, January 5, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA from the Italian university rectors Roberto Delle Donne, Gli atenei italiani e l'informazione in Open Access, a presentation at Institutional archives for research : experiences and projects in Open Access, (Rome, November 30 - December 1, 2006). In Italian but with this English-language abstract:
OA as a remedy for narrow scientific orthodoxies Alessandro Giuliani, Open Access as an antidote for the self-referential character of science, a presentation at Institutional archives for research : experiences and projects in Open Access, (Rome, November 30 - December 1, 2006).
More on libraries as OA publishers Christian Woll, Bibliotheken als Dienstleister im Publikationsprozess: Herausforderungen und Chancen alternativer Formen des wissenschaftlichen Publizierens, Verlag Dr. M�ller, 2006. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) An extensive (157 pp.) guide to how libraries can take part in scholarly publishing. Section 4 (pp. 29-82) is devoted to OA archiving and OA journals. Emerald launches a no-fee hybrid program Emerald has launched Emerald Asset (Accessible Scholarship Shared in an Electronic Environment), an unusual no-fee hybrid program for its engineering journals. From the site:
Comments.
Reimbursing UK universities that pay publication fees for faculty When UK universities pay publication fees on behalf of faculty who publish in fee-based OA journals, there are two ways in which they can be reimbursed by the Research Councils UK for at least part of the expense. For details, see Payment of Publication Fees, a December 2006 briefing note from the Research Information Network. Comment. This is important. UK scholars who publish in fee-based OA journals, or who would like to, should make sure their universities understand these reimbursement procedures. Editors and publishers of fee-based OA journals should also try to spread the word. New OA journal on men and masculinities The Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality is a new peer-reviewed, OA journal. (Thanks to Integral Options Cafe.) OA publishing in law: the Lewis & Clark symposium The Winter 2006 issue of the Lewis & Clark Law Review contains the proceedings from the L&C Spring 2006 symposium, Open Access Publishing and the Future of Legal Scholarship. The articles are not themselves OA, at least not from this source and not yet. But I've already blogged several that have been self-archived. Chinese translations of Budapest and Berlin statements Anthony Mao has translated the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge into Chinese (here and here, respectively). Anthony had previously translated the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing into Chinese.
The British Library will digitize journal backfiles The British Library has launched a program to digitize journal backfiles. From yesterday's press release:
Comment. Just last month, I wondered whether journals might find better terms for backfile digitization than Google's. This is at least another choice, but so far the BL isn't making it easy to assess. The announcement doesn't say whether the BL program costs the journal anything (the Google program is free), whether it lets journals charge for access to the resulting files (the Google program is only for free online access), or whether it's exclusive (the Google program is non-exclusive). But BL clients do, apparently, get to keep the digital files (Google clients don't). ProQuest Information and Learning has completed the December 2006 update to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT). From the site:
NSF recommendations on data sharing NSF and ARL Conduct Workshop on Digital Data Stewardship, ARL Bimonthly Report, December 2006. Excerpt:
Journal intimidation of faculty who want better terms James V. Maher, The Research University And Scholarly Publishing: The View From A Provost�s Office, ARL Bimonthly Report, December 2006. This paper was originally presented at the ARL/CNI/SPARC conference, Improving Access to Publicly Funded Research (Washington DC, October 20, 2006). Maher is the Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh. Excerpt:
Why environmental research should be OA Daniel M. Kammen, The need and challenge for Environmental Research Letters, Environmental Research Letters, October-December 2006. (Thanks to Sustainable Research.) An editorial in the inaugural issue of a new OA journal. Excerpt:
An unnamed "independent publishing house committed to providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed research" is looking for a public relations manager. Germany withdraws from Project Quaero Mark Chillingworth, Franco/German partnership dissolves over intended rival to Google, Information World Review blog, January 3, 2007. Excerpt:
Update. Also see Philip E. Ross, What's the Latin For "Delusional"? IEEE Spectrum, January 2007 --written before Germany's withdrawal but predicting failure for other reasons. ERC pledges to adopt an OA mandate The Scientific Council of the European Research Council has issued a Statement on Open Access (December 2006). Here it is in its entirety:
Comments.
Karger adopts a hybrid OA model for eight journals Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers has adopted a hybrid OA model for eight of its journals. From today's press release:
Comment. The Karger program is better than many others under my criteria for hybrid OA journals. The license is closely modeled on the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license and allows authors to retain key rights and deposit their copies in repositories independent of the publisher. The OA edition is apparently the full published edition. SHERPA doesn't say whether Karger has been green up to now, but nothing in today's announcement retreats from green (e.g. imposing embargoes or fees on self-archiving). On the downside, Karger does not promise to reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake, and doesn't say whether authors under an OA obligation from a prior funding contract must pay Karger's fee in order to comply.
Shore Communications' forecast of publishing in 2007, Reality Checks for New and Old Forms of Publishing,
But not Access. However, its four-point summary of major trends in 2006 devotes one to OA:
Two pieces on OA in Der Standard Yesterday's issue of Austria's Der Standard had two pieces on OA (in German):
R�diger Voss and John Enderby, The open-access debate, PhysicsWeb, January 2007. From Voss, a senior researcher at CERN and editor of CERN's June 2006 report Open-access publishing in particle physics:
From Enderby, immediate past president of the Institute of Physics and a paid adviser to its publishing arm. He has also been a VP of the Royal Society and head of its publishing activities.
Comment. Two of Enderby's chief objections to OA journals (that they discriminate against indigent authors and would cause high-output countries to pay more than they pay now for subscriptions) are derailed by the fact that the majority of OA journals charge no author-side fees, which I am surprised he did not know. For other answers to his first objection, see my article from November 2003, and for other answers to his second objection, see my article from June 2006. Open access in action: a Pacific example, Open Access Anthropology, January 2, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Kudos to Michael Evans for the idea and to Wilfrid Laurier University Press for permission to let it happen. Eprints 3.0 as journal management software Steve Hitchcock, Using EPrints v3 plugins to produce an OA journal, Eprints Insiders, January 3, 2007. Excerpt:
How institutions can do better on research assessment exercises Steve Hitchcock, Why repository mandates, research assessment and metrics are connected, Eprints Insiders, January 3, 2007. Excerpt:
Gene Russo, NIH offers free access to wealth of disease data, Nature, December 21, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Thanks to Gavin Baker both for the alert and for excerpting the article on his blog. Since I don't have access myself, I'll gratefully use his:
I just mailed the SPARC Open Access Newsletter for January 2007. This issue reviews the progress of OA in 2006. The round-up section briefly notes 73 developments from December alone.
Bill Hooker, OA/Open Science resolutions, Open Reading Frame, January 2, 2007. Excerpt:
Jonathan Eisen, My Open Access New Years Resolutions, Tree of Life, January 1, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: A very good list! For publishing researchers, the most trusted and persuasive bearers of the OA message are other publishing researchers. Talk to your colleagues --on campus and at conferences, in print and in hallways. And above all, provide OA to your own work, either through OA journals or OA repositories. Two more Elsevier alumni move to OA Tracey Caldwell, Elsevier duo say the future is open, Information World Review, January 2, 2007. Excerpt:
OA archiving unlikely to trigger journal cancellations Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Will Self-Archiving Cause Libraries to Cancel Journal Subscriptions? DigitalKoans, December 21, 2006. I just regained access to Charles' excellent blog after about a month of mysterious obstacles. This is a post I would have blogged 10 days ago. Excerpt:
More on citation analysis, OA, and impact Lokman I. Meho, The Rise and Rise of Citation Analysis, forthcoming in Physics World, 2007. Self-archived December 31, 2007. Abstract: With the vast majority of scientific papers now available online, this paper (accepted for publication in Physics World) describes how the Web is allowing physicists and information providers to measure more accurately the impact of these papers and their authors. Provides a historical background of citation analysis, impact factor, new citation data sources (e.g., Google Scholar, Scopus, NASA's Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service, MathSciNet, ScienceDirect, SciFinder Scholar, Scitation/SPIN, and SPIRES-HEP), as well as h-index, g-index, and a-index. From the body of the paper:
Scientists now need to make it their job to disseminate their work on as many platforms and in as many different ways as possible, such as publishing in open access and high-impact journals, and posting their work in institutional repositories, personal homepages and e-print servers, if they want their peers to be aware of, use and ultimately cite their work. Publishing a journal article is now only the first step in disseminating or communicating one�s work; the Web provides a multitude of methods and tools to publicize its scholarly worth. OA repositories and ebooks in Australia and beyond The Spanish Job Team has posted a long and useful list of the Best free digital libraries in Australia. After listing 12 OA libraries and repositories in Australia, it throws in a much longer list from beyond Australia, and then adds lists of free Australian ebooks, other free ebooks in English, free ebooks in other languages, and free ebooks in a large number of selected topics. PS: There's a lot of material here --so much that it becomes hard to navigate. If you have a specific query, you can use the search engine on your browser. But for anything more general, it would help to have a clickable table of contents. Heather Morrison, Dramatic Growth December 2006 & Predictions for 2007, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, December 31, 2006. Excerpt:
PS: That's just the synopsis. See the whole post for a raft of specific numbers. My own predictions for 2007 came out last month and my review of OA in 2006 will come out in tomorrow's issue of SOAN. Launch of the Free Culture Foundation The Free Culture Foundation launched today. (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) From the announcement:
PS: At least so far, the foundation focuses on culture as art. Neither the foundation's list of essays nor its list of projects mentions OA or free-culture issues related to science and scholarship.
Graphing the rise of OA journals Heather Morrison, The newer the journal, the more likely it is open access, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, December 30, 2006. Excerpt:
Also see Heather's related post from the same day, Ulrich's and DOAJ: an idea:
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