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Plan for OA to American Founding Fathers' papers
National Archives Creates Plan for Online Access to Founding Fathers Papers, press release, May 7, 2008.
Public Knowledge Project posted a new document on May 9 on embedding video or slides in an Open Journal Systems journal.
Development begins on new release of OPUS
Jan Steinberg, Development of OPUS 4 starts July, 1st 2008, message to SPARC-OAForum mailing list, May 9, 2008.
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved funding of a new release of the institutional repository software OPUS. The project is carried out collaboratively by Stuttgart University Library, the Library Service Center Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg, Saarland University and State Library, Bielefeld University Library and Hamburg University of Technology Library. The partners closely co-operate with the State and University Library Dresden.
Infochimps.org is a database of databases. The site launched on March 5. From the site's description:
Brenda Collins, UR Research at the University of Rochester: an Institutional Repository case study, Massachusetts Library Association Conference Reports, May 8, 2008. Blog notes on Suzanne Bell, UR Research at the University of Rochester: an Institutional Repository case study, Massachusetts Library Association Annual Conference (May 6-9, 2008, Falmouth, Mass.).
New OA life sciences search engine
Gino D'Oca, New, free-to-access life sciences search engine, Chemistry Central Blog, May 7, 2008.
Kevin Stranack, OJS in a Nutshell - Workshop on Open Journal Systems, British Columbia Library Association Conference 2008 (April 17-19, 2008, Richmond, BC), posted May 8, 2008. Abstract:
This workshop discussed creative ways for librarians to work with faculty, graduate students or public library patrons using freely available, open source software. An overview of Open Journal Systems (OJS) online publication management software was presented with emphasis on the publishing process, peer review, editorial workflow, and website customization. Tips were provided on increasing journal visibility. More on the Georgia State-OA connection
Raizel Liebler, The Georgia State E-reserves lawsuit: Is Fair Use Dead? Or is it the traditional publishing model?, LibraryLaw Blog, May 7, 2008. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)
... [M]y post will focus more on ... the potential options libraries have at this point, and why moving towards open access might (eventually) help to solve this impasse. ...See also previous OAN posts on the lawsuit: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Criticism of SSHRC policy on funding OA journals
Maximilian Forte, Social Science Research Funding in Canada: Additional Notes (3.0), Open Anthropology, May 9, 2008.
More on California-funded stem-cell research California has started to distribute the $3 billion it has pledged for stem-cell research. So far, I can't find any report that the state will put an OA condition on its publicly-funded research grants. Comment. I mention the possibility of an OA mandate for this research because many people (including myself) have proposed one, and for a time California was seriously considering it. I haven't heard any new developments on this front for about 16 months, but here's a short summary I wrote in September 2007:
Text of the Ukrainian OA mandate The text of the OA mandate the Ukraine has now been posted to ROARMAP. This policy is more than a proposal but less than a working policy. It was adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament in January 2007 but has not yet been implemented. Thanks to Iryna Kuchma for the English translation. Excerpt:
PS: See my past posts on the Ukrainian mandate. The folks at EPrints have revamped ROARMAP, the database of funder and university OA mandates. The front page now has a very useful tally of the worldwide OA mandates in six categories:
It also has two world maps, one showing OA mandates by country and the other showing OA repositories by country. The presentations from from the Open Access panel at the International Science Media Fair (Fiera Internazionale dell'Editoria Scientifica, Trieste, April 16-20, 2008) are now online. (Thanks to Bora Zivkovic.) High-energy physics as an example for other fields Anne Gentil-Beccot and four co-authors, Information Resources in High-Energy Physics: Surveying the Present Landscape and Charting the Future Course, a preprint, deposited in arXiv April 22, 2008. (Thanks to SymmetryBreaking.)
From the body of the paper:
Sabinet has launched the beta version of its Open Access Journal Collection. (Thanks to Pierre Malan and Jennifer A. De Beer.) From the site:
April issue of Ariadne released
The April 2008 issue of Ariadne is now available. Articles related to OA:
Profile of ChemSpider in Nature News
Geoff Brumfiel, Chemists spin a web of data, Nature News, May 7, 2008.
See also Williams' comments on the ChemSpider blog: ... The original investment in hardware and software costs has finally been recouped. Modest profits? No one gets paid for the work we do. ... New OA journal of e-media studies
The Journal of e-Media Studies is a new peer-reviewed OA journal on issues in electronic media, published by Dartmouth College Library. It was announced on May 7. The inaugural issue is now available.
'Amazingly complicated' restrictions at Google Book Search
Adam Hodgkin, Amazingly Complicated Viewability Restrictions, Exact Editions, May 7, 2008.
Comment. Lack of access outside the US to Google-scanned public-domain books has been a problem since at least 2005. See our past blog posts on this topic (1, 2, 3). Open Students call for contributors
Gavin Baker, Call for contributors: Write for Open Students!, Open Students, May 7, 2008.
More on the Harvard Law School policy Athena Y. Jiang, Law School Adopts Open Access for Scholarship, Harvard Crimson, May 7 , 2008. Excerpt:
Survey of practices with museum digital collections
Francis Deblauwe, Collating online collections. Study of 13 cultural heritage collections online, iCommons.org, May 5, 2008.
More and more museums and other cultural heritage organizations are offering online access to their holdings. These initiatives are varied in scope, depth and target audience. They also take different approaches to copyright and open access, esp. regarding photos of art and artifacts in their care. How much content of research value is OA?
Lisa Spiro, How many texts have been digitized?, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, May 5, 2008.
Arden Pennell, 'Bookless' textbook study launched at Foothill, Palo Alto Online News, May 5, 2008.
A group of educators will meet at Foothill College this week to begin studying how to encourage widespread adoption of free online textbooks.See also previous OAN coverage of CCOER: 1, 2. Four Elsevier perspectives on OA The May issue of Elsevier's Editors' Update focuses on Access and Dissemination. Here are the OA-related articles. (The blurb's are Elsevier's.)
NIH Updates its Public Access Policy FAQ, a summary of the updates from SPARC, May 7, 2008. Excerpt:
Kaitlin Mara and William New, WHO IP And Health Group Concludes With Progress; Tough Issues Remain For Assembly, Intellectual Property Watch, May 6, 2008.
The article doesn't contain much news on the OA-related provisions of the plan, but it does contain a working link to the latest available draft (as of May 3). This permits comparison to the latest version available from the WHO (dated July 31, 2007). Of note is the language in element 2.4, not present in the previous version: (2.4) Promoting greater access to knowledge and technology relevant to meet public health needs of developing countries ...See also previous coverage of the meeting. Harvard Law School joins Harvard FAS in mandating OA If you recall, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted an OA mandate in February 2008 by a unanimous vote of the faculty. Today the Harvard Law School followed suit, also by a unanimous vote of the faculty. From the law school announcement, May 7, 2008:
Harvard's Berkman Center has a few more details:
Comments
Update. The text of the motion approved by the law school faculty is now online (also on John Palfrey's blog). It is essentially the same as the text approved by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in February. The new policy is voluntary until September 1, 2008, when it will become mandatory.
LII Director Bruce teams with Carl Malamud for podcast, LII Announce, May 5, 2008.
On May 1, [Legal Information Institute] Director Tom Bruce and open-access advocate Carl Malamud of public.resource.org were featured on the popular practitioner�s podcast Lawyer2Lawyer. Also included in the podcast, but recorded separately, was Andy Martens, Senior Vice President of New Product Development for Thomson West. No doubt the discussion was less lively than it might have been had all three been present simultaneously ... No, Oregon, your laws aren't copyrighted
Cory Doctorow, Archivists to Oregon: your laws aren't copyrighted, so there!, Boing Boing, May 2, 2008.
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,See also our previous post on this topic. Recycling court documents online
Erika Wayne, Recycle your PACER documents, Free Government Information, May 1, 2008.
See also past OAN posts on PACER. Scholar's guide to copyright now in English How to use copyright wisely within scholarly communication, a press release from SURF, May 7, 2008. Excerpt:
Also see the guide's FAQ, which includes questions on institutional repositories. From the final section of the FAQ, Four things that authors definitely need to know:
UroToday Inc. Launches a Unique "No Cost" Open Access Journal Focused on Urology and Urologic Oncology, press release, May 6, 2008.
From the inaugural Letter from the Editor, dated May 5:
More on OA for theses and dissertations Kim Thomas, Don't let the grey fade away, Information World Review, May 7, 2008. Excerpt:
Gramophone magazine provides OA to backfile
Gramophone to launch revolutionary website, Gramophone, May 2, 2008.
Gramophone, the world�s most influential classical music magazine, ... started in 1923, today announces its commitment to a bold two stage plan. U. Michigan launches health OER project
U-M receives grant to provide free and open, online electronic health professions educational materials, press release, April 29, 2008. (Thanks to News-Medical.Net.)
Publishing in the social sciences and humanities Tracey Caldwell, Slumbering giant stirs, Information World Review, May 7, 2008. This article on journal and book publishing in the SSH fields has only a few bits on OA, but here are those bits:
More on the Open Humanities Press Jennifer Howard, New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7, 2008. Excerpt:
Columbia contributes materials to Aquifer
Columbia University Libraries Contribute to Digital Library Federation's Aquifer Initiative, press release, May 1, 2008.
New OA journal of emergency medicine
The Journal of Emergencies Trauma and Shock is a new OA journal published by the INDO-US Academic Council for Emergency and Trauma and Medknow. The web site was launched on April 15. According to the announcement, the journal will be published semiannually in 2008 and quarterly from 2009. Accepted articles in advance of the first issue are now available.
Two more active lists from the Open Access Directory The Open Access Directory (OAD) just promoted two more lists from "under development" to active lists open for community editing and enlargement: Remember that OAD is a wiki and you can help the OA community by adding your own entries to these lists.
JOC goes online and open access, Medknow, May 2008.
The Journal of Cytology is the official quarterly publication of the Indian Academy of Cytologists. It is in the 25th year of publication in the year 2008. The journal covers all aspects of diagnostic cytology, including fine needle aspiration cytology, gynecological and non-gynecological cytology. JoC is now available online for free access to everyone from its newly designed website. JoC accepts articles electronically and manuscripts can be submitted online. There is no fee required to be paid for submission or processing of articles.The January-March 2008 issue is now online. Dublin Institute of Technology launches IR
Dublin Institute of Technology has launched its IR, Arrow@DIT. (Thanks to OA@UCD.)
Antony Williams, ChemSpider Adopts Creative Commons Licenses, ChemSpider Blog, May 6, 2008.
New OA journal on medical physics
Iratxe Puebla, BMC Medical Physics - linking physicists and physicians to improve treatment and diagnosis of disease, BioMed Central Blog, May 6, 2008.
... BMC-series journals impose no limits on the length of article or the number of images, so medical physics researchers will be able to present full movies and high quality color images at no extra cost. ... Submissions to BMC Medical Physics are fully peer-reviewed and articles are published immediately on acceptance. Like all the medical journals in the BMC series, BMC Medical Physics operates an open peer review process, which means that reviewers are asked to provide signed reports for authors, and also that the reviews will be made publicly available as part of the published article's "Pre-publication history". BMC Medical Physicsis indexed by PubMed, CAS, and Google Scholar. Articles published by BMC Nuclear Medicine will continue to be available via the BMC Medical Physics website. ... Richard A. Danner, Applying the Access Principle in Law: The Responsibilities of the Legal Scholar, International Journal of Legal Information, vol. 35 (2007) pp. 355-395. (Thanks to Kevin Smith.)
From the body of the paper:
Looking forward to the Open Humanities Press The Open Humanities Press will launch next Monday. From today's announcement:
Free pre-publication access at C&RL College & Research Libraries (C&RL) is offering free online access to its accepted articles during the period after peer review and before publication. From today's announcement:
Comments
Jane Park, eIFL.net on Open Access, Open Education, and Creative Commons, Creative Commons blog, May 5, 2008. An interview with Rima Kupryte and Iryna Kuchma of eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries).
Byzantine studies journal re-launches as OA
BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA launches!, announcement, April 23, 2008.
OA as response to research bottlenecks
Robin Cooper Feldman and Kristopher A. Nelson, Open Source, Open Access, and Open Transfer: Market Approaches to Research Bottlenecks, Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, forthcoming, posted May 2, 2008. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)
One of the most hotly contested issues in the field of intellectual property law concerns the existence, or non-existence, of patent thickets and the extent to which any such bottlenecks may be interfering with research. ...Comment. The paper also contains a thorough (several page) discussion of OA, including analysis of recent events. I skipped it in the excerpt, since it's familiar to most longtime readers of OAN, but mention it here as a potential starting point for someone interested in a thorough introduction to OA. Libraries: It is all not all free on the web
Nicholas Joint, It is all not all free on the web: advocacy for library funding in the digital age, Library Review 57(4), 2008. Abstract:
Purpose � To examine the impact on library funding of budget holders' idiosyncratic understanding of three important principles of technological innovation: the more you use a technology, the less staff you need, the better the service becomes and the lower the cost of the service. Review of OA sources on U.S. law
Lisa Smith-Butler, Cost Effective Legal Research Redux: How to Avoid Becoming the Accidental Tourist, Lost in Cyberspace, Florida Coastal Law Review 6, 2008. A preprint; posted April 14, 2008. (Thanks to Legal Research Plus.)
... To assist law students with evaluating legal web sites containing primary and secondary sources of law, this article will review certain free Internet sites pertaining to primary sources of federal and state law as well as secondary sources. When using these sites with understanding, legal researchers can be said to be performing cost effective legal research and will avoid becoming an accidental tourist, lost in cyberspace. ... Open database for insect semiochemicals
Gino D'Oca, Open database for insect semiochemicals, Chemistry Central Blog, May 2, 2008.
23 new repository case studies
New Treasure Trove of Case Studies, Repositories Support Project, apparently posted May 2, 2008.
40 journals join PMC in last 60 days
Heather Morrison, 40 new PubMedCentral journals in last 60 days!, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, May 3, 2008.
40 more journals have begun adding content to PubMedCentral in the last 60 days! To view the list, go to PMC Journal List - New. Blog notes on Chinese scholarly journals
Karina Bradshaw, Monday 7 April - afternoon sessions, Karina Bradshaw & Kathryn Fielding - UKSG 2008, May 2, 2008. Blog notes on Ruoxi Li, Publishing & communication of Chinese scholarly journals, United Kingdom Serials Group 2008 Annual Conference (Torquay, April 7, 2008).
... The Open Access archives initiative aims to open & widen access to Chinese scholarly journals and has resulted in several projects, mainly Sciencepaper online - a non-profit making institutional repository which accepts pre-prints and PaperOpen an open access search engine which collates open access papers from across the world. More than 40,000 papers have been indexed and loaded into a beta version. There will be 6 million papers indexed from July 2008. ...See also these earlier blog notes on the same presentation, by Nicola Osborne. National Cancer Institute to use Tranche to share data
Kaitlin Thaney, National Cancer Institute to use Tranche Network to share data, Science Commons blog, May 2, 2008.
More on the Rockefeller UP copyright policy Lila Guterman, Rockefeller U. Press Gives Away Copyright on Journal Articles, Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, May 6, 2008. Excerpt:
Comments
List of research questions on OA Directory The list of research questions I published in SOAN last week (What we don't know about open access: research questions in need of researchers) is now up on the OAD wiki for community editing and enlargement.
Help the OA community by adding your own entries to these lists. Harvard Magazine on the Harvard OA policy Open Access, Harvard Magazine, May 2, 2008. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) Excerpt:
T&F and Caltech create OA backfile for TA society journal Richard C. Flagan and Kimberly Douglas, Aerosol Science and Technology: A professional society-library-publisher partnership in open access, Aerosol Science and Technology, April 2008. (Thanks to George Porter.) Excerpt:
Call for self-archiving in Nigeria Consortium tasks Nigerian scholars on information, The Tide Online, May 3, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: Bozimo spoke at Open Access Repositories: New Models for Scholarly Communication (Zaria, Nigeria, April 28-29, 2008). The conference was sponsored by eIFL.net and Ahmadu Bello University. The story of an OA journal of plastic surgery Bob Braun, Millburn surgeon finds Rx to help less fortunate, Star Ledger, May 5, 2008. Excerpt:
Looking for neutral terminology Stevan Harnad, The Two Forms of OA Have Been Defined: They Now Need Value-Neutral Names, Open Access Archivangelism, May 3, 2008.
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