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Evolving copyright and evolving scholarly communication Marcus A. Banks and Cees de Blaaij, "Implications of Copyright Evolution for the Future of Scholarly Communication and Grey Literature," The Grey Journal, Spring 2007. Not even an abstract is free online, at least so far. IRRODL issue on open education in Asia The new issue of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (vol. 8, 1, 2007) is devoted to Changing Faces of Open and Distance Education in Asia. Yesterday the University of Frankfurt Library launched the OA Virtual Library of Biology (Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Biologie). (Thanks to medinfo.) Green over gold OA in archaeology Jingfeng Xia, Electronic Publishing in Archaeology, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 37, 4 (2006). Self-archived March 30, 2007. Excerpt:
Asking society members to set society priorities Stevan Harnad, Mobilising Scholarly Society Membership Support for FRPAA and EC A1, Open Access Archivangelism, March 30, 2007.
From the body of the post:
Comment. Some societies make surpluses (profits) from their journals and some don't; and among those that do, the percentage of the surplus spent on good works beyond the publishing division itself must vary widely. But when a society decides to lobby against FRPAA or other national policies to mandate OA for publicly-funded research, they are putting the perceived threat to their revenue ahead of their avowed commitment to research and deciding to advance their general mission (conferences, scholarships, salaries, lobbying) at the expense of their specific mission to advance research in their fields. I don't know a single society that has asked its members how to choose between these competing goods, and I've often argued (esp. here and here) that members should take control of these decisions or elect leaders who will reflect their views. OA portal for Canadian courseware A non-profit with public funding has launched CultureSource, an OA portal for Canadian courseware and teaching materials. From today's announcement:
A German publisher's objections Wulf D. von Lucius, Licht und Schatten - Strukturver�nderungen im wissenschaftlichen Informationssystem, Academics.de, March 2007. A German publisher repeats old objections to OA (publishing has costs, don't fix what isn't broken, OA will undermine publishers and peer review). Read it in German or in Google's English. January JCMC devoted to e-science The January issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is devoted to e-Science. (Thanks to TL Infobits.) All the articles may interest OAN readers, but these two are most relevant to OA:
Candidate for IEEE president supports OA John Vig, one of the candidates for president of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), supports embargoed OA. From his campaign page on OA:
The page includes comments from IEEE members and Vig's replies. Vince Rosati asked how Vig would prevent "a serious loss [of revenue] to IEEE". From Vig's reply:
Janet Babin, Open source science, transcript of a radio story on NPR's Marketplace, March 28, 2007. Hear the original story. From the transcript:
More on the vision of MediaCommons Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet, MediaCommons, undated but approximately March 29, 2007. On the MediaCommons vision of a born-digital, peer-reviewed, OA monographs in the humanities. Excerpt:
The online text is accompanied by many user comments. At the same time, Fitzpatrick is continuing to elaborate the vision in the MediaCommons blog. How not to measure ejournal usage Rick Ralston, Assessing Online Use: Are Statistics from Web-Based Online Journal Lists Representative? Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, March 15, 2007. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far. (Thanks to medinfo.) Many library Web sites feature hypertext lists of their online journals. This article explores the reliability of usage statistics generated by these Web-based journal lists. Reliability is assessed by comparing the number of journal title accesses from the list with the number of articles downloaded per title supplied by electronic journal vendors. The study includes 468 titles from three different vendors. While a correlation in use from the two different sources was found, this sample's usage counts from the online journal list were not accurate enough to use with cancellation decisions. How OA Google Earth aids geoscience research Brad Flora, Google Earth Impact: Saving Science Dollars and Illuminating Geo-Science, EContent, April 2007. Excerpt:
Moving beyond the WMD business model Alex Golub, With a Business Model Like This, Who Needs Enemies? Anthropology News, April 2007. An op-ed. (Thanks to Savage Minds.) Excerpt:
The same issue contains a counterpoint piece by Stacy Lathrop, "Friends, Why Are We Sinking?" Unfortunately I only have access to the first page, which appears on the self-archived copy of Golub's piece. Excerpt:
Comments. Here are a few quick comments to Stacy Lathrop's counterpoint.
Update. Anthropologists are discussing Golub's article in the comments to his post on Savage Minds. UK Free Our Data campaign talks to minister in charge of public data Michael Cross, Minister listens to Guardian's campaign call, The Guardian, March 29, 2007. Excerpt:
For more detail, see the Free Our Data blog post on the same interview. OA to two more journal backfiles Pers�e now offers OA to the backfiles of two more journals:
(Thanks to Charles Ellwood Jones.) AAP response to NIH call for an OA mandate The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has publicly released its March 26 letter to Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds the NIH. This is the AAP's response to last week's appearance by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni before the same subcommittee. Zerhouni testified that the NIH policy should be strengthened from a request to a requirement. Excerpt:
Comments.
OA repository adds tell-a-colleague button dLIST, the OA repository for information science and technology, has added a tell-a-colleague button. From the site:
PS: This feature is an EPrints customization already available to any sites running EPrints 2 or 3. Anita Coleman brought it to my attention because she thought too few EPrints archive managers were aware of it. Note to archive managers: the key documents for this customization are here, here, and here. OA publisher positions on commercial use Klaus Graf has made a useful list of the few OA publishers who don't allow commercial use and the many who do allow it. He welcomes additions to his list. His own view is that OA providers should permit commercial use. That's my view as well, although as I put it in January 2002, "...I want to make this preference genial, or compatible with the opposite preference, so that the [open access] movement can recruit and retain authors who oppose commercial use." New edition of NSF's vision for cyberinfrastructure and open data The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has published a new version of its report, Cyberinfrastructure Vision For 21st Century Discovery, March 2007. (Thanks to Clifford Lynch.) Earlier versions of this report strongly supported OA to data. See for example my blog excerpts for version 4.0 (September 2005) and version 5.0 (January 2006). The March 2007 edition also supports OA to data. I haven't had time to find all the relevant passages, but here's an excerpt from the executive summary (p. 2):
PS: As far as I can tell, the March 2007 edition of this report has no version number. The preface says that "this version...is intended to be a living document, and will be updated periodically." It looks like the NSF will be using dates and not version numbers for future editions. OA book on open content licensing Brian F. Fitzgerald, Jessica M. Coates, and Suzanne M. Lewis (eds.), Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons, Sydney University Press, March 22, 2007. A new book on from Sydney UP available in both an OA edition and a priced/printed edition. You can also jump directly to individually self-archived chapters. (Thanks to Jessica Coates.)
More on the Science Commons author addenda Regaining author�s rights over published material, iCommons blog, March 29, 2007. I'd like to see an article on regaining rights, but in this case I believe the anonymous author meant retaining rights. Excerpt:
Launch of a new OA publisher and consultant Co-Action Publishing is a new OA publisher and consultant with "real and virtual offices in Norway, Sweden and Denmark." From its home page:
From the page on access:
From the page on consulting:
PS: This is a very auspicious launch. Congratulations and best wishes to Co-Action and its three principals, Anne Bindslev (Senior Publisher), Caroline Sutton (Publisher), and Lena Wistrand (Production and Operations Manager).
New OA journal of computer graphics The Revue Electronique Francophone d'Informatique Graphique (REFIG) is a new OA journal of computer graphics. The inaugural issue is now online. (Thanks to IRISA.) Open data for the semantic web MIT's Technology Review has posted an 8.5 minute podcast of Tim Berners-Lee talking about the semantic web. I haven't had time to listen yet, but according to Brian Robinson, TBL says that the semantic web will require "more open access to data". NCurse at ScienceRoll has put together an annotated list of 25 medical wikis. Readers are adding more in the comment section. Heather A. Piwowar, Roger S. Day, and Douglas B. Fridsma, Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate, PLoS ONE, March 21, 2007. Abstract:
Comment. Many studies have shown a correlation between OA articles and citation impact. I believe this is the first study to document a similar correlation between OA data and citation impact. Spread the word to colleagues who are still hoarding data, waiting too long before releasing it, or unable to see any gain for themselves in data sharing. Update (7/13/07). Also see Heather Piwowar's presentation on this paper at the NLM Biomedical Informatics Trainee conference. If you remember, back in January four Norwegian university libraries rejected the whole package of 778 Blackwell journals because of "unacceptable conditions and price increases" (more details here and here). Yesterday Blackwell announced that the problem has been resolved. Excerpt:
Valentina Comba, A toolkit for Research Communities: Helping Authors choose the right mode of publication to maximise impact, a presentation at the conference on Institutional archives for research: experiences and projects in Open Access (Rome, November 30 - December 1, 2006). Abstract:
Response to the UK's Public Service Publisher consultation The Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Rights Group, and Free Culture UK have written a joint response to the UK Office of Communication's Public Service Publisher consultation. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see Saul Albert's report on an earlier stage of the discussion (blogged here January 30, 2007). The consultation ended on March 23. April issue of Learned Publishing The April issue of Learned Publishing is now online. Here are the OA-related articles.
Update. Mary Anne Kennan has self-archived an OA edition of her paper. Gallica collection added to the European Digital Library Daniel Griffin, European Digital Library grows after new French contribution, Information World Review, March 27, 2007. Excerpt:
Stevan Harnad, Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise, a preprint self-archived March 26, 2007. Abstract: Scientometric predictors of research performance need to be validated by showing that they have a high correlation with the external criterion they are trying to predict. The UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), together with the growing movement toward making the full-texts of research articles freely available on the web -- offer a unique opportunity to test and validate a wealth of old and new scientometric predictors, through multiple regression analysis: Publications, journal impact factors, citations, co-citations, citation chronometrics (age, growth, latency to peak, decay rate), hub/authority scores, h-index, prior funding, student counts, co-authorship scores, endogamy/exogamy, textual proximity, download/co-downloads and their chronometrics, etc. can all be tested and validated jointly, discipline by discipline, against their RAE panel rankings in the forthcoming parallel panel-based and metric RAE in 2008. The weights of each predictor can be calibrated to maximize the joint correlation with the rankings. Open Access Scientometrics will provide powerful new means of navigating, evaluating, predicting and analyzing the growing Open Access database, as well as powerful incentives for making it grow faster. Rex, Anthropology (and archaeology) on Citizendium, Savage Minds, March 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Ilmenau Technical U mandates OA editions of books from its university press Starting today, the university press (Universit�tsverlag Ilmenau) of the Ilmenau Technical University (Technische Universit�t Ilmenau) will publish each of its books in dual editions, one OA and one priced/printed. (Thanks to press director Eric Steinhauer via Klaus Graf.) This is a mandate laid down in a new university regulation published today. Excerpt (in Google's English):
A similar statement appears on the University Press home page (in Google's English):
Looking for OA datasets in archaeology Eric Kansa, Development News and Requests, Digging Digitally, March 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Heather Morrison, Coming April 24: the IDRC Digital Library, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, March 26, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: The IDRC first announced plans to launch this repository in December 2005. Brewster Kahle talks about the openness of the Open Content Alliance How Digital Book Collections Will Change Academe, a 12 minute podcast interview with Brewster Kahle from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Australian commission recommends an 'author pays' OA mandate The Australian government Productivity Commission has released a new report, Public Support for Science and Innovation, March 27, 2007. Also see the press release and overview. In the full report, see esp. Section 5.7 (pp. 227-244), "Access to the results of publicly-funded research". Also see Box 5.11 (p. 229), "Some Australian Government actions to enhance access to the results of publicly-funded research"; Box 512 (p. 230), "Recommendations of the PMSEIC Working Group on Data for Science"; Box 5.13 (p. 231), "Suggestions by Houghton et al. for improving access"; Box 514 (p. 233) on the ARC OA policy. Excerpt:
Comment. I'm glad to see that the Commission is moving toward an OA mandate. But this particular proposal is confused and confusing. The Commission recommends an 'author pays' OA mandate as a way to bring about OA while ensuring that journals are protected financially. But does it realize that not all journals offer an OA option? Does it realize that even among OA journals, most do not charge publication fees? Does it realize that it may be forcing journals to change their business models, something that (at least in their rhetoric) publishers oppose as much as threats to their revenue streams? Does it realize that insofar as journals do not change their business models, the new policy will limit the freedom of authors to publish in the journals of their choice? The Commission says that the publication fees might be provided by funding agencies themselves, but is it mandating that the agencies provide the funds? Does it realize that mandating deposit in an OA repository (green OA) rather than publication in an OA journal (gold OA) would avoid all these problems? Update. Also see Stevan Harnad's comments on the proposal.
Brian D. Crawford, "Chairman's Corner," Professional/Scholarly Publishing Bulletin, Spring 2007, pp. 1-2. Crawford is the Chairman of the Executive Council of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). This is a strongly-worded criticism of OA advocates and defense of the AAP. I reproduce it in full so that I can answer it in full. (I'm relying on this statement from the end of the issue: "All material in the PSP Bulletin is protected by copyright, but may be reproduced or quoted with proper credit." However, if the AAP would like me to reproduce only a shorter excerpt, I will.)
Comments.
Citizendium out of alpha into beta The Citizendium beta has officially launched. From the front page:
Here's something you don't see everyday: a journal editorial accompanied by a press release and call for supporting signatures: Rick Anderson, Open access - clear benefits, hidden costs, Learned Publishing, April 2007. Excerpt:
Comments.
Update. Also see the comments by William Walsh. The recommendations from the Institutional Repositories Workshop sponsored by Knowledge Exchange (Utrecht, January 16-17, 2007) are now online. (Thanks to Birgit Schmidt.) The recommendations are divided into six reports: From the report on Exchanging Research Info:
Where is the UK leadership on OA? Bobby Pickering, Free up access to archives for all, Information World Review blog, March 26, 2007. Excerpt:
ScientificCommons starts citation tracking Lars Kirchhoff, ScientificCommons starts citation analysis, Lars Kirchhoff, March 23, 2007. Excerpt:
Thomas Nicolai adds by email: "Currently we have been extracting about 0.3 Million OA citation relations, but I guess we can take this up to 1 million with a couple of improvements." Comment. Very well done. All this is from good algorithms and OA/OAI repository harvesting. If it can scale, it will be a most useful OA layer on top of the OA literature itself, and one step away from a second layer that counts or weighs citations to and from OA literature. Update (3/26/07). The links didn't work in the form in which I posted them yesterday, but they should work now. Sorry for the inconvenience. The problem was an HTML error at my end, not at ScientificCommons. An OA mandate for Europe in the draft FP7 grant agreement Napoleon Miradon, Letter to MPs, a post from the AmSci OA Forum, March 24, 2007. In this draft letter to members of the European parliament, Miradon points out that the EU already mandates deposit or collection of EU-funded research and permits (but does not require) its OA dissemination. Excerpt:
Also see Stevan Harnad, The European Commission has already mandated Green OA! Open Access Archivangelism, March 25, 2007. In this post, Stevan quotes all of Miradon's draft letter and comments on how to improve upon his suggestion. Excerpt:
Comment.
OA book reviews in anthropology The journal Museum Anthropology has been providing OA to some of its book reviews through the journal's associated blog. On the same blog, editor Jason Baird Jackson reflects on the OA experiment:
The experiment has been such a success that the journal has launched an OA supplement, Museum Anthropology Review, also in blog format, just for reviews.
Fayaz Ahmed and Rafiq Rather, Open Access Digital Repositories: An Indian Scenario, KnowGenesis: International Journal for Technical Communication, 2, 1 (2007). The article is free to read but only for registered users, and registration requires the user to agree to email alerts for new issues. Here's a free online copy of the abstract for unregistered users:
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