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New fees at Royal Society hybrid journals On June 22, the Royal Society will raise the publication fees for its EXiS Open Choice (hybrid OA) journals. The new prices:
Correction (June 21, 2007). A colleague points out that the new fees represent a significant decrease from last year. For example, compare the prices above with the prices reported in this article from June 2006. My apologies to the RS for not noticing or mentioning that the new fees are lower than the old fees. On the other hand, the RS price announcement doesn't mention this fact either. Promoting OA journals from developing countries The Summer issue of the INASP Newsletter is now online. Excerpt:
Hamburg University Press becomes an all-OA publisher Starting on July 1, all scientific publications of the Hamburg University Press will be OA. The press will also sell print-on-demand editions from its own web site and and through traditional booksellers. Comments.
More on the feasibility of a Usage Factor The UKSG has released its final report on the feasibility of developing a Usage Factor for journals and journal articles. From the text (dated May 2007 but announced and released June 15, 2007):
From elsewhere in the body of the report:
Comments.
Do we need a Repositories Plan B? Andy Powell, Repository Plan B? eFoundations, June 15, 2007. Excerpt:
The presentations from ElPub 2007, Openness in Digital Publishing: Awareness, Discovery and Access (Vienna, June 13-15, 2007), are now online. Chemical data in OA repositories JISC's 18th-month SPECTRa project (Submission, Preservation and Exposure of Chemistry Teaching and Research Data) ended in March and the final report is now available. From the report:
Re-opening access to presidential papers The right to know, Austin American-Statesman, June 15, 2007. An editorial. Excerpt:
PS. Hear, hear. For background, see my blog posts from 2002 on Bush's executive order. Sen. John Cornyn, of course, is the Senator from Bush's state and party who introduced FRPAA last year. The Public Library of Science recently added this paragraph to its FAQ on publication fees:
And it added this paragraph to its page on publication fees:
Presentations on OA in Latin America The presentations from the CRIA meeting, Strategies for Open and Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Latin America (Atibaia, Brazil, May 8-10, 2007), are now online. (Thanks to EPT.) DRIVER is looking for Belgian OA repositories From the DRIVER news page:
Charlotte Webber, Summary of BioMed Central�s Workshop at MLA �07 conference, BioMed Central blog, June 15, 2007.
OA mandates for ETDs growing in Australasia Australasian Digital Theses Program: Membership survey 2006, February 2007. (Thanks to CAUL.) Excerpt:
Comment. This is very good news. For ETDs, mandatory digital submission is essentially equivalent to OA. Here's how I put it last year:
Update. Also see Arthur Sale's comments on the report:
The case for OA for consumer magazines Adam Hodgkin, Open Archives (4): Citeability and Moving Walls, Exact Editions Blog, June 15, 2007. Excerpt:
Tove Iren S. Gerhardsen, Negotiators Agree To Add Access To Knowledge To WIPO Mandate, IP Watch, June 14, 2007. Excerpt:
Update. Also see James Love on the KEI Policy Blog:
Google tightens its terms for the CIC libraries deal Questions Emerge as Terms of the CIC/Google Deal Become Public, Library Journal Academic Newswire, June 14, 2007. Excerpt:
No trade-off between OA data and OA postprints Stevan Harnad, On Patience, and Letting (Human) Nature Take Its Course, Open Access Archivangelism, June 14, 2007.
Implications for OA from Pierre Bourdieu Ulrich Herb, Open Access: Soziologische Aspekte, Information Wissenschaft & Praxis 58, 4 (2007). Self-archived June 14, 2007. In German but with this English-language abstract:
OA archiving at six Quebec universities Karen Herland, Librarian poster forum opportunity to share research, Concordia Journal, June 14, 2007. Excerpt:
EC committee discussion of OA policy Back on April 18, I blogged an EC press release on a meeting of the EC's High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries. The meeting was supposed to discuss (among other topics) "how to ensure more open access to scientific research...." But I never saw anything about the meeting's outcome. Here, finally, are the summary minutes from that meeting. (Thanks to Gary Price.) Excerpt:
PS: For more information on members of the Expert Group named in the minutes, see the group's membership page. SPARC partners with OA repository for agricultural research AgEcon Search is an OA repository for agriculture and applied economics at the University of Minnesota, and now it's also a SPARC Partner. From SPARC's announcement:
Can the UN discuss facilitating, or only blocking, access to knowledge? James Love, U.S. Government Opposition to Term "Access to Knowledge" in Key WIPO Negotiation, The Huffington Post, June 13, 2007. Excerpt:
The Canadian Anthropology Society has provided OA to the back issues (2002-2005) of its journal, Anthropologica. (Thanks to Anthropologi.info.) Notes on the Ghana OA and IR workshop Yao Mereku has blogged some notes on the Open Access and Institutional repository sensitization workshop in Ghana (Accra, June 12-13, 2007). Excerpt:
Questionnaire for repository managers Poornima Narayana is the Deputy Head of the Information Centre at India's National Aerospace Laboratories and writing a doctoral dissertation on institutional repositories in India and policies to fill them. To collect data, she has created an online questionnaire for repository managers. If you can speak for an IR, in any country, I hope you can find the time to fill out her questionnaire. Beyond declarations to policies Stevan Harnad, The Gap between OA Precept and OA Practice, Open Access Archivangelism, June 13, 2007.
DINI presentations for OA repository managers Presentations from the DINI meeting Technische und rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen f�r die Betreiber von Open-Access Repositories "Scholarly publishers should start expert Web 2.0 projects" Larry Sanger, What Strong Collaboration Means for Scholarly Publishing, Citizendium Blog, June 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Nature launches another OA resource Nature has launched Scintilla. From its about page:
From the page for content producers:
From Alf Eaton's post about it on Nature's Nascent blog:
U of Victoria facilitates electronic submission and OA for ETDs Canada's University of Victoria has made it easier for grad students to make OA their theses and dissertations OA. From yesterday's announcement:
Comment. Good move. This process should be as easy as possible. Next steps: (1) don't require PDFs, (2) when students choose OA, encourage them to use CC licenses or the equivalent, and ultimately (3) mandate OA for ETDs even if the university also accepts or requires a printout. Peter Cochrane, Are we destined to repeat history? Silicon.com, June 13, 2007. Cochrane is the former CTO and Head of Research at BT. Excerpt:
Si�n Harris, Training increases HINARI and AGORA benefits, Research Information, June/July 2007. Excerpt:
Si�n Harris, Is physics the new biomedicine? Research Information, June/July 2007. Excerpt:
Si�n Harris, Physicians and researchers have different needs, Research Information, June/July 2007. An interview with Alex Williamson, publishing director at the BMJ Group. Excerpt:
Stevan Harnad, Get the Institutional Repository Managers Out of the Decision Loop, Open Access Archivangelism, June 12, 2007.
Comments.
Nottingham creates an OA publishing fund Stephen Pinfield announced at the June 6 ARMA conference that the University of Nottingham had set up an OA publishing fund to help cover publication fees charged by fee-based OA journals. See his slide presentation, Setting up central funds and processes for open-access publishing and dissemination. From Natasha Robshaw's summary of Pinfield's presentation:
Comments.
ARMA presentations on OA publishing The presentations from the ARMA conference, Open Access Publishing: Funding Mechanisms and Institutional Collaboration (Cardiff, June 6, 2007) are now online via the BioMed Central blog. BMC's Natasha Robshaw summarizes each presentation and links to the PPT slides.
New study on data access and dissemination The Research Information Network (RIN) has announced a new study, Publication and quality assurance of research data outputs. From the description:
Public-domain ransom supermarket from Public Resource Last month, if you remember, a new non-profit called Public Resource found that the Smithsonian Institution was selling public-domain photographs, bought copies, and posted them to Flickr. Now it's generalizing the practice. (Thanks to Carl Malamud via Cory Doctorow via Rob Styles.) Whenever a US government web site sells public domain content, Public Resource asks citizens to buy one copy and donate it to Public Resource for OA distribution. To make this work, it has set up an online store stocked with content from 54 federal agencies. From the store's about page:
The Public Resources store is based on the US National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which sells government information to the public. For example, see the Gov.Research Center, the NTIS division devoted to science and technology research. More on the launch of Open Medicine Dean Giustini, Doing Medical Journals Differently: Open Medicine, UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog, June 11, 2007. Excerpt:
Four new OA journals coming from Libertas Academica Libertas Academica has added four new titles to its list of OA journals:
The first journal has an editor (Erich Bornberg-Bauer) but the other three are still hiring. All four are still recruiting members for their editorial boards. Update (June 20, 2007). Add a fifth title to this list: Clinical Medicine: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disorders. The editor-in-chief will be Tariq Haqqi, but the journal is still recruiting the editorial board. EBSCO proud to boost visibility of OA journals KnowledgeSpeak has published an interview with Tim Collins, President of EBSCO. Excerpt, quoting Collins:
Milestone for BMC Bioinformatics The BioMed Central blog reports a milestone for BMC Bioinformatics:
PS: Rising submissions help a journal improve its quality and impact, which in turn help it improve its submissions even further in a benign circle. Congratulations to the whole Bioinformatics team. DRIVER wiki for sharing info on European repositories DRIVER has launched a DRIVER wiki. From the site:
APLA converts its journal to OA Jennifer Richards reports that Canada's Atlantic Provinces Library Association has decided to convert the APLA Bulletin to OA. From her announcement:
PS: Kudos to APLA. A proposal for redirecting subscription funds to support OA journals Heather Morrison, A potential positive cycle: more access, more funds, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, June 11, 2007.
SHERPA issued this announcement earlier today:
PS: Thanks and congratulations to SHERPA. RoMEO is indispensable for the OA movement; and as it covers more publisher policies, it becomes even more indispensable. More on removing permission barriers Stevan Harnad, Open Access: What Comes With the Territory, Open Access Archivangelism, June 12, 2007.
Comments
The June issue of the Repositories Research Team Newsletter is now online. More on the bill to strengthen the NIH policy Lila Guterman, Open-Access Policy Would Be Strengthened in House Panel's NIH Spending Bill, Chronicle of Higher Education blog, June 12, 2007.
PS: There's still time for US citizens to ask their representatives to support this bill. See the details from the ACRL and the frequent updates from the ATA. The NIH is the world's largest funder of medical research, and its $28 billion budget results in about 65,000 peer-reviewed articles per year. Strengthening its public access policy from a request to a requirement is a critical goal for OA and medical research.
AGU launches hybrid OA program for most of its journals In April, the American Geophysical Union launched a hybrid OA program for most of its 19 journals. Here's the policy in its entirety:
Comments. (1) It appears that a "publication unit" is a page or figure. (2) What does it mean for a repository to "accept AGU copyright permissions"? A repository will accept anything that the publisher allows it to accept. (3) When authors pay publication fees, they should retain copyright. If AGU really wants the copyright in order to protect authors, then it should let authors decide. (4) Note that AGU doesn't promise to reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake. JISC report on Web 2.0 in higher education Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen, Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, JISC, May 28, 2007. Excerpt:
Update (8/28/07). JISC has published its response to the recommendations. Excerpt:
More on removing permission barriers Peter Murray-Rust, �open access� is not good enough, A Scientist and the Web, June 10, 2007. Excerpt:
Comments.
Update. See Peter MR's response to my response. We agree on every substantive issue here. The European Library is hiring The OA European Library is looking for a general manager and seven other staffers. Richard Akerman has also blogged some notes on Tom Cochrane's talk earlier today at the IATUL 2007 meeting Global Access to Science: Scientific Publishing for the Future (Stockholm, June 11-14, 2007). Excerpt:
Update. Richard has now blogged on H�kan Carlsson's talk as well, and I expect many more over the next few days. For the time being, I'll just point you to Richard's blog and urge you to read his posts directly. Update on CERN's SCOAP3 initiative Richard Akerman has blogged some notes on R�diger Voss' talk earlier today on CERN's SCOAP3 initiative at the IATUL 2007 meeting Global Access to Science: Scientific Publishing for the Future (Stockholm, June 11-14, 2007). Excerpt:
New review of Chanier's 2004 book on open archives Jean-Claude Bertin reviews Thierry Chanier's book, Archives ouvertes et publication scientifique. Comment mettre en place l'acc�s libre aux r�sultats de la recherche? (Paris: L'Harmattan, December 2004) in the May issue of ReCALL (accessible only to subscribers). (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.) Excerpt:
New OA journal on game studies The Canadian Games Study Association (apparently no web site yet) is launching a new peer-reviewed OA journal, Loading.... It's still in the early stages and is looking an editor, an editorial board, and referees. (Thanks to Population of One.) Scholarly authority in a world of scholarly abundance and OA Michael Jensen, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers). Michael Jensen is the director of strategic Web communications for the US National Academies. Excerpt:
Bethesda statement in Catalan and Spanish Ismael Pe�a L�pez has translated the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing into Catalan and Spanish. (Thanks, Ismael.) Central v. distributed OA archiving in Canada Stevan Harnad, No Need for Canadian PubMed Central: CIHR Should Mandate IR Deposit, Open Access Archivangelism, June 10, 2007.
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