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Library drops BioMed Central's Open Access membership, a press release from the Yale University Libraries, August 3, 2007. Excerpt:
Color-coding Wikipedia entries by trustworthiness Brock Read, Software Weighs Wikipedians' Trustworthiness, Chronicle of Higher Education blog, August 3, 2007.
Comment. Interesting approach.
Stevan Harnad, Ethics of Open Access to Biomedical Research: Just a Special Case of Ethics of Open Access to Research, Open Access Archivangelism, August 4, 2007.
Sanjay Kataria, Intellectual Repositories in Institutions of Higher Learning in India: An overview, in Abdullah, et al. (eds.), Proceedings International Conference of Library Information and Society (ICoLIS), 2007, pp. 129-136. Self-archived August 3, 2007.
Open content licenses in UK cultural heritage institutions The Eduserv Foundation is running a survey on the Use of open content licences by cultural heritage organisations in the UK. (Thanks to the OKFN.) The survey is part of a larger study:
OA literature search as a teaching tool Antony Williams, A Plea to Academia to Help Design a Lesson Plan Using ChemSpider, ChemSpider blog, August 3, 2007. Excerpt:
A new blog on OA launched yesterday, Indonesian Open Access Initiative. The blogger goes by the name of Imam. The inaugural post reprints the Budapest and Berlin statements on OA. PS. Welcome Imam! This promises good things for OA and Indonesia. Intro to OA for the FOSS community Bruce Byfield, Academia's Open Access movement mirrors FOSS community, Linux.com, August 2, 2007. Excerpt:
Rainer Kuhlen, Open access – ein Paradigmenwechsel f�r die �ffentliche Bereitstellung von Wissen. Entwicklungen in Deutschland, Biblioteconomia i Documentaci�, June 2007. BiD published the article in German, Spanish, and Catalan. (Google's machine translation isn't working on this file; but just in case the problem is temporary, here's Google's English.) The Kronberg Declaration on knowledge acquisition and sharing Last month I blogged the draft Kronberg Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing. The final edition is now online, dated June 22-23, 2007, but released today:
From today's press release from UNESCO:
The June issue of Access is now online. This issue has articles on the World Digital Library (from the Library of Congress and Bibliotheca Alexandrina), the Hong Kong meeting on institutional repositories (May 2007), the Bentham Science plan for 300 OA journals, and OA ETDs in the UK. The Research Councils UK has released its Annual Review 2006/2007. Excerpt:
No public funds for copyright exaggerators Michael Geist has a good suggestion on the CCIA complaint about deceptive copyright notices. He describes it for Canadian publishers, but the idea would work just as well for publishers from most other countries:
The future of small literary journals Karen G. Schneider, Survival of Small Press Journals: A Librarian Says the Future Is Digital, but We're Not There Yet, Critical Mass, August 2, 2007. (Critical Mass is the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors.) Excerpt:
I just mailed the August issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at a bill moving through Congress that would require open access for NIH-funded research. The round-up section briefly notes 79 OA developments from July.
International harvesting of OA ETD repositories Leading the way with a European e-Theses demonstrator project, a press release from the Dutch SURF Foundation, July 31, 2007. Excerpt:
Peter Murray-Rust, Cyberscience: Changing the business model for access to data, A Scientist and the Web, July 31, 2007. Excerpt:
Updated OA guide to research in bioinformatics Joanne A. Fox, Scott McMillan, and B. F. Francis Ouellette, Conducting Research on the Web: 2007 Update for the Bioinformatics Links Directory, Nucleic Acids Research, June 22, 2007.
From the body of the paper:
Tech group defends full fair use Sarah McBride and Adam Thompson, Google, Others Contest Copyright Warnings, Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2007. Excerpt:
From the CCIA's Defend Fair Use page:
Comment: Kudos to the CCIA. Content industries have a natural incentive to minimize fair use, but their public warnings cynically and systematically misrepresent the law. It's about time that they were called on it by another, larger industry. The job shouldn't be left to consumers, academics, and non-profits. BTW, universities are often guilty partners of the content industry in this misrepresentation, distributing its propaganda pamphlets on fair use to “educate” students and faculty about the law. Update. The Library Content Alliance has sent an open letter to the FTC supporting the CCIA complaint and giving its own examples of misleading publisher FUD about fair use for academic publications. (Thanks to Gavin Baker.) Snippet: The fair use analysis is complex enough without the obfuscation caused by intimidating, inaccurate copyright warnings. We urge the FTC to investigate this matter carefully, and issue appropriate relief along the lines suggested by CCIA. Update. Library Journal Academic Newswire for August 2, 2007, has a good article on the LCA letter. Chris Surridge, Now we are ONE, PLoS blog, August 1, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Happy birthday, P1. I’m glad to spread the word, in hopes that more people will give you the gifts that will benefit everyone.
The University of Michigan Library has put together a five–page collection of Google Book Search Tips.
Update. Klaus Graf has added some tips of his own. Matt Hodgkinson, BioText - a search engine for open access figures, BioMed Central blog, July 31, 2007. Excerpt:
OA repository for myeloma genomics data MMRF, MMRC Launch Multiple Myeloma Genomics Portal, a press release from the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium, August 1, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Apparently the new repository isn't yet online. MMRC doesn't give a URL in its press release or web site, and Google hasn't heard of it yet. OA to help patients and journalists Jason Bobe, Richter Scale and Your Genomic Portfolio, The Personal Genome, July 31, 2007. (Thanks to My Biotech Life.) Jason outlines a way to help people understand their genetic risks for various diseases and get beyond the superficiality and sensationalism of popular media (“scientists discover a gene for Alzheimer’s”). In the middle of the discussion he pauses for an aside:
LATimes editorial written by LATimes The Library Journal Academic Newswire for July 31 erroneously reported that Ray English (Director of Libraries at Oberlin College) wrote the July 28 LATimes editorial in support of an OA mandate at the NIH. Ray tells me that the report is in error, perhaps arising from the fact that he forwarded a copy of the editorial to LibLicense. He also tells me that LJAN plans to run a correction. Update. The Library Journal Academic Newswire ran the correction in its August 2 issue.
Three videos from Open-Access.tv Francis Muguet has linked to three OA-related videos from Open-Access.tv: Microattribution to facilitate open data Compete, collaborate, compel, Nature Genetics, August 2007. An editorial. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) Excerpt:
Comment. This is the second Nature journal in two days with an editorial supporting open access. For the first, see Free Market Science, Nature Cell Biology, July 2007 (blogged here yesterday). More on the revived Rice University Press Scott Jaschik, New Model for University Presses, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2007. Excerpt:
iCommons has launched its Open Business Guide. Excerpt:
One of the guide’s examples is an OA publisher:
Put it in the Depot! JISC Inform, July 23, 2007. A podcast interview with Peter Burnhill, director of EDINA. From the description:
OA refinement at Libertas Academica As part of his review of the access policies at different publishers, on July 15, Peter Murray-Rust reviewed the policies at OA publisher, Libertas Academica. On July 28, he received this note from LA's Tom Hill:
Comment. Congratulations to Peter MR for his initiative and to kudos to Tom Hill for his constructive response. Update. Peter MR continues his review series with several posts (first, second, third) on the data access policies at CODATA. Steve Foerster, The Demise of Old-Fashioned Scholarly Journals? iCommons, July 30, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA for university press monographs Dorothea Salo, Drive-by thoughts on the Ithaka report, Caveat Lector, July 30, 2007. Excerpt:
Heather Morrison and three co-authors, E-LIS: The Open Archive for Library and Information Science, Charleston Advisor, July 2007. Excerpt:
OA repositories in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America Fernanda Peset and three co-authors, Use of OAI protocol and its impact in digital libraries: a case study in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, in ARD Prasad and Devika P. Madalli (eds.), Proceedings International Conference on Semantic Web and Digital Libraries (ICSD-2007), Bangalore, India, 2007, pp. 459-471. Self-archived July 29, 2007.
"We hope that [OA and TA] will flourish side-by-side..." Free Market Science, Nature Cell Biology, July 2007. An editorial. Excerpt:
Comment. Also see my own list of Nature’s OA and near-OA projects, which is (interestingly) longer than the one in this editorial. There is some controversy about how open some of these projects are. But there is no doubt that some of the projects are full OA and that Nature is genuinely experimenting with different ways to widen access. What’s new and encouraging here is that a Nature journal is editorializing its endorsement of OA, not just its willingness to experiment —even if it’s not an unqualified endorsement of OA but only of OA/TA coexistence. Update. On July 27 Nature launched an OA supplement on AIDS --too new to appear in the NCB editorial or in my earlier list. ALPSP adopts a hybrid OA policy ALPSP has launched an experimental hybrid OA program for its journal, Learned Publishing. From today's announcement:
Also see the ALPSP Author Choice page, which includes this new information:
Comments.
OA for development via personal research portals Ismael Pe�a-L�pez, The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access, Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 3, 1 (2007) pp. 35-48.
Also see Ismael's blog post on the evolution of this article. Another society journal converts to free online access S. Negrini, Europa Medicophysica and its "Free full text" in Internet: toward the first Open Access of a general rehabilitation journal, Europa Medicophysica, June 2007. The journal locked this PDF so that I can't cut and paste excerpts. I'm rekeying this one but I'm not happy about it:
Also see in the same issue: Elena Giglia, Open Access in the biomedical field: a unique opportunity for researchers (and research itself). There is an abstract but I don't have time to rekey it. Europa Medicophysica is the official journal of three organizations:
Comment. I applaud the decision to make the articles free to read. But please reconsider the policy to demand full copyright from authors and please unlock the PDFs! OA resources on urogenital infections Konstantinos N. Fragoulis, Konstantinos Z. Vardakas, and Matthew E. Falagas, Open access World Wide Web resources on urogenital infections, Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, June 16, 2007. Abstract:
M. Rice, Open access publishing in the EU, European Journal of Cancer, 43, 8 (May 2007) p. 1227. I’m linking to the PubMed citation, which doesn’t include an abstract, because the journal itself doesn’t even list the article in its table of contents. Judging from the page number, the article appears within the news section. Another society journal explains why it is OA S.S. Izquierdo, L.R. Izquierdo, and J.M. Izquierdo, Publishing science in the digital age. The case of Neurocirug�a, Neurocirug�a, June 18, 2007. Neurocirug�a is the official journal of the Sociedad Espa�ola de Neurocirug�a (Spanish Society of Neurosurgery).
More on libraries becoming publishers Brian, Rosenblum, Building Publishing Services in the Academic Library, a presentation at CALC 2007, Colorado Academic Library Summit: Changing Cultures: Collaboration, Social Networking, and New Technologies (Denver, May 31 – June 1, 2007). Self-archived July 23, 2007.
Posting tabular data to a blog For science bloggers, Alf Eaton describes five ways to post tabular data to a blog. Update on ChemSpider/ChemRefer integration Antony Williams, ChemRefer - Searching Open Access Chemistry Articles via ChemSpider, ChemSpider blog, July 29, 2007. Excerpt:
New UK govt moves toward OA for public data Charles Arthur, The minister will hear you now, The Guardian, July 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. Kudos to Wills for his openness to a significant change of policy and for initiating the discussion with proponents. Congratulations to the Free Our Data campaign for eliciting this initiative through 16 months of informed and unrelenting advocacy. Update. Also see the full transcript of the meeting with Michael Wills. Access policies at the Leibniz Gemeinschaft
When I blogged Klaus Graf’s series of posts on the access policies of the Leibniz Gemeinschaft, there were four installments. Now there are 14 and Klaus has brought the series to an end. Read his summary in German or Google’s English. His short email synopsis: very little support for OA.
There’s a good discussion thread at Bytes for All Readers & Supporters Forum (a Yahoo group) on where to post a (scholarly) full-text OA book. Comments.
S�ren Bertil Fabricius Dorch has written an useful Short guide to HAL, Copenhagen University Library, July 27, 2007. Excerpt:
Tommy Thompson wants open source research Tommy Thompson, Republican presidential candidate and former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has announced his science platform: double the budget of the NIH (to $58 billion/year), cure breast cancer in 10 years, and this:
I can’t find anything in his press release or campaign site to explain what he means by this. Update (8/13/07). Thompson dropped out of the race after placing sixth in the Iowa straw poll. Manuela Palafox, Antonio Moreno, and Eugenio Tardon, Complutense Library: The digital collections in open access, a presentation at OAI5, the CERN workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (Geneva, April 18-20, 2007). Self-archived July 29, 2007.
Oxford reduces prices on 28 hybrid journals For the second year in a row, Oxford University Press is reducing subscription prices of certain Oxford Open hybrid journals in order to reflect their rising levels of OA content (i.e. the rising levels author uptake of the OA option). Kirsty Luff, OUP's Senior Communications & Marketing Manager, made the announcement on LibLicense:
This year 28 Oxford Open journals will see price reductions. The deepest reductions are at Bioinformatics (19%), Human Molecular Genetics (15%), Brain (10%), PEDS (9%), and Carcinogenesis (8%). Last year OUP reduced the prices of three of its hybrid journals (Bioinformatics, Human Molecular Genetics, and Carcinogenesis.) Comment. Kudos to Oxford for promising to reduce prices in proportion to author uptake and for keeping its promise. Libraries and authors should be very suspicious of publishers who don't even make this promise and hope to get away with a frank "double charge" business model for their hybrid journals (American Chemical Society, American Physiological Society, Royal Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley). Update. Two good blog comments:
Creative Commons has officially launched ccLearn. From the announcement (undated but new):
PS: This is the official launch, but I circulated its pre-launch announcement and search for an Executive Director in March 2007. Ken Strutin, Guide to Short Form Open Access Legal Publications, LLRX, July 27, 2007. (Thanks to Michel-Adrien Sheppard.) Excerpt:
Strutin briefly notes, and links to, 15 short-form OA law journals. |