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Case study in digitizing journal backfiles for OA Yan Han, Jeanne Pfander, and Marianne Stowell Bracke, Digitizing Rangelands: Providing Open Access to the Archives of Society for Range Management Journals, Quarterly Bulletin of IAALD, 3, 4 (2005) pp. 105-110. Self-archived February 24, 2007. The University of Arizona Library is a vital participant in the AgNIC Rangelands project and has contributed to the initiative in many ways. For example, in the mid-to-late 1990�s the Library digitized the backfiles of the Journal of Range Management for open access on the web. Funding and completing digitization projects such as this is a complicated process and requires many decisions along the way. This paper outlines the process taken by the Library to manage a more recent project to scan back issues of the journal Rangelands. It starts with the decision to develop a project plan and request funding from the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It continues on to describe negotiating agreements with project partners, the process for outsourcing of scanning, the design of the technical infrastructure needed to support digitized content, and issues of sustainability that any digital library encounters. U of Bergen perspective on Norwegian cancellation of Blackwell titles Lars Holger Ursin, UB breaks with publisher, P� H�yden, February 23, 2007. (Thanks to Adam Hodgkin.) Excerpt:
PS: For background, see the January 2, 2007, joint statement by four of Norway's six university libraries on their decision to cancel the whole package of 778 Blackwell journals because of "unacceptable conditions and price increases" (blogged here January 8, 2007). OA supporter becomes Dutch minister of education, culture, and science Wouter Gerritsma, Important OA proponent becomes minister of education in the Netherlands, Wouter over het Web, February 24, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Congratulations to Ronald Plasterk and kudos to Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende for this exciting appointment. John Wilbanks on the Neurocommons OA project John Wilbanks, Second-Generation Open Access: Building an Open Content, a 92-minute video- or audio-cast of a presentation at Oxford's Internet Institute, February 8, 2007. Oxford's description:
The European Research Council (ERC) will officially launch in Berlin on February 27-28. For details see the February 22 press release. What's the OA connection? In December 2006, the Scientific Council of the ERC pledged to adopt an OA mandate for ERC-funded research "as soon as pertinent repositories become operational". Update. Wendy Hall, member of the ERC Scientific Council, Head of the School of Electronics & Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and friend of OA, will be on the opening panel at the launch conference. Pro bono legal services for fair-use defendants In November 2005, American University's Center for Social Media released an important report, Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. Now the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Fair Use Project is building on the AU guidelines with a stunning offer. Quoting Lawrence Lessig:
Comment. This beautiful offer amounts to free or nearly free insurance against fair-use liability for conscientious film-makers. I'd love to see a similar project for conscientious scholars, especially in fields like art history that are crippled by copyright over-reaching. We have to pull together three elements: good guidelines for fair use, public-spirited lawyers willing to defend scholars who comply with them, and a public-spirited insurance company willing to cover damages in the rare case of liability. (If the guidelines are good and eligible clients comply, then we know liability will be rare --and will become even rarer as the guidelines are revised.) Kudos to AU, Stanford, Media/Professional, and Michael Donaldson for inventing the recipe and committing themselves to implement it for film-makers. Now that we know the recipe, what are the chances that a new or overlapping set of players can implement it for scholars? The state of scholarly communication in South Africa Eve Gray, The State of the Nation - South African scholarly publishing and the global knowledge divide, Gray Area, February 22, 2007. Excerpt:
Creative Commons has launched the 3.0 versions of its licenses. Usability data on Michigan's MBooks The University of Michigan Library has posted some usability data on MBooks, the ebooks digitized from the Michigan library by the Google Library Project. OA journal program at Swinburne U of Technology Charles Bailey has written a profile the OA journal program at Australia's Swinburne University of Technology. Excerpt:
M.J. Tooey, Why Open Access Won't Go Away, Connective Issues, February 2007. Tooey is the Executive Director of the University of Maryland Health Sciences & Human Services Library. Excerpt:
Elsevier's US lobbying during 2006 William Walsh has a detailed summary of Elsevier's lobbying activity in the US during 2006. His summary is based on a report from the Center for Public Integrity, using data from the Senate Office of Public Records. Bottom line: in 2006, Elsevier spent $2.84 million on lobbying Congress. That's less than it spent in 2005 but still its second-highest total ever. The company's US lobbying budget increased 610% from 1998 to 2006. Among the many bills on which Elsevier lobbied, presumably for amendment or defeat, was FRPAA and the two Labor/HHS appropriations bills (House and Senate) that would have strengthened the NIH policy from a request to a requirement. PS: There's nothing illicit about this lobbying. Pro-OA groups lobbied for passage of the same three bills. Karen Markey and four co-authors, Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States: MIRACLE Project Research Findings, CLIR, February 2007. From the splash page:
From the executive summary:
PS: For background, see Kathlin Smith, U.S. Institutional Repositories: A Census, CLIR Issues, January/February 2007 (blogged here 2/3/07).
Martin Enserink, European Union Steps Back From Open-Access Leap, Science Magazine, February 23, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
The AlouetteCanada Declaration AlouetteCanada, the digitization and OA project for Canadian cultural heritage, has issued a Declaration that includes language supporting OA. The Declaration is undated but appears to be new. Excerpt:
The Declaration is accepting signatures from individuals and institutions. British Columbians support DOAJ Heather Morrison, BC Libraries support DOAJ! Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, February 22, 2007.
"The publishing industry is merely the flea on the tail of the dog" Stevan Harnad, A Tale of Fleas, Tails, Dogs, and Pit-Bulls..., Open Access Archivangelism, February 22, 2007. Excerpt:
More on the National Library of Australia as an OA journal publisher Charles Bailey has written a profile of Open Publish, the OA journal service from the National Library of Australia. Excerpt:
Ellen Duranceau, A Conversation with Benjamin Mako Hill, organizer of the MIT Student Day of Action for Open Access, MIT Library News, undated but c. February 22, 2007. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) Excerpt:
Wendy Hall on OA and the science of the web R. Rangaraj, Towards a Science of the Web, ChennaiOnline, February 23, 2007. Excerpt:
Five problems with the subscription business model Jan Velterop, Failing business models, The Parachute, February 22, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. I'd add two problems that Jan omits.
Calling for OA to historical UK election data S.A. Mathieson, Copyright sets boundaries on history, The Guardian, February 22, 2007. Excerpt:
DC Principles petition opposing FRPAA misses the target The DC Principles Coalition has launched a petition in support of society publishers who oppose FRPAA (c. February 21, 2007). Excerpt:
Comments.
7/10 of most popular web sites in biology are OA Seven of the 10 most popular web sites in biology are open access, according to Alexa. They include the National Center for Biotechnology Information, PubMed, and BioMed Central. The three non-OA sites in the top 10 are Nature, Sigma-Aldrich, and the American Society for Microbiology. (Thanks to BMC.) PS: It would be interesting to look for this pattern in other fields of science. Wikimedia Foundation signs the Berlin Declaration
The Wikimedia Foundation has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization running Wikipedia and other projects.
Web 2.0 meets traditional publishers Mark Chillingworth, Will Web 2.0 revolutionise information providers or kill them? Information World Review, February 21, 2007. Excerpt:
"Sharing information is power" DH News Service Bangalore, Coming up: a planetary web, Deccan Herald, February 21, 2007. Excerpt:
More on the DC Principles Coalition's new old arguments Stevan Harnad, The DC Coalition: A Matter of Principle, Open Access Archivangelism, February 22, 2007.
Randy Dotinga, Senator's Spokesman: Open-Access Bill Will Return, Wired News, February 22, 2007. Excerpt:
Podcast interviews from the CNI meeting Matt Pasiewicz has posted a raft of podcast interviews with participants in CNI's 2006 Fall Task Force Meeting, including:
39 patient and consumer organizations for FRPAA Thirty-nine patient and consumer organizations have written a letter to Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman (and another to Senator Susan Collins) in support of FRPAA (February 16, 2007). From the Cornyn-Lieberman letter:
The letters are signed by these organizations:
"In the spirit of open and collaborative science that transcends national borders" the letters are also signed by these non-US based groups organizations:
Also see today's press release from Knowledge Ecology International on the letters. Excerpt:
Gold OA and two forms of payment Jan Velterop, It's about copyright, right? The Parachute, February 21, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA to legal scholarship Jan Ryan Novak and Leslie A. Pardo, The Evolving Nature of Faculty Publications, Cleveland-Marshall Legal Studies Paper No. 07-134, February 7, 2007. (Thanks to Lawrence Solum.)
From the body of the paper:
Hindawi becomes an OA-only publisher Hindawi Publishing converted its last two TA journals to OA and is now an OA-only publisher. From today's announcement:
Comment. This is a milestone in OA publishing. Hindawi now joins the ranks of other OA-only publishers, like PLoS and BMC. On the basis of its first-hand experience with subscription-based and OA publishing, it not only chose OA, but chose it for its entire line. Finally, it is not determined to lose money; on the contrary, it's is a for-profit OA publisher and already profitable. The new issue of the Journal of Electronic Resource Description & Access (vol. 8, no. 44, 2007) is now online. Here are the OA-related articles. Only abstracts are free online for non-subscribers, at least so far.
A blog-like news module for EPrints Anita Sundaram Coleman, and Joseph Roback, "Latest News": EPrints Meets Web 2.0, a presentation at Open Repositories 2007 (San Antonio, January 23-26, 2007).
DC Principles Coalition still opposes an OA mandate Nonprofit publishers oppose government mandates for scientific publishing, a press release from the DC Principles Coalition, February 20, 2007. Excerpt:
Comments. There's nothing new here and I've answered the major arguments many times before.
OA increases researcher productivity Beverly Brown, Cynthia Found, and Merle McConnell, Federal Science eLibrary Pilot: Seamless, equitable desktop access for Canadian government researchers, The Electronic Library, 25, 1 (2007) pp. 8-17. Only this abstract is free online for non-subscribers:
Comment. This study directly confirms the claim of OA proponents that OA accelerates research and increases the productivity of researchers --in case anyone actually doubted it. Cost per downloaded article: Elsevier v. BMC Matt Cockerill, Maximum access at minimum cost, BioMed Central blog, February 20, 2007.
More on Free High School Science Texts Alex Steffen, South Africa's Free High School Science Texts, WorldChanging, February 20, 2007. Excerpt:
JISC report on the Brussels meeting European Commission discusses future of scientific publishing, a press release from JISC, February 19, 2007. Excerpt: More than 500 delegates from nearly 50 countries attended a major European Commission conference last week to discuss the future of scientific publishing in the European Research Area. Held in Brussels, the conference attracted researchers, publishers, policy makers, research funders, librarians and administrators drawn to debate the issues of open access of research outputs, dissemination of research and preservation in the digital age.... The University of Liverpool is gearing up to launch an institutional repository and is calling on interested faculty and departments to participate in a pre-launch pilot project. (Thanks to Lisa Bryce.) German press on the EC communication Stefan Krempl, EU-Kommission f�rdert Open-Access-Publikationen, Heise online, February 20, 2007. Read the original German or Google's English.
OA to increase impact of publicly-funded research Colin Steele, Profits before public brains trust in push for open research, Canberra Times, February 19, 2007. A letter to the editor. (Colin didn't pick the title!) Excerpt:
Joe, More Universities Recognize The Value Of Free, TechDirt, February 19, 2007. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.)
Utrecht conference on institutional repositories The Knowledge Exchange blog has some notes on each day (one, two) of its recent Institutional Repositories Workshop (Utrecht, January 16-17, 2007). Matthew H. Todd, Open access and open source in chemistry, Chemistry Central Journal, February 19, 2007. Abstract: Scientific data are being generated and shared at ever-increasing rates. Two new mechanisms for doing this have developed: open access publishing and open source research. We discuss both, with recent examples, highlighting the differences between the two, and the strengths of both. Different perspectives at Brussels meeting More experiments needed to find best open access models, CORDIS News, February 19, 2007. Excerpt:
India moving toward OA for govt geospatial data Rajeev Deshpande and Nitin Sethi, GIS loosens govt hold on useful info, Times of India, February 18, 2007.
Larry Page on unlocking scientific knowledge Stefanie Olsen, Google's Page urges scientists to market themselves, News.com, February 17, 2007. On a talk by Google co-founder Larry Page at the AAAS Annual Meeting (San Francisco, February 15-19, 2007). Excerpt:
PS: Google supports OA by indexing the contents of OA repositories and journals and, in a different way, by digitizing public-domain books for free online reading (even if not full OA). I have a dozen serious ideas if it wants to do more. I've raised some of these ideas with the Google Corporation and the Google Foundation in the past and would be delighted to take them further. Update. See Matt Cockerill's post on the BMC blog, listing three things that "Google could do to improve the communication of scientific research":
The human rights argument for OA Gavin Yamey, Time to End the Slavery of Traditional Publishing, PLoS Publishing Blog, February 18, 2007. Excerpt:
Presentations from FreeCulture OA panel The presentations from the Panel on open access research (Gainesville, Florida, February 15, 2007) are now online. Lowering the costs of journal publication Heather Morrison, Scholarly Publishing: High Quality at Low Cost, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, February 17, 2007. Excerpt:
Journal merger with a no-fee OA section on physics letters Gerardus 't Hooft, Editorial, Foundations of Physics, January 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Foundations of Physics is published by Springer. |