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Internet Archaeology converting to OA Internet Archaeology: creating an Open Access success story, a press release from JISC, May 25, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: I can't tell whether the free online access will be limited to users from UK institutions. If anyone knows the answer, please drop me a line. Update. I just learned from Liam Earney at JISC that the newly-funded free online access will be limited to the UK. However, Lorraine Estelle at JISC reassures me that IA plans to use some of its new funding to prepare for full worldwide OA. Overview of OA publishing in Canada Heather Morrison, Demystifying open access journals: pure gold, a presentation at the Canadian Library Association Annual Conference (St. John's, May 23-26, 2007). Self-archived May 24, 2007.
Today is fifth birthday of Open Access News. Blogger says it has 11,066 posts, which comes to about six a day. (About 200 were written by my co-contributors during the period when OAN was a group blog.) I'm sure that the last couple of years bring up the average and that the slope of the curve is rising rather than falling. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing right now, but that relentless growth is ominous and I have to keep reminding myself that it reflects the steadily mounting worldwide momentum for OA.
Presentations on OA at the CSE meeting The presentations from the session on the current status of open access at the Council of Science Editors 2007 Annual Meeting (Austin, May 18-22, 2007) are now online at the home page of the DC Principles Coalition:
Judith Winters, New ways to unlock potential of research, AHDS Newsletter, Spring/Summer 2007. Excerpt:
Public access to surgery mortality data decreases risk of mortality Ben Bridgewater and eight co-authors, Has the publication of cardiac surgery outcome data been associated with changes in practice in northwest England, BMJ, June 2007. Abstract:
In the same issue, also see Steven Livesey's comment, Is public access to surgeon-specific data affecting practice adversely? (No abstract available.) Call for OA to Brazilian research Roberto Meneghini of BIREME has called for OA to Brazilian research. Read the Portuguese original in the Jornal da Ci�nca or Google's English. (Thanks to Donat Agosti.) PS: Just last week BIREME required the journals indexed in LILACS or SciELO, and publishing articles on clinical drug trials, to require OA to the underlying trial data. The OA decision of Germany's Bundesrat The International Publishers Association (IPA) has released released an English translation of the Bundesrat Decision of May 11, 2007. Excerpt:
Also see the IPA press release accompanying the translation (May 24, 2007). Excerpt:
Comments. For background, the Bundesrat was discussing the EC's Communication on access to scientific information in the digital age, February 15, 2007. For my thoughts on the same EC Communication, see SOAN for March 2, 2007,
WideOpenEducation is a new blog devoted to open access and open source, especially in higher education. It's sponsored by the Online Education Database. From its inaugural post:
Google restrictions on public-domain works hurt users and Google too Cory Doctorow, Google Print doesn't do exclusive deals with libraries, but still holds the public domain tight to its chest, Boing Boing, May 24, 2007. Excerpt:
More on CERN's project to convert particle physics journals to OA Travis C. Brooks, Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics: A Brief Introduction for the non-Expert, a preprint posted to arXiv May 23, 2007.
Proposing an OA, open review journal for educational technology George Siemens, Scholarship in an age of participation, Emerald InTouch, March 27, 2006. Siemens proposes an open access, open review journal for "emerging trends in educational technology and pedagogy, exploring fields of social software, connectivism, and networked learning" and calls on interested colleagues to contact him. Wessex Archaeology adopts Creative Commons license for photos, Past Thinking, May 24, 2007. (Thanks to Jo Cook.)
Another society journal backfile goes OA The British Epigraphy Society is digitizing and providing OA to the backfile of BES News. (Thanks to Charles Ellwood Jones.) More on finding articles in PubMed and PubMed Central Sandra Porter, Finding scientific papers for free, one more experiment, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, May 24, 2007. Excerpt:
More on Eigenfactor for measuring citation impact Carl Bergstrom, Eigenfactor: Measuring the value and prestige of scholarly journals, C&RL News, May 2007. This is the first full account of the Eigenfactor as a measurement of citation impact, its algorithm, its intended uses, and its advantages over other impact measurements. I won't post an excerpt because the article doesn't directly touch on OA issues. But I will point out that Eigenfactor results are free of charge. Tom Matrullo, A conversation with JSTOR's Bruce Heterick, Improprieties, May 24, 2007. (Thanks to David Weinberger.) Excerpt:
Comment. This is important and could become be a huge step toward OA in the social sciences and the humanities. I talked to the Mellon Foundation in 2004 about the possibility of OA to sufficiently old and amortized back issues of participating journals, and the answer was not a flat no. The door was ajar. It's very heartening to hear that the door is opening further and that JSTOR now considers OA to be a goal.
NSF launches data interoperability project The NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure has launched the Community-based Data Interoperability Networks (INTEROP) project and is now soliciting proposals (May 23, 2007). (Thanks to Clifford Lynch.) From the solicitation:
The due date for the first round of funding is August 23, 2007. Open data presentations at XTech Abstracts of the presentations on Open Data at XTech 2007 (Paris, May 15-18, 2007) are now online. Paul Miller, Linked Data - the real Semantic Web? Nodalities, May 22, 2007. (Thanks to Peter Murray-Rust.) Excerpt:
Author attitudes toward OA repositories for teaching and learning Melanie Bates and three co-authors, Attitudes to the rights and rewards for author contributions to repositories for teaching and learning, ALT-J, March 2007. Only this abstract is free online for non-subscribers, at least so far:
More on AZoM's OA journals that pay authors Financial rewards for nanotech science authors and peer reviewers, a press release from AZoM.com ("The A to Z of Materials"), May 22, 2007. (Thanks to Jim Till.) Excerpt:
PS: Recall that earlier this month AZoM won a Hitwise Australia award for online leadership in manufacturing and industry. For more on AZoM's patented OA business model, my comment in SOAN for October 2005. Asking the German govt to strengthen its support for OA Germany's Aktionsb�ndnis: Urheberrecht f�r Bildung und Wissenschaft (Coalition for Action: Copyright for Education and Research) issued a press release yesterday on its communications with the national ministries of science and culture. The coalition asked the ministries whether they agree that the government has a role to play in providing access to publicly-funded research, and where they stand on the conflict between the upper house of Parliament's 2006 support for OA and its May 2007 deference to private publishers. The coalition also calls on Parliament to resolve its conflicting positions in favor of OA for publicly-funded research. Read the press release in German or Google's English. Carl Zimmer contrasts Wiley and PLoS Carl Zimmer, An Open Mouse, The Loom, May 24, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: The Batts/Wiley story broke in late April when I was traveling. If I'd been at my desk, I'd have covered it or at least I'd have tried. But because the comments proliferated explosively, I wasn't at my desk, and I had a full load of other work, I decided that I had to let it go. I'm glad to catch up a bit with this post. I'm also glad to have the chance to recommend comments by Mark Chu-Carroll, Cory Doctorow, Matt Hodgkinson, Bill Hooker, Rob Knop, Brock Read, Kaitlin Thaney, Bryan Vickery, and Alan Wexelblat. Finally, Katherine Sharpe at ScienceBlogs, where the controversy began, solicited comments from five "experts and stakeholders" (Jan Velterop of Springer, John Wilbanks of Science Commons, Mark Patterson of PLoS, Matt Cockerill of BMC, and me.) Ghent U joins the Google Library Project Ghent University has joined the Google Library Project, becoming its 16th library partner and the fifth from a non-English speaking country. From Ghent's announcement:
Also see the shorter announcements from Google Book Search and Google Librarian Central. PS: Google says Ghent is the 15th library partner, but I've been counting the Library of Congress, which participates through the World Digital Library.
Laura Cohen, Social Scholarship on the Rise, Inmersi�n Educativa, May 23, 2007.
MollyK has blogged some notes on the Open Access Panel at Copyright Utopia: Alternative Visions, Methods and Policies (Adelphi, Maryland, May 21-23, 2007).
On April 30, Heather Piwowar launched Research Remix, a new blog on data sharing and reuse. (Thanks to Bill Hooker.) From her about page:
See for example her post from yesterday, Nonresponse to data sharing requests:
More on finding OA papers in medicine Sandra Porter, Finding scientific papers for free, part III: my new favorite method, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, May 23, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see the excerpts from Part I and Part II that I blogged here yesterday. Paris meeting on open archives The presentations from the Couperin Consortium meeting, Journ�e d'�tude sur les Archives Ouvertes (Paris, May 21, 2007), are now online. (Thanks to the INIST Libre Acc�s blog.) OA to clinical trial data working as intended GlaxoSmithKline's own OA Clinical Trial Register was a major source of data for a new study showing that Avandia, GSK's drug for diabetes, increases the risk of heart attack. For details see yesterday's Wall Street Journal. (Thanks to Ari Friedman.) Update. Apparently scientists studying Avandia risks don't have access to all the GSK data they'd like. See Jonathan Eisen's post about a radio discussion of the problem and his own phoned-in contribution. Update. Cory Tomsons warns that the role of open data in this case doesn't mean that we can relax efforts to regulate and improve drug safety. Excerpt:
Software to automate OA queries to authors News from Ari Friedman's Self-Archiving Initiative:
I wrote him for additional details and learned this:
PS: Unlike the email request buttons now available for EPrints and DSpace, Friedman's software applies to online bibliographies, not repositories, sends many queries at once, and can ask authors to deposit their articles, not merely to forward copies of articles already on deposit. This could be very useful. Turkish guide to launching an IR ANKOS (Anatolian University Libraries Consortium) has published a guide to establishing an institutional repository, in Turkish with an English summary. (Thanks to Bulent Karasozen.) The slides and video of the colloquium by CERN's Salvatore Mele at Stanford's SLAC, Demystifying Open Access (Palo Alto, May 14, 2007), are now online. (Thanks to Jens Vigen.) The MRC and BHF OA mandates in action James Mitchell Crow, Scientists seek indicators of illness, Chemistry World, May 22, 2007. Excerpt.
Comments.
More on how copyrights hinder research Donat Agosti, Das Urheberrecht behindert die Forschung, Handelszeitung, May 16, 2007. How copyrights hinder research and how OA accelerates it. (Because the original is a PDF, I can't link to a machine translation.) New prize for openness and innovation in cancer research The Gotham Prize is a new annual $1 million award for innovation in cancer research. It doesn't specifically require OA for research results, but it does specifically try to counteract the data hoarding and secrecy that often accompany promising new ideas, especially in their early stages. From the FAQ:
Wikipedia for Data - Freebase, OpenBusiness, May 23, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For more background, see my post from 3/9/07 on the Freebase launch.
M�tropoles is a new peer-reviewed OA journal of cities and urban life published with support from the French Minist�re des Affaires Etrang�res, R�gion Rh�ne-Alpes, CNRS, Minist�re de l�Ecologie, du D�veloppement et de l�Am�nagement Durables, Cluster 12 de la R�gion Rh�ne-Alpes, and the Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l�Etat. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) New OA journal of semio-linguistics Semen: Revue de s�mio-linguistique des textes et discours is a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by the Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comt�. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) Sandra Porter, Finding scientific papers for free, part I, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, May 21, 2007. Excerpt:
Also see Part II: comparing methods:
More on the limited knowledge of OA in Africa Charles Mkoka, Open access blocked by unawareness and librarians, SciDev.net, May 22, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For background, here's the original article and my blog post about it. I'm glad to hear that HINARI is working on the password availability problem. On the other hand, straight OA requires no passwords. Sean Eddy on open access and open source Kevin Davies, Eddy Celebrates Open Access in Franklin Speech, BioIT World, May 22, 2007. Excerpt:
Paul-Erlich-Institut signs the Berlin Declaration Germany's Paul-Ehrlich-Institut has signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. "Emancipatory teaching in an electronic age" James Neill, Journey into use of free software, open formats, open access, and open licensing in academia, University of Canberra wiki, May 22, 2007.
More on a possible OA journal of computational linguistics The blog-based discussion of a possible OA journal for computational linguistics and natural language processing has moved to a wiki.
More on open data at XTech 2007 Rufus Pollock has blogged some notes about XTech 2007: The Ubiquitous Web (Paris, May 15-18, 2007). Excerpt:
Video about the the global commons movement From the iCommons blog:
Biotechnology for Biofuels is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from BioMed Central. For details, see today's announcement. Danny Ayers has posted five podcasts on open data, from the WWW2007 Developers Track (Banff, May 10, 2007). (Thanks to Peter Murray-Rust.) Google will digitize 100,000 ancient Indian texts
Charles Huckabee, Google to Digitize Ancient Texts at University in India, Chronicle of Higher Education News blog, May 20, 2007. Excerpt:
Google has agreed to digitize some 800,000 books and manuscripts at the University of Mysore, in Karnataka, India, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. Some of the documents are written on palm leaves, and some on paper. Among them are India�s first political treatise, the Arthasastra, dating from the fourth century BC. Of the 800,000 texts Google will digitize from the Mysore library, about 100,000 date from the eighth century. PS: The Indo-Asian News Service adds that the works will be "patented" after they are digitized and before Google may link to them. Did it mean "copyrighted"? Either way, will Google display full-texts (as it may do with public-domain works) or limit itself to fair-use snippets (as it must do with works under copyright)? Update. Library Journal Academic Newswire reports that early reports of this project have been exaggerated: ...[R]eports circulating on the Internet are...claiming Google has struck a deal to digitize more than 800,000 books and manuscripts at the University of Mysore, Karnataka, India....There's just one catch --that agreement is news to Google. Google officials confirmed they were in discussions, but that there was no agreement in place with Mysore. Another reason for OA in anthropology Alexandre Enkerli, AAA on OA, Lorenz on AAA, Open Access Anthropology, May 21, 2007. Excerpt:
Cancer Research UK announces its OA mandate Cancer Research UK released its OA policy today. The CR-UK pledged to adopt an OA mandate back in January 2007, at the launch of UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). (It's a member of the UKPMC Funders Group and all members of the Funders Group pledged or adopted OA mandates.) But it took some time to deliberate and didn't announce its policy until today. Excerpt:
PS: The main page on the policy doesn't talk about timing, but the FAQ fills in the gap: "All deposited papers must be made freely accessible from the UKPMC as soon as possible, and in any event within six months of the journal publisher's official date of final publication." Kudos to all involved at CR-UK. A German review of Willinsky's Access Principle Daniel Zimmel has written a review of John Willinsky's book, The Access Principle, MIT Press, 2005 (print edition, OA edition), for Bibliothek: Forschung und Praxis, 2007. The review is in German. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) Because the review is a PDF, I can't link to a machine translation. Wishful thinking in the publisher position paper on balancing rights Kevin Smith, Publisher position on author rights, Duke Scholarly Communications, May 20, 2007. Excerpt:
Elia Powers, Standing Up for Open Access, Inside Higher Ed, May 21, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For more background, see my posts from March 21 and April 23, 2007.
OA collection of Darwin's letters For more than 20 years, the Darwin Correspondence Project has been collecting Darwin's letters for a series of priced, printed volumes. It has now started releasing them in an OA edition. From the site:
OA collection of radical small-press writing The University of Utah has launched Eclipse, "a free on-line archive focusing on digital facsimiles of the most radical small-press writing from the last quarter century." (Thanks to the Prelinger Library blog.) For the past three days, Blogger hasn't listed all my archive files in my sidebar. But the problem is now fixed, thanks to an anonymous contributor to the Blogger Help Group. OA collection at the U of Vermont Back in April, the University of Vermont launched an OA repository for rare and fragile works from its special collections. From its announcement:
In a New York Times op-ed, Mark Helprin argues for permanent copyrights. He refers to the expiration of a copyright as "expropriation" and "confiscation". Update. See the lengthy response evolving at Lawrence Lessig's wiki. The internet as a platform for pursuing truth Time Magazine has published an excerpt from Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason (Penguin Press, to be available on May 22). Excerpt from the excerpt:
Giving readers one more reason to look at OA articles first Heather Morrison, Does Open Access correlate with quality and recency? Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, May 20, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA to clinical drug trial data Pat McCaffrey, Clinical Trial Data: Fit for Public Consumption, Alzheimer Research Forum, March 13, 2007. Excerpt:
CCAHTE Journal converting to OA Cheryl McLean, CCAHTE Journal Achievements and Challenges, Crossing Borders, May 17, 2007. McLean is the editor and publisher of the CCAHTE Journal. (CCAHTE = Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education.) Excerpt:
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