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Sol Lederman, Dr. Bob Marianelli: A Catalyst for Accelerating Chemical Science, OSTIblog, September 5, 2008.
OSTI is founded on the principle that science advances only if knowledge is shared. The OSTI Corollary takes this concept to a new level. It holds that accelerating the spread of knowledge accelerates the advance of science. The advance of science can also be accelerated by funding more bright scientists. In the following blog article, Dr. Bob Marianelli reminisces and gives his perspectives about advancing science throughout his remarkable career. More than 200,000 articles searchable through DOAJ
Heather Morrison notes that the Directory of Open Access Journals recently passed the milestone of 200,000 articles searchable through the DOAJ service.
Case study of digitizing dissertations
Ingrid Mason, Technical Report: Doctoral Theses Digitisation, report, September 2008. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)
Doctoral theses (~1200) in the [Victoria University of Wellington] Library�s collection have been digitised and uploaded into the Library�s two research repositories: RestrictedArchive@Victoria and ResearchArchive@Victoria. ... OA databases of state spending
Ellen Miller, Sunshine States, The Sunlight Foundation Blog, September 4, 2008.
Christian Zimmermann, RePEc in August 2008, The RePEc blog, September 4, 2008.
Guide to OA educational videos
Susan Ariew, You Tube Culture and the Academic Library: A Guide to Online Open Access Educational Videos, Choice, August 2008. Only this description is OA:
Ariew's essay introduces librarians to online videos as sources of useful information and as promotional tools. The first part of the essay is a guide to quality videos on video-hosting Web sites, the second to videos libraries use to promote their collections and services, the third to open source videos that libraries can use in their own instructional programs. Ariew discusses more than forty resources, all of which are listed in the cite list along with their URLs.
Kete has released version 1.1 of its software. From the description at LISNews:
... Kete is open source software that enables communities ... to collaboratively build their own digital libraries, archives and repositories. Kete combines features from Knowledge and Content Management Systems as well as collaboration tools such as wikis, blogs, tags, and online forums to make it easy to add and relate content on a Kete site. ...
Ben Stebbing, OAPEN - a new frontier?, Manchester University Press blog, September 4, 2008.
I went to Goettingen in Germany at the start of this week, to kick off OAPEN, a project in open access publishing. It is quite cutting edge, as it is looking at open access in humanities monographs, where other open access projects look at journals in the sciences. ...See also our past posts on OAPEN. Overview of some research sharing tools
Paula J. Hane, Research Sharing Gets New Tools and Goes Trendy, Information Today, September 4, 2008. Discusses Research1, Labmeeting, Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, WizFolio Web 2.0, and Academici, among others.
New OA publishing service for conferences
Atlantis Press is offering an OA publishing service for conferences. For a fee, the company will host an OA site for the conference and manage other publisher services. The company can also produce print and CD copies of the conference proceedings.
$400m endowment for Broad Institute
Carey Goldberg, $400m gift makes center on genomics permanent, The Boston Globe, September 5, 2008.
A record-setting $400 million gift announced yesterday will provide financial permanence for the Broad Institute, a Cambridge genomics research center that in just four years has become a worldwide leader in the effort to unravel the genetic basis of diseases. ...See also our past posts on the Broad Institute. On OA to protein structure data
Structural Genomics And Open Access To Epigenetic Data, TS-Si, September 4, 2008.
... The structural papers not only represent an advance for the epigenetics field, but also an advance for how the science was done. The concurrent publication of the three papers highlights the competitive nature of this field, but in fact these papers were made possible because the [Structural Genomics Consortium], in keeping with its policy of making its data freely and immediately available, made the underlying information available in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) late in 2007. The availability of this information allowed the other groups to make more rapid progress in their own work. New OA platform for engineering conferences
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has launched Engineering Conferences Online, a new OA publishing service for conference organizers. (Thanks to Information Today.)
3 articles on IRs in developing countries
There are three articles on IRs in developing countries in the Summer 2008 issue of the INASP Newsletter:
I'll be on the road September 6-11 with few opportunities for blogging or email. But Gavin will be on the job, and I'll start to catch up as soon as I return. New grants awarded for OA humanities projects
NEH and IMLS Award Advancing Knowledge Digital Partnership Grants, press release, August 26, 2008.
See also the Alexandria Archive Institute's note on its grant. Blogging the Oslo conference on scientific publishing Alma Swan and Katarina Jander are live-blogging the Second European Conference on Science Publishing in Biomedicine and Medicine (Oslo, September 3-6, 2008). Follow the conference blog for details. Bloomsbury launches a new imprint for OA books Bloomsbury Publishing has announced a new OA imprint, Bloomsbury Academic. From today's press release:
Update. Also see Adam Hodgkin's comments:
Update (9/23/08). Also see Andrew Albanese's story in Library Journal. Update (9/25/08). Also see the Bloomsbury press release on its acquisition of Berg Publishers. Excerpt:
Publishers go to Congress to undo the NIH policy Andrew Albanese, NIH Public Access Policy To Face Copyright Challenge in Congress? Library Journal, September 5, 2008. Excerpt:
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Update. Alert to US Citizens: If your representative is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, please contact him/her before the end of business on Tuesday, September 9, and express your support for the NIH policy. There are committee members from AL, AZ, CA, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, MA, MI, MN, NC, NY, OH, TN, TX, UT, WI, and VA. Some members know nothing about the policy but what the publishing lobby has told them. Explain why the policy matters to you and make it personal. Send copies of your message to the committee leadership (John Conyers, Chairman, D-MI, and Lamar Smith, Ranking Member, R-TX). If your representative is not a member of the committee, then you can send a message to the committee leadership alone. For the contact info on any member, see Congress Merge. If you can address copyright issues, do. This committee has jurisdiction over copyright issues, and copyright is the hook publishers used to get the committee's attention. It's tiring to mobilize all over again, but it's necessary. Please write and spread the word. Keep a copy of your message. You may need it again. Update. Also see: Is NIH Public Access Mandate In Danger? Library Journal Academic Newswire, September 9, 2008. Labels: Hot The Fall 2008 issue of Libreas is now online. Here are the OA-related articles:
PS: Also see our March 2008 post on Kuhlen's book. How Ireland will provide OA to its publicly-funded research Ireland is launching a national OA platform or portal which will harvest the contents of the country's new network of institutional repositories. See the announcement by Dublin City University (undated but this week):
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Update. Also see the comments of Garret McMahon, not only on the news but also on the presentations at the meeting where the news was announced. Labels: Hot OKF launches an open science mailing list New from the Open Knowledge Foundation:
News on the CC0 public domain waiver
Donna Wentworth, Progress on the CC0 public domain waiver, Science Commons blog, September 2, 2008.
See also our past posts on CC0. Blog notes on Southampton open science workshop
Branwen Hide, Open Science, Research Information Network, undated but recent.
New OA journal of computer science and math
The International Journal of Open Problems in Computer Science and Mathematics is a new, peer-reviewed, no-fee OA journal. The inaugural issue, dated June 2008, is now online. (Thanks to Intute.)
Malamud recognized with Public Knowledge award
Public Knowledge Presents Fifth IP3 Awards to Lofgren, Scott, von Lohmann and Malamud, press release, September 2, 2008.
See also our past posts on Carl Malamud.
New OA copyright evidence registry
OCLC pilots WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry, press release, August 25, 2008. (Thanks to Georgia Harper.)
Geoff Brumfiel, Physicists aflutter about data photographed at conference, Nature News, September 2, 2008. Excerpt:
Also see the growing number of comments at the end of the article. There are more comments here, here, and here. Michigan puts Google-scanned books into CIC consortial repository MBooks Becomes HathiTrust, a press release from the University of Michigan, August 21, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my June 2008 post on the CIC consortial repository, which wasn't called HathiTrust at the time. Also see Indiana University's announcement of HathiTrust, August 8, 2008. Update. Read about Roy Tennant's experiment to make HathiTrust searchable, August 25, 2008. NIH Update: PubMed Central Numbers Surge Dramatically in July, Library Journal Academic Newswire, September 4, 2008. Excerpt:
Alex Steffen, Cory Doctorow: The WorldChanging Interview, World Changing, September 3, 2008. Excerpts (from Doctorow):
PS: Article 5-2 of the draft A2K treaty mandates OA for publicly-funded research. (Disclosure: I participated in the drafting of 5-2.) What ARL libraries are doing for OA Pippa Smart, SPEC Kit 299: Scholarly Communication Education Initiatives, August 2007 and SPEC Kit 300: Open Access Resources, September 2007, Learned Publishing, October 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For more details, including excerpts from the two SPEC Kits, see our blog post on Kit 299 and our post on Kit 300. Trends in journal business models, including models for OA journals Donald W.King and Frances M. Alvarado-Albertorio, Pricing and other means of charging for scholarly journals: a literature review and commentary, Learned Publishing, October 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
More on the SHERPA list of hybrid OA journal policies Stevan Harnad, SHERPA/RoMEO: Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access, Open Access Archivangelism, September 3, 2008. Excerpt:
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Talking about majority of TA publishers which permit postprint archiving Dorothea Salo, Two-thirds full? Caveat Lector, September 3, 2008. Excerpt:
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Update. Klaus Graf has some evidence that SHERPA hasn't yet surveyed the principal publishers of German-language history journals. Read his post in German or Google's English. This is a useful piece of the mosaic, and I wish we had more detail about the publishers SHERPA hasn't yet surveyed. BTW, he also reports that the same publishers don't provide the relevant copyright and self-archiving information on their web sites. Update (9/5/08). Also see Dorothea Salo's response.
Call for publicly-funded OA journals in China Jia Hepeng, Make China journals open access, says top scientist, SciDev.Net, September 2, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. If the goal is OA for Chinese research, to boost its audience and impact, then green OA would be faster and cheaper than gold OA. But if the goal (or part of the goal) is to publish the articles in China, and keep China's 5,000 peer-reviewed journals alive, that's a reason to consider the gold strategy. But why not both? A gold strategy without a green one is not likely to absorb the whole research output of the nation, especially as that research output grows rapidly over the next decade. Will Google's Knol attract academic users? Andrea Foster, What Google's New Encyclopedia Means for Students and Professors, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2008. Excerpt:
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Carl Malamud strikes in California Nathan Halverson, He's giving you access, one document at a time, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, September 3, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see our past posts on Malamud's heroic efforts to provide OA to public domain information, including the documents of US law. Also see our past posts on the Veeck case, the tendency of building codes to be written by industry lobbies and copyrighted, and the Supreme Court's refusal to review a Fifth Circuit decision that, qua public law, those codes are in the public domain even if, qua proposals of private organizations, they are not. Update (9/4/08). Excerpt from Free Government Information:
Chris Snyder, Open Source Textbooks Challenge a Paradigm, Wired, September 1, 2008.
See also our past posts on Flat World Knowledge. OA backfile of Journal of Distance Education
The Journal of Distance Education has provided OA to its complete backfiles, dating to 1986. The journal is published by the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education. New issues are also OA. See the blog post by editor Mark Bullen:
... This marks the culmination of a two year project to convert the JDE to a fully online, open access journal. It consolidates three separate and different web presences for the journal and allows readers to search all the journal issues using the Open Journal System search tools. ...
The Twidox folks have created another Facebook group about OA.
Update. Some other OA-related presences on Facebook are the groups Access to Research Now!, we support taxpayer access, and SPARC, and the PLoS page.
Robin Lloyd, Era of Scientific Secrecy Near End, LiveScience, September 2, 2008. (Thanks to Ria Tan.)
Secrecy and competition to achieve breakthroughs have been part of scientific culture for centuries, but the latest Internet advances are forcing a tortured openness throughout the halls of science and raising questions about how research will be done in the future.
Maria Jos� Vi�as, Medical Wiki Backed by Prominent Colleges Will Go Live by Year's End, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2008.
Medpedia, a new online [OA] medical encyclopedia to be written and edited by a collaborative group of thousands, with support from several leading medical schools, is calling for volunteers. But not everyone will be accepted. Only those who hold an M.D. or Ph.D. in a biomedical field need apply.See also our past post on Medpedia. Presentations from FKFT conference online
Presentations from Free Knowledge, Free Technology (Barcelona, July 15-17, 2008) are now online. A few deal with OA-related topics.
Topaz, the publishing platform used by some PLoS journals, released version 0.9 of its software on September 1, 2008. The release mostly consists of bug fixes. The packages are available for download.
Collection of OA datasets and mashups
Datamob (motto: Public data put to good use.) is a site, launched earlier this year, that catalogs OA datasets and visualization interfaces. (Thanks to Olivier Charbonneau.)
New book on Indian institutional repositories Smitha Ramachandran and Gayatri Doctor (eds.), Digital Institutional Repositories: Case Studies, Icfai Books, 2008. The table of contents:
It doesn't appear that there is an OA edition of the book, although there is a detailed, OA overview. The presentations --papers or slides, and links to recommended reading-- from Digital Libraries � la Carte 2008 (Tilburg University, 25- 29 August, 2008) are now online. See especially those from Module 4 (Libraries - Partners in Research and Open Access), Module 5b (Put Yourself in the DRIVER's Seat - Practical Training for Building a European Repository Network), and Herbert Van de Sompel's two presentations, on MESUR and ORE, from Module 2. More on SJI and the Poynder inquiry Strange Case: Publisher Threatens OA Reporter with Lawsuit, Charges Racism, Library Journal Academic Newswire, September 2, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my post on Poynder's original inquiry, which I've since updated with links to replies and comments. Publishers with hybrid OA journal programs SHERPA has created a list of Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access. It annotates each one with a link to the program, the price range for the OA option (in dollars and pounds), and remarks. Very useful.
NIH's largest grant will yield open data for PubChem The NIH has given the Scripps Research Institute and eight other research centers an $80 million grant to create a biochemical research network. All the resulting data will be OA on PubChem. The San Diego Union-Tribune published details today:
Survey of societies and scholarly communication SAGE is conducting a survey of learned societies, Meeting the challenges: societies and scholarly communication. (Thanks to Research Information.) I haven't gone through all 30 questions, but at least some are about OA. Responses are due September 22, and respondents may sign up to receive a copy of the results. New document sharing site to launch
Twidox is a new document sharing site, scheduled to launch in September 2008. The site is currently in private beta. From the description on their blog:
Final report on JISC's archive inventory
Daisy Abbott, JISC Final Report � Digital Repositories and Archives Inventory Project, report, August 28, 2008. Abstract:
The Digital Repositories and Archives Inventory (DRAI) Project aimed to provide a comprehensive snapshot of digital resource provision in the UK and to examine the technical infrastructure and preservation environment of this digital content. There has been a clearly articulated need for a �one stop shop� for information discovery across a range of different digital collections. By concentrating on resources containing digital objects, the catalogue of resources created during the Digital Repositories and Archives Inventory (DRAI) project updates and complements previous aggregation efforts and provides more specific information about the preservation of each collection (which has not been part of the scope of previous portals). This information is crucial to understand the current preservation environment in the UK and will build on previous work by the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (amongst others) in building strategies for digital preservation.See also the JISC Information Environment Team blog post:
Role of academic health centers in data sharing
Heather A. Piwowar, et al., on behalf of the caBIG Data Sharing and Intellectual Capital Workspace, Towards a Data Sharing Culture: Recommendations for Leadership from Academic Health Centers, PLoS Medicine, September 2, 2008.
Sharing biomedical research and health care data is important but difficult. Recognizing this, many initiatives facilitate, fund, request, or require researchers to share their data. These initiatives address the technical aspects of data sharing, but rarely focus on incentives for key stakeholders. Academic health centers (AHCs) have a critical role in enabling, encouraging, and rewarding data sharing. The leaders of medical schools and academic-affiliated hospitals can play a unique role in supporting this transformation of the research enterprise. We propose that AHCs can and should lead the transition towards a culture of biomedical data sharing. ... Legal background on data sharing
Mustafa �nl�, Data Sharing and the Digital Science Commons, The [Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review] Blog, August 29, 2008.
Data is both the primary output as well as the most vital input of the scientific process. In fact, data sharing performs such a key role that without a commons based on publicly shared data, scientific progress would surely suffer. In addition, data forms the foundation for downstream commercial applications aimed at privatizing the fruits of the scientific enterprise. Yet, despite their importance, data ownership rules are subject to a unique, inchoate IP regime which is neither copyright, patent, nor trademark. Moreover, these rules change over time, depending on whether the data has been published. Prior to publication, most data is treated as proprietary and secret. At this early stage, data sharing is governed by informal norms, which are enforced, if at all, under a minimal, liability rule-based legal infrastructure. After publication, data loses its protected status and becomes a part of the public domain. At this later stage, data sharing comes under a default rule of open and free access.
Brian Kenney, An Open and Shut Case, School Library Journal, September 1, 2008.
Update. See this update announcing plans for OA to an ALA journal, American Libraries. Update. See also Charles Bailey's posts on OA at ALA. Matt Cockerill on BMC Evolutionary Biology The September 2008 issue of ScienceWatch has an interview with Matt Cockerill, the publisher of BioMed Central, on BMC Evolutionary Biology. Excerpt:
I just mailed the September issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at the ways in which journal quality and journal prestige overlap, the ways in which they diverge, and how their complex relationship affects the prospects for OA. The round-up section briefly notes 96 OA developments from August. Update. Here's a story without a strong enough OA connection to blog on its own. But because it connects well with my article in the September SOAN, I'll note it here. The British Academy is criticizing the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) for its attempt to rate journals by their prestige. That's right: prestige, not quality or impact. Journal editors in the history of science, technology, and medicine (HSTM) are circulating an editorial against the practice and asking ERIH to remove them from the index. The copy of the editorial I received by email, forwarded from the EJournals mailing list, was signed by the editors of 45 journals. (I can't link to it because the online version is in a closed archive.) I've seen several OA copies of the editorial, but none has all 45 signatures, for example, 1, 2, 3, 4. I support the journals' criticism of ERIH. The prestige rankings will have the effect of cementing a journal's current level of prestige, nourishing the benign circle for high-prestige journals and the vicious circle for low-prestige journals. Update. For ERIH's response to the criticism, see Michael Whorton's letter to the editor in the Times Higher Education Supplement for November 27, 2008. Whorton is a member of the ERIH steering committee. Labels: Hot
Open licensing to enable reproducible research Victoria Stodden is the winner of this year's Access to Knowledge writing competition, for her paper, Enabling Reproducible Research: Open Licensing for Scientific Innovation. (This link points to a draft; the final version isn't yet online.)
The competition is sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, with a $1,000 cash prize put up by Kaltura. The prize will be awarded next week at the A2K3 Conference (Geneva, September 8-10, 2008). Congratulations, Victoria! Philip A. Schwartzkroin and Simon D. Shorvon, Public (open) access policy, Epilepsia, August 2008. An editorial. Not even an abstract is free online, at least so far. Epilepsia is published by Wiley. Update. I've now seen the text. The editorial announces that Epilepsia and Wiley-Blackwell will post papers by NIH-funded authors directly in PubMed Central, immediately upon acceptance, and allow OA release after a 12 month embargo. It also explains that the PMC version is peer -reviewed but not copy-edited, and that the journal makes the copy-edited version freely available at its own web site after the same 12 month embargo. The Wellcome Trust requires OA within six months, which is apparently too short for Epilepsia and Wiley. Wellcome-funded authors must pay Epilepsia a $3,000 fee if they want to publish in the journal and comply with their prior funding agreement. If they do pay the fee, however, the paper is made OA immediately upon publication. Introducing OA to Hungarian physicians E. Juh�sz, E. K�hrner, and L. Vasas, [The medical relations of open access initiative], Orvosi Hetilap, September 1, 2008. The article is in Hungarian, but PubMed has posted an English-language abstract:
Attracting data to OA databases Risto Kalliola and three co-authors, Open access to information bridges science and development in Amazonia: lessons of the SIAMAZONIA service, Environmental Research Letters, August 7, 2008.
Another TA response to the the NIH OA policy A. D. Kirk and D. R. Salomon, AJT's Response to the National Institutes of Health Public Access Regulations, American Journal of Transplantation, August 22, 2008. Not even an abstract is free online, at least so far. AJT is published by Wiley. Update (9/2/08). Heather Morrison has seen the text. From her summary:
PS: This is a great policy. Why hide it? Australian govt helps fund OA legal database Nicola Berkovic, Victorian boost for online law database, The Australian, August 15, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: Also see our past posts on AustLII.
Blog notes on Fedora conference
Matt Zumwalt has posted notes on the Red Island Repository Institute: 1st Fedora Summer Institute on Prince Edward Island (Prince Edward Island, August 11-15, 2008):
What the RePEc Author Service offers authors
Christian Zimmermann, Keeping contact with authors, The RePEc blog, August 26, 2008.
One crucial aspect of RePEc are the regular mailing that participants get. ... [A]uthors registered in the RePEc Author Service get an email every month with statistics, a list of new citations that were discovered, and some news about RePEc. Since we have started these emails, we noticed that authors have become much more diligent in making sure their profiles were up-to-date and that they have responded to suggestions made in the emails. ... ACM journal asks its readers to weigh in on OA Elizabeth Churchill and Mark Vanderbeeken, Open, closed, or ajar? Content access and interactions, interactions, September/October 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. Many subscription journals are thinking through the same question as interactions, a journal on the interactions between people and technology published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). But I haven't seen another journal open the question to its readership. Kudos to the interactions editors, and the ACM, for taking this open approach. Update. Also see co-author Mark Vanderbeeken's blog post on the article, which quotes some dialog between Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko, the journal's two editors in chief:
Splitters and Lumpers: why planet Earth needs taxonomists, AFP, August 31, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see our past posts on ZooBank. Image search engine starts with images in OA articles Songhua Xu, James McCusker, and Michael Krauthammer, Yale Image Finder (YIF): a new search engine for retrieving biomedical images, Bioinformatics, July 9, 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
Comment. The OA connection here is that YIF populated its index by harvesting OA papers at PubMed Central. It might have been able to index the papers at TA journals. But it would either have had to pay for access or use prepaid university access and risk running afoul of at least one of the dozens or hundreds of applicable licensing agreements. This is a good example of how OA can free up users for innovative uses. |