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The San José University School of Library & Information Science has released videos of Janelle Weaver (of PLoS) speaking on Open Access to Biomedical literature and Heather Joseph (of SPARC) speaking on Open Access. San José doesn't indicate at what event they spoke, or when (except that it was in 2008). Economic impact of OA on STM publishers The Groupement Français de l'Industrie de l'Information (French Association of Electronic Information Industry, or GFII) has announced a new research project, Réalisation et expérimentation de scénarios économiques dans le domaine de l’édition scientifique technique et médicale (Implementation and testing of economic scenarios in STM publishing), April 22, 2008. The project is supported by the government Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (Ministry of Higher Education and Research). Read the project description in the French original or in Google's English. Update. The GFII study will be undertaken in parallel with a similar study from TGE ADONIS announced on March 20, 2008. Read about the ADONIS study in the French or Google's English. Presentations from Repositories Services Day The presentations from Repositories Services Day (Nottingham, April 23, 2008) are now online. All nine are OA-related. More notes on Economies of the Commons David Bollier has blogged some notes on Economies of the Commons: Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online (Amsterdam, April 10-12, 2008). Excerpt:
Web-mining a repository of learning objects Yang Ouyang and Miaoliang Zhu, eLORM: learning object relationship mining-based repository, Online Information Review, 32, 2 (2008) pp. 24-265. The DOI-based URL currently returns an error message. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far.
The April issue of the Charleston Advisor is now online. Here are the OA-related articles.
New OA journal on commentary, glossing, and marginalia Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the City University of New York. It hasn't published any issues yet but has released a call for submissions. Good news, bad news, for OA in Biblical studies Alan Lenzi, The Open Access Monograph Series That Almost Was, Bible and Ancient Near East, April 25, 2008. Excerpt:
Andrea Foster, Legislation to Ease Problem of Orphan Works Is Introduced in Congress, Wired Campus, April 25, 2008. Excerpt:
More on the Science Commons open data protocol Thinh Nguyen, Freedom to Research: Keeping Scientific Data Open, Accessible, and Interoperable, Science Commons, April 23, 2008. (Thanks to the Science Commons blog.) Nguyen is the Counsel for Science Commons. Excerpt:
Changes in academic publishing
K.A. Wallace, Marketing Ideas, Science Progress, April 10, 2008.
Blog notes from Drexel Scholarly Communication Symposium
Marc Meola, Web 2.0 and Open Science, ACRLog, April 18, 2008. Blog notes from Scholar2Scholar (Philadelphia, April 16, 2008).
Bora Zivkovic, Open Access in Italian, A Blog Around The Clock, April 20, 2008.
The podcast of the radio interview with Derek Law and me about Open Access is now available online. Most of the show is in Italian, but if you cannot understand it, our interview is in English and it starts at the 22:07 minute point. UN U. joins Open Training Platform
United Nations University joins UNESCO's Open Training Platform, press release, April 15, 2008.
The United Nations University (UNU) is the ninth UN agency to join the Open Training Platform (OTP). This UNESCO-powered hub offers free training resources on 21 development topics, fostering cooperation to provide free and open content for development. ...See also past OAN coverage of UNU's OpenCourseWare portal. Checklist: IRs for institutional management
From Les Car (via Peter Suber on April 18):
Comments are requested on a draft document from the presenters of the "Research Assessment Experience" session at the EPrints User Group meeting at OR08. The "Institutional Repository Checklist for Serving Institutional Management" lists 13 success criteria for repository managers to be aware of when making plans for their repositories to provide any kind of official 'research reporting' role for their institutional management. Although institutional research reporting lays increased burdens on the staff, the processes and the infrastructure of the repository, the unanimous conclusion of the presenters at the OR08 session was that the effort is worthwhile, with the end result being recognition of the repository and inclusion of its staff in the highest level decision making committees of the University. The document is available from the OR08 repository ... The recommendations of the document are platform neutral, and comments are warmly invited from managers of ... any ... institutional repository software. SPARC, et al. thank Rep. Doyle re: NIH policy
SPARC and others sent a letter (dated April 8; posted April 17) thanking Congressman Mike Doyle for his leadership supporting the NIH public access policy. The signatories are: the American Association of Law Libraries, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Greater Western Library Alliance, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), and the Special Libraries Association.
Recommendations to JISC on access Alma Swan, Key Concerns Within the Scholarly Communication Process, Key Perspectives, March 2008. A report to the JISC Scholarly Communications Working Group. While the report is dated last month, JISC only announced it today. Excerpt:
Comment. The findings are very helpful for showing how much faculty education is still necessary, and on which points. The superb recommendations arise naturally from these findings. MIT guide for authors on NIH policy
Ellen Duranceau, NIH Public Access Policy of 2008: New Guide for MIT Authors Available, MIT Libraries News, April 10, 2008.
... The MIT Libraries have developed a step-by-step guide for MIT authors who need to comply with this policy. In addition, the MIT Libraries� Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant is available to assist MIT authors in complying with it. ... Comment. Neither Peter nor I can get the link to work. Is it restricted to the MIT campus?The difficulty of studying IR users Dawn Schmitz, The Seamless Cyberinfrastructure: The Challenges of Studying Users of Mass Digitization and Institutional Repositories, Council on Library and Information Resources, April 2008. Excerpt:
From the summary of the report in the March/April CLIR Issues, Who Uses Institutional Repositories and Mass-Digitized Collections?
Five more US institutions are interested in joining SCOAP3 Five US institutions have expressed interest in joining the CERN SCOAP3 project:
What would you do with OA to PSI?
If you get free data, what will you do with it?, Free Our Data: the blog, April 19, 2008.
On April 17, several thousands of Charles Darwin's private papers were made freely available in digital form online. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, where the papers were posted, also hosts digitized OA versions of numerous Darwin publications and manuscripts. See coverage from Wired, the BBC, or Reuters.
EPA conducting "National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information"
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information, apparently started April 16. Through June 2008, the agency is soliciting public comments on use of and access to environmental information. Individuals can respond to topics on the site or email a comment. A video from the agency's chief information officer is also available. A chat on the topic was held today; the transcript is now available. (Thanks to Free Government Information.)
New screencast on using Open Conference Systems
Public Knowledge Project has produced an instruction screencast (posted April 22) for users of its Open Conference Systems on submitting a proposal to a conference using OCS.
Popular comic's publisher not concerned about OA archive's impact on sales
Brad Stone, Scott Adams Hands "Dilbert" Pen to Fans, Bits, April 18, 2008.
... United Media, �Dilbert�s� syndicate, is revamping Dilbert.com ... OA to federally funded research Jonathan Miller, Open Access to Federally Funded Research: Can we get the golden egg without killing the goose? A slide presentation at the Florida Library Association Annual Conference (St. Petersburg, April 22-25, 2008). Oregon claims copyright on its laws
Via Boing Boing and the Sunlight Foundation comes the news that the U.S. state of Oregon is sending cease & desist letters to sites reproducing Oregon's statutes (which are freely available from the state legislature's Web site), asserting copyright in the laws. One of the C&D recipients claims they were told that similar letters would not be sent to Thomson West, who also reproduces the statutes without a license.
Social aspects of open science
richard, Open science 0.9 beta, spreadingscience, April 18, 2008.
Paying for a print edition of Wikipedia Noam Cohen, A Slice of German Wikipedia to Be Captured on Paper, New York Times, April 23, 2008. (Thanks to Catherine Rampell.) Excerpt:
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Update. Klaus Graf has collected some critical comments on the Wikipedia book from German scholars. Cristóbal Cobo has listed 19 skills for knowledge workers. Excerpt:
Improving text mining, short of OA Structured Digital Abstracts - Easier Literature Searching But Not Democratic, Bitesize Bio, April 24, 2008. Excerpt:
Belgian institute joins SCOAP3 The Institut Interuniversitaire des Sciences Nucléaires of the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, or FNRS) has joined the CERN SCOAP3 project. More submissions on Canadian Science and Tech policy Last week I blogged the comments of the British Columbia Library Association (BCLA) to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, on the committee's inquiry into federally funded research performed by universities. This week more submissions have been made public. (Thanks, inter alia, to ZeroPaid.) From the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic:
From Michael Geist:
From Tracey P. Lauriault:
From Russell McOrmond:
From Heather Morrison:
SPARC/DOAJ seal for OA journals SPARC Europe and the Directory of Open Access Journals have launched their Seal for Open Access journals program. From yesterday's announcement:
Comment. I love this idea. As I said in the announcement, I support both conditions for the seal: the CC-BY license and the interoperable metadata. But I also support the way SPARC Europe and the DOAJ are trying to bring about this change: setting a good standard, helping journals reach it, and recognizing those who do. Here's how I put it last November when SPARC Europe and the DOAJ offered a pre-launch glimpse of the program:
Some background on Bentham Open, but just some Richard Poynder, The Open Access Interviews: Matthew Honan, Open and Shut? April 23, 2008. This is another thorough Poynder interview. It covers Bentham's progress toward the goal of 200 OA journals (178 launched to date), its policy on fee waivers and discounts (for authors from developing countries and for editors), its 90 subscription-based hybrid journals, its "limited OA option" (half of the standard publication fee for just 12 months of OA), the use of CC-BY license in the OA journals, the forthcoming self-archiving policy for Bentham's subscription journals (permitted only after a 12 month embargo), Honan's view of OA mandates from funders and universities, and Honan's responses to criticism of Bentham's practices. I encourage you to read it all. If it doesn't give a more complete picture of Bentham, it's not because Richard didn't ask the right questions. Excerpt:
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I'm just back from a three day trip, in which I seem to have stumbled into the twilight zone of cyberspace. While I was away, all my outgoing emails went to limbo and disappeared. Even the copies I sent to myself never arrived, something I was too busy to notice until Day 3. Among the unrecoverable messages are personal emails to correspondents, listserv posts, and items for Gavin to blog. I'm now trying to remember, reconstruct, and resend these messages, but I'm sure I'll forget something. If you were expecting an email from me and don't hear from me soon, please don't hesitate to write again. BTW, apart from my frustration, I'm simply baffled by this problem, since I sent the messages from at least three different ISPs. If anyone has a diagnosis, I'd love to hear it. Please bear with us as we catch up in our blogging of recent news. Rockefeller UP supports NIH policy, again Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press, has released his April 21, 2008, letter to the NIH. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see some of the earlier open letters in which Rossner supports OA and the NIH policy against the AAP and DC Principles Coalition.
Report from Latin American OA conference Dora Ann Lange Canhos and six co-authors have released a report on last year's conference, Strategies for Open and Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Latin America: Focus on Health and Environmental Information for Sustainable Development (Atibaia, Brazil, May 8-10, 2007). Excerpt:
More on the OA implications of the Georgia State lawsuit GSU E-Reserves Suit Moves E-Reserves Discussion into the Light, Library Journal Academic Newswire, April 22, 2008. Excerpt:
100K items digitized by U of Iowa
As announced on on April 16, there are now 100,000 items in the Iowa Digital Library. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)
OA to 1,000 digitized versions of Jewish Passover text
Dovid Zaklikowski, Library Makes 1,000 Rare Haggadahs Available Online, Chabad-Lubavitch News, April 15, 2008. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)
Open encyclopedia of Egytpology
The UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, an apparently-new project, will offer an "open" and a "full" version of the encyclopedia. The oldest paper on the site was deposited April 3. There will also be a feature for sharing data, including the option to embargo data prior to publication.
Latest additions to DOAJ: 17 new entries
The following journals were added to the Directory of Open Access Journals since April 14, most recent first:
Indian medical journal converts to OA
From the April 2008 news from Medknow:
More and more notes from Open Repositories conference
Kara Jones, Open Repositories conference - OR08, my:self-archive, April 17, 2008.
A few weeks back I attended the Open Repositories conference in Southampton, UK. ...Open Repositories 2008, JISC Information Environment Team, April 18, 2008. Before arrival at the recent Open Repositories 2008 conference, I was telling myself that this would be a dynamic, busy and vibrant conference, attended by a technically ambitious and knowledgeable community, and that it would obviously be a great opportunity for me to engage in constant blog activity (reading and writing). As it turned out, the preconceptions I had about the conference were exactly right. ... Veterinary monograph series now OA
Online monograph series is now open access, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, May 1, 2008.
Report from last WIPO Development Cmte. meeting available
The Draft Report from the World Intellectual Property Organization's most recent Committee on Development and Intellectual Property meeting is now available, dated April 11 (in HTML, DOC, or PDF).
Petra Buhr also reports, on the A2k mailing list, that the next committee meeting will be held on July 7-11, 2008 in Hokkaido, parallel to the G8 summit. See also past OAN posts on the WIPO Development Agenda. Wikimedia Foundation wants research about its projects to be OA
The Wikimedia Foundation has posted a draft document (started April 7), "Wikimedia Foundation Research Goals" (see the current revision as of this post or the latest revision). The purpose of the document is to "articulate the key areas and broad questions related to Wikipedia and other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, which the Wikimedia Foundation would like to see investigated by reputable research organizations." Under "Research conditions", the document states:
SPARC Europe award goes to Leo Waaijers
Leo Waaijers Receives SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications, 2008, press release, April 22, 2008.
Jorum to move to open access, press release, April 21, 2008. (Thanks to Phil Vaughan.)
More on OA and the Georgia State suit
Georgia Harper, Suing Georgia, �ollectanea, April 22, 2008.
See also Past OAN coverage of the case: 1, 2, 3, 4. CC Ecuador launches, along with open courseware
Ecuador encourages learning, research, and creativity with localized CC licenses, press release, April 21, 2008.
Workshop on OA in Latin America now online
Donna Wentworth, Workshop report: strategies for open, permanent access to scientific information, Science Commons blog, April 21, 2008.
Open Journal Systems available in Norwegian
Public Knowledge Project posted the news yesterday that their Open Journal Systems software has been translated into Norwegian, courtesy of the journal Acta Didactica Norge.
Yes, U.S. sold out its legislative history
Cory Doctorow, General Accounting Office has sold exclusive access to legislative history down the river to Thomson West, Boing Boing, April 14, 2008.
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,Comment. We previously covered this story at OAN, but before the answer was definitive. More notes from Open Repositories 2008
Pete Johnston, Open Repositories 2008, eFoundations, April 14, 2008.
I spent a large part of last week the week before last (Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday) at the Open Repositories 2008 conference at the University of Southampton. ...
Antony Williams, WiChempedia Very Early Beta is Released Using New ChemSpider Dedicated Website Approach, ChemSpider Blog, April 15, 2008.
University of Cape Town signs open ed. statement
Eve Gray, UCT signs the Cape Town Declaration, Gray Area, April 14, 2008.
The University of Cape Town � which is one of South Africa's leading research universities - last week became one of the few major universities worldwide to sign the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education (previously blogged here and here). The Declaration was signed by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Martin Hall, at a function in the Senate Room, hosted by the D-VC's office, the Centre for Higer Education Development and the Centre for Educational Technology and supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation. The motivation for the event came from the OpeningScholarship project ... EC recommends OA for publicly-funded research The European Commission has released its Recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations, April 10, 2008. (Thanks to Jordi Adell.) While the focus is on "tech transfer" (as we call it in the US), the document contains an important recommendation on OA:
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U. Florida digitizing 100,000 pages a month
Laurie N. Taylor, 100,000 pages a month, Digital Library Center Blog, April 20, 2008.
The University of Florida Digital Collections are still relatively young, established separately only recently. Since March 23 of this year, we�ve added another 100,000 pages, up from 1.62 million on March 23 and now we�re at 1.718 million (and counting) and it�s only April 20. The full stats�as of today�are: 53,682 titles; 70,323 items; and 1,718,050 pages. ...
Mike Linksvayer, CC0 beta/discussion draft 2, Creative Commons blog, April 16, 2008.
Journal policies in immunology
Jim Till, Assessing immunology journals, Be openly accessible or be obscure, April 16, 2008. A review of the OA-related publication policies of the top journals in immunology, and the percent of NIH-related immunology articles in top science journals available OA via PubMed.
Science Commons looking for info on open science
Science Commons is still looking for information on ongoing projects in open science, as of April 16.
Remedios Melero, et al., Landscape of Open Access Institutional Repositories in Spain, Open Repositories 2008 (April 1-4, 2008, Southampton, UK). From the abstract:
The open access movement is an emerging issue in Spain, but it is becoming a familiar term within the scientific community. It has advanced in the past three or four years with more frequent initiatives related to repositories and open/free journals. The 246 registered signatories of the Berlin Declaration include 21 Spanish institutions, most of which signed it in 2006. The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) have in their records 32 and 22 open access repositories from Spain, respectively, but these figures do not represent the real ones, since there are more that have not registered yet ... and others that are listed in those directories which are not repositories but journals or aggregators. The oldest repository in Spain, Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa (�Networked Doctoral Theses�) was created in year 2001, but most of the Spanish institutional repositories emerged at the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005 (Melero, 2006). Nevertheless, there is evidence that more have been created and announced in recent months (Melero, 2007). These data do not correlate with the DRIVER I inventory study in which the response of the 12 invited (those registered at that time in OpenDOAR) was very low (3 answers). However, the international presence of our repositories, measured as participations in OA initiatives, is increasing as described below. ...
I'll be on the road Monday-Wednesday with few opportunities for blogging or email. But Gavin will be on the job and I'll start to catch up myself on Thursday.
International Archives of Medicine is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from BioMed Central. In addition to original articles, the journal will also publish translations from the Spanish-language OA journal Archivos de Medicina, and vice versa. As with other BMC journals, it will charge article-processing fees to authors whose manuscript is accepted for publication, subject to discounts and waivers; and like other BMC journals, articles will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. See the April 16 announcement,. The first articles were released April 15, including the inaugural editorial.
Roddy MacLeod, ticTOCs update, News from ticTOCs, April 17, 2008.
Connotea adds support for several publishers
Connotea, the free and open source social bookmarking tool developed by Nature Publishing Group for researchers, has added support for automatically recognizing bibliographic metadata for sites using software by Atypon, which includes a large list of publishers. See the April 16 post by Ian Mulvany for the full list.
David Wiley, Coming Out of Silent Mode, iterating toward openness, April 15, 2008.
Update. See also this Chronicle story on the company. New nanotech journal, OA for now
Nano Research is a new journal published by Tsinghua University Press and Springer. It appears it will be OA for the first year as a marketing gimmick. From the April 13 announcement:
... It will offer Open-Access in the first year to efficiently promote your outstanding publications to the readers. Different from most other Open-Access journals, the Publishers are committed to widely advertise the journal through a variety of means. ... What individual researchers can do Kevin McCurley, Open Access Publishing, Special Interest Group on CRAP, April 18, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. Kevin right that individual researchers should start with OA for their own work. Either publish it in a suitable OA journal or deposit a copy of the peer-reviewed postprint in an OA repository. Remember that the second option is usually compatible with publishing in a non-OA journal. For more, see six things that researchers need to know about open access and what faculty can to do promote open access. Dean Giustini, Top Five (5) Ways for Librarians to Contribute to Open Access (OA) Movement, UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog, April 18, 2008.
PKP developing Open Monograph Press
The Public Knowledge Project, developer of Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems, is now developing Open Monograph Press. A project outline is available from November 2007. From the Web site:
Open Monograph Press ... will establish an online workspace for publishing monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions (e.g. The Mark Twain Project) while keeping archival record of process (compatible with the Fedora repository).Comment. Due to its age, this isn't news, but it seems we hadn't posted it on OAN previously, so better late than never. |