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Scanning and lending digital copies of orphan works OCA to Scan Orphan Works; Publishers Float Orphan Works Solution, Library Journal Academic Newswire, October 25, 2007. Excerpt:
More on the victory in the Senate After Years of Effort, Mandatory NIH Public Access Policy Passes Congress, Library Journal Academic Newswire, October 25, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: This is a good brief recap of the three-year struggle to date. For some dates and links to specific landmarks in that struggle, see my article in SOAN for August 2007. The consequences of teacher ignorance of fair use Renee Hobbs, Peter Jaszi, and Pat Aufderheide, The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, American University School of Communications, September 2007. (Thanks to Wired Campus.) Excerpt:
Ezclopedia is a new OA, user-written encyclopedia trying to do better than Wikipedia. From the about page:
More on the White House involvement in the NIH debate Robin Peek, Oh the OA Drama of it All, Wikis@GSLIS, October 27, 2007. A preprint of a forthcoming column for Information Today (like this one). Excerpt:
Comment. It may be that the next president will be friendlier to OA than the current one. But I'm still optimistic that we can win an OA mandate at NIH this year, even if Bush vetoes the first version of the LHHS appropriations bill. Two of the reasons are (1) bipartisan support for OA in Congress, and (2) Republican support for OA in both the legislative and executive branches. I'll have more to say about this in the November issue of SOAN. Meantime, thanks again to Information Today for permitting Robin to post these preprints. The October issue of First Monday is now online. This issue contains selected papers from the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference (Vancouver, July 11-13, 2007). Not coincidentally, with this issue First Monday has moved to Open Journal Systems, PKP's open-source software optimized for OA journals. All 18 articles in this issue are relevant to OA. Aaron Swartz on the Open Library Aaron Swartz spoke on the Open Library at Harvard's Berkman Center on October 23. See the 63 minute webcast or David Weinberger's blog notes on the talk. Your thoughts on free/open/public databases in chemistry Antony Williams, Request for Input from the Community - Public Chemistry Databases, ChemSpider Blog, October 25, 2007. Excerpt:
Visual exploration of an OA database Chris Leonard, Browsing ADS visually, PhysMath Central blog, October 25, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. This is another good example of what I call the software strategy for OA --a very useful tool optimized for OA literature, creating new incentives for authors and publishers to make their work OA. More on open access and open data in chemistry I meant to blog this a month ago, but apparently forgot. (Thanks to Richard Akerman for the reminder.) Peter Murray-Rust, Open Chemistry, a preprint posted to Nature Precedings on October 1, 2007.
Also see PMR's blog post on his submission and expectations. More on CERN's SCOAP3 plan in high energy physics Jens Vigen, Particle physicists push for publishing changes, Research Information, October/November 2007. Excerpt:
Rainer Kuhlen, Vom erfolgreichen Scheitern, den Zugriff auf Wissen und Information zu verknappen, in Wege und Spuren: Verbindungen zwischen Bildung, Kultur, Wissenschaft, Geschichte und Politik: Festschrift für Joachim-Felix Leonhard, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2007. On scholarly information retrieval, copyright, and open access. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) OA repository for policy research The Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) and the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have launched Policy Archive, "a comprehensive, searchable, open access, online archive of public policy research." (Thanks to The Exchange.) From the site:
Another funding model for open knowledge projects Cofundos - ‘community innovation and funding’, Open Knowledge Foundation weblog, October 26, 2007. Excerpt:
Why publishers want authors to transfer full copyright The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has released a new position paper, Publishers Seek Copyright Transfers (Or Transfers Or Licenses Of Exclusive Rights) To Ensure Proper Administration & Enforcement Of Author Rights, October 2007. It's one page long. Excerpt:
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Ken Varnum has blogged some notes on Clifford Lynch's talk at ASIST 2007 (Milwaukee, October 19-24, 2007). Excerpt:
More on the journal pricing crisis James Council, Warning! Rant Ahead: Academic Journals and the Publishers who Publish Them, An Academic in Libraryland, October 25, 2007. Council is the Dean of Libraries at North Dakota State University. Excerpt:
Carolina Almeida A. Rossini, The Open Access Movement: opportunities and challenges for developing countries, Diplo Foundation, 2007. Apparently a preprint. A detailed general introduction to OA with special attention to copyright law and developing countries. Microsoft joins the Open Geospatial Consortium Microsoft has become a "principal member" of the Open Geospatial Consortium. From Sunday's announcement: Excerpt:
NYU students ask university to join OCA NYU should digitize library content, Washington Square News, October 24, 2007. An editorial arguing that New York University should join with the Open Content Alliance, not the Google Library project, to digitize the books in the NYU library. Excerpt:
OA for sustainable development in Africa The International Journal of Technology Management (IJTM) has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Knowledge and Technology Management for Sustainable Development in Africa. Guest editor Allam Ahmed, University of Sussex, expressly includes open access among the topics "of particular interest" for the issue. Titles and abstracts of submissions are due by November 15, 2007. Poynder interviews Pilch on OA to patent information Richard Poynder, Interview with the EPO's Wolfgang Pilch, Open and Shut? October 24, 2007. Excerpt:
Distinguishing the Open Knowledge definition from Creative Commons Rufus Pollock, The Open Definition and Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog, October 23, 2007. Excerpt:
Universities needn't wait for Congress and the President Stevan Harnad, NIH Green OA Mandate Now Passed By US Senate: No Need for Universities to Keep Waiting to Implement It, Open Access Archivangelism, October 24, 2007.
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Bad reasons for withholding public data Edward Lotterman, Decision to disclose information can enter gray area, TwinCities.com, October 24, 2007. Excerpt:
A major Brazilian OA initiative The day before 14 European university rectors met at the University of Liege to launch a European campaign to persuade research institutions to adopt strong, local OA policies, six Brazilian rectors did the same. Here's a report from Sely Costa of the Universidade de Brasília:
Comment. Kudos to all involved in Brasilia, especially to the Chancellor. Universities are clearly realizing that they have their own interests in OA and needn't wait for funders, legislators, or publishers in order to bring it about. I hope the Brasilia-Liege movement spreads to other every other nation and region. Elsevier one of Sen. James Inhofe's top contributors Thanks for Charles Bailey for unearthing this information:
More on the economics of distributing information End of Paying for Information on the Net? Knowledge@Wharton, October 10, 2007. (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.) Excerpt:
Federation of OA repositories for crystallography data Charles Bailey has done a good job pulling together the recent news from the eBank UK project. I'll let him tell it:
A distribution system optimized for tag-based discovery Jon Ippolito, ThoughtMesh Helps Writers Connect Ideas, Interarchive, October 20, 2007. Ippolito is a co-developer of ThoughtMesh. Excerpt:
ACS editor makes the case for ACS Author Choice program Lawrence J. Marnett, AuthorChoice: A Great Way to Get Your Papers Read, Chemical Research in Toxicology, September 17, 2007. An editorial. (Thanks to George Porter.) Excerpt:
Comment. This is the most enthusiastic defense of ACS Author Choice --the ACS hybrid OA journal program-- that I've seen. See my less enthusiastic review in SOAN for April 2007. Despite the limitations of Author Choice, however, Marnett is right that OA boosts author impact, which is the best reason for authors to arrange for OA to their work. More on rising journal prices and flat library budgets Chris Manzano, Journal subscriptions remain high despite shift to electronic format, Daily Nebraskan, October 19, 2007. Excerpt:
Open Access News was just named one of The 100 .edu sites every Entrepreneur Should Read. The list was compiled by Bootstrapper, the blog for small business owners. I admit I'm a little surprised. I know that OA can help small business owners --see for example the Chamber of Commerce support for the OA mandate at the NIH earlier today. But I don't believe I've ever heard from a small business owner about OA, apart from small publishers. If you're a small business owner who benefits from OA research literature, drop me a line. I'd like to hear about what you're doing. Autism Genome, Phenotype Data Goes Open Access, Scientific Blogging, October 22, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For more on AGRE, which is OA, see my post from June 2006. Lecture series on data sharing in archaeology
Archaeoinformatics.org has announced a virtual lecture series. Nearly all the lectures are on data sharing in archaeology. All past lectures are archived as streaming video at Archaeoinformatics.
Pronetos ("Professor's Network") has officially launched. From yesterday's announcement:
PS: Pronetos is a combination networking site and repository. I first blogged it when it went online in May 2007. Funder and university policies can make up for weak publisher policies Stevan Harnad, AAAS (Green), Nature (Pale-Green), ACS (Gray), Open Access Archivangelism, October 23, 2007.
OA for publicly-funded biofuels research The US Department of Energy has given a $4.4 million grant to South Dakota State University for biofuels research that will all be made OA through BioWeb. For details, see yesterday's announcement. More on the victory in the Senate Mandate for Public Access to NIH-Funded Research Poised to Become Law, a press release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, October 24, 2007. Here's the statement in full:
ACS concedes incentive pay for publishing executives J.J. Hermes, Chemical Society Rebuts Anonymous Accusations of Self-Interest in Opposing Open Access, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2007 (accessible only to subscribers). The Chronicle talks to the ACS about allegations that ACS executives earn bonuses based on revenue or profits from ACS publications. The ACS responds to the first memo from "ACS Insider" but not the second memo. By the way, while the "ACS Insider" allegation is anonymous, the same allegation was made earlier, for attribution, by Paul Thacker in an article in the Summer 2007 issue of SEJournal from the Society of Environmental Journalists. The Chronicle article contains one new disclosure from Madeleine Jacobs, executive director of the ACS:
PZ Myers has reprinted a new memo from "ACS Insider". The new memo is a response to the ACS statement from Judith Benham published Monday in The Scientist. (Also see my blog comments on the Benham statement.) From the new ACS Insider memo:
PS: For background, see the first ACS Insider memo. Andrew Leonard, What is James Inhofe trying to keep secret? Salon, October 23, 2007. Excerpt:
Comments. Note that Leonard's piece came out before last night's historic vote. Inhofe withdrew his anti-OA amendments earlier in the day and as a result the bill passed with the OA mandate for the NIH intact. However, Inhofe did file a "colloquy" (statement for the record to be included as part of the legislative history) objecting to the NIH provision and asking the House-Senate conference committee to reconsider it. We should have the text of the colloquy later today. Update. Also see Leonard's follow-up on Elsevier's financial contributions to Inhofe.
OA mandate at NIH passes the Senate Tonight the Senate passed the Labor-HHS appropriations bill containing the provision to mandate OA at the NIH. More, the vote was a veto-proof 75-19. Comments
More on the Max Planck cancellation of 1,200 Springer journals Max Planck Society Dumps Springer Deal Over Pricing, Library Journal Academic Newswire, October 23, 2007. Excerpt:
Alma Swan has blogged some personal notes on the Liege meeting last week that launched EurOpenScholarship. Excerpt:
Gavin Baker presentation on OA Gavin Baker, Sustaining Scholarship: The Case for Open Access Academic Literature, a presentation at Florida State University, October 14-16, 2007.
Radio interview with John Willinsky Thomas Hill is interviewing John Willinsky about open access right now on WVKR FM 91.3. In about 45 minutes or so, there should be a link to the podcast at the program page. Update. Here's the 48 minute MP3 file. More on the Humanities Research Network at SSRN SSRN Announces New Humanities Research Network (HRN), a press release from the Social Science Research Network, October 19, 2007. Excerpt:
Also see Jennifer Howard's story in yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education. Excerpt:
PS: For more background, see my post from last month on the Philosophy Research Network and some restrictions at SSRN unheard of at other OA repositories. Lax enforcement of data-sharing policies Climate Change Research, United States Government Accountability Office, September 2007. The report's lengthy subtitle serves as a short abstract: Agencies Have Data-Sharing Policies but Could Do More to Enhance the Availability of Data from Federally Funded Research. Excerpt:
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Future of institutional repositories Christina Pikas has blogged a virtual transcript of the panel on the Future of Institutional Repositories (October 21) at ASIST 2007 (Milwaukee, October 19-24, 2007). Update. Dorothea Salo was one of the panelists. Also see her blog notes on the event. Update. Bora Zivkovic has also blogged some notes on the panel devoted to Opening Science to All. Boston libraries chose OCA over Google for its openness Katie Hafner, Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web, New York Times, October 22, 2007. Excerpt:
PS: For more background, see post from September 24 on the Boston Library Consortium decision to work with the Open Content Alliance, and my article from November 2005 comparing the OCA and Google book-scanning projects.
Removing obstacles to the sharing of physical material Thinh Nguyen, Science Commons: Material Transfer Agreement Project, Summer 2007. (Thanks to Kaitlin Thaney.) Excerpt:
More on bonuses for ACS executives Andrea Gawrylewski, Unrest in the ACS, The Scientist, October 22, 2007. Excerpt:
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Inhofe's amendments to undermine the OA mandate at NIH Charles Bailey, Text of the Inhofe Amendments That Affect the NIH Open Access Mandate, DigitalKoans, October 22, 2007.
Comment. Note precisely how the second of these two amendments would weaken the OA provision: the OA mandate would apply "only where allowed by and in accordance with the policies of the publishers...." If that sounds familiar, the reason is that it's nearly identical to the loophole in the OA mandate adopted last month by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The CIHR policy mandates OA for CIHR-funded research "where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies...." Here's what I said about the loophole in the CIHR policy at the time:
Publishers clearly agree and want the same easy opt-out from the NIH policy. OA as an unprecedented public good Heather Morrison, Open access as an Unprecedented Public Good: The Transformative Potential of the Internet for Scholarship and Society, a presentation prepared for Internet Research 8.0 (Vancouver, October 17-20, 2007).
Update on the evolving Cape Town Declaration Here's an update from Heather Ford on the drafting of the Cape Town Declaration, iCommons, October 12, 2007. Excerpt:
Knowledge Ecology International has released its letter to the Senate in support of an OA mandate at the NIH and opposing publisher amendments to block or weaken it.
Comment. Kudos to the KEI. US citizens: don't forgot to write your own and to do it today. For for three excellent models, use the KEI letter, the ATA sample letter, or the ALA action alert. Update. KEI Director James Love also posted the KEI letter to the Huffington Post, which should definitely help spread the word. Update. For another strong letter to use as a model, see Bill Hooker's on Open Reading Frame. The presentations from IATUL 2007, Global Access to Science: Scientific Publishing for the Future (Stockholm, June 11-14, 2007), are now online. More than 20 of them are strongly relevant to OA. (Thanks to Paul Peters.) Urgent reminder to US citizens The appropriations bill (S.1710) containing the provision that would mandate OA at the NIH is in trouble, and today is your last chance to ask your Senators to save it.
New issue of OCLC Systems & Services The new issue of OCLC Systems & Services (vol. 23, no. 4, 2007) is now online. Only abstracts are free online, at least so far. Here are the OA-related articles:
More on the international race to the bottom Michael Geist, Canadian Public Domain Told To Cease and Desist, Michael Geist's blog, October 21, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. This is an important problem and the worst possible way to resolve it. Here's how I commented (October 2004) on a similar case in which the heirs of Margaret Mitchell demanded that Project Gutenberg of Australia take down a copy of Gone with the Wind which was in the public domain under Australian law but not under US law:
In my newsletter for 11/16/01, I looked at the possibility that IP-tracking software could solve this problem without all countries on Earth having to harmonize their copyright rules. But kudos to the Canadian Supreme Court for making that question moot and ruling (in effect) that the IMSLP needn't use IP-tracking software. Now it's time for Canada to protect conduct that is lawful in Canada. Update. Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg has offered a most welcome rescue. (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) Excerpt:
Update. Barbara Krasnoff has blogged a response from the German publisher, Universal Edition. In short: it only wanted IMSLP to remove the scores under German copyright and not to shut down the site. Heather Morrison, Would a bold politician speak up for an unprecedented public good? Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, October 20, 2007. Excerpt:
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Update. Also see Heather's response to my blog comments. Notes on Willinsky's keynote at AoIR Axel Bruns, Pushing Towards Open Access Scholarship, SnurBlog, October 21, 2007. Some blog notes on John Willinsky's keynote address at Internet Research 8.0 (Vancouver, October 17-20, 2007), the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). Excerpt:
Mark Ware, Sermo - an unusual business model, Putting down a marker, October 19, 2007. Excerpt:
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