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Combining OA and tech transfer The Kauffman Foundation launched the iBridge Network on Tuesday at the DEMO 07 conference. (Thanks to Science Commons.) From the press release (January 30, 2007):
PS: From my quick tour of the site, it appears that the iBridge Network doesn't provide OA to peer-reviewed research articles but to specially written, detailed descriptions of patented, licensable discoveries and technologies. "Stepping on a legal landmine from a previous war" Daniel Terdiman interviews Brewster Kahle for News.com, January 31, 2007. Excerpt:
Open licensing for university medical research Samantha Chaifetz and four co-authors, Closing the access gap for health innovations: an open licensing proposal for universities, Globalization and Health, February 1, 2007. Abstract:
Larry Sanger, How to Think about Strong Collaboration among Professionals, a talk at the Handelsblatt IT Congress. Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia and founder of Citizendium. Excerpt:
OA and university ownership of faculty research Robert C. Denicola, Copyright and Open Access: Reconsidering University Ownership of Faculty Research, Nebraska Law Review, 85 (2006) pp. 351ff. (Thanks to Current copyright literature.) The article is not online, at least so far, and the link only points to a scan of the first page. Update. Thanks to Carol Hutchins I can provide this excerpt from Denicola's conclusion: It is unrealistic to expect authors to solve the problem by bargaining harder with publishers over copyrights. The benefits of retaining copyright are too abstract to prompt individual authors to risk a good placement, and the bargaining leverage in any event is with the publishers. However, universities could claim what they probably already own by invoking their rights under the work-made-for-hire doctrine, and they could do it in a manner that poses no threat to the interests of their faculty. Armed with a right to authorize electronic access to the entire research output of their faculties, universities could facilitate the development of comprehensive open-access repositories, or at least extract significant concessions from publishers. Results of CLIR's census of IRs Kathlin Smith, U.S. Institutional Repositories: A Census, CLIR Issues, January/February 2007. Excerpt:
Owen Dyer, Publishers hire PR heavyweight to defend themselves against open access, BMJ, February 3, 2007. Only the first 150 words are OA, and I don't have access to the rest. Here's the opening paragraph:
Peter Millington and William J. Nixon, EPrints 3 Pre-Launch Briefing, Ariadne, January 2007. Excerpt:
PS: Congratulations to the whole EPrints team, especially Christopher Gutteridge. Heather Morrison, The British Columbia Library Association Resolution on Open Access, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, February 2, 2007.
PS: BCLA has an admirable track record on OA. Its members have good reason to be proud. OA initiatives for French mathematics V�ronique Cohoner, Fran�oise Dal'Bo, and Liliane Zweig, Les publications math�matiques: panorama et synth�se sur une situation en �volution, Les publications en math�matiques, February 2, 2007. New initiatives for distributing mathematical research in France, especially OA initiatives. (Thanks to the INIST Libre Acc�s blog.)
I just mailed the February issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at the momentum for OA mandates in January and the 12 provisions of FRPAA and the NIH policy most likely to be overlooked or distorted by opponents. The round-up section briefly notes 67 OA developments from January.
Statement from the EUA Working Group on OA The European University Association's Working Group on Open Access has released a Statement on Open Access, January 26, 2007. Here it is in its entirety:
Also see the interview with Sijbolt Noorda that the EUA released yesterday. Noorda is the chairperson the EUA Working Group Open Access as well as the chairperson of the VSNU. Excerpt:
Comments.
National day of action for OA and FRPAA FreeCulture has declared February 15 a "National Day of Action" for students to support OA and FRPAA. From yesterday's announcement:
PS: If your campus doesn't already have a chapter of FreeCulture, please find a way to spread the word about this initiative to your students. Leslie Chan, Frances Groen, and Jean-Claude Gu�don, Study of the Feasibility of Open-Access Publishing For Journals Funded by SSHRC�s Aid to Scholarly and Transfer Journals Programme, SSHRC, August 15, 2006 (released online February 1, 2007). From the summary of recommendations:
Comment. This is new and welcome. Funders worldwide increasingly recognize that when they support research, they should use their influence to steer the resulting work toward OA. What's new here is that when funders support journals, they should also use their influence to steer the journals toward OA. I've been without internet connectivity for nearly 24 hours and will be working today from a cafe. I'm further behind than usual and will need some time to catch up. Thanks for understanding.
New digitization and OA project at the Library of Congress The Sloan Foundation has given the Library of Congress $2 million to digitize thousands of rare and brittle public domain books for OA. (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) From yesterday's press release:
Discussing the AAP PR campaign on campuses New PR Campaign Against Open/Public Access Initiatives, an open letter from Karla Hahn and Prue Adler to the Directors of all ARL libraries, January 31, 2007. Hahn is the Director of Scholarly Communication and Adler is the Associate Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Excerpt:
Update. The ARL has released a slightly revised version of this text under the title, Issue Brief: AAP PR Campaign against Open Access and Public Access to Federally Funded Research. The new version is not cast as a letter to library directors.
More blogger comments on the AAP Here are a few more blogger comments on the AAP's new PR campaign against OA. From Mike Dunford at Questionable Authority:
From Brock Tice at Virtually Shocking:
From Matt Wedel at Ask Doctor Vector:
Stevan Harnad, Pit-Bulls vs. Petitions: A Historic Time for Open Access, Open Access Archivangelism, January 30, 2007. Excerpt:
Over at Journalology, Matt Hodgkinson reviews a group of third-party tools for searching or mining PubMed. Dominika Sokol, Developing Marketing Strategies for dLIST and the LIS Commons, in Richard Papik and Ingeborg Simon (eds.), Proceedings Bobcatsss 15th Symposium, Marketing of Information Services, Prague, 2007, pp. 454-463. Self-archived January 30, 2007. Abstract: This paper, accompanied by a short workshop, introduces the development of marketing tools and strategies used to promote the LIS Commons and its basic infrastructure provided by dLIST. dLIST � Digital Library of Information Science and Technology � was established at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 2002 as a cross-institutional, subject-based, open access digital archive for the Information Sciences, including Archives and Records Management, Library and Information Science, Information Systems, Museum Informatics, and other critical information infrastructures. dLIST currently contains approximately 800 documents and its registered user base has surpassed 1200. With the recent foundation of LIS Commons � an international consortium for scholarly communication in information science, dLIST has entered a new phase. The main goal of LIS Commons� members (schools as well as individual researchers) is to encourage their faculty to use and further develop the cross-institutional, interdisciplinary repository based on dLIST. This task requires a new marketing strategy corresponding to the current competitive environment. The dLIST approach and effort to fulfil these needs is discussed. During the workshop the main structure, interface, and functions of dLIST will be introduced as a part of the dLIST marketing strategy. OA to Pitt's Darlington Library The University of Pittsburgh is digitizing is Darlington Library for OA. See the details in the PittChronicle for January 8, 2007 (scroll to p. 3). (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) Excerpt:
Journal cost v. journal downloads, usage, or impact Jan Velterop, Value Perception, The Parachute, January 30, 2007. Excerpt:
More on OA for legal scholarship Tim Armstrong, Open Access Law, or: Should Law Professors Write for Wikipedia? Info / Law, January 30, 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. I like the post but not the title, which incorrectly implies that providing OA to your own work means putting it in Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia is OA, but it's not the only form of OA literature or even the primary form for the OA movement. What's primary for the OA movement is OA to peer-reviewed literature, either through OA journals or OA repositories. Can the AAA afford to offer OA for its journals? There's a good discussion taking place in the comment section of Savage Minds. The question is whether the American Anthropological Association (AAA) can afford to offer OA to AnthroSource, its collection of publications now offered as a benefit of membership. From Michael Brown's objection to OA for AnthroSource:
From Rex's reply:
Good answers to common objections Mike Dunford has patiently and succinctly answered a blog commenter's raft of objections and misunderstandings to OA. Thanks, Mike. Worldwide call for OA to publicly-funded research on biodiversity and the environment Conservation Commons is submitting a petition to the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) calling for open access to publicly-funded research, past, present, and future, on biodiversity and the environment. From the petition:
From Donat Agosti's call for signatures:
Comment. This petition deserves worldwide support. Please consider signing as an individual or institution. You can sign electronically at the petition web site or physically sign a printout (PDF edition) and fax it to Conservation Commons at +1 514 287 9687. The petition is undated but will be presented to the UNEP Governing Council at its 24th Session, which will take place in Nairobi, February 5-9, 2007. The Bioinformatics Organization has announced the nominees for the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences. From Kevin Davies' story in the January 30 Bio-IT World:
I'm omitting the bios of the four nominees, but you should read them. All four have made stellar contributions to open access or open data in biomedicine. Regardless of the Franklin Award, all four deserve recognition for their work. Here are a couple more blogger comments on the AAP's new PR campaign against OA. From Stephen Downes at OLDaily:
From Richard Jones at The Chronicles of Richard:
More on affordable rather than free journals Chrysanne Lowe, A Student Perspective on the Serials Crisis, Library Connect, January 2007. Excerpt:
Thanks to Dana Roth for the alert and for this comment:
Rich Apodaca, How to Find Chemical Information on the Internet: Why Open Source, Open Access, and Open Data Matter, Depth-First, January 26, 2007. (Thanks to Jennifer McLennan.) Excerpt:
From the conclusion:
European Petition Seeking Open Access to Research Draws 13,000 Names, Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, January 30, 2007. More than 13,000 people have signed a petition asking the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, to require the results of academic research that benefits from public funds to be posted free online, according to The Guardian, a British newspaper. The petition is designed to influence the commission on the eve of a meeting where members will debate the merits of the open-access movement. Just as in the United States, the movement in Europe is largely driven by the skyrocketing cost of academic journals. On both sides of the Atlantic, defenders of the status quo seem to be on the defensive. Last week it was disclosed that the Association of American Publishers had hired a public-relations firm with a pit-bull reputation to fend off the open-access movement. What is a Public Service Publisher? Broadcasters have public service obligations. Should publishers? The UK Office of Communications (OFCOM) is looking into the question. Saul Albert looked into the OFCOM inquiry on behalf of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Here's an excerpt from his report (January 26, 2007):
Sharing knowledge across the digital divide Margreet Van Doodewaard, Online knowledge sharing tools: any use in Africa? Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 2, 3 (2006). Abstract: There is no doubt that ICTs, particularly the Internet, can contribute to the effective dissemination and exchange of information and knowledge. Yet, even though the Internet holds such promise as a knowledge sharing vehicle, Africa and African organizations have not yet fully caught on. The reasons for this seem to be threefold. Firstly, civil society organizations (CSOs) in Africa often work for target groups which do not have the infrastructure, means, capacity and facilities to exploit the benefits of the Internet. To reach these groups more traditional methods of knowledge sharing need to be used such as face-to-face meetings, radio programmes and paper publications. Secondly, the capacity of CSOs to apply, promote and monitor the use of on-line knowledge sharing tools is often still relatively low. Furthermore, the use of the Internet as a knowledge sharing resource is often further hampered by the cultural and social principles underlying the knowledge and tools offered online, and the cultural and social realities of recipients in Africa. As a result, CSOs that do use the Internet tend to approach the Internet first and foremost as a marketing tool to create upward visibility, aimed at to those stakeholders that impact the organization financially or organizationally such as international donors and government agencies. In order to counteract this, donors should clearly separate their information need for monitoring and evaluation purposes from their knowledge sharing for development activities. Donors and practitioners should continue to promote the use of digital tools for knowledge sharing yet, at the same time keep, an open mind for the limitations of these technologies. Efforts to develop local solutions, including the Africanization of the Internet, should be encouraged as it increases a sense of ownership and can integrate local knowledge sharing habits. Enrique Canessa and three co-authors, Access to scholarly literature via a free knowledge management enabler: an opportunity for scientists in developing countries, Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 2, 3 (2006).
Two more Dutch universities sign the Berlin Declaration
The President of Radboud University Nijmegen and the Vice President of Erasmus University Rotterdam have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.
The National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists (NSCSS) has endorsed FRPAA. From its announcement (January 24):
Also see today's announcement from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. New OA journal on the sociology of critical thinking Intersticios: Revista sociol�gica de pensamiento cr�tico is a new peer-reviewed OA journal distributed on the Scholarly Exchange free journal publishing platform. The inaugural issue is now online. For details in English and Spanish, see today's announcement. Google co-op for science teaching Jean-Claude Bradley has posted slides, audio, video, and examples of the workshop he ran yesterday at Drexel University on using Google Co-op for science teaching. January issue of Helmholtz OA Newsletter The January 26 issue of the Helmholtz Open Access Newsletter is now online. Read it in the original German or Google's English. (Thanks to Klaus Graf.) Open health media for open healthcare Dmitriy Kruglyak, HealthTrain: The Open Healthcare Manifesto, Version 0.1, October 30, 2006. (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) Excerpt:
PS: The author seems unaware of OA repositories, OA journals, and the OA movement. Two symptoms:
The danger of a settlement in the Google lawsuits Jeffrey Toobin, Google's Moon Shot, The New Yorker, January 29, 2007. This is the most comprehensive article I've seen yet on the practical details of Google's book scanning project and the legal issues it raises. Excerpt:
Dani�le Duclos-Faure, Les archives ouvertes et le protocole fran�ais, a slide presentation at the R�union des directeurs des biblioth�ques des �tablissements d�enseignement sup�rieur (January 22-23, 2007). (Thanks to the INIST Libre Acc�s blog.) More on the European petition for OA Richard Wray, Nobel prize winners join calls to open research to all, The Guardian, January 30, 2007. Excerpt:
Randy Dotinga, Open-Access: Old-School Publishers Fight Back, Body Hack, January 29, 2007. Excerpt:
More comments on the AAP PR campaign Here's another set of blogger comments on the AAP's new PR campaign against OA. (This is the fourth set; also see the first, second, and third.) From Samuel Bradley at Cognition:
From Graeme at Graeme's blog:
From Heather Morrison at Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics:
From Matthew Nisbet at Framing Science:
From Dorothea Salo at Caveat Lector:
Fredric Cohen, Why Pharma should support open access, Pharma's Cutting Edge, January 28, 2007. Excerpt:
OA because it supports mirrors, mashups, and mining Matt Hodgkinson, Mashups, mirrors, mining, and open access, Journalology, January 28, 2007. Excerpt:
More toll access to public resources Brett Zongker, Smithsonian and Corbis Enter Media Deal, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 2007. Excerpt:
Thanks to New Museums for the alert and for these comments:
Digitization and OA project at ERIC The US Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is digitizing 40 million pages of microfiche documents and providing OA to as many as it can. From Barbara Quint's story in today's Information Today NewsBreaks:
Also see the NAPC press release on the project. Oliver Obst has blogged some notes on the Academic Publishing in Europe conference (Berlin, January 23-24, 2007). Read them in German or in Google's English. Who's signing the European OA petition? There are now over 12,000 signatures on the petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results. The statistics page (last updated yesterday) gives a good glimpse of the first 10,000 or so. As of yesterday, the petition had 9,850 signatures from individuals and 450 from institutions. 7,737 are from EU countries, a desirable majority since the petition is addressed to the European Commission. Of the individual signatories, 7,825 are researchers and 1,457 are librarians. The organizers tell me that the signatures include Nobel laureates, major funding agencies like the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, DFG, and CNRS, major research universities, and groups of university rectors. NB: The petition is still open and all signatures are welcome. However, signatures are most needed from European researchers and European research institutions. If you haven't signed, please sign ASAP. And then spread the word. Update. See today's petition update from JISC:
OA info from the Royal Library of Denmark The Royal Library of Denmark has launched a new website that includes some pages on open access (also available in English) edited by Bertil Fabricius Dorch.
Response from the Chair of the AAP/PSP Brian Crawford, Chairman of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing division (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has posted a response on the CHMINF discussion list (January 26, 2007) to the Jim Giles' story in Nature. Forgive the length; here's the response in its entirety.
PS: Also see the response posted earlier today from Barbara Meredith, VP of the AAP/PSP. Digitising five centuries of UK life, a press release from the JISC Digitisation Programme, January 25, 2007.
Update. Klaus Graf has discovered that not all of these projects will be OA. Several will be toll-access only through JSTOR or pay-per-view. It's difficult to understand why, since these are public-domain documents digitized at public expense. In the recently announced and very controversial NARA-Footnote deal, public-domain documents from the US were digitized at private expense, so it's more defensible to institute temporary toll-access to benefit the company funding the digitization. Did JSTOR invest in any of these digitization projects? If not, I hope JISC will rethink its access policies. More blogger comments on the AAP PR campaign Here's a new set of blogger comments on the AAP's new PR campaign against OA. (This is the third set; also see the first and second.) From Amy Gahran at PoynterOnline:
From Eve Gray at Gray Area:
From Joe at Back of the Envelope:
From Kambiz Kamrani on Anthropology.net:
From Heather Morrison at OA Librarian:
From Alex Palazzo at The Daily Transcript:
From Revere at Effect Measure:
From Rex at Savage Minds:
From Olive Ridley at The Olive Ridley Crawl:
National Library of Chile releases content under CC licenses From the Creative Commons Blog, January 26, 2007:
PS: I'm guessing that this refers to all the library's digital content. But is it possible that all its content has now been digitized? Either this is very good news or an order of magnitude better. I'd appreciate hearing more from someone in the know. I can't read Spanish, and the library's home page in Google's English doesn't mention the project. French lab adopts an OA mandate The Labortoire de Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives (LPNCog) at the University of Paris Descartes has adopted a lab-specific OA mandate. Here's the language from ROARMAP (added by Henri Cohen, January 24, 2007):
PS: Kudos to the LPNCog. This looks like the patchwork mandate method at work at the U of Paris Descartes. Making public data free for useful enhancements Michael Cross and Charles Arthur, Don't panic: we'll email if someone plans to demolish your house, The Guardian, January 25, 2007. Excerpt:
Open access, toll access, and intelligent design Proponents of "intelligent design" blame biased peer review, rather than bad science, for their poor showing in peer-reviewed journals. For some reason, they think OA might help them. From a blog post by William Dembski at Uncommon Descent (January 26, 2007):
(Thanks to Afarensis.) Comments.
AAP/PSP response to the Nature story
The Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has issued a response to Jim Giles' story in Nature and my blog posting about it. Here's the response in its entirety:
The response is signed by Barbara J. Meredith, VP of the AAP/PSP. Comment. I've thanked Barbara Meredith privately for posting this response and I'm glad to thank her publicly as well. However, the response doesn't give detail on where the Nature story is inaccurate. Nor does it help those, like me, who have criticized the AAP based on the Nature version of events and who would like to retract any unjustified criticism. I hope the AAP/PSP will tell us specifically which proposals described by Nature have not been adopted and which details in the story misrepresent what's really going on. OA an essential task of scientific libraries Cordula N�tzelmann, Open Access - nur eine Ph(r)ase oder neue Kernaufgabe f�r wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken? PPT slides from a public lecture in Kiel, November 16, 2006. Self-archived January 24, 2007. |