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Help Harvard implement its OA policies Harvard's Office of Scholarly Communication (newly headed by Stuart Shieber) is looking for a program manager. The person filling the post will play a large role in the "implementation of new initiatives relevant to open access" such as the OA mandate at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the OA mandate at the law school, and others still to come. More misunderstanding of the NIH policy Joan Leach, Hurdles for free debate charter, ScienceAlert, May 29, 2008. Excerpt:
Comments. This may be the highest concentration of misunderstandings about the NIH policy I've ever seen.
Another society journal converts to OA Uwe Dulleck, Benno Torgler, and Clevo Wilson, Change of Guard for Economic Analysis and Policy, Economic Analysis and Policy, March 2008. Excerpt:
Thanks to Christian Zimmerman on the RePEc blog for the alert and for this additional information:
Update. Klaus Graf reports by email that EAP now uses CC-BY licenses. New OA journal of health research The International Journal of Health Research is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from Poracom Academic Publishers. (Thanks to Vikas Anand Saharan.) The inaugural issue came out in March. Update. Klaus Graf has found the web site for a Nigerian software company named Poracom. This is clearly the Poracom behind the IJHR, although nothing at the web site refers to Poracom Academic Publishers. Poracom has written some software (journal management software?) powering IJHR and another, older OA journal, Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research, published by the Pharmacotherapy Group at the University of Benin. Klaus has also found that IJHR charges no publication fees but requires authors to transfer copyright. It removes price barriers, not permission barriers. (Thanks, Klaus.) New OA journal of research-creation Inflexions: A Journal for Research-Creation is a new peer-reviewed OA journal sponsored by the Sense Lab. The inaugural issue is undated but now online. What is research-creation? From the about page:
Last week, Jesse Brown interviewed me for his radio show, Search Engine, on Canada's CBC Radio One. It was broadcast yesterday, and the podcast is now online. There are three stories on yesterday's show; the one with me starts at minute 13:30 and lasts about seven minutes. Most of the interview focuses on OA to research literature, but the blurb, the introduction, and the final question focus on open courseware. New OA journal of hematology and oncology The Journal of Hematology & Oncology is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from BioMed Central. See Delong Liu's editorial in the inaugural issue:
Microsoft will complete its book-scanning project with the British Library Microsoft and the British Library have been collaborating for almost a year on a project to digitize 19th century books from the BL collection (see my past posts on this project, 1 and 2). What will happen now that Microsoft is pulling the plug on its book-scanning operations? The BL explains in a May 28 press release that Microsoft will carry out its contract. Excerpt:
How bloggers can help the cause Sukhdev Singh, What can Bloggers do for Open Access? Sukhdev in Web Land, May 29, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. A very good set of ideas. On the first item, blogging about OA itself, see the list of Blogs about OA at the Open Access Directory. Because OAD is a wiki, you can help keep this list comprehensive and up to date. New OA journal of psychoanalysis and critique S (the "journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique") is a new peer-reviewed OA journal sponsored by the Jan van Eyck Academy. The inaugural issue is now online. Update. Klaus Graf reports by email that all the S articles he's checked use CC-BY-NC licenses. (Thanks, Klaus.)
Time is short to comment on the NIH policy Public comments on the OA mandate at the NIH are due by 5:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time), Saturday, May 31, 2008, less than two days from now. Submit your comments through the NIH web form. But before you do, see some of the comments already submitted. The pro-OA comments will give you ideas, and the anti-OA comments will show you what objections to answer and what perspective might predominate if you don't send in your own. This time the NIH wants separate answers to four separate questions. The web form has four separate spaces for them:
If you're thinking that the NIH just concluded a round of public comments for its March 20 meeting, you're right. See the comments generated by that round (and my blog post on them). One persistent publisher objection is that the policy has not been sufficiently vetted and one purpose of the new round no doubt is to give the stakeholders one more chance to speak. We must use it. Publishers will. Please submit a comment and spread the word. Even if you have no suggestions to improve the policy, it's important to express your support. Update (5/30/08, 1:15 pm). I just submitted my own comment. It's already up on the page of comments already submitted. If you haven't submitted your own, feel free to use what you want from mine. But for maximum impact, please customize it! I haven't read all the comments already submitted, but I can strongly recommend the long, detailed comment submitted this morning by Heather Joseph on behalf of SPARC. (Load the page of comments and search for "SPARC".) Update. Peter Murray-Rust wonders whether non-Americans may submit comments. The answer is yes. There are already comments online from Canada, Germany, India, and the UK. The policy has international implications, most directly for readers outside the US, but also indirectly for authors, libraries, universities, societies, publishers, funding agencies, and governments outside the US. One step forward, one back for UK PSI
Michael Cross, An Inspired debate on access, The Guardian, May 22, 2008. See also the background on the Free Our Data blog.
First, some very good news. Civil servants revealed last week that the British government has begun work on a system to make all the geospatial data it holds on the natural environment available for free inspection and re-use. Now the bad news. In this context, "free" means we will still have to pay to download much key data, especially if it is to be published or otherwise used commercially. Interview with Jean-Claude Bradley
Bora Zivkovic, Doing science publicly: Interview with Jean-Claude Bradley, A Blog Around The Clock, May 23, 2008.
... You are one of the pioneers of Open Notebook Science. Could you, please, explain to my readers what this is? OA archive of sports literature and research
The LA84 Foundation has launched an OA archive of "more than 300,000 pages" of sports literature and research, including "academic journals, scholarly books, popular sports magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and an extensive offering of Olympic publications". (Thanks to OA Librarian.)
Oregon to re-consider its copyright policy on statutes
The State of Oregon has scheduled a hearing for June 19, 2008 to consider its policy of claiming copyright over its laws. See the page at Public.Resource.Org or the story from May 21 at Ars Technica.
See also past OAN coverage of the issue. The Annals of Improbable Research ("Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK") converted to OA back in December 2007. But it just ran into a barrier that other OA journals won't face: The DOAJ decided not to index it. From the AIR announcement:
Stuart Shieber reflects on his new position In New Job, Harvard Professor Downplays the Role of “Revolutionary”, Library Journal Academic Newswire, May 29, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my post on Stuart's appointment as Director of Harvard's Office of Scholarly Communication, my post on the HUP roll-out of the Journal of Legal Analysis (both May 22, 2008), and my newsletter article on the Harvard OA mandate (March 2, 2008). Ginsparg to investigate and build on OA at Radcliffe Paul Ginsparg has been named a Science Fellow for 2008-2009 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) From the Radcliffe announcement:
The importance of OA for taxonomy research Kevin Zelnio, PLoS ONE Publishes First Taxonomic Paper, The Other 95%, May 28, 2008. Excerpt:
More on the Microsoft exit from book scanning Andrea Foster, Microsoft's Book-Search Project Has a Surprise Ending, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2008. Excerpt:
New OA journal of public health Global Health Action is a new peer-reviewed OA journal affiliated with the Centre for Global Health Research at Sweden's Umeå University and published by Co-Action. From Stig Wall's editorial in the inaugural issue:
New OA journal of communication Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology is a new peer-reviewed OA journal of communication published by the Communication Graduate Student Caucus at Simon Fraser University. (Thanks to Kate Milberry.) From Martin Laba's editorial in the inaugural issue (Spring 2008):
Jeffrey Young, Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2008. This article is primarily about image fraud, but I've omitted most of it in order to highlight the OA connection.
Presentations from DINI conference The presentations and videos from the DINI conference, Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Informationslandschaft in Deutschland: Chancen und Strategien beim Aufbau vernetzter Repositorien (Berlin, February 26-27, 2008), are now online. (Thanks to Informationsplattform Open Access.) Four years of a Spanish OA journal Pep Simo and Jose M. Sallan, Intangible Capital: Four years of growth as an open-access scientific publication, Intangible Capital, 4, 1 (2008) pp. 1-7. An editorial.
Digitizing the Munich Hebraica Collection Munich's Ludwig-Maximilans University and the University of Cologne are digitizing the Hebraica Collection of the Munich State Library, which includes 2,700 manuscripts from 1501 to 1933. (Thanks to Welt Online via the Informationsplattform Open Access.) Read the Welt Online article in the original German or in Google's English. Wales' University of Glamorgan has launched an institutional repository. From today's announcement:
Update. Also see the notes and photos of the launch ceremony from the Repositories Support Project. More from the Belgian newspapers who don't want Google links to their headlines Nate Anderson, Belgian papers demand huge fine from Google News, Ars Technica, May 28, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. See my post on the suit from February 2007. In my newsletter the next month, thinking the case was over, I said, "The Belgian newspapers...are now vindicated and invisible." Special issue of JIME on open education The May issue of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education is devoted to Researching open content in education. (Thanks to Jonathan Gray.) Major report on author attitudes and experiences in Australia Anthony Austin, Maree Heffernan, and Nikki David, Academic authorship, publishing agreements and open access: Survey Results, a new report from the OAK Law Project. The report is dated April 2008 but was released today. Excerpt:
Comment. This significant survey asked all the right questions. I've caught what I think are the most important excerpts, but the report is long (129 pp.) and I'll need more time to read it with care. Update. Also see Bernard Lane, Dons wary of open access, The Australian, May 28, 2008 (another in a series of misleading headlines). Excerpt:
Combining the strengths of institutional and disciplinary repositories Ulrich Herb, Anja Kersting, and Tobias Leidinger, Vernetzung von fachlichen und institutionellen Open-Access-Repositorien, Bibliotheksdienst, 42, 5 (2008) pp. 550-555. Self-archived May 27, 2008. In German but with this English-language abstract:
Dean Giustini interviewed three Canadian health librarians on the subject of OA: Lindsay Glynn, Lorie Kloda and Denise Koufogiannakis. (Thanks to Heather Morrison.) Excerpt:
The University of Georgia has launched the OA Civil Rights Digital Library. (Thanks to Josh Fischman.) Evaluating the new media work of new media scholars Andrea Foster, New-Media Scholars' Place in 'the Pool' Could Lead to Tenure, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30, 2008. Excerpt:
PS: For background, see my post on The Pool from December 2003, and my post on ThoughtMesh from October 2007. Combining OA, wikis, community annotation, semantic processing, and text mining Barend Mons and 22 co-authors, Calling on a Million Minds for Community Annotation in WikiProteins, Genome Biology, May 28, 2008.
I've omitted the links from the abstract because they presuppose a technology I don't have on my blog, apparently the technology described in the article. To see it in action, surf over the article itself. Keywords are highlighted in different colors: blue for anatomy, yellow for genes and molecular sequences, green for living beings, and so on. (Hover your mouse over a colored keyword to see its category.) Clicking a keyword pops up a small window with a user-editable definition. The window also offers the options to run a search on the term or to look up its entry in WikiProfessional or its "knowlet" in the Concept Web. Unfortunately, users don't have the option to open the WikiPro or Concept Web entries in a new window, forcing us to leave the article we're trying to read. My copy of Windows XP wanted to run Microsoft's MSXML 5.0 in order to read the article, and I refused, so I may be missing some of its functionality. From the Rationale and overview section of the paper (again without links):
From today's press release:
PS: For background, see our earlier posts on WikiProteins, WikiProfessional, Knowlets, and Knewco (the company behind both WikiProfessional and Knowlets). Update. Also see Jan Velterop's post on WikiProfessional. I'm new to the technology, but Jan is the CEO of KnewCo, the company behind it. Excerpt:
Update. See Euan Adie's critical comments on WikiProteins and Barend Mons' response.
Two preprint series hosted by Utrecht repository The Logic Group Preprint Series and Artificial Intelligence Preprint Series have found a new home at Igitur, the institutional repository at the University of Utrecht. From the announcement:
Another positive review of the E-LIS repository Péter Jacsó, BOSS, E-LIS, and Haworth Press, Online Magazine, May/June 2008 (accessible only to subscribers). An OA copy of the part on E-LIS has been posted to the AmSci OA Forum. Excerpt:
More on open-source drug discovery Shambhu Ghatak has written a report on the Workshop on Knowledge Commons (New Delhi, January 18, 2008). (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.) Excerpt:
QUT ePrints, the institutional repository at Queensland U of Technology has passed the milestone of 10,000 items on deposit. Update to biblio on Google Book Search Charles Bailey has released version 2 of his Google Book Search Bibliography. From his description:
Heather Morrison, Open Access, Authors' Rights and the Commons, a presentation at the Canadian Library Association Preconference 2008: Copyright 0.9, Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada), 2008.
New OA journal of massage therapy The International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork: Research, Education, & Practice is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the Massage Therapy Foundation. The journal has issued a call for papers, and expects to publish the first issue in August 2008. Presentations from Fourth Nordic Conference The presentations from the Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication (Lund, April 21-23, 2008) are now online. (Thanks to the INIST Libre Accès blog.)
More on free/open and text/data Stevan Harnad, OA Primer for the Perplexed, Open Access Archivangelism, May 25, 2008. From the summary:
Comment. I agree with nearly all of this. But I want to note two exceptions:
The Public Knowledge Project has released version 2.1 of Open Conference Systems. OA journals as social networks Jon McGlone, Open Access Journals, a paper for a graduate seminar published online with CommentPress, May 8, 2008. From Chapter 8, Towards the Revolution: Open Access Journals as Social Networks:
From the conclusion:
Updated ranking of world repositories Webometrics has updated its ranking of world repositories. From the site:
In the latest ranking, the top five repositories in descending order are arXiv, SSRN, RePEc, E-LIS, and Citeseer. Note that the ranking is a weighted average of four criteria, not a simple ordering by size. Today is the sixth birthday of Open Access News. This morning it had 13,921 posts, and should pass 14,000 in early June.
Report on the APE 2008 meeting Svenja Hagenhoff and Chris Armbruster have written a report on the APE 2008 conference, Academic Publishing in Europe (Berlin, January 21-23, 2008). (Thanks to Arnoud de Kemp.) Excerpt:
On Thursday, Peter Murray-Rust posted some thoughts on open data in chemistry. When I blogged them, I added this comment:
Today Peter responded to my comment in a blog post. (Thanks, Peter.) Excerpt:
Comments
Introduction to the Health Commons John Wilbanks, Executive Director of Science Commons, has made a 6.5 minute video on his vision for a Health Commons. I recommend it as a succinct overview of the obstacles slowing down the development of new cures and the solution he's proposing. For more detail, see the just-released white paper he co-authored with Marty Tenenbaum, Health Commons: Therapy Development in a Networked World, May 2008. Tenenbaum is the founder of CommerceNet and CollabRx. Excerpt:
Health Commons is a new and very practical project, not just a plan or vision. The founding partners are Science Commons, CommerceNet, Public Library of Science, and CollabRx . More on Microsoft's withdrawal from Academic Search, Book Search, and book scanning Here are some comments from around the web on Microsoft's decision to pull the plug on Academic Search, Book Search, and book scanning. From Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive (note that Microsoft has been a partner in the Open Content Alliance, run by the Internet Archive):
From Farhad Manjoo at Salon:
From Rick Prelinger on the Association of Moving Image Archivists list:
From Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land:
From Richard Wallis at Panlibus:
Kate Milberry, The public intellectual: Bridging the scholar/activist divide, a presentation at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (Montreal, May 22-26). Excerpt:
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