Open Access News

Housekeeping

2010-04-30T16:13:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow (May 1, 2010) Google will turn off FTP updating for Blogger. The old FTP-based Blogger blogs can migrate to a new Google-hosted site where FTP won't be necessary. If a blog migrates, then all the posts in its archive will receive new URLs, all links to the old URLs will be redirected, all posts will carry their old page-rank to their new addresses, and Google will start indexing the new versions of the posts and stop indexing the old. If a blog doesn't migrate, it will die. Its archive may remain online, but it cannot be updated with new posts.

My days of heavy blogging at Open Access News are behind me. In July 2009, I curtailed my blogging to make room for my new work at the Berkman Center, and in January 2010 I cut back even further --essentially to zero-- in favor of the Open Access Tracking Project, a more comprehensive and scalable alert service for the now very large and very fast-growing OA movement. OATP was not designed to do what OAN once did. But for several years now, the high volume of daily OA news has made it impossible to keep doing what OAN once did, even with an assistant.

Despite that, my plan was to keep Open Access News alive and contribute sporadically. But now Google has forced my hand.

I've decided not to migrate OAN. At first I worried about the risks to the large OAN archive: more than 18,000 posts in more than 400 files. I use the archive every day in my own research and I know that many of you use it too. It's still the best source for news and links about any OA development in the last eight years, and I didn't want to take the chance that even part of it might not survive the migration or might disappear behind broken links. Blogger has been very good about answering my anxious queries and I'm persuaded that the risks are low. But the fact remains that migration is irreversible.

(I especially want to thank Blogger's Rick Klau. He always had time for my questions even though the migration must have caused a huge spike in his workload.)

In the end, a more decisive factor was that I've essentially stopped blogging at OAN and don't have plans to resume. The safest way to keep the archive intact for research is also the most realistic about my future: freeze this blog as it is and start a new one later if I feel the need to do so.

If I do start a new blog later, it won't be a daily news blog about new OA developments. I've been there, and the future for that task is the crowdsourced approach of OATP. But if a new blog wouldn't carry on the job of OAN, then it needn't be OAN. It would be nice to have the old page-rank of OAN, but if I do start a new blog --by no means certain-- I'll start from scratch like everyone else.

I'll still be able to update the OAN About page. If I have any blog-related announcements too late to blog, look for them there.

I've often thanked the Open Society Institute, SPARC, and the Wellcome Trust for the financial support that made OAN possible. But I'll never be able to thank them adequately. OAN was more than a mere job and more than a full-time job. Without their support I would have watched from the sidelines.

April SOAN

2010-04-02T11:42:00.002-04:00

I just mailed the April issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue reviews some reader-suggested verbs to replace "to provide OA to". The roundup section briefly notes 117 OA developments from March.

Wanted: a verb meaning "to provide OA to"

2010-03-03T13:04:00.001-05:00

The word contest in my March newsletter is generating some enthusiastic responses. In the first 24 hours, I've received 79 suggestions from 16 people.

Here's the contest again if you didn't see it:

English speakers need a verb that means "to provide OA to". It should be as succinct as "sell" for use in sentences such as, "We sell the print edition but ____ the digital edition."

I use "to provide OA to" for lack of anything obviously better. But I don't like it. It's long, dry, and awkward. Making a digital work OA is a fairly elemental act, and the verb for that act shouldn't take four words. I'm hoping that someone out there can do better.

We could say "open up" or "make OA". These are shorter than four words, but they're still phrases and I'm hoping that creative people can find or invent a single word. We could say simply "open", but that would be ambiguous, since we already say "open the journal" and "open the book" with another meaning in mind. "Give away" (or "giveaway") is also ambiguous, since we sometimes give away priced, printed literature. "Disclose" is a nice fit etymologically but has similar ambiguities. "Liberate" is a little ambiguous, a little precious, and suggests an overcoming of resistance which is by no means intrinsic to OA.

We could revive and hijack a rare word like "derestrict" or "debouche" (the way gamers revived and hijacked "avatar"), but could we find one that is less dry and technical-sounding? We could coin a familiar-sounding new term like "openize" or "accessibilitate", but could we find one that is less nauseating? We could coin an utterly new word like "fazz" or "jirp", but could we find one that actually suggests the intended meaning?

There's no prize in this contest except glory. I'll summarize the results in the next issue, and may also post them to the SPARC Open Access Forum for further discussion.

If the submissions aren't any better than "open", "debouche", "accessibilitate", and "fazz", then I won't pick a favorite or a winner, but I'll still share the results. If there's an array of plausible contenders, one of them may catch fire with some of you and start to spread, becoming more acceptable as it goes. But you can already sense some of my personal criteria: Would the word be ambiguous (bad), pretentious (bad), sound like insider jargon (bad), or make OA itself sound technical and difficult (bad)? Would it be short (good), sweet (good), and more or less self-explanatory (good)?

If other languages already have elegant solutions to this problem, I'd love to hear about them.

Send me your ideas (peter dot suber at gmail dot com). I'll assume that I may name and quote you unless you tell me otherwise.

March SOAN

2010-03-02T13:42:00.001-05:00

I just mailed the March issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at how "market-oriented" economic sectors differ from "mission-oriented" sectors, and where scholarly publishing belongs on this spectrum.

The roundup section briefly notes 112 OA developments from February.

The BOAI is eight

2010-02-14T07:09:00.001-05:00

Happy birthday to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which is eight years old today.

The BOAI "statement of principle,...statement of strategy, and...statement of commitment" was the first to offer a public definition of OA (combining gratis and libre access, though not in those terms), the first to use the term open access, the first to call for green and gold OA as complementary strategies (though not in those terms), the first to call for OA in all disciplines and countries, and the first to be accompanied by significant funding. A good number of OA projects were already under way, but it helped catalyze the OA movement and give it energy and unity.

The BOAI was hammered out in a December 2001 meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute, which committed $3 million to carrying out the vision. The BOAI public statement was released on February 14, 2002.

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment....The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it....

Happy birthday, BOAI, and many happy returns. And to all OA activists around the world, Happy Valentines Day.

(Disclosure: I helped draft the BOAI and have received support from the Open Society Institute. I'm probably not neutral on the subject, which is a reason to write your own birthday greeting!)

True or false? Defend your answer.

2010-02-04T19:29:00.002-05:00

Prepping for your Graduate Record Exams? Here's a sample essay topic from a GRE study guide:

All results of publicly funded scientific studies should be made available to the general public free of charge. Scientific journals that charge a subscription or newsstand price are profiting unfairly.

See GRE Exam 2009 Edition Comprehensive Program, Kaplan Publishing, June 2008, p. 231. (Thanks to Amber Smith for the discovery.)

February SOAN

2010-02-02T12:42:00.001-05:00

I just mailed the February issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at four analogies between the political fortunes of open access and the political fortunes of clean energy.

The roundup section briefly notes 116 OA developments from January.

Here's a quick overview of the four analogies:

The gap between breakthrough and uptake
Putting obstacles in our way
Slowing down to protect the incumbents
Some pay for all

Update (3 hours later). A list problem has snagged delivery of the email edition. Apologies for the delay. Meantime, the online edition (link above) is the same as the email edition and already available.

Comments to Obama administration due in 5 days

2010-01-16T16:50:00.001-05:00

The public comment period on the Obama administration's consultation on OA for federally-funded research expires this Wednesday. The original deadline was January 7, but was extended until January 21.

If you haven't already submitted a comment, use your weekend to write one and send it off no later than Wednesday. You can submit your comment by email or through the OSTP blog.

All signs suggest that the Obama administration is willing to generalize the NIH policy in some form and extend it across the federal government. Show your support for this move! You know that opponents are showing their opposition.

And please spread the word to others who might write comments.

Housekeeping: Future of OAN

2010-01-16T16:04:00.001-05:00

Now that Gavin has departed, and my time is still occupied with other OA work, what will become of Open Access News?

To understand my answer, first allow me to recap a little history. When Gavin came aboard two years ago, there was already more OA news than one person could cover alone, and with his help we made a substantial gain on adequacy. But soon there was too much news for two people to cover together.

If the problem was to cover the news comprehensively, one solution was to add more people. But it was clear that OAN was already too long. We couldn't capture everything, but what we did capture was too much for people to read. The rapid growth of the OA movement made both problems worse because it made the inadequacy and volume of the blog grow at the same time. (That's why I had to keep reminding myself that this was a side effect of success.)

So there were two problems to solve --enlarge the scope and reduce the volume. To solve both at once I decided that we needed a very different kind of alert service, and launched the OA tracking project (OATP) as a scalable alternative. OATP is more comprehensive than a large blog because it is crowdsourced and distributes the labor to all who want to take part. It's leaner than a large blog because most of its news alerts are just citations, links, and brief descriptions.

I could look for other news bloggers to do what Gavin and I had been doing. But that would replicate one or both of the problems that plagued OAN.

You knew I was going to say this: the future of OAN is OATP.

I'll continue to blog, but only sporadically. OAN will continue to exist, but its output will be greatly reduced. Meantime, OATP is a daily, comprehensive source of OA-related news. OATP's austere format doesn't do what good blogs do. But it supports good bloggers in doing what good bloggers do. Bloggers can be selective in what they cover in depth, knowing that OATP is taking care of breadth. And when they do cover the news in depth, OATP itself will point us to their coverage.

OATP is still in Phase 1, with relatively few taggers and most of them using just one tag (the one official project tag, oa.new). In Phase 2, which I hope to roll out later this year, we'll have more taggers, more of them will use "subtopic tags", it will be easier for taggers to avoid adding duplicates to the project feed, it will be easier for taggers to use convergent rather than divergent tags, and it will be easier for users to subscribe to versions of the feed covering just the subtopics they care to follow.

As I note in the sidebar to the right,

You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.

Please take part, as a reader, a tagger, or both.

If you've had a widget on your blog running the headlines from OAN, please replace it with a widget running the headlines from the OATP.

Am I deliberately steering readers away from my blog? Not exactly. I'll keep blogging, at a low level, and will appreciate any eyeballs that linger here. But I am deliberately recommending another news source over my own. I'm doing it to be useful: it's a better way to track new developments. It's not a better way to comment thoughtfully on new developments. But it doesn't interfere with any of the existing ways to comment thoughtfully on new developments, and it will helps all of us find the thoughtful comments people are moved to make.

Housekeeping: Good bye to Gavin Baker

2010-01-15T21:21:00.001-05:00

Gavin Baker joined Open Access News as assistant editor in February 2008, two weeks shy of two years ago. When he started, there was already too much news for me to cover alone. His help was indispensable to the blog and to me personally. After July 2009, when I took a new position and had to curtail my own blogging, he carried virtually the whole, still-growing load at OAN on his own. Today is his last day, and OAN will not be the same.

Gavin was highly qualified for this job on Day One. As I described his background in my blog post introducing him to my readers (February 3, 2008):

Gavin is the founder of the Open Students, the only blog about OA directed to students. He's also the force behind The Right to Research, the SPARC web site on the student campaign for OA, and the author of some first-rate blog posts (one, two, three), presentations (one, two, three), and articles on OA. When he was still a student, he co-founded the Florida chapter of Free Culture, and organized a successful campaign to get the University of Florida Student Senate to adopt a strong resolution in support of OA. It's no surprise that when SPARC honored the student campaign for OA with its Innovator Award in December 2007, it singled out five students as notable agents of change and named Gavin "The Professional". He was interviewed last week in Library Journal Academic Newswire.

In the past two years, his understanding of this topic and the worldwide campaign behind it grew even further, embodied in a daily stream of succinct posts. Behind the scenes he was skilled and dogged at the time-consuming tasks required to blog well: finding the relevant policies of the journals, publishers, projects, institutions, or countries we were covering; discovering whether a development in the news was really new; deciphering gibberish and PR-speak and restating it clearly; gaining access to articles that were not OA; understanding stories or documents not written in English; finding URLs for items to which we'd like to link; and reading long documents in order to select the most relevant excerpts. When a news article or press release was vague on a point important to us and our readers, Gavin often took the initiative to ask the right questions and track down people who might be in a position to answer.

His work at OAN --as well as the OA tracking project-- has been valuable to me, our readers, and the wider OA movement. I'm grateful to him and wish him the best in the next chapters of his life and career, starting with graduate school in the fall.

Postscript 1. For an idea of what he's been up to, see his article, Open access: Advice on working with faculty senates, published just this week in the January issue of College & Research Libraries News.

Postscript 2. I'll soon post more on the future of OAN itself.

Housekeeping: Farewell

2010-01-15T17:24:00.003-05:00

For the past two years, my work on Open Access News has been funded by SPARC. My funding ends today, and with it my tenure at OAN.

I'll leave it to Peter to say what becomes of OAN from here. The Open Access Tracking Project, which we launched last year, continues. (Anticipating this moment was one motivation behind the project: anyone can contribute to the OATP feed, allowing the workload to be distributed.)

I give my sincerest thanks to Peter and to SPARC for affording me this incredible opportunity. There are few better ways to engage so deeply and globally with the topic of open access. I've learned so much.

I hope my work has also been useful to you, our readers. It has been a challenge and a privilege to make sense of the world of open access and communicate it to you. Thank you for your support and engagement.

As for me, I intend to begin work on my Ph.D. in the fall. Until then, I'm available to work on new projects: if you have any ideas, please contact me.

Thanks for reading, and for all you do.

Keep in touch,

Gavin

Open access roundup

2010-01-15T17:13:00.003-05:00

PLoS launched a new collection of research from the Tagging of Pacific Predators group of the Census of Marine Life.
The National Library of Finland made two of its catalogs OA: LINDA, the union catalog of Finnish university libraries, and ARTO, an index of Finnish scholarly journals.
Lars Juhl Jensen looks for correlations among PLoS' article-level metrics.
Leigh Blackall proposes a journal with open post-publication review, free reuse, and OA to the underlying data.

New OA database on facial genetics

2010-01-15T17:11:00.002-05:00

National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIDCR Launches the FaceBase Consortium, press release, October 5, 2009.

... The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced today it has issued the first 11 research and technology grants of its new FaceBase Consortium. The five-year initiative will systematically compile the biological instructions to construct the middle region of the human face and precisely define the genetics underlying its common developmental disorders, such as cleft lip and palate. The mid-face includes the nose, upper lip, and the palate, or roof of the mouth.

As a key part of the initiative, a one-stop, encyclopedic database of head and skull, or craniofacial, development will be created and maintained to allow scientists to mine the riches of the information enabling them to more rapidly and effectively generate hypotheses and accelerate the pace of their research. The database, called FaceBase, will be free and publicly accessible to the scientific community. Its organizers anticipate that FaceBase will have a prototype ready within the next year and a fully functioning database soon after. ...

New draft attribution data license

2010-01-15T17:06:00.001-05:00

Draft of an Open Data Commons Attribution License, Open Data Commons, January 11, 2010.

Open Data Commons are happy to announce the first draft of an attribution license for data/databases.

A commentable version of the text is available here.

Feedback is actively sought and we would be grateful for any assistance in circulating this announcement to relevant communities and networks.

The license is heavily based on the Open Database License (ODbL), though obviously without the share-alike provisions! ...

The present plan is to start out with this first comments round based ending around the start of February. Based on the feedback received we will then assess how many further rounds of revision and consultation will be needed.

Some particular questions that it would be good to have feedback on:

Is there any irrelevant matter that can be cut from the license (shorter is better!)

Is attribution wanted for produced works (at the moment it is)

What flexibility in attribution format/requirements should be supported

The drafting of this license has been prompted by a clear need in several communities for an open license for data/databases that provides for attribution but does not impose share-alike requirements. ...

House Science Committee on roundtable report

2010-01-15T16:58:00.002-05:00

U.S. House Science and Technology Committee, Report Finds Common Ground in Efforts to Balance Public Access, Scholarly Publishing, press release, January 13, 2010.

... [U.S. House of Representatives] Committee on Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) offered the following statement:

The Committee on Science and Technology hosted a Scholarly Publishing Roundtable in June of 2009 to bring together key stakeholders from the academic and publishing communities. To allow a more frank and productive discussion, the Committee asked that Members come to the table with their deep expertise and their own viewpoints, but not as representatives of their home institutions or organizations.

I applaud this group for taking such a thoughtful approach to a difficult and divisive issue. After the group met at the event hosted by the Committee, the members of the roundtable volunteered to continue meeting on their own to produce a report that would be useful to Congress, the White House and the agencies.

I believe these recommendations strike a good balance by allowing public access to the results of research paid for with federal funds, while preserving the high quality and editorial integrity of scholarly publishing so critical to the scientists and seasoned science writers on whose expertise we all depend.

Our collective goal is to advance both scholarship and public access. I commend the members of this group for putting aside self interest to reach a compromise that will benefit us all.

Is Mendeley heading for copyright trouble?

2010-01-15T16:30:00.001-05:00

David Crotty, Going Legit: The Difficult Path from Piracy to Partnership, The Scholarly Kitchen, January 13, 2010.

... Mendeley [is] the current market leader for potential filesharing of scholarly papers and materials. ... The problem is that they�ve built filesharing into their system with little to no oversight over copyright infringement. Since Mendeley claims it has 8 million research papers uploaded to its site, if you�re a scholarly publisher, it�s likely that your copyrighted material is already hosted on their servers.

I first met with representatives from Mendeley back in late 2008, and was fairly stunned at their apparent na�vet� towards copyright law and the legal precedents that had been set in cases involving music sites (particularly since one of their major backers is the founder of Last.FM). Their FAQ and terms of service at the time were clearly offering the sorts of infringement inducements that got Grokster in so much legal trouble, and after some correspondence with Victor Henning, Mendeley changed the language on these pages to better reflect copyright law and leave the company some hope of a safe harbor defense. The big problem they still haven�t resolved is the fact that all uploading and downloading takes place through the company�s servers. ... Mendeley not only connects users through their servers but actually hosts and redistributes the potentially infringing files. ...

Maney launches hybrid option for 39 journals

2010-01-15T16:21:00.002-05:00

Maney Publishing launches open access model, press release, January 15, 2010.

Maney Publishing is pleased to announce the launch of a new open access (OA) business model, MORE OpenChoice. Twenty-four materials science and engineering journals and fifteen health science titles are initially included in MORE OpenChoice, with the intention to expand this to humanities journals in the future.

MORE OpenChoice represents a new business model which will co-exist with Maney�s traditional subscription business ...

Gaynor Redvers-Mutton, Business Development Manager at Maney Publishing, is leading the open access project: "We have priced our article charge competitively to help to stimulate the OA market and offer our authors real choice. ..."

Optical Society is newest SPARC Innovator

2010-01-15T15:09:00.001-05:00

SPARC honors Optical Society of America as a pioneer in scholarly publishing innovation, press release, January 14, 2010.

With the launch of Optics Express in 1997, the Optical Society of America (OSA) created an open-access journal that has stood the test of time to become a both a scientific and financial success. The journal, now entering its second decade of publication, is consistently ranked among the top titles in its field. And, it has proved to be such a successful financial venture that the Society is this year rolling out three more publications that follow the same open-access business model.

For being a shining example of community-driven creativity and innovation in scholarly communications, the Optical Society of America has been named the first SPARC Innovator of 2010. ...

Optics Express publishes original, peer-reviewed articles in all fields of optical science and technology twice a month � within an average of 47 days after article acceptance. The quick turnaround, along with creative ways to highlight content � such as electronic cover images for every issue and Focus issues � have made Optics Express a sought-after publishing destination for authors and a top journal in the field. OSA is introducing three new journals under the Optics Express brand and publishing model over the next year: Biomedical Optic Express, Optical Material Express and Energy Express. ...

New OA journals

2010-01-15T14:47:00.002-05:00

OA journal announcements, launches, and conversions spotted in the past week:

New OA journals:
- Silence (announcement)
- Codex: the Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL (announcement)
Converted to OA:
Converted to delayed OA:
- Formation emploi (announcement) (2 year delay)
New on PubMedCentral:
- Journal of Veterinary Science (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Journal of Ocular Biology, Diseases, and Informatics (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Asian Journal of Transfusion Science (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Indian Journal of Pharmacology (immediate OA) (announcement)
- Mental Health in Family Medicine (1 year embargo)
- Medical Education Online (immediate OA)

Open access roundup

2010-01-14T19:30:00.003-05:00

The Institute of Cancer Research has begun asking its researchers to contribute their publications to the IR.
BMC journal Cancer Cell International has been accepted for indexing by Thomson Reuters and will receive its first impact factor this year.
BioMed Central announced partnerships with CLOCKSS and Portico for preservation of its journals' contents.
Lawrence Lessig lectures on "Open Content and the Ethics of Science".

More on French digitization plans

2010-01-14T18:46:00.001-05:00

Eric Pfanner, France Offers Google Its Books in Exchange for Tax, New York Times, January 14, 2010.

As France drags its cultural past and present into the digital future, it is coming around to the idea that the job will require support from a company often viewed with deep suspicion here: Google. ...

Last year, unconfirmed reports that the National Library of France was considering working with Google on scanning millions of books caused an outcry. In response, President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged �750 million, or $1.1 billion, to bolster France�s own efforts to digitize libraries and cultural archives.

As an expert panel published its recommendations on how to go about that, the culture minister, Fr�d�ric Mitterrand, said this week that he hoped to move beyond the �passionate reflexes� that have sometimes inflamed French attitudes toward Google and other U.S. Internet companies. ...

The panel proposed a partnership in which taxpayer money would be used to scan books from the national library and other public institutions; those would form the backbone of an upgraded version of the government�s existing digital book project, called Gallica. To add other works, the report recommended working with private companies like Google, whose digital book archive is by far the most comprehensive. Works could then be made available on both sites.

Mr. Mitterrand said he planned to visit Google headquarters in California to negotiate on several sticking points. To participate, Mr. Mitterrand said, Google would have to depart from its practice of striking exclusive arrangements with institutions that participate in its book program, which include a municipal library in Lyon. He also insisted on greater respect for French copyright traditions, which can sometimes be more restrictive than American practices. ...

The government report lamented the shortcomings of Gallica, which has been archiving works that are no longer under copyright. While Google has scanned more than 10 million books, the study says, Gallica has only 145,000 in its database. Even some French classics are apparently unavailable on Gallica ...

Google welcomed the proposal for a partnership, saying it was �in line with the spirit of cooperation we�ve always tried to promote.� ...

The report is available here (in French).

Linguistics society debates data sharing

2010-01-14T18:34:00.001-05:00

Jeff Good, LSA Data Sharing Resolution, Cyberling Blog, January 11, 2010.

At the recently concluded Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in Baltimore, the following resolution on Data Sharing was passed by those at the Business Meeting. It will soon be sent along to the whole membership of the Society for their vote. The resolution was put forth by the LSA's Technology Advisory Committee.

Whereas modern computing technology has the potential of advancing linguistic science by enabling linguists to work with datasets at a scale previously unimaginable; and

Whereas this will only be possible if such data are made available and standards ensuring interoperability are followed; and

Whereas data collected, curated, and annotated by linguists forms the empirical base of our field; ...

Therefore, be it resolved at the annual business meeting on 8 January 2010 that the Linguistic Society of America encourages members and other working linguists to:

make the full data sets behind publications available, subject to all relevant ethical and legal concerns; ...

work towards assigning academic credit for the creation and maintenance of linguistic databases and computational tools; and

when serving as reviewers, expect full data sets to be published (again subject to legal and ethical considerations) and expect claims to be tested against relevant publicly available datasets.

The resolution passed in the Business Meeting by a comfortable enough margin that no vote count was required. ...

After the resolution was presented at the Business Meeting, the LSA Ethics Committee decided it would discuss the resolution on its Ethics Discussion Blog in the near future, specifically to address what ethical issues it raises.

U.S. libraries call for public access

2010-01-14T17:30:00.002-05:00

American Library Association and Association of College and Research Libraries response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy consultation on public access, January 12, 2010.

... The ALA and ACRL have long believed that ensuring public access to the fruits of federally funded research is a logical, feasible, and widely beneficial goal. ...

All federal agencies funding significant research should adopt public access policies. This is important in a wide variety of disciplines, as new research in many fields can have an immediate impact on the public good. It is also necessary to establish consistent expectations and conditions for the management of grants and resulting output, saving institutions and principal investigators valuable time.

Based on the initial experience of low manuscript deposit rates under a voluntary NIH Public Access Policy, mandatory policies are necessary to ensure compliance and routine uptake of such submissions.

We urge a short embargo period and recommend a 6-month maximum to bring U.S. policy into alignment with policies already in place in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. ...

The authorized repository should provide support for converting the file to a standard mark-up language, such as the currently preferred XML, if the file is not submitted in that format. PDF, a document format in ubiquitous use, does not support robust searching, linking, text-mining, or reformatting over the long-term, nor does it provide full accessibility for the blind and reading impaired. ...

Also see the press release.

How to pass a campus OA policy

2010-01-14T17:03:00.001-05:00

Gavin Baker, Open access: Advice on working with faculty senates, College & Research Libraries News, January 2010.

Tim Hackman�s October 2009 Scholarly Communication column, �What�s the opposite of a pyrrhic victory?,� discussed the failure of the University of Maryland to adopt an open access policy. Responding to the advice in Hackman�s piece, this column offers some suggestions on the process of proposing a policy at your institution. ...

My overall advice: consider your endeavor a political one. Yours won�t involve street demonstrations or smoke-filled backrooms (probably), but it certainly will involve making friends and changing minds. Politics is not only about logic and reasoning, but also emotion and relationships. Be prepared for it.

One theme echoed by Hackman and others who have proposed open access policies is to not overestimate faculty�s understanding of open access. To the contrary, expect to spend considerable time and effort informing faculty and responding to their questions and concerns. ...

Message control is key to any political endeavor. Formulating clear, succinct messages �and sticking to them�ensures that your most effective and favorable arguments will be communicated.

I�ve seen myriad different arguments for open access, some of them extraneous, confusing, or even antithetical to faculty interests. Be ever mindful of your audience. Speak their language and tailor your message to their concerns. ...

Small or private informational meetings, proceeding at a deliberate pace, help to avoid triggering alarms or making anyone feel they have been left behind. ...

As you proceed, be aware of the fault lines and diversity within your institution. The proposal shouldn�t come toward a vote with anyone feeling, �People like me weren�t consulted.� ...

At all stages, exhibit confidence in your proposal. Without being untruthful, always focus on the positive aspects; let critics do their own work. But always be willing to hear concerns, and be patient in addressing them. ...

Finally, one principle of politics is: never take a vote unless you know you will win it. If possible, do a �whip count� in advance to ensure your proposal has sufficient support to pass. Lobby waverers until they�re prepared to vote for the proposal, and delay a vote until then. ...

Open access roundup

2010-01-13T19:14:00.002-05:00

Oxford Brookes University launched its IR, containing both research outputs and learning objects.
Dan Cohen asks, "Is Google Good for History?"
An interview with Antony Williams of ChemSpider.
UNESCO's new head of science policy suggests creating "virtual science museums".
The Hebrew-language Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles.