Thursday, March 29, 2007

Vectors: Journal of culture and techology in a dynamic vernacular.

I write Journal because I'm not sure what else to call it. They use the term but it is a journal that will not publish anything that could be published on paper.

It's at http://vectors.iml.annenberg.edu/index.php?page=6%7C1&pageLast=2%7C1

From their About:
Vectors maps the multiple contours of daily life in an unevenly digital era, crystallizing around themes that highlight the social, political, and cultural stakes of our increasingly technologically-mediated existence. As such, the journal speaks both implicitly and explicitly to key debates across varied disciplines, including issues of globalization, mobility, power, and access.

And farther down the same page:
Vectors features submissions and specially-commissioned works comprised of moving- and still-images; voice, music, and sound; computational and interactive structures; social software; and much more. Vectors doesn't seek to replace text; instead, we encourage a fusion of old and new media in order to foster ways of knowing and seeing that expand the rigid text-based paradigms of traditional scholarship. Simply put, we publish only works that need, for whatever reason, to exist in multimedia.

The things I looked at needed Flash 7, other Projects could require more but they all seem to use OS software in the creation.
This is high level work, most of it way over my head. I can just imagine helping a student who has a MLA citation question from a Vectors project.
Richard

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

CLA Open Access Pre-Conference: Transitioning to Open Access: Action and Advocacy

Transitioning to Open Access: Action and Advocacy
Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 9:00 - noon
Earl and Jennie Lohn Floor Policy Room
Simon Fraser University - Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada

The Canadian Library Association's Task Force on Open Access warmly invites you to join us, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) for a presentation and discussion on transitioning to open access. This is a pre-conference to the PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007 (http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/index.php)

Participants will learn about open access action and advocacy efforts underway, learn more about open access and/or develop confidence in their abilities to act as catalysts for open access, and develop a network of colleagues with whom to share ideas and issues in your own open access initiatives.

Presentation 9:00 - 10:30
Speakers:

Heather Joseph, SPARC
SPARC has been active in engaging in open access advocacy on the local institutional, federal and international policy levels. SPARC’s strategy is focused on reducing barriers to access, sharing and use of scholarly information, and its highest priority is advancing the understanding and implementation of open access to research results. Heather will provide an update on SPARC’s recent advocacy activities as well as a snapshot of the current open access policy climate.

Heather Morrison, CLA Task Force on Open Access
The Canadian Library Association adopted a Resolution on Open Access in 2005. The mandate of the CLA Task Force on Open Access is to draft recommendations on policy for CLA's own publications, draft a position statement on open access for Canadian libraries on behalf of CLA, and liaise with other library associations, such as CARL. Heather will report on activities to date, such as drafted a response to the CIHR Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs, and planned.

Kathleen Shearer, CARL
Institutional repositories (IRs) are one of the major planks in the strategy for achieving open access. In 2002, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries launched an institutional repository project to support their members in implementing IRs. Kathleen Shearer will provide an overview of the project and discuss the opportunities and challenges for research libraries in supporting the open access movement.

Break 10:30 - 11:00

Discussion Groups: 11:00 - 12:00
The morning's speakers will briefly join each of the discussion groups, which will be led by members of the CLA's Open Task Force. Depending on interests of participants, discussion group questions may include:

  • What policy and advocacy initiatives could my library undertake to promote open access to scholarly literature?
  • What policy and advocacy initiatives could the CLA and/or CARL undertake to promote open access to scholarly literature?
  • Share successful initiatives (and failures) that have been undertaken at your institution to promote open access/changes to the scholarly communications system.

Registration is required. Registration is online, at http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/registration.php

If you have already registered for the PKP conference, please register again for the CLA preconference. The two registrations can be combined into one single payment if desired.

CLA members: $40
non-members: $50

The website for Transitioning to Open Access: Action and Advocacy is http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/cla-pre-conference.php.

Monday, March 26, 2007

IDRC Library and Majorie Whalen: more library leadership in the open access movement

Canada's International Development Research Library plans to launch its Institutional Repository this April 24, with over 8,500 full text, open access documents, including IDRC documents and publications, as well as licensed research from IDRC research partners. Kudos to Marjorie Whalen and her team at IDRC library. For details, please see The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, and mark your calendar to view the IDRC website on April 24.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Partnership Journal now in DOAJ!

Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, has just been added as the 72th journal in library and information science in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

DOAJ carefully vets journals, for full open access status and peer review, before adding them to the list. For this reason, being added to DOAJ is an important milestone for a new open access journal. This vetting process adds value for the publisher, and for libraries; good reason for either to consider DOAJ membership.

Congratulations to all my colleagues at Partnership - the association, as well as the journal, and many thanks to all of our authors and reviewers. We are now hard at work on our second issue.

Disclosure: I am the Editor, Theory / Research, for Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

Friday, March 23, 2007

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Registration Now Open

Registration is now open for the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference, July 11 - 13, 2007.

Please Note: Registration is limited to 200 people and is filling up fast! If you are interested in attending the conference, please register and submit your payment as soon as possible to secure a place.

The conference will provide opportunities for those involved in the organization, promotion, and study of scholarly communication to share and discuss innovative work in scholarly publishing, with a focus on the contribution that open source publishing technologies (such as, but not restricted to, PKP’s OJS, OCS, and OA Harvester) can make to improving access to research and scholarship on a global and public scale.

Major keynote and plenary speakers have now been confirmed. John Willinsky, the founder of PKP and the creator of OJS software will provide the opening keynote address. Raym Crow from SPARC will speak on publishing cooperatives and the various forms they might take for nonprofit publishers, including societies, university presses, and universities themselves. We are also pleased to welcome Anurag Acharya, Google Scholar’s founding engineer. Finally, Michael Geist will close the conference with his thoughts on the changes and challenges that lie ahead in the fields of communications, knowledge creation, and intellectual property.

For more information and online registration:
http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/index.php

Thursday, March 22, 2007

OA Librarian's Anita Coleman recognized in Library Journal

Anita Coleman has been recognized as a Global Thinker in Library Journal.

Congratulations - much deserved, Anita!

Thanks to Peter Suber of Open Access News for the link and additional comments.

Anita's efforts were recognized earlier on right here on OA Librarian.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

More OA Hindawi journals

It's been noted elsewhere (lists, Peter Suber's blog, etc.) but I thought I would get my dibs in (after all, I am a Serials Librarian) and mention the 12 new OA journals that will be coming out soon from Hindawi Publishing (www.hindawi.com):

Research Letters in Biochemistry
Research Letters in Chemical Engineering
Research Letters in Communications
Research Letters in Ecology
Research Letters in Electronics
Research Letters in Inorganic Chemistry
Research Letters in Materials Science
Research Letters in Nanotechnology
Research Letters in Organic Chemistry
Research Letters in Physical Chemistry
Research Letters in Physics
Research Letters in Signal Processing

If my math is correct, this brings the Hindawi suite of fully OA journals to a total of 78. Not too shabby. The press release about the Research Letters titles indicates that others in this series will be announced in the near future.

The submission fees for the Research Letters journals will be 400 Euros (approx. $619 CAN or $535 US). This is at the cheaper end of the OA journal submission fee scale.

Flickr as source of OA material

When I saw the link to this in metafilter.org, it struck me that this is OA on the real cheap.

The link http://www.io.com/~iareth/codindx.html describes what the author calls the weirdest book in the world, the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS


http://www.flickr.com/photos/cottoncandyhammer/sets/72157594263968563/

is the link to the entire book in a flickr set.
I use my flickr account to document mountain biking rides, putting an entire book online for semi-free has never occurred to me....


I say semi-free because flickr only shows the medium size in the open display. When I login to my Pro account, I can view all sizes including the original at 2400 pixels largest dimension.

Is this kind of do it yourself digitization a trend?

The size of this and its uniqueness might make it a one-off. But consider other useful works that could be done by people who have the time and now thanks to flickr, the server space.
Richard

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Chemists Without Borders Open Access Open Source Teleconference Series

** with apologies for cross-posting **

Any assistance in promoting this series of free events would be most appreciated. Please feel free to forward this message to any parties for whom it might be of interest.

Please join Chemists Without Borders for a special series of teleconference meetings on Open Access and Open Source. For more background, please see the link from the Chemists Without Borders website http://www.chemistswithoutborders.org/ to the Open Chemistry Position Statement.

Thursday, April 5 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Heather Joseph: Federal Research Public Access Act

Heather Joseph, Executive Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), will talk about the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). FRPAA is anticipated to be re-introduced this spring. The purpose of this bill is to require all U.S. Federal research granting agencies with portfolios of over $100 million (11 agencies altogether) to develop policies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund. FRPAA has been endorsed by many higher education leaders and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. Chemists Without Borders is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access; should we support FRPAA?
More information about FRPAA can be found on the SPARC website, at:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/index.html

As the Executive Director of SPARC, Heather Joseph is very involved in advocacy for FRPAA. Before joining SPARC, Heather worked for many years in the publishing industry, and was formerly Executive Director of the BioOne publishing cooperative.

Thursday, June 7, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Peter Suber: Open Access Questions & Answers
Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge Project, author of Open Access News, at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Peter Suber, one of the world's leading academics in the area of open access, will join Chemists Without Borders for a question and answer session on any aspect of open access.

Thursday, September 6 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Jean-Claude Bradley: Open Source Chemistry
Chemists Without Borders' own Jean-Claude Bradley, Coordinator for E-Learning at the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, will talk about the Useful Chemistry approach to open source chemistry, founded by Bradley.
More information about Useful Chemistry is available at:
http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/

Chemists Without Borders: participation in this special series is the same as for regular teleconferences. Watch for a reminder. Not a member? No problem - contact us and let us know you would like to participate. There is no charge, other than regular long distance rates, to join the teleconference.

Heather Morrison
Member, Chemists Without Borders
http://www.chemistswithoutborders.org/
http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/

Thursday, March 15, 2007

"Doing Good, Doing Well" John Willinsky

New course at UBC that might be of interest to OA Librarians:

LLED 565A - Section 951 - 3 credits
Developments in Scholarly Publishing: Doing Good and Doing Well
Instructor: John Willinsky> >Term 2 - July 3 to 16 http://www.lled.educ.ubc.ca/courses/summer2007/565A-951.htm

Topics
1. Origins of scholarly publishing (E Eisenstein, A Johns, JW)
2. Copyright, patents and ownership (Y Benkler)
3. Open science, open data, open source (PA David)
4. Journal publishing and scholarly societies (T Bergstrom)
5. Peer review, traditional and open (medical studies)
6. Archival projects and research sites (J McGann)
7. New roles and expectations for libraries (R Crow)
8. Indexes, searching, and citation (E Garfield)
9. Scholarly blogging, wikis, podcasts, and ebooks
10. PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference (3 sessions: 10 hours)
11. Postcolonial knowledge circulation (Altbach; JW)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Library Student Journal

The University of Buffalo Department of Library and Information Studies publishes a peer-reviewed open access journal, Library Student Journal.

The Library Student Journal site also features a blog, forum, and a new listserv for library students internationally.

Thanks to Eli Guinnee, Editor-in-Chief

Friday, March 09, 2007

SPARC web site redesigned

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, has redesigned the SPARC Web Site to improve http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifresource access for librarians, authors, and publishers

Please update your Web sites and scholarly communication pages with these key links:
SPARC resources on the Federal Research Public Access Act:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa
SPARC resources on the NIH Public Access Policy:
SPARC resources for authors: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author
SPARC resources for publishers: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publisher
Journal Pricing: http://www.arl.org/sparc/pricing
Open Access: http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess
Repositories: http://www.arl.org/sparc/repositories
The SPARC-ACRL Forum: http://www.arl.org/sparc/forum
Current SPARC Publisher Partners: http://www.arl.org/sparc/partner/partnerlist.html

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Open Access Course

Fellow OA Librarian team member Heather Morrison will be teaching a course on OA this spring at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia. The formal name for the course is LIBR 559K: Topics in Computer-Based Information Systems: Open Access. The goals of the course are:

To provide overview of the basic concepts of Open-access. The open access movement is one of the key trends in librarianship today, one that presents librarians and archivists with challenges, but also significant opportunities for leadership. This course will provide students with an overview of open access, key definitions, how and why libraries and archives are involved in open access, trends, policies, and implications for librarians and archivists.

I haven't really checked but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is the first university course devoted to OA in its entireity (though I'm sure that OA is an element in many other courses these days). Congratulations to Heather for developing and teaching this course!
I look forward to hearing more from her about it.

The full description for the course can be found at http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/coursdes/libr/libr559k.htm

Friday, March 02, 2007

Open Access (OA) and Web 2.0 - What's the connection?

Greetings fellow OA librarians,

On my sabbatical, I've had the distinct pleasure (and luxury) to contemplate some of the synergies created between open access and social software. But more than that, I've been able to determine for myself how some of these trends fit into a larger whole for our profession.

OA is not, despite its name, about access exclusively - although, it's our raison d'etre as librarians. OA is also about librarians being able to participate as equal partners in the academic enterprise. Some of the most rewarding work I have done in the past year is collaborate with physicians on the launch of our new OA journal called Open Medicine. Our launch is imminent.

Further, the core values that are brought out into the open through open access are linked to the notions of collaboration and socialization in web 2.0. Knowledge begins with conversations - one of the reasons we use blogs. Content-creation via wikis is important for exploration, and discovery. Using social tagging to organize websites is a simpler means of subject analysis and description. If librarians are good at getting their message out, web acolytes will see that we have expertise in description beyond simple taxonomies in the emerging 2.0 discourse.

For those of you interested in wikis, this article in Nature Medicine might be of interest. Dean