Sunday, December 21, 2008

Noted OA Advocate Harold Varmus to lead Obama's science advisory council

Noted OA advocate Harold Varmus - co-founder of Public Library of Science and former director of NIH - will lead Obama's science advisory council. Thanks to Heather Joseph via Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Please vote! OA proposal for Obama administration now in top 12

Forwarding from Peter Suber on Open Access News. Please register and vote for OA - it only takes a minute!

OA proposal for Obama administration now in top 12



The proposal to require OA for publicly-funded research has climbed to the 12th spot on Obama CTO, the unofficial web site collecting recommendations for the Obama administration, up one rank from last week.

The OA idea was posted to the site on November 15, and broke into the top 25 on December 4.  Keep spreading the word:  ranks are determined by user votes.

Monday, December 15, 2008

PKP Conference Call for Papers: January 15 Deadline Reminder

The Public Knowledge Project would like to remind interested participants that the call for papers deadline of January 15, 2009 for the second international PKP conference to be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is approaching. More information on conference topics and audiences is available on the conference website at:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/cfp

Conference registration is also open on the website. The first PKP conference held in 2007 was oversubscribed so registrants are encouraged to register early for the 2009 event. Early bird rates are also available until June 8, 2009.

PKP welcomes inquiries from prospective conference sponsors. We would like to thank those who have already confirmed their sponsorship support for the 2009 conference:

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
Athabasca University
Canadian Library Association Open Access Interest Group
Gibson Library Connections
Simon Fraser University Library
University of British Columbia Library
University of Victoria Libraries

Heather Morrison
PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Organizing Committee
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009

SPARC and ACRL Announce Slate for Denver Forum on Open Educational Resources

For immediate release
December 15, 2008

For more information, contact:

Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
(202) 296-2996 ext. 121
jennifer@arl.org

Kara Malenfant
ACRL
(312) 280-2510
kmalenfant@ala.org

SPARC and ACRL Announce Slate for Denver Forum
on Open Educational Resources

Washington, DC & Chicago, IL – December 15, 2008 – Four pioneers from the Open Educational Resources community will offer their insights into “The transformative potential of Open Educational Resources (OER)” at the next SPARC-ACRL Forum, to be held during the 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Denver, CO.

The forum, hosted by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), will introduce OER and the philosophy behind them to the wider library community, highlight examples of how different constituencies are currently advancing OER on campuses, and offer suggestions for how libraries can further engage to support OER.

OER are a logical extension of what the library community supports in the Open Access movement, and underscore the need for the larger playing field on which scholarly communication takes place to be made more equitable. OER focus not only on journals, but also on full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques that are critical in the learning environment.

Forum presenters will include:

• Richard Baraniuk, an architect of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which aims to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education (http://www.capetowndeclaration.org); founder of Connexions, an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web (http://cnx.org); and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University.

• David Wiley, also a leader of the Cape Town Declaration; Chief Openness Officer for Flat World Knowledge, a new approach to college textbooks offering rigorously reviewed textbooks online free of cost to students (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com); and Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University.

• Nicole Allen, leader of the Student PIRGs’ Make Textbooks Affordable campaign, which aims to develop a textbook market with both a vibrant used book market and a plethora of learning content that is priced and sold fairly (http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org).

• Mark Nelson, Digital Content Strategist for the National Association of College Stores, the trade association representing the higher education retail industry. He facilitates NACS three-pronged digital course materials strategy—partnerships, enhanced trade infrastructure, and education and awareness (http://www.nacs.org).

The 18th biennial SPARC-ACRL Forum will be held from 4:00 – 5:30 PM on Saturday, January 24, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Centennial D. The ACRL Scholarly Communications Discussion Group will also host an open conversation about issues that surface at the Forum from 4:00 – 5:30 PM on Sunday, January 25 in room 403 of the Colorado Convention Center.

The Forum will be available via SPARC podcast at a later date. For more information, visit the SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

##

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

ACRL
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), represents more than 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. It is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Dramatic Growth of Open Access and Happy Holidays from OA Librarian!

An Early Edition of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access is now available. In brief: while content recruitment for the IR may seem slow, on a global level the growth is phenomenal - more than 24 million publications in Scientific Commons, growing by close to 150,000 publications a week. DOAJ is now at over 3,780 journals, 780 more than last year, a growth rate of 2 titles per day. There are 59 open access mandates, 11 in process, and many more coming. 2009 is predicted to be a year of Walking the Talking, a shift in focus from debate to implementation.

Happy Holidays to everyone from the OA Librarian Team. While some of us may be blogging over the holidays, others will be enjoying a wedding and honeymoon, or just Working Less, resting up for a busy 2009!

Marunouchi winter illumination 2006-01 HAMACHI http://www.flickr.com/photos/mawari/323922061/

SCOAP3 at ALA Midwinter

Going to ALA Midwinter? Check out the SCOAP3 Information session:

Saturday, January 24, 2009
10:30 a.m.–noon
Colorado Convention Center, Room 705

Details are available on the SPARC Open Access Forum.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

SPARC Open Access Newsletter December 2008: Peter Suber's Predictions

Peter Suber has just released the December 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlights this month are Peter's predictions for 2009, with a focus on the impact of the Obama administration and the world's economic crisis. There is also a section with a list of open access "cross-over" points - some, such as the majority of TA publishers allowing self-archiving, were crossed some time ago.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Directory of OA Librarian Profiles moves to Open Access Directory

The list of Librarians and Honorary OA Librarians from the OA Librarian Table of Contents is now part of a new list on the Open Access Directory, Interviews and Profiles.

Along with links to posts celebrating OA Librarian heroes, this new OAD list begins with links to Richard Poynder's celebrated interviews of various leaders of the open access movement, and links from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) website, such as the SPARC Innovators series.

Please join us in building this list, and in so doing building or helping to build the possibility for writing the fascinating story of the open access movement. If you're researching on Open Access News and come across a link to an interesting story about an open access hero, please add it to the Open Access Directory. Or, do you know of open access hero about whom nothing has been written? If so, please consider writing something, even if it just a brief paragraph or two.

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers
Rethinking Electronic Publishing : Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies
13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

10 - 12 June 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.elpub.net

Electronic publishing via the Internet is continuously changing its shapes and models, challenging traditional players to adapt to new contexts. Innovative technologies enable individuals, scholars, communities and networks to establish contacts, exchange data, produce information, share knowledge. Open access sources and commercial players make contents available for a heterogeneous audience in diversity of environments, from business to private life, from educational and cultural activities to leisure time, and in a large variety of devices, from personal computers to mobile media.

New opportunities and new needs challenge us to rethink electronic publishing, to innovate communication paradigms and technologies, to make information not just a flat equivalent of a paper but a truly digital format, to allow machine processing and new services, to face the future of
mobile life. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models, technologies, methods and concepts.

We welcome a wide variety of papers from members of the communities whose research and experiments are transforming the nature of electronic publishing and scholarly communications. Topics include but are not restricted to:

- New publishing models, tools, services and roles
- New scholarly constructs and discourse methods
- Innovative business models for scholarly publishing
- Mobile distribution of e-contents, e-books
- M2M publishing services
- Multilingual and multimodal interfaces
- Services and technology for specific user communities, media, and content
- Content search, analysis and retrieval
- Interoperability, scalability and middleware infrastructure to facilitate awareness and discovery
- Personalization technologies (e.g. social tagging, folksonomies, RSS)
- Semantic web, metadata, information granularity, digital objects
- Data mining, text harvesting, dynamic formatting
- Knowledge linking, discovery, presentation
- User generated contents
- Usage and citation impact
- Security, privacy and copyright issues
- Digital preservation, content authentication
- Recommendations, guidelines, interoperability standards

Author Guidelines
Contributions are invited for the following categories:
- Single paper (abstract minimum of 1,000 and maxximum of 1,500 words)
- Tutorial (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Workshop (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Poster (abstract max of 500 words)
- Demonstration (abstract max of 500 words)
See website for detailed author instructions: http://www.elpub.net.
Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and present their work.

Key Dates:
November 15th 2008: Opening date for submission of abstracts.
January 15th 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts (in all categories).
February 23rd, 2009: Notification of acceptance of submitted proposals.
April 6th, 2009: Deadline for submission of final papers.

All submissions are subject to peer review (double-blind) and accepted by the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Printed proceedings are distributed during the conference. Electronic versions of the contributions will be archived at: http://elpub.scix.net and indexed by the major
indexing agents.

ABOUT ELPUB
The ELPUB 2009 conference will keep the tradition of the previous international conferences on electronic publishing, held in the United Kingdom (in 1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999), Russia (2000), the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil (2004), Belgium (2005),
Bulgaria (2006), Austria (2007) and Canada (2008), which is to bring together researchers, lecturers, librarians, developers, business executives, entrepreneurs, managers, users and all those interested in issues regarding electronic publishing in a wide variety of contexts. These include the human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal, commercial, and other relevant aspects that such an exciting theme encompasses.

Three distinguishing features of this conference are: broad scope of topics which creates a unique atmosphere of active exchange and learning about various aspects of scholarly communications and electronic publishing; combination of general and technical issues; and a condensed procedure of
submission, revision and publication of proceedings which guarantees presentations of most recent work. ELPUB 2009 will offer a variety of activities, such as workshops, tutorials, panel debates, poster presentations and demonstrations. Social events and sight-seeing tours will also be available to participants (at additional costs). Please see the conference web site for details.

Conference Location: Milan, Italy. Milan is the largest metropolitan area in Italy, one of the largest in Europe: 7,4 million population. It is the Italian capital of industry and business and well renowned as one of the world capitals of fashion and design. Milan is one of the oldest artistic
centres in Northern Italy and its surroundings include the beautiful Alps and the famous Garda, Maggiore and Como lakes. All this makes Milan a perfect place for sight-seeing, cultural visits and exciting shopping, not to mention enjoying Italian food and wines.

Conference Host: The State University of Milan is the third largest university in Italy after Rome and Naples. The venue is the main building, in the centre of Milan, 3 minutes on foot from the Cathedral. It was madein 1450 under Duke Francesco Sforza, who also built the famous Castle.
ELPUB 2009 is organized by CILEA, a consortium of Italian Universities founded in 1974 to promote the use of advanced ICT in academic and research environments, to support technological transfer and to manage ICT services, facilities and infrastructures. Within CILEA, the AePIC team deals with
innovative e-publishing technologies and models, promoting Open Access to knowledge through sustainable online publishing.

General Chair:
Susanna Mornati, CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT, Segrate, Italy
mornati@cilea.it

Programme Chair: Turid Hedlund, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki,
Finland
turid.hedlund@hanken.fi

Conference information: elpub2009@elpub.net
Conference web site: http://www.elpub.net

Join the "ELPUB Electronic Publishing Conference" group on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3D36376184362

ELPUB 2009 and OAI 6 are just 3 days in time and 400 km in space (4 hours by train, 50 minutes by plane) away from each other: take this unique chance to participate in both, enjoying two exciting scientific events in electronic publishing and scholarly communication and visiting Italy and
Switzerland.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Should OA be a priority for Obama? Please vote!

Urgent action item, from Peter Suber on Open Access News. Registering and voting only takes about a minute!

PS:  Last week I sent my An open letter to the next President of the United States to Change.gov.  And it's not too late to vote for the OA proposal at Obama CTO.  It's been up for less than 10 days and it's already the 26th most popular proposal (out of 630+) on the site.  If we could rise to 25th or above, we'd appear on the front page and get a lot more attention.  Spread the word.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

E-LIS: New Server, and E-Prints 3.0!

E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies, is now available once more, on a new server and the latest version of E-Prints, 3.0.

As posted by Imma Subirats on Facebook:

E-LIS has finally moved to a new server and to E-prints 3.0. The objectives of this change is to improve our service and to implement new features. You will also notice some changes that will make the submission process easier. However, the service e-mail alerts has not been migrated. It was practically impossible to do so, therefore we contact you for apologizing and suggesting to create once again the e-mail alerts according to your preferences.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Volunteer Opportunities at Open Access Directory

The Open Access Directory has just posted a list of Volunteer Opportunities. Please consider joining this thriving OA community - the work of keeping track of OA is easier for all of us if we just pitch in a little every now and then and contribute what we know!

  • Keep the Wikipedia articles about OA accurate and up to date. Many people get their first impression of OA from those articles.
    • Make sure that Wikipedia includes articles about all major OA projects, in all disciplines and countries.
    • Make sure that Wikipedia includes biographies for all major leaders of the OA movement. Women leaders are currently under-represented.
    • Add links to OAD lists from appropriate articles in Wikipedia and other wikis.
  • Systematically go through the archive of Open Access News (OAN), and add articles about OA to the OAD Bibliography of open access.
    • These additions are needed much more for works published in the spring of 2005, and after, than for works published earlier. Charles W. Bailey, Jr. published the first edition of the bibliography in March 2005.
    • This is a big job. If you need a public workspace to coordinate efforts, consider using an entry on the OAD page of Research in progress. If you use a different system, such as another wiki or a Google Doc, indicate what it is on the Research in progress page.
  • Systematically go through the numbers on the OAD page of OA by the numbers and update them. Each number is accompanied by a link to make the job easier.
    • Because we had to start the OAD list with an old version of the file, most of the numbers have not been updated since 2006. Once it's up to date, it should be the place to go for the latest figures on the state of OA and its growth. It will then attract readers, to consult it, and contributors, to keep it up to date.
    • Of course the list could also be improved with relevant new numbers not already listed.
    • Use Dapper to make RSS feeds for the useful subsets of the numbers.
  • Volunteer to gently take care of a list on the OAD. As we grow in size it would help us if subject specialists would take watch out for content for that would be appropriate for specific lists. As an all volunteer organization, the OAD does count on good folks to step up and look out for the quality of our content.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

E-LIS Server Upgrade / downtime

E-LIS is moving to a new server, and to E-prints 3.0! The change will mean better service and new features. This E-LIS server will be down from Nov. 17th - 21st. E-LIS will be operational at 9:00 a.m. (Italy time) on the 21st. Statistics will be available before the end of this year.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience, and thank you to all of our authors and readers.

Heather Morrison
E-LIS Governance Team

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE REGISTRATION NOW OPEN / CALL FOR PAPERS / PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Quick link to 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Website:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN / CALL FOR PAPERS / PRECONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the second international PKP conference, July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Session proposals will be accepted until January 15, 2009.

Preconference Workshops on July 8 include:
Networkshop - Editors/Publishers: John Willinsky, Rowly Lorimer
Networkshop - Software Developers/Technical Experts: PKP Team Developers
Networkshop - Librarians/Information Specialists: Brian Owen, Kevin Stranack
OJS in an Afternoon: Kevin Stranack, James MacGregor
L8X in an Afternoon: MJ Suhonos
PKP Software Plug-in Workshop: Alec Smecher
CLA Open Access Interest Group: Lynn Copeland, Heather Morrison, Leah Vanderjagt, Andrew Waller

Postconference Workshop July 11:
Workshop on Creating Open Access Journals: David Solomon, Caroline Sutton

The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will appeal not just to members of the PKP community, but to anyone interested in trends and developments for scholarly publishing and communication. There will be a wide range of topical sessions on new reading and publishing technologies; open access initiatives; alternative publishing and funding models; national and international collaborative projects; new roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers and others; and sustainability for open access publishing and open source software. Prospective and first time users of OJS and other PKP software will be able to learn more about the systems and establish contacts with the PKP community. Experienced implementers, developers, and system administrators will have an opportunity to participate in technical sessions and exchange information.

The conference will commence with an opening keynote session on the evening of July 8 convened by John Willinsky, the founder of the Public Knowledge Project. There will be several pre-conference workshops on July 8, and the main conference program will present a combination of concurrent and single track sessions during on July 9 and 10. The conference will conclude with three special symposia on community and network building intended for each of the core PKP constituents: journal editors and publishers; librarians; and software developers.

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.

For more information, please visit the conference web site: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and current conferences. The PKP software suite is comprised of three modules in production: Open Archives Harvester, Open Journal Systems, and Open Conference Systems, and two in development: Lemon8-XML and Open Monograph Press.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will consist of a mixture of plenary talks and parallel conference streams intended for the following groups:

- journal editors and publishers
- researchers in scholarly publishing
- librarians and information specialists
- open source software developers and system administrators

Papers and presentation proposals that address one or more of the following topics are especially encouraged:

- New reading and publishing technologies, e.g. integration of Web 2.0 features;
- Open access initiatives;
- Alternative publishing and funding models;
- National and international collaborative projects;
- New roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers, and others;
- Sustainability for open access publishing and open source software.

Parallel sessions will each be up to 1 hour in length. They may consist of a workshop, a case study, a research report, a set of 3 presentations on a single theme, a panel discussion as well as other options.

Proposals for papers or presentations should be submitted by January 15, 2009, using the submission guidelines and form available at http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. The partnership brings together faculty members, librarians, and graduate students dedicated to exploring whether and how new technologies can be used to improve the professional and public value of scholarly research. Its research program is investigating the social, economic, and technical issues entailed in the use of online infrastructure and knowledge management strategies to improve both the scholarly quality and public accessibility and coherence of this body of knowledge in a sustainable and globally accessible form. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. It continues to be an active player in the open access movement, as it provides the leading open source software for journal and conference management and publishing. The research and publishing activities of the project have been reviewed and cited in Inside Higher Ed, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, The Scientist and others.

Heather Morrison
PKP Conference Committee

Open Access Day 2009

Following on the success of OA Day 2008 (October 14), a call for interest in OA Day 2009. Please check out http://openaccessday.org/contact/.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries Open Access Publishing Round Table Minutes

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) has posted their August 2008 Open Access Publishing Round Table Minutes. Looks like an interesting meeting!

CARL has a new open access journal in formation, called Collaborative Librarianship.

Open Access Open Letter to Next President of the U.S.

Peter Suber's November SPARC Open Access Newsletter features an open letter by Peter to McCain and Obama, reminding both of support already expressed for OA, and giving plenty of good reasons to move OA forward, regardless of who wins!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Birthday, Open Access Directory!

The Open Access Directory is now 6 months old - Happy Birthday, OAD!

As noted on the OAD website, We have grown from six lists to thirty-four, which shows the strength and passion of the OA community.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

INTERACTIVE MARKETING SESSION TO BE FEATURED AT SPARC DIGITAL REPOSITORIES MEETING

For immediate release
October 28, 2008

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org

INTERACTIVE MARKETING SESSION TO BE FEATURED
AT SPARC DIGITAL REPOSITORIES MEETING

Last Chance to Register and Book Hotel at Reduced Rates

Washington, DC – Oct. 28, 2008 – At the upcoming SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting, branding strategist Nicole Colovos will lead a module dedicated to addressing one of the most compelling questions of digital repository management: How do we grow our content? The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 will be held November 17-18 at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore, USA.

This “Marketing Practicum” will introduce key marketing principles and strategies for the academic context. Participants will have a hands-on opportunity to apply these in an exercise aimed at engaging campus constituencies and demonstrating the importance of digital repositories. They will examine the research and publishing process from a variety of perspectives and be challenged to introduce repositories in ways that clearly communicate their benefits and opportunities to wide-ranging constituencies.

Colovos is the Vice President of Strategic Development for Bremmer & Goris Communications, the Alexandria-based marketing and design firm whose clients have included Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University at Buffalo, and the Council on Library and Information Resources. The firm has been instrumental in developing recent SPARC educational campaigns, including “The Right to Research: The student guide to opening access to research” and the Sparky video awards.

The Marketing Practicum will be on Tuesday, Nov. 18, following the luncheon keynote address by Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications, who will offer his unique insights on targeted message development. One-day registration rates are available.

Advance registration fees for the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 expire Oct. 31, after which higher on-site rates apply. Hotel reservations must be made by Nov. 1 to obtain the discounted conference rate. To register and for more details, visit the meeting Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/ir08.

The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting is supported by major contributions from Microsoft (Conference Sponsor); Berkeley Electronic Press, BioMed Central, DC Lab, and EPrints, (breakfast and luncheon Sponsors); and by additional contributions from seventeen coffee break and supporting sponsors.

#

SPARC

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC’s advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

The SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting program has been developed by the members of the 2008 Program Committee: Jun Adachi (SPARC Japan), Raym Crow (SPARC), Richard Fyffe (Grinnell College), Susan Gibbons (University of Rochester), Melissa Hagemann (Open Society Institute), Karla Hahn (Association of Research Libraries), Bill Hubbard (SHERPA), Rick Johnson (SPARC), Michelle Kimpton (DSpace Foundation), Norbert Lossau (Goettingen State and University Library and DRIVER), Joyce Ogburn (University of Utah), Terry Owen (University of Maryland, College Park), Kathleen Shearer (Canadian Association of Research Libraries), Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd.), Sean Thomas (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Susan Veldsman (eIFL), and Charles Watkinson (The American School of Classical Studies at Athens).



Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers
Rethinking Electronic Publishing : Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies
13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

10 - 12 June 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.elpub.net

Electronic publishing via the Internet is continuously changing its shapes and models, challenging traditional players to adapt to new contexts. Innovative technologies enable individuals, scholars, communities and networks to establish contacts, exchange data, produce information, share knowledge. Open access sources and commercial players make contents available for a heterogeneous audience in diversity of environments, from business to private life, from educational and cultural activities to leisure time, and in a large variety of devices, from personal computers to mobile media.

New opportunities and new needs challenge us to rethink electronic publishing, to innovate communication paradigms and technologies, to make information not just a flat equivalent of a paper but a truly digital format, to allow machine processing and new services, to face the future of mobile life. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models, technologies, methods and concepts.

We welcome a wide variety of papers from members of the communities whose research and experiments are transforming the nature of electronic publishing and scholarly communications. Topics include but are not restricted to:

- New publishing models, tools, services and roles
- New scholarly constructs and discourse methods
- Innovative business models for scholarly publishing
- Mobile distribution of e-contents, e-books
- M2M publishing services
- Multilingual and multimodal interfaces
- Services and technology for specific user communities, media, and content
- Content search, analysis and retrieval
- Interoperability, scalability and middleware infrastructure to facilitate awareness and discovery
- Personalization technologies (e.g. social tagging, folksonomies, RSS)
- Semantic web, metadata, information granularity, digital objects
- Data mining, text harvesting, dynamic formatting
- Knowledge linking, discovery, presentation
- User generated contents
- Usage and citation impact
- Security, privacy and copyright issues
- Digital preservation, content authentication
- Recommendations, guidelines, interoperability standards

Author Guidelines

Contributions are invited for the following categories:
– Single paper (abstract minimum of 1,000 and maximum of 1,500 words)
– Tutorial (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
– Workshop (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
– Poster (abstract max of 500 words)
– Demonstration (abstract max of 500 words)

See website for detailed author instructions: http://www.elpub.net.

Key Dates:
November 15th 2008: Opening of submission of abstracts.
January 15th 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts (in all categories).
February 23rd, 2009: Notification of acceptance of submitted proposals.
April 6th, 2009: Deadline for submission of final papers.

All submissions are subject to peer review (double-blind) and accepted by the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Printed proceedings are distributed during the conference. Electronic versions of the contributions will be archived at: http://elpub.scix.net

ABOUT ELPUB
The ELPUB 2009 conference will keep the tradition of the previous international conferences on electronic publishing, held in the United Kingdom (in 1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999), Russia (2000), the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil (2004), Belgium (2005), Bulgaria (2006), Austria (2007) and Canada (2008), which is to bring together researchers, lecturers, librarians, developers, business executives, entrepreneurs, managers, users and all those interested in issues regarding electronic publishing in a wide variety of contexts. These include the human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal, commercial, and other relevant aspects that such an exciting theme encompasses.
Three distinguishing features of this conference are: broad scope of topics which creates a unique atmosphere of active exchange and learning about various aspects of scholarly communications and electronic publishing; combination of general and technical issues; and a condensed procedure of submission, revision and publication of proceedings which guarantees presentations of most recent work.
ELPUB 2009 will offer a variety of activities, such as workshops, tutorials, panel debates, poster presentations and demonstrations. Social events and sight-seeing tours will also be available to participants (at additional costs). Please see the conference web site for details.

Conference Location: Milan, Italy. Milan is the largest metropolitan area in Italy, one of the largest in Europe: 7,4 million population. It is the Italian capital of industry and business and well renowned as one of the world capitals of fashion and design. Milan is one of the oldest artistic centres in Northern Italy and its surroundings include the beautiful Alps and the famous Garda, Maggiore and Como lakes. All this makes Milan a perfect place for sight-seeing, cultural visits and exciting shopping, not to mention enjoying Italian food and wines.

Conference Host: The State University of Milan is the third largest university in Italy after Rome and Naples. The venue is the main building, in the centre of Milan, 3 minutes on foot from the Cathedral. It was made in 1450 under Duke Francesco Sforza, who also built the famous Castle. ELPUB 2009 is organized by CILEA, a consortium of Italian Universities founded in 1974 to promote the use of advanced ICT in academic and research environments, to support technological transfer and to manage ICT services, facilities and infrastructures. Within CILEA, the AePIC team deals with innovative e-publishing technologies and models, promoting Open Access to knowledge through sustainable online publishing.

General Chair: Susanna Mornati, CILEA – Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT, Segrate, Italy - mornati@cilea.it

Programme Chair: Turid Hedlund, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland - turid.hedlund@hanken.fi

Conference information: elpub2009@elpub.net

Conference web site: http://www.elpub.net

Join the "ELPUB Electronic Publishing Conference" group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36376184362

Heather Morrison
ELPUB Programme Committee

Monday, October 27, 2008

Charles Bailey: Authors' Rights Tout de Suite

Many thanks to Charles Bailey for yet another useful tool!

Charles Bailey's announcement:

Author's Rights, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give journal article authors a quick introduction to key aspects of author's rights and to foster further exploration of this topic through liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent Web sites.


http://www.digital-scholarship.org/ts/authorrights.pdf


It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, and it can be freely used for any noncommercial purpose, including derivative works, in
accordance with the license.


http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/


The prior publication in the Tout de Suite series, Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, is also available.


http://www.digital-scholarship.org/ts/irtoutsuite.pdf

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association Launches

ANNOUNCING THE LAUNCH OF THE OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, OASPA

14 October 2008, London. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, announces its official launch today in conjunction with an OA Day celebration hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London. The mission of OASPA is to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines through an exchange of information, setting of industry standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of innovation.

From having first emerged as a new publishing model over a decade ago, OA publishing has become an embedded feature of the scholarly publishing landscape: The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists over 3500 peer-reviewed journals; a growing number of professional organizations offer OA publications; university libraries increasingly support OA publishing services; funding organizations support and encourage OA publishing; and a long tail of independent editorial teams and societies now publish their titles OA. Professional OA publishers such as BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have been in business for over five years, while some scientist/scholar publishers (editorial teams operating independently of a professional publisher) have published their OA journals for a decade or more. Moreover, a number of traditional publishing houses are now engaging in Open Access activities, the recent acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer and the SAGE-Hindawi partnership being two cases in point. By bringing together those who share an interest in developing appropriate business models, tools and standards to support OA journals publishing, it is hoped that success in these areas can be achieved more quickly to the benefit of not only OASPA members, but more importantly, for the scholarly community that OA publishers serve.

Membership in OASPA is open to both scholar publishers and professional publishing organizations, including university presses and for profit and non-profit organizations. Members are expected to demonstrate a genuine interest in OA journals publishing by having signed either the Berlin or Budapest Declarations and must publish at least one full OA journal. Other individuals and organizations who support OA journals publishing or who are interested in exploring opportunities are also welcome. Membership criteria and an application form can be found on the OASPA website, www.oaspa.org.

The founding members of OASPA represent a broad spectrum of OA publishers and include: BioMed Central, Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther Eysenbach), Medical Education Online (David Solomon), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), SAGE, SPARC Europe and Utrecht University Library (Igitur). Representatives from each of these publishers will form an interim board until a first General Meeting is held during 2009.

###

Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association, OASPA, is launched today 14 October 2008 in response to long-time informal discussions among Open Access publishers, and aims to represent the interests of OA journals publishers globally. For more information about the organization, visit the OASPA website at: www.oaspa.org.

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.

Open Access (OA) scholarly publication refers to the dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts containing original research or scholarship immediately upon publication, at no charge to user groups, without requiring registration or other restrictions to access. OA publications also allow users to "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

(From the SPARC Open Access Forum

Happy Open Access Day!

Follow the events on the Open Access Day website!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

In the Library with a Lead Pipe

Check it out! A new open access, peer-reviewed blog by librarians, called In the Library with a Lead Pipe.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

October 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the October 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlighted this month: an attempt to overturn the NIH policy with a bill that makes the ludicrous claim that copyright in published results of publicly funded research belongs to the publishers.

If publishers make a little money from publishing the results of publicly funded research, that's fine - as long as this does not interfere with the purpose of funding the research. In medicine, the purpose is advancing our understanding so that we can prevent, cure, and treat illnesses.

This is a topic I've written about in more depth in my open letter to the American Association of Cancer Research, In lieu of flowers.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

First Open Access Day to be held on October 14th

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Open Access Day will create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content.

The First Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00 PM (Eastern) and 7:00 PM (Pacific) and feature appearances from:


  • Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S.
    Joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for discovering split genes and RNA splicing and one of 26 Nobel Prize-winners to sign the Open Letter to U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access to publicly funded research, and currently at New England Biolabs, USA. [broadcast: 7PM Eastern]


  • Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D.
    Philip E. Bourne is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology and the author of the popular PLoS Computational Biology Ten Simple Rules Series. He is Professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego, Associate Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, Senior Advisor to the San Diego Supercomputer Center, an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham Institute, and Co-Founder of SciVee. [broadcast: 7PM Pacific]


The event will also mark the launch of the new “Voices of Open Access Video Series.” Key members of the research community, including a teacher, librarian, researcher, student, patient advocate, and a funder, will speak on why they are committed to Open Access.

For details and to participate, visit: http://www.openaccessday.org/

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE July 8-10, Vancouver, British Columbia: Preliminary Announcement and Call for Papers

Quick link to 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Website:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE
PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will appeal not just to members of the PKP community, but to anyone interested in trends and developments for scholarly publishing and communication. There will be a wide range of topical sessions on new reading and publishing technologies; open access initiatives; alternative publishing and funding models; national and international collaborative projects; new roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers and others; and sustainability for open access publishing and open source software. Prospective and first time users of OJS and other PKP software will be able to learn more about the systems and establish contacts with the PKP community. Experienced implementers, developers, and system administrators will have an opportunity to participate in technical sessions and exchange information.

The conference will commence with an opening keynote session on the evening of July 8 convened by John Willinsky, the founder of the Public Knowledge Project. There will be several pre-conference workshops on July 8, and the main conference program will present a combination of concurrent and single track sessions during on July 9 and 10. The conference will conclude with three special symposia on community and network building intended for each of the core PKP constituents: journal editors and publishers; librarians; and software developers.

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.
Session proposals will be accepted until January 15, 2009 and conference registration opens October 15, 2008. For more information, please visit the conference web site: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and current conferences. The PKP software suite is comprised of three modules in production: Open Archives Harvester, Open Journal Systems, and Open Conference Systems, and two in development: Lemon8-XML and Open Monograph Press.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will consist of a mixture of plenary talks and parallel conference streams intended for the following groups:

- journal editors and publishers
- researchers in scholarly publishing
- librarians and information specialists
- open source software developers and system administrators

Papers and presentation proposals that address one or more of the following topics are especially encouraged:

- New reading and publishing technologies, e.g. integration of Web 2.0 features;
- Open access initiatives;
- Alternative publishing and funding models;
- National and international collaborative projects;
- New roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers, and others;
- Sustainability for open access publishing and open source software.

Parallel sessions will each be up to 1 hour in length. They may consist of a workshop, a case study, a research report, a set of 3 presentations on a single theme, a panel discussion as well as other options.

Proposals for papers or presentations should be submitted by January 15, 2009, using the submission guidelines and form available at http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. The partnership brings together faculty members, librarians, and graduate students dedicated to exploring whether and how new technologies can be used to improve the professional and public value of scholarly research. Its research program is investigating the social, economic, and technical issues entailed in the use of online infrastructure and knowledge management strategies to improve both the scholarly quality and public accessibility and coherence of this body of knowledge in a sustainable and globally accessible form. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. It continues to be an active player in the open access movement, as it provides the leading open source software for journal and conference management and publishing. The research and publishing activities of the project have been reviewed and cited in Inside Higher Ed, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, The Scientist and others.

PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) initiative

Over the summer, NRC-CISTI and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) finalized the first step in the partnership for the PubMed Central Canada agreement process, a national digital repository of peer-reviewed health science research. With CIHR funding now in place, CISTI plans to contribute its technological expertise to build & host the infrastructure and manage & develop the e-repository.

Before this can go forward, however, the second and final step of the agreement process must be completed. That would be for CISTI and CIHR to jointly approach the US National Library Medicine to co-sponsor the service, as a mirror site to PubMed Central therefore obtaining a 3-way agreement between CISTI, CIHR and the US National Library of Medicine to ‘officially’ enter into the PubMed Central International (PMCI) network. Once the final agreement is in place, development will begin on the first phase of PMC Canada thus enabling CIHR researchers to deposit their publications into PubMed Central.

As the process unfolds, the initiative’s progress and latest developments will be published on CISTI’s Partnership Development Office website and in CISTI News, CISTI’s quarterly newsletter on events and happenings at CISTI.

Thanks to Donna Meighan, Partnership Development Officer, Health Portfolio, NRC. Email: Donna.Meighan@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Thinking about Prestige, Quality, and Open Access

Here is a great article to send to faculty and university administrators! Peter Suber's Thinking about Prestige, Quality, and Open Access covers in some depth the reasons TA journals are so entrenched, even in comparison with newer OA journals of equal (or better) quality - and some thoughts on what can be done about this. For example, university hiring procedures could either focus on quality instead of surrogates such as the impact factors of journals faculty have published in, or, at the very least, at some of the newer surrogate measures that don't oversimplify as much as IF.

My own comments on this topic are posted on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics.

PKP Conference 2009: July 8-10, Vancouver

Mark your calendar!

The 2009 Public Knowledge Project (PKP) conference dates and venue have been announced: July 8-10, 2009, in Vancouver. The event will begin with a keynote by PKP principal John Willinsky. Papers from the First International PKP Conference were published in the October 2007 First Monday.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Knowledge Exchange: Licensing and Open Access Exchange across borders

Knowledge Exchange combines national initiatives across four countries: Denmark, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands - to support multi-national licensing and support for open access initiatives.

Excerpt from About Knowledge Exchange:
Vision and goals
The agreed vision for Knowledge Exchange is:

To make a layer of scholarly and scientific content openly available on the Internet.

The goals that have been set to achieve that vision include:
* Building an integrated repository infrastructure
* Exploring new developments in the future of publishing
* Facilitating integrated management services within education and research institutions
* Supporting the European digital libraries agenda.

Looks an initiative to watch!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Two More OA Mandates

Two more OA mandates have been announced this week, by the European Commission for 20% of its research budget, and Ireland's Higher Education Authority.

Please follow the links above to Peter Suber's posts for details, comments and related links.

Monday, August 18, 2008

RSS Feed Aggregator About Open Access

Vedran Vucic has created an RSS Feed Aggregator for blogs, websites etc. on open access.

Thanks, Vedran!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

ARL Releases Publisher-Author Agreements and the NIH Public Access Policy

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has just announced release of a new study on publisher/author agreements and the NIH Public Access Policy, by Ben Grillot.

Friday, August 15, 2008

IFLA award for OA Librarian pioneer

IFLA has recognized librarian and open access pioneer Rima Kupryte. Rima was among the original signatories to the Budapest Open Access Initiative

Excerpt from the IFLA Press Release:

Rima Kupryte, Director of Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net) was honoured by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) at the 74th World Library and Information Congress in Quebec, Canada. The IFLA Medal is one of the highest professional accolades and is awarded to an individual for their distinguished contribution to international librarianship.

Rima Kupryte received the award in recognition of her groundbreaking work with the Open Society Institute (OSI) and eIFL.net in sharing information at a global level. “IFLA applauds the outstanding commitment of Rima in promoting international cooperation throughout her professional career”, said Claudia Lux, IFLA President. “We are delighted to bestow this honour for her dedication in expanding access to knowledge internationally through libraries”.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Gratis and libre open access

Peter Suber, in the August 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter just released, has found an elegant solution to the emerging need for definitions to clarify the two basic concepts of open access, free as in free to read and free as in free for use. The distinction between gratis and libre mirrors a similar distinction in open source software. While the terms may be unfamiliar, this could be an advantage, as there would not be conflicts with preexisting uses of words.

This is an important, and useful, distinction. There is much discussion about gratis open access, as this is often the focus of open access policies.

Libre access, or freedom for use, is a very important concept. It is a reflection of the maturity of the open access movement that this distinction needed to be made, from my perspective. Now that we have 50 open access mandates with more coming, and a scholarly communications system well on the way to transition, it is time to be talking about libre access.

The Libre concept, to me, is very similar to what we librarians have been talking about for years even with subscription resources. Even when we pay, we may or may not be able to make certain uses of material, from printing and downloading to interlibrary loans. Creative commons licensed material is beginning to show up in our subscription resources; so far, this is likely only occasional, but this is the tip of the iceberg.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Advises Copyright Retention

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has issued an Intellectual Property Advisory, advising scholars to retain their copyright, and providing advice as to how, including use of the SPARC Canadian Authors Addendum!

Excerpt (Conclusion)

Journals require only your permission to publish an article, not a wholesale transfer
of the full copyright interest. To promote scholarly communication, autonomy, integrity
and academic freedom, and education and research activities more generally, it is
important for academic staff to retain copyright in their journal articles.

Thanks to Paul Jones, CAUT and Kenneth D. Gariepy, University of Alberta.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Nature Letters to the Editor

Update July 10 - see Peter Suber on Open Access News for more on the story.

It seems that Nature ran a Letter to the Editor claiming that open access is harmful to developing countries, but is not publishing critical letters from scholarly authorities in this area (Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan, and Barbara Kirsop). In the interests of both open access and intellectual freedom, following is the text of the letters, thanks to the American Scientist Open Access Forum.

A number of people responded to the letter to
Nature, from Dr Gadagkar, IISc Bangalore, India,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
by sending corrections of the impression given by Nature's headline
(Open Access more harm than good for developing countries) and the
misunderstandings of the policies of OA journals.

Unfortunately none of the letters I know about were published by
Nature. Other letters may have been sent unknown to me. Therefore,
so that misunderstandings may be corrected, I attach the letters sent
by Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad and three of the EPT Trustees (Subbiah
Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and myself).

It is important the Nature headline and the misunderstanding are
corrected as the EPT and many other colleagues are very concerned that
the economically poor countries do indeed benefit from the very significant
benefits that OA offers.

Here are the letters, in the order in which they were sent to Nature:



[1] Text of letter sent to Nature by Professor Stevan Harnad, Canada
Research Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and Professor of
Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton, UK

Sir,

Open Access (OA) means free online access to peer-reviewed journal
articles. There are two ways to provide OA:

(1) either by publishing one's article in an OA journal that makes all
articles free online ("Gold OA")
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html

(2) or by publishing one's article in a non-OA journal and
self-archiving it to make it OA ("Green OA")
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/

R. Gadagkar (Letter to Nature, 22 May 2008) suggests that although
denying access to users because of unaffordable subscription fees
to the user-institution is bad, denying publishing to authors because
of unaffordable OA publishing fees to the author-institution is
worse, especially in the Developing World.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html

The usual reply is that (1) many Gold OA journals do not charge
a publishing fee and (2) exceptions are made for authors who
cannot pay. More important, there is also Green OA self-archiving,
and the self-archiving mandates increasingly being adopted by
universities (e.g. Harvard) and research funders (e.g. NIH).
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Self-archiving costs nothing, and if it ever makes subscriptions
unsustainable it will by the very same token generate the windfall
institutional savings out of which to pay for OA publishing instead.

Nor are the costs of publishing likely to remain the same under
self-archiving: If journal subscriptions are ever no longer in
demand (because users all use authors' self-archived drafts
rather than publishers' subscription-based versions) journals
will not convert to OA publishing under its current terms (where
journals still provide most of the products and services of
conventional journal publishing), but under substantially
scaled-down terms.

Current costs of providing the print and PDF edition, of access-provision
and of archiving will all vanish (for the publisher). Those
functions will have been off-loaded onto the distributed network of
OA institutional repositories, each hosting its own peer-reviewed,
published output. The only service that peer-reviewed journal
publishers will still need to provide then will be peer review itself
http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html and the
windfall institutional cancellation savings will be more than enough to
pay for that.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

But until then, Green OA is OA enough - and free.

Sincerely,

Stevan Harnad



[2] Letter sent to Nature by Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust
for Development

Sir,

As Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development working
with research scientists and publishers in developing countries* for
over a decade, we write to correct misunderstandings conveyed in the
correspondence from Raghavendra Gadagkar (Nature, 453, 450, May 22nd,
2008).

First, the choice for researchers in the economically poor regions is not
between 'pay to publish' versus 'pay to read' since by far the majority of
'Gold' Open Access (OA) journals make no charge to authors whatsoever.
Most are therefore free to both authors and readers.

Second, the alternative 'Green' route to OA for universities is to create
low-cost institutional repositories (IRs) - in which their researchers
can self-archive their publications to make them freely available to
all users with Internet access - and this has already been adopted by
about 1300 institutions worldwide.

A growing number (44) of universities and funding organisations (including
Harvard, Southampton, Liège, CERN, NIH, Wellcome Trust, 6 of the 7 UK
research councils, and India's National Institute of Technology) have
already gone on to officially mandate Green OA self-archiving for all
their research publications.

Usage of these resources by developing countries is now well recorded.
As examples, usage of journals published in developing countries
(and making no charge to authors or readers) was recorded by Bioline
International as having reached 3.5 million full text downloads in
2007. Usage of research publications archived in IRs shows India, China,
Brazil and South Africa among the top15 most active user-countries, and
smaller developing countries to a lesser degree. Full text downloads
from just one of the 1300 registered repositories showed UK: 10,174;
India: 5,733; China: 5,070; South Africa: 1155. Detailed usage of 4
such IRs by 6 countries is shown in the EPT Blog.

It is clear from these small but representative examples of usage that OA
has huge benefits for the progress of research in the developing world,
and advances steadily.

Sincerely,

Subbiah Arunachalam, Flat No. 1, Raagas Apts, 66 Venkatakrishna Road,
Chennai 600 028, India. Tel: +91 44‰? 2461 3224, Mobile: 97909 23941

Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Department of Social Sciences, 1265
Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C1A4, Canada, Tel: +1 416 287
7505

Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, Wilmots,
Elmton, Worksop, S80 4LS, UK Tel: +44 1909 724184, Mobile 07773677650

Electronic Publishing Trust for Development,
http://www.epublishingtrust.org
University of Otago, New Zealand, http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/es/
Bioline International, http://www.bioline.org.br)
EPT Blog: http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2008/03/bring-on-irs.html




[3] Letter sent to Nature by Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy,
Earlham College, USA

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Raghavendra Gadagkar's letter in the May 22 issue, Open-access more
harm than good in developing world.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html

Nature gave Gadagkar's letter a misleading title. His argument is
not against open access (OA) as such, or even OA journals as such, but
against fee-based OA journals or "the 'pay to publish and read for free'
business model".

However, Gadagkar's argument is misleading in its own right. He is
apparently unaware that most OA journals charge no publication fees [1].
As of late 2007, 67% of the journals listed in the Directory of Open
Access Journals charged no publication fees [2], and 83% of OA journals
from society publishers charged no publication fees [3].

Gadagkar writes that "A 'publish for free, read for free' model may
one day prove to be viable..." as if it were untried, when in fact it
is the majority model around the world. Moreover, it's the exclusive
model in his own country. All OA journals published in India are of
the no-fee variety.

He also fails to mention that OA archiving already follows the model
of no fees for readers and no fees for authors. In the same week that
Nature published Gadagkar's letter, the OA repository at his institution,
the Indian Institute of Science, passed the milestone of 10,000 deposits.

Peter Suber
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Visiting Fellow, Yale Law School

1. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-06.htm#nofee

2.
http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/12/new-data-showing-that-most-
oa-journals.html

3. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-07.htm#list

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Open Access Subject Guides & Tutorials

Students in the 2008 University of British Columbia SLAIS Open Access class have created open access subject guides on a variety of topics, including the environment, chemistry, HIV/AIDS, environmental and occupational health, media studies, as well as a tutorial on preserving OA materials and a draft OA research project. Links to the projects can be found here.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

July 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the July 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The feature article this month is Open Access and the Last-Mile Problem for Knowledge, and begins with the "tarmac problem" for disaster relief - emergencies such as Katrina where badly needed supplies were almost within reach, but never delivered. Peter compares this "last mile" problem with the problems of access to (stage one problem), and understanding of (stage two problem), scholarly knowledge.

Peter argues (and I agree) that paid access to the published literature is not a scalable solution, as the volume of this literature grows, while the money to purchase essentially does not. Open access is the only scalable solution to full access to our scholarly knowledge.

Peter's Stage Two problem is understanding of the knowledge that is available. Open access is a necessary precondition for full resolution of this problem, but it is not enough. Learning or growing in knowledge is not just about having access; it is about finding the right article, how to sift through mazes of often conflicting data and opinions to find the information that will really answer your question. Some of the answers, as Peter argues, are technological - alerting services, machine translation, automated summarizers for long articles we don't have time to read, text mining and so forth.

All really good ideas. What I'd like to add: We librarians have much to add to resolving this Stage Two problem - building understanding, such as our skills in helping people to build information literacy, one-on-one help with finding answers (reference and research assistance), and our skills at designing and building systems to facilitate making the connections between author and reader. As our global storehouse of knowledge grows, with more research being done and published, data and new formats of publications made available, the need for our skills will only grow in the coming years.

As Peter Suber says:
It's staggering to think about what could happen if the knowledge we have painstakingly discovered, articulated, tested, refined, validated, gathered, and delivered to the tarmac were systematically distributed to all who need it. Imagine if what was known became more widely known, especially among those who could put it to use.

E-LIS passes 8000 documents

As of about 8:45 am MST today, E-LIS, the open archive for library and information science (http://eprints.rclis.org/) contained 8023 documents. When I looked on Friday, the total was just under 8000 which means that E-LIS went over the 8000 mark sometime in the last few days. While it's not as an auspicious number as, say, 10,000, I think it's worth recognizing.

(disclosure: I am part of the E-LIS editorial team for Canada)

Andrew

Monday, June 30, 2008

OICR Open Access Policy

It's been blogged elsewhere (e.g. on Heather Morrison's Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/06/three-forthcoming-oa-policies-announced.html) but I should make brief mention of the just-announced Ontario Institute of Cancer Research (OICR) Open Access Policy. I won't get into too many details (this page - http://www.oicr.on.ca/portalnews/vol2_issue3/access.htm - covers the basics plus there will be lots of discussion elsewhere) but I will say that the new directive is much in the vein of the previously-announced CIHR policy.

Also, in her posting, Heather says "Note: watch for OA policies at other Canadian provincial funding agencies - discussions are underway!" I know that the main Alberta health funder, the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR, http://www.ahfmr.ab.ca/), is certainly looking seriously looking at Open Access options; along with Denise Koufogiannakis from the University of Alberta, I talked with some folks at the AMFHR several months back about OA.

Andrew

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

University of Calgary Open Access Authors Fund

It has appeared elsewhere already but, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's the press release about the University of Calgary OA submission fee fund. I figured that I should blog something about this considering I'm involved in it and am one of the folks behind OA Librarian :-)

U of C funds Open Access Authors Fund

Fund gives professors and students access to new funds

University of Calgary professors and graduate students will now have access to a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund designed to increase the amount of publicly available research.

The new fund, announced today by Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, is the first of its magnitude in Canada. “I am proud that the University of Calgary is taking leadership in this movement to increase the worldwide accessibility of cutting- edge research,” said Hickerson.

The new fund will provide U of C faculty and graduate students with financial support to cover Open Access author fees. Open Access publishing is a rapidly expanding development in the exchange of research information. An increasing number of academic journals make research literature openly available via the internet without the restrictions on authors and without the high costs to users imposed by traditional subscription-based publications.

This new publishing model does, however, often require that authors pay fees contributing to the costs of publication. With the establishment of this new fund, researchers at the University of Calgary will have the freedom to exercise their own choice in publishing decisions. Open Access publishing is emerging as the best hope for a sustainable and responsible course of action for the future of scholarly communication.

“The Open Access movement is a significant initiative in bringing our research activity more quickly and broadly to the awareness of the scholarly community and to the public at large,” said Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-President, Research. “The establishment of this fund by Libraries and Cultural Resources is a crucial development for our faculty and graduate students.”

Open Access publishing allows authors to retain copyright control over their work and promotes broad educational use of the latest information. Open Access is also a key means by which university research can serve the larger community, providing public access to the new findings in everything from cancer treatment to global warming.

Faculty or graduate students looking for additional information may contact Helen Clarke, Head, Collection Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at hclarke@ucalgary.ca For media inquiries, please contact: Tom Hickerson Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian tom.hickerson@ucalgary.ca 403.220.3765


The online version of the press release, with picture, is at http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/june2008/authorsfund.

I should stress that we haven't worked out all the details quite yet but we in the process of doing so. The official start-up date is September 2008.

Andrew

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Position Statement on Open Access now on CLA website

The Canadian Library Association / Association canadienne des bibliothèques Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries, approved by the CLA Executive on May 21, 2008, has just been posted on the CLA website, at: http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Position_Statements&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=5306

The text of the position statement is:

Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values, therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.

CLA encourages Canadian libraries of all types to:
  • support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
  • raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
  • support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
  • support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Version 72, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Charles Bailey has just released Version 72 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Oxford Open automatic deposit at PMC

Posting message from Oxford (with permission). Note also that Oxford is taking article processing fees into account when assessing subscription rates, and has already reduced some subscription fees to reflect revenue from article processing fees.

Excerpt of message from Kirsty Luff at Oxford:

Open access articles published in over 50 journals in the Oxford Open initiative are now automatically deposited in PubMed Central (PMC).

Authors who have paid a fee to make their articles open access in one of our Oxford Open biomedical journals do not need to deposit their article into PMC – Oxford Journals will do so on their behalf. The final published version of their article will be freely available immediately via PMC and also directly from the journal website.

Oxford Journals is depositing into PMC all open access papers that have been or will be published in 58 journals participating in the Oxford Open initiative (a list of journals can be found here: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/open_access_titles.html)

Regular data feeds between PMC and the journals concerned have been set up. Recently published open access content is being deposited first, followed by older content. You can refer to http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/open_access_titles.html for the latest information on the status of PMC deposits for individual journals.

We have also prepared some information and guidelines for authors of various funding agencies, which can be found here: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/open_access_titles.html

We look forward to continuing our work with PMC to help authors deposit their articles.

Kirsty Luff, Senior Communications & Marketing Manager
Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press

Monday, June 02, 2008

June SPARC Open Access Newsletter

The June 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter is now available.

Peter Suber's main article in the Newsletter is Open access and the self-correction of knowledge. Beautifully written, this article talks about how knowledge is built. Inspiring, and highly recommended for those of us thinking about the broader changes in, and purpose of, scholarly communications.

One thought is that thinking about the self-correcting nature of knowledge helps to put the (to me) rather silly worries about article versions into perspective.

Regardless of what version of an article (or other scholarly document) one looks at, no matter how good the article, it is only a part of the truth. Better to critique, build upon, try the next step in the grand experiment or develop the next concepts. This is how we learn, all of us together.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Creating a Gold Open Access Publishing Organization

Efforts are underway to create a Gold Open Access Publishing Organization.

It's about time! In future OA policy discussions, a group like this can be a strong voice FOR OA from the publishing side.

A good summary by Peter Suber on Open Access News.

I agree with Peter's comment that it would be wise to be more inclusive in forming this organization, and welcome fully open access publishers even if they provide basic rather than permissions OA - or if they provide permissions OA, but restrict commercial use, or use sharealike conditions. In both of the latter cases, the aim is often not to limit but to protect OA for further uses and redistribution.

Friday, May 30, 2008

NIH policy: please express support!

OA Librarian colleagues - especially in the U.S. - please submit a comment in support of the NIH policy! Comments are due tomorrow, Saturday, May 31, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you're not sure about the details of the policy implementation, no problem - at least comment on question number 4, expressing thanks and support for the policy.

Details from Peter Suber on Open Access News:

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:

  1. Do you have recommendations for alternative implementation approaches to those already reflected in the NIH Public Access Policy?
  2. In light of the change in law that makes NIH’s public access policy mandatory, do you have recommendations for monitoring and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy?
  3. In addition to the information already posted [here], what additional information, training or communications related to the NIH Public Access Policy would be helpful to you?
  4. Do you have other comments related to the NIH Public Access Policy?

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.






Thanks to Peter Suber on
"http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/time-is-short-to-comment-on-nih-policy.html">Open Access News

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Health Commons video

Science Commons' John Wilbanks has produced a 6-minute video on the Health Commons which explains succinctly what is broken about the current approach to health discovery, and how a health commons could make a difference.

The current approach emphasizes profit; this makes the weight problems of the wealthy a higher priority than river blindness, a serious affliction for millions of people around the world.

The world wide web makes it possible to create new approaches to science discovery, based on open sharing of knowledge and collaboration.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Olympics archive is OA

I found this while doing something else. It appears to be masses of Olympic information in the LA84 Foundation archives. And considering what will descend on us in 2010, the topic is getting bigger.

http://la84foundation.org/5va/over_frmst.htm


From the entry page:

Digital Archive

The LA84 Foundation has undertaken an ambitious project to convert portions of its traditional library collection to digital format. The growing digital collection now contains more than 300,000 pages, stored in over 45,000 PDF files.

Digital resources include academic journals, scholarly books, popular sports magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and an extensive offering of Olympic publications. The Olympic titles include a complete run of back issues of Olympic Review, the official publication of the International Olympic Committee, and two dozen Olympic Games official reports.

All of the digital publications are available at no cost to website visitors. The LA84 Foundation Search page provides full-text access to all digital documents and shows a complete list of titles.

Medicins sans Frontiers website now OA

From the Website:
MSF is well known for its humanitarian medical work, but it has also produced important research based on its field experience with vulnerable populations. Its studies have been published in over 90 peer-reviewed journals and have often changed clinical practice and been used for humanitarian advocacy.
This website archives MSF's scientific articles and makes them available free, with full text, and in an easily searchable format. No login required.

http://fieldresearch.msf.org/msf/

Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Audacity of SCOAP3

This brief page-and-a-half on SCOAP3 is an interesting an engaging way to learn about this exciting intiative to convert high energy physics publishing from subscription to OA:

The Audacity of SCOAP3
by Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections, California Digital Library

with:

Taking Action on SCOAP3
by Julia Blixrud, Assistant Executive Director, External Relations, ARL, and Assistant Director, Public Programs, SPARC

downloadable from: http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br257.shtml