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!