Saturday, May 29, 2010

Open Access Policies in Europe: David Prosser article

Enabling Open Scholarship has just released David Prosser's Open Access Policies in Europe. This succinct overview by one of open access' most noteworthy champions is a must-read for anyone involved in OA policy development or advocacy.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Canadian action item: help vote up OA to Canadian Research in Canada's Digital Economy Consultation

Please register for Canada's Digital Economy Consultation and vote for Open Access to Canadian Research under Canada's Digital Content. Currently OA is at 8 votes, just 2 behind the lead suggestion in this section of the Ideas Forum.

OA-related items from the Alberta Library Conference

Two OA-related items came out of the Alberta Library Conference (ALC) that was held in Jasper, AB, April 29-May 2, 2010 (http://www.albertalibraryconference.com/)

First, at the AGM, the Library Association of Alberta (LAA) voted to investigate setting up an OA policy for the organization. This would follow what other Canadian library associations, such as the British Columbia Library Association (BCLA) and the Canadian Library Association (CLA), have done. In addition, LAA has already taken actions in terms of OA e.g. the LAA newsletter, the Letter of the LAA, is available as a delayed OA publication (http://www.laa.ca/page/letter%20of%20the%20laa%20archives.aspx).

(Disclosure: I moved the motion to investigate setting up an OA Policy.)

Second, the theme for ALC 2011 was announced and it includes an OA component. The theme will be "Open doors, open minds, open access".

Monday, May 10, 2010

Hurray for DOAJ! Over 5,000 journals

The DOAJ has just announced a series of milestones, including the milestone of exceeding 5,000 journals!

Kudos to DOAJ. As I point out over on the Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, this is more than 20% of the world's scholarly journals that are now fully open access.

This is a conservative estimate - from the OA community, what I hear is a little frustration with the amount of time it takes to get a journal vetted and included in DOAJ. If you'd like to help DOAJ achieve better service - consider joining as a member or sponsor.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

FRPAA introduced in the US House of Representatives (May 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter)

Peter Suber just released the May 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month is concise analysis of the introduction of FRPAA and what you can do to help.