Sunday, February 21, 2010

OpenAIRE Press Release

European Countries join forces to realize the EC Open Access pilot: OpenAIRE

OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe), a three-years project funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, has now taken up its work to implement Open Access on a pan-European scale. This ambitious effort unites 38 partners from 27 European countries.

The main goal of OpenAIRE is to support the Open Access pilot, launched by the European Commission in August 2008. This Open Access pilot, which covers about 20% of the FP7 budget, commits researchers from 7 thematic areas (Health, Energy, Environment, Information & Communication Technology, Research Infrastructures, Socio-economic sciences & Humanities and Science in Society) to deposit their research publications in an institutional or disciplinary Open Access repository, to be made available worldwide in full text. OpenAIRE will establish underlying structures for researchers to support them in complying with the pilot through European Helpdesk System, build an OpenAIRE portal and e-Infrastructure for the repository networks and explore scientific data management services together with 5 disciplinary communities.

“The implementation of a Europe wide infrastructure for Open Access is a milestone for the success of Open Access,” says Dr. Norbert Lossau, Scientific Coordinator of OpenAIRE and Director of Göttingen State and University Library, Germany. “The project consortium will work closely together with the European Commission, the ERC and many other stakeholders (such as SPARC Europe, LIBER, EUA) to achieve the broadest possible impact.”

The project consortium incorporates the best available expertise for Open Access & repository infrastructures in Europe and will establish a distributed support structure based on a network of liaison offices covering all European Union member states plus Norway. Consortium partners have been identified in each country, or in the case of Luxembourg, have pledged their support for the development and implementation of strategies and services for Open Access, that have gained acceptance in the international community since 2003, the launch of the Berlin Declaration.

[thanks to Peter Suber at the Open Access Tracking Project]

Saturday, February 13, 2010

New Open Access Fund at SFU Library

Excerpt:

At its January 2010 meeting, the Senate Library Committee adopted sweeping recommendations that will make SFU one of only three Canadian universities to embrace Open Access (OA) publishing. “We’re going to put our money where our mouth is,” says Bird. OA Journals are scholarly peer-reviewed journals freely available on the web without subscription fees, but they are often supported through Article Processing Charges (APCs) levied to authors. Fees range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per accepted paper. Prominent examples are BioMed Central, Public Library of Science, and Hindawi.

(Thanks to Gwen Bird).

Note also that there is a link to the full SFU OA Strategy document at the bottom of this page.

Kudos to Gwen Bird & SFU Library!

Global Knowledge Exchange Network launched

The Global Knowledge Exchange Network has just launched - here is a description, from the About page:

The Global Knowledge Exchange Network (GKEN) is a community for scholars and practitioners to share and explore new ideas and emerging trends related to scholarly research or everyday practice. More specifically, the community is devoted to understanding the changing role of information –its creation, management, dissemination and use– in scholarly research, higher education and business practice.

The project is sponsored jointly by the Harvard Business School Knowledge and Library Services and the Copenhagen Business School Library. The GKEN Founding Team includes Mary Lee Kennedy and Gosia Stergios (Harvard Business School), and René Steffensen and Leif Hansen (Copenhagen Business School).

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Science Commons Symposium: February 20, Redmond Washington

Lineup looks very interesting!

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

SPARC webcast: Library-press partnerships

Library-press partnerships in action: The new University of California Publishing Services
A SPARC Webcast
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
1:00 – 2:00PM EST

Free, but registration required.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

ARL ACRL Scholarly Communication Institute Webinar Series

Registration is now open for Strengthening Programs through Collaboration, the ARL ACRL Scholarly Communication Institute Webinar Series.

[Disclosure: Julie Garrison & I are co-coordinators of this series, and fellow OA Librarian Andrew Waller is among the confirmed speakers].

February 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the February 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: analogies between the politics of open access and the politics of clean energy.

Mark your calendars: Open Access Week October 18-24, 2010