Saturday, May 14, 2011

Barbara Fister: 4 options for librarians

Barbara Fister has 4 suggested options for libraries to further OA publishing in Library Journal. The options are, in brief:

  • Start an open access publishing program with a local focus.
  • Mergers of libraries and university presses.
  • Redirect funding from subscriptions to paying author fees for open access (Fister does not think this is workable on a grand scale; note that I would disagree)
  • Build small and nimble coalitions among libraries with scholars who do get it

Friday, May 06, 2011

Andrew Waller winner of BMC OA Advocate of the Year award!

BioMedCentral presented OA Librarian's own Andrew Waller with their OA Advocate of the Year award last night - congratulations, Andrew! Details at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/researchawards/previousawards#2010

Update May 9: here is another more direct link to the announcement

Text from science journalist Vivienne Parry: He is the Open Access Librarian in the Scholarly Communication Centre, part of the Libraries and Cultural Resources unit at the University of Calgary, Canada. Andrew is responsible for the Open Access Authors Fund, which has made possible over 170 articles for University of Calgary authors since its inception in 2008. This fund was the first of its kind in Canada. It is one of several programs in the University of Calgary’s outstanding open access suite. It includes an institutional repository; an expansive digitization program; OA journals and monographs in the University of Calgary Press. Andrew has regularly written on and spoken about open access over the last several years. He is one of the people behind the OA Librarian blog and is a Canadian editor for the open access repository for library and information science, E-LIS.

Comment: the University of Calgary's Open Access Authors Fund, led by Andrew, is just one of the initiatives that I hope Andrew will do more speaking and writing about in the near future. It is a pleasure to see this award go to someone who has frequently been a co-author, co-presenter, co-OA Librarian, and co-E-LIS member. Thanks for all that you do, Andrew!

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

May 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has released the May 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlighted this month: Free Offline Access: A Primer on OA' (OA Prime)