California call to open access action! update - now the Senate!

Thanks California! now for the next step as the bill goes to Senate

California people - call to action to support the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act

Tectonic movements towards open access in the UK and Europe: September 2012 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the September 2012 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlighted are the major recent OA developments in the UK and Europe.

March 2012 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just posted the March 2012 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: a thorough and authoritative (as usual) look at the Research Works Act and the Federal Research Public
Access Act (FRPAA), with links to important historical information.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

Announced today is the Directory of Open Access Books or DOAB. From the press release:

DOAB will provide a searchable index to peer-reviewed monographs and edited volumes published under an Open Access business model, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository. The beta version of the service will contain publications of a selected number of academic publishers. The beta version will be made public early spring 2012.

The DOAB will be launched by the Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Foundation.

As there is the long-established Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), it makes sense to have something similar for the burgeoning world of OA monographs. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

U.S. Call to action: 2011 White House RFI on public access (deadline Jan. 2)

U.S. OA Librarians and organizations elsewhere with OA policy experience, see this call to action fron the Alliance for Taxpayer Access: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-1117.shtml

September 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the September 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter's description as posted to the SPARC OA Forum: Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, this issue reflects on the problem of access to dangerous knowledge. It also describes how I'll have to trim future issues to make time for a large new OA project at Harvard. The look-back sections reprint short excerpts from SOAN five and ten years ago this month.

August 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the August 2011 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. No feature article this time, this issue focuses on 5 and 10 years ago and the latest roundup.