Copyright Hall of Janus? : Harvard University’s Two-Faced Approach to Copyrigh

This post by Raizel Leibler of The Learned Fangirl, contrasting Harvard as excellent role model (with their leading-edge, faculty-led OA policies) and horrible role model (Harvard Business Review's IP is for me approach), may be of interest to librarians.

Comments for OA Librarian closed

OA Librarian receives one or more comments every day. Unfortunately, over the last several months, the vast majority of comments have been spam; these have been increasing in number while "legit" comments have become few and far between. As a result of this, the decision has been made to close off the comment function for this blog. Apologies if this causes difficulties for anyone.

SPARC CALLS ON CAMPUSES TO COORDINATE OPEN-ACCESS POLICY EFFORTS

SPARC has created a new resource centre - including a list of experts - to help librarians coordinate campus institutional open access policy developments.

August 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the August 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This issue takes a close look at the recently re-introduced U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

Campus Outreach to Scholarly Society Leaders, Editors, and Members: new ARL resource

ARL SPEC Kit on Authors' Addenda

The Association of Research Libraries has just published a SPEC Kit on Author's Addenda. The table of contents and Executive Summary are available online. Highlight: author's addenda are in use by authors of at least 35 ARL institutions, 50% of the institutions responding to the survey.

Hat tip to the Open Access Tracking Project.

July 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the July 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter's feature article this month is on Open Access for Digitization Projects, a thorough piece on the philosophical elements underlying OA and digitization, such as balancing public access / public domain and private rights. For example, when public funds are used to digitize material under private copyright, the public funder has every right to expect concessions to the public rights that come with public funding; some projects may need to allow private parties embargoed rights to move forward, however the embargo period should be much less than what is allowed under copyright, and when projects are competing for funds, the public funder has every right to prioritize projects that provide the best public benefits, such as little or no embargo. Highly recommended reading for anyone involved in digitization.

PKP 2009 Conference: Full Program now available

The full program for the 2009 PKP Conference is now available for download here.

U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) re-introduced

In the U.S., Senators Cornyn and Lieberman have teamed up to re-introduce the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). This is huge; FRPAA would require all U.S. federal funding agencies with significant research spending portfolios to develop public access acts, similar to NIH.

Stay tuned to Open Access News for a summary and comments as well as updates like this one.

E-LIS Team wins OAI6 Poster Prize!

The E-LIS team won the Poster Prize at OAI6! Very impressive, as there were many excellent poster sessions on innovative open access projects - details can be found here. Congratulations to Imma Subirats, Antonella de Robbio, Fernanda Peset and Zeno Tajoli (and of course all of the E-LIS team, editors and contributors alike).

[Disclosure: I am part of the E-LIS team].

June 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the June 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. This month's feature is an in-depth analysis of the defeat of the University of Maryland proposed OA mandate.

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

Planning to attend the Second International PKP Conference in Vancouver from July 8 - 10, 2009? If so, you should register soon, as the Early Bird rates will be ending June 8!

If not, you might want to take a closer look at our outstanding program with over 50 sessions by a truly international caste of speakers from 6 continents, including experienced library and open access publishers, and leaders in academic publishing technologies and initiatives.

Our prestigious international speakers include:

- John Willinsky, PKP Director and Professor at both the Stanford University School of Education and the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia;
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Internationally renowned author and Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine;
- Ana Maria Cetto, Investigator, Physics Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Technical Cooperation Leader and Subdirector of the International Atomic Energy Agency;
- Gregg Gordon, Social Science Research Network President and CEO;
- and many more:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/presentations

This year's conference combines a stimulating mixture of both the theoretical and practical, with several pre-conference and post-conference workshops on Open Journal Systems, Lemon8-XML, Creating Open Access Journals, Networkshops for Editors, Librarians, and Software Developers, and Walking the Talking with the CLA Open Access Interest Group:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/workshops

Additional conference highlights include:

- An early look at the latest PKP software application, the Open Monograph Press;
- Opportunities for face to face meetings with the PKP Team;
- A software "hackfest" for developers to get together, experiment, and innovate;
- A special focus on graduate students and scholarly publishing;
- And, of course, the beauty of Vancouver in the summer!

http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/travel

We very much hope to see you in July!

Heather G. Morrison
Planning Committee, 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phone: 778-782-7001
Fax: 778.782.3023
Email: heatherm@eln.bc.ca
Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca

Don't miss! the
2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Vancouver, July 8-10, 2009
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009

Library faculties now in the lead in departmental OA mandates!

The library faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College have adopted an open access mandate, the 4th such mandate. According to Peter Suber, library faculty are now in the lead with the most open access departmental policies!

Why not teach students to use OA resources?

Dorothea Salo asks: why bother teaching students to use toll access databases when they won't have access to them after they graduate?

My perspective: information literacy is a key skill for the knowledge age, and the need for librarians to develop and provide instruction will only grow. But why not focus primarily on open access resources, since this is what they will have access to for sure after graduation?

Many librarians, for that matter, are looking for information on how to search for open access information. The top question I've been getting at recent presentations, where I tend to cover just how much OA there is - more than 4,000 journals in DOAJ, over 2.6 million items available in fulltext from PubMed alone, >26 million publications available through Scientific Commons is: so how do I find this stuff? Hint: great topic for a future conference presentation proposal...

Hat tip to Open Access News.

ALA, ACRL, and ARL ask judge to assert vigorous oversight of proposed Google Book Search settlement

Excerpt:

The associations asserted that although the settlement has the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values including equity of access to information, patron privacy and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes.

May 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the May 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, highlighting the Open Access Tracking Project at Connotea. OA Librarians everywhere, please join us in the ever-growing task of tracking OA developments, through the OA Tracking Project and the Open Access Directory.

We'll be needed, as on July 1 Peter Suber will be moving on to a full-time commitment to open access at Harvard, as a Berkman fellow. Peter will continue to write the SPARC Open Access Newsletter and contribute from time to time to Open Access News. Congratulations and best wishes to Peter, and to Harvard.

ACRL new website (Scholarly Communications section)

ACRL has just launched a completely revamped website. The Scholarly Communications section looks well-organized and useful!

Happy one-year anniversary to NIH Public Access (mandatory) policy

The NIH Public Access policy's being strengthened to a mandate is now one year ago - and the results are a tripling of author deposits to PubMedCentral, as reported by Meredith Wadman in today's Nature News. Great chart for anyone tracking the dramatic growth of open access!

E-LIS now has over 9,000 documents

Another milestone to report: The Directory of Open Access Journals went over the 4,000 journal mark a day or so ago and now there is a note on the E-LIS home page that E-LIS now contains over 9,000 documents. It would have gone over this mark sometime in the last 12 hours or thereabouts; as of last night, the number was 8895. Congratulations to E-LIS (and DOAJ).

This is also the 500th post on OA Librarian.

Clear up OA MIsunderstandings with April SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the April 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, featuring a thorough treatment of still all-too-common OA misunderstandings.