Version 77, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Charles Bailey has just released Version 77 of his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.

E-LIS: Over 10,000 documents

E-LIS now contains over 10,000 documents. As of 1:15 pm MST, December 13, 2009, the E-LIS homepage advertises that the repository now has "more than 10,021" items in the archive. The 5-digit mark is a notable line to cross; I've been checking in with the site now and again to see when E-LIS got to this point. Congrats to E-LIS and all who have deposited in this OAR.

Disclosure: I am part of the Canadian editorial team for E-LIS

December 11, 2009 Dramatic Growth of Open Access

I just published the December 11, 2009 early year-end edition of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access.

U.S. OA Action Alert

From Peter Suber on Open Access News:


The Obama administration wants OA for federally-funded research

The Obama administration is calling for public comments on ways to enhance access to federally-funded research.  From today's announcement:

With this notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, requests input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies. This RFI [Request for Information] will be active from December 10, 2009 to January 7, 2010. Respondents are invited to respond online via the Public Access Policy Forum...or may submit responses via electronic mail. Responses will be re-posted on the online forum. Instructions and a timetable for daily blog topics during this period are described at [the White House Open Government Initiative web site]....

[T]he Administration is dedicated to maximizing the return on Federal investments made in R&D. Consistent with this policy, the Administration is exploring ways to leverage Federal investments to increase access to information that promises to stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness. The results of government-funded research can take many forms, including data sets, technical reports, and peer-reviewed scholarly publications, among others. This RFI focuses on approaches that would enhance the public's access to scholarly publications resulting from research conducted by employees of a Federal agency or from research funded by a Federal agency....

The Executive Branch is considering ways to enhance public access to peer reviewed papers arising from all federal science and technology agencies. One potential model, implemented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...requires that all investigators funded by the NIH submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance for publication no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Articles collected under the NIH Public Access Policy are archived in PubMed Central and linked to related scientific information contained in other NIH databases....

The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer- reviewed scholarly publications. The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms....

Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually)....[PS: Here omitting the nine questions; but anyone submitting a comment should read and address them.]

Comments (by Peter Suber)

• This is big.  We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA.  The question here is about separate action from the White House.  What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt?  This is the first major opening to supplement legislative action with executive action to advance public access to publicly-funded research.  It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something similar at other federal agencies.
• Don't forget that FRPAA has to stand in line behind healthcare reform, financial regulation, and climate change.  This is the perfect time to open a new front from the executive branch.  Also don't forget that the federal funding agencies belong to the executive branch and are subject to executive order.
• Comments are due January 7.  Please write one and spread the word, not necessarily in that order.  As far as I can tell, comments from non-citizens addressing the nine questions are as welcome as comments from US citizens. 
• You can be sure that the publishing lobby will be writing comments.  It's vital that the research community be heard as well, loud and clear.

University of Ottawa

This morning, the University of Ottawa announced a comprehensive Open Access program, including an authors fund, a research to support research on OA, a fund to support the creation of digital materials, and support for the U of O Press to produce a collection of OA monographs. The University of Ottawa has also joined the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE).

The announcement can be found here, with links leading to the components of the OA program.

Congratulations to everyone at the University of Ottawa (especially Tony Horava for sending me the news right away) for putting together a broad program in a very coherent manner.

December 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the December 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: implications of the Google Books settlement for open access.

OA Librarian Kumiko Vezina featured in Concordia Journal

OA Librarian Kumiko Vezina is among those featured in an article in Concordia Journal celebrating the launch of Concordia's institutional repository Spectrum.

U.S. House Science committee considering OA -in secret

According to Gavin Baker on Open Access News, a U.S. House Science Committee is considering OA - in secret.

Why would a country that has seen lots of public discussion on this topic over the past few years suddenly decide on secret discussions? This doesn't exactly sound like democracy, does it?

Peter Suber's Knowledge as a Public Good

Peter Suber's latest article, , Knowledge as a Public Good, has just been released as the feature article of the November 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

This article explains in depth why knowledge makes sense as a public good, and the happy coincidence that this is the month when Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for physics. Ostrom is well-known for her writing on the commons.

Austrian Science Fund: more good news for OA funding

Thanks to Dr. Falk Reckling of the Austrian Science Fund for more good news on OA funding, extending the Austrian Science Fund pre-existing subsidy for publication charges to cover not only OA articles, but also peer-reviewed monographs and more.

October 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has released the October 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month is "10 challenges for open access journals", an expansion of his keynote talk at the first Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) conference held in September.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: September 30, 2009

The September 30, 2009 Dramatic Growth of Open Access is now available.

Abstract

This issue of The Dramatic Growth of Open Access features a few key quotable numbers to illustrate the growth and current extent of open access: more than 4,000 fully open access, peer reviewed journals in DOAJ, growing by 2 titles per day; close to 1,500 open access repositories listed in OpenDOAR, adding a new repository every business day; over 30 million free publications through Scientific Commons, growing by more than 20 thousands items per day; more than 20% of the world's medical literature is freely available 2 years after publication, and close to 10% is freely available immediately on publication; 1 more journal decides to submit all or most content to PMC every business day, and growth of open access journals in PMC is one new journal every other business day. The number of open access mandate policies is well over a hundred, and growing rapidly - but also likely understated. If you have a policy, please be sure to register with ROARMAP. This quarter saw some minor setbacks. Most notable (but still small) is a decrease in free content through Highwire Press.

Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity: a key step in transitioning to open access

My comments on the Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) are available on the Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. In brief, I recommend that every library and university join. No immediate financial commitment is required, rather a commitment to develop models that provide equity for open access journals. Commitment entails recognition of the key role that libraries provide in supporting scholarly journals.

For links to COPE, see Andrew's post.

Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE)

Five major US universities (Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley) have announced that they have joined together in a compact for Open Access publication. Each university commits "to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open-access journal articles written by its faculty for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds". Other universities are being asked to sign on to the compact.

More details can be found here:

The announcement/press release: http://hul.harvard.edu/news/2009_0914_compact.html

The website for the compact: http://www.oacompact.org/

PLoS One wins ALPSP award for publishing innovation!

PLoS One is the winner of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) award for publishing innovation! Congrats, PLoS One! (Thanks to Peter Binfield on twitter).

Free webcast of OASPA conference

Free webcast of the first Open Access Scholarly Publishing Conference which begins September 16! Announcement from OASPA follows:

Dear All, I am pleased to announce that the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing will be broadcast live online at: http://www.river-valley.tv/ in order to broaden the reach of the conference beyond those participants who will be able to physically join us next week. Assuming that there are no technical hiccups, the webcast will begin on Monday September 14th at 12.30 pm Swedish time (11.30 am London/6.30 am in New York), and will continue according to the conference schedule, which can be found at: http://oaspa.org/coasp/sessions.php. If you check the website and find that the webcast is not working, I would encourage you to check back after a while to see if the conference has come back online. The parallel breakout sessions on the second day of the conference, as well as the social events in the evening, will not be broadcast. In addition to the live webcast, we will be recording both the video and audio of all of the conference presentations, which should be made available online within 1-2 weeks after the conference has ended. The recordings of the individual presentations will be posted as soon as they are ready at: http://www.river-valley.tv, and once all of
the presentations have been uploaded we will send out a final announcement. If you will be joining us in Lund, I look forward to seeing you next week. Otherwise, I hope you take the opportunity to check out the conference online.

Best Regards,
Paul Peters,
Chair 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing

Caroline Sutton, PhD
Publisher Co-Action Publishing

Workshops on creating open access journals

David Solomon and Caroline Sutton are looking for co-organizers to host their Workshop on Creating Open Access Journals. I attended the workshop held at the 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference. Highly recommended. This is very useful for the librarian interested in scholarly communication, or consider hosting a workshop for your faculty members.

Please join me for ALCTS Webinar September 23rd

Please join me (Heather Morrison) on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EDT for the ALCTS webinar, Open Access: Key Trends

Description

While content recruitment at the local IR may seem slow and painful, from a global / historical perspective, the growth of open access in all its flavors is nothing short of phenomenal. The benefits of the IR for authors and for institutions will become more and more apparent in the near future. The chicken will emerge from the egg, and the IR will be seen as a great career choice. This session will provide an overview of the latest key trends in open access: why we need green as well as gold, both institutional and disciplinary repositories, and open access policies to fill the repositories. Institutional open access policies will be highlighted, introducing different types of policies, what makes for good policy, and approaches to open access policy development at the university.

For details and registration for this and other programs , see the ALCTS Webinar Series.

Kudos to Harvard and for FRPAA support letter and DASH!

Kudos to Harvard University for a Letter supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), to many thanks to the letter's signatories, Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman, Robert Darnton, and Stuart Shieber.

Congrats also to Harvard on launch of DASH, Harvard's institutional repository.

What an impressive and inspiring start to the semester!

September 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the September 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this: BMJ's successful business model, supporting OA full-text through paid abridgements.