OA / U of A

The University of Alberta libraries has created a blog called Open Access Publishing Information for the University of Alberta Community.

Here is the introduction to the blog from the Welcome page:

The University of Alberta Libraries encourages University of Alberta faculty members and researchers to publish their work according to the principles of the Open Access model, to maximize the access and benefit to scientists, scholars and the public throughout the world.

To these ends, we have created this information site to provide an overview of Open Access publishing initiatives and support available for members of the University of Alberta Community.

Thanks & congratulations on a beautiful, well-organized blog to Denise Koufogiannakis, Pam Ryan, & Trish Chatterly, University of Alberta Libraries.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Creative Commons Fundraising Campaign

The Creative Commons has launched its annual fundraising campaign. This year's campaign will feature stories about the innovative ways that people are making use of friendly licensing options.

If you need background info about the Creative Commons, visit this page.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Campaign for Open Government

The Campaign for Open Government launched in Vancouver on September 26, 2006.

Excerpt:

Vancouver – A broad-based coalition which includes the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, BC Civil Liberties Association, BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA), and many other groups, launched a campaign today to ensure BC’s government fulfils its long-overdue promise to be a Canadian leader in openness and accountability.

The Campaign for Open Government is focusing on the Province’s poor record of response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. The FOI Act allows citizens and organizations to request copies of government documents.

“Our tax dollars pay for all government reports, memos, policy analysis, everything. If citizens pay for it, they have a right to know what it is,” said Sara MacIntyre of the Canadian Taxpayers Association.

“In 2004 a Committee of the Legislature reviewed the FOI Act and recommended amendments that were applauded by academics, activists, media organizations and citizens,” commented Darrell Evans of FIPA. “To date, the government has ignored these recommendations completely. On the other hand, they have made a large number of amendments and procedural changes that have made it more difficult and time consuming to obtain information.”

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

New "For Authors" Service in DOAJ

A press release over the weekend announced that the Directory of Open Access Journals, or DOAJ (www.doaj.org), has added a service to the site that allows authors to determine whether or not there is a submission fee for an OA journal in which they are interested in publishing. Basically, the "find journals" feature now has two more search filters, one for "free to publish" titles and the other for "author pays to publish" (I think something like "submission fee required to publish" would have been a preferable way to phrase the latter but...). The press release also notes that the DOAJ folks don't have the submission fee information for all the journals and would appreciate any such information for those that they do not have.

I saw the press release on the liblicense-l list. The press release can also be found in the "news" section of the DOAJ site at http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempl&templ=061014.

On a related note, the main page of the DOAJ site notes that there are now 2414 journals in the directory. Not too shabby, I think.

Creating New Publishing Channels Is Our Future

I've been eerily silent recently on OA Librarian because I'm teaching, taking two courses and holding down a full-time job. (Oh, yeah, and blogging AND wiki'ing. Am I crazy?) But I've been thinking of starting a new blog as a step beyond informing other librarians about open access. Don't know what I'd call it but I'd like it to be a completely new idea about librarians' direct involvement in publishing.

Remember the CMAJ scandal early in 2006? I've been working with a new editorial team on a new journal in Canadian medicine, called OpenMedicine. We're working with web designers on a new look, a new branding.

Librarians must move beyond informing each other and their users about open access (OA), I believe, to creating new forms of information dissemination, working closely with scholars and researchers and partnering on wikis, blikis and blogs. Oh, yes, and if you have time - why not start your own Open Access Journal?

I'll keep you posted on our launch date, early 2007.

Dean

DRAFT Policy on Access to CIHR-Funded Research Outputs

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has released its Draft Policy on Access to CIHR-Funded Research Outputs. Comments are requested by November 24, 2006.

This is a strong policy - kudos to CIHR! Highlights include a strong open access mandate for peer-reviewed journal articles, with no more than a 6-month publisher-imposed delay, a recommendation that researchers consider retroactively archiving their most important articles, an indication that a researcher's track record of providing access to research outputs will be considered in the future when considering requests for funding, and a requirement to deposit research data into the appropriate public database immediately on publication.

When considering your own response, it may be helpful to consult Peter Suber's Ten Lessons from the Funding Agencies Open Access Policies, in the August 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Update October 12 -


Peter Suber's Comment, from Open Access News (please see OA News for the links):

Comment. Kudos to the CIHR for this exemplary policy.

1. The policy is an unambiguous mandate. It applies to all research funded in whole or in part by CIHR. It applies to both peer-reviewed journal articles and data files. (Although it requires some kinds of data-sharing and merely encourages others, it may be the strongest data-sharing policy by any funder to date.) It makes reasonable exceptions for royalty-producing publications like monographs. It lets grantees choose between OA journals and OA repositories, and in the latter case, between institutional and disciplinary repositories. The only condition on eligible repositories is that they be OAI-compliant. The policy uses the dual deposit/release strategy (requiring immediate deposit and permitting delayed OA release, in this case limiting embargoes to six months). And it takes a grantee's past compliance into account when evaluating new funding proposals. With one exception the policy embodies all the most important lessons from the funding agency open access policies. The exception is that CIHR doesn't offer to pay article processing fees for grantees who choose to publish in fee-based OA journals.

2. The CIHR has called for comments on its new draft. Responses are due by November 24, 2006.

3. For background, the CIHR announced that it was considering an OA policy and called for public comments back in April 2006. In June it released an update on where it stood in the process and in August (in a document dated June) it released a summary of the public comments.

4. If the CIHR draft counts as a policy, and the new OA policy in Austria counts as a mandate (it deliberately positions itself between a request and a requirement), then the CIHR policy is the seventh OA mandate to be adopted this month. There are the four new mandates from the RCUK, the expansion of the existing mandate at the Wellcome Trust, the Austrian policy, and now the CIHR. This is unprecedented momentum.

Stevan Harnad on Open Access Archivangelism reports that the CIHR proposal is 99% optimal - please see Stevan's blogpost for substantive details.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Librarian Publishing Preferences and Open-Access Electronic Journals

Article of interest by Elaine Peterson, Montana State University. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship v.7 no.2 (Summer 2006). Librarian Publishing Preferences and Open-Access Electronic Journals.

Abstract:
Librarians have often led the way in championing Open-Access (OA) journals on the Internet as an alternative to established journal titles that are subscription based. In the discipline of Library and Information Science, all types of journals continue to be published—paper and electronic, subscription-based and free. Using a survey, this article explores how some librarians view OA titles. The article collects suggestions for editors of OA journals. The article also asks questions about the relationship of OA journals to the promotion and tenure process for academic librarians.

Thanks to CARL (Canadian Assocation of Research Libraries).

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The Community Health Online Digital Archive Research Resource

The Community Health Online Digital Archive Research Resource (CHODARR) project will establish a permanent, publicly accessible, no-fee digital archive of research materials related to health and social welfare, with special interest in HIV, women’s health, aboriginal health, and community mental health. The unique features of CHODARR will be its genuine accessibility (via the internet), its content (focused on “grey literature”), and its diversity of stakeholders.

If you're in Vancouver October 18th, please join the BCLA Information Policy Committee for a Salon by Dr. Cindy Patton on CHODARR, featuring the project and related policy issues. If you cannot attend, but have questions for Dr. Patton, please let us know.

For details and to register for the Salon, please contact IPC Co-Chair Carla Graebner. Contact information is available on the BCLA web site - look up Committees, then IPC.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

October so far - a mandate a day!

So far, 6 OA mandates have come into effect this month - 4 RCUK mandates, an expansion of the Wellcome Trust mandate, and a new mandate by Austria's Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung [Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Reseach]. It's only October 8th, so this is more than a mandate per business day so far - wow!!! Thanks to Peter Suber (and Matt Cockerill) - for details and links, see: Open Access News.

Other important developments are in the works, including the European Commission's Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Market in Europe - a summary of their recent consultation process was just released. Details on Open Access News.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Fatima Darries: award-winning South African OA Librarian

Fatima Darries, South African OA Librarian activist and co-E-LIS Editor, South Africa, has been formally recognized as a role model to the rest of the Library and Information Community. Congratulations, Fatima!

Here is the text of the announcement:

On behalf of the National Executive of LIASA and Sabinet Online, we are very pleased and proud to announce that the LIASA/Sabinet Librarian of the Year for 2006 is Fatima Darries.

Fatima was nominated by the Western Cape Branch. She receives an award of R25 000 to be used for any educational purpose (further studies, visits to relevant institutions locally or internationally, attending relevant conferences). The Librarian of the Year is seen to be a role model to the rest of the Library and Information community and a person whose contributions make a lasting impact on the sector.

The motivation from the Western Cape branch reads (in part): "In addition to fulfilling all the criteria for this prestigious award, Ms Darries has been very actively involved in LIASA ... She demonstrates excellence in promoting library and
information services and the Association through her work at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and LIASA activities. Her leadership is demonstrated by the various initiatives such as the establishment of the WCHELIG (Western Cape
Higher Education Libraries Interest Group) and the successful Colloquiums hosted by this interest group. An exceptional achievement was her selection to attend the HERS-SA Academy as one of four Cape Technikon women. In 2005, Fatima was one of
six South African women to attend the Bryn Mawr Summer Institute and also presented a paper there, promoting librarians and making valuable contacts. She is also an
accredited EDT practitioner and her involvement with training is evidence of her commitment to the development of LIS professionals."

Thanks to Jennifer A. De Beer, co-Editor, E-LIS South Africa

October SPARC Open Access Newsletter

The SPARC Open Access Newsletter, released last week, features an in-depth article by Peter Suber on Open Access and Quality.

Here is a thought for a project if someone has time - perhaps a student could do this as an assignment? There are a number of in-depth articles on different topics in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter - I'd love to see a topic index.

Update October 10: Peter Suber maintains a List of Peter Suber's writings on open access, in reverse chronological order. Major newsletter features are included. For more links to Peter's works on topics other than open access (e.g. philosophy, law), see Peter Suber's home page.

Come to think of it, are indexing services beginning to look at, and include, these kinds of works? That might be a topic for a different paper...

Comment from Walt Crawford:

To the best of my knowledge, indexing sources--at least those within the library field--are not doing much with what I think of as the "formal gray literature" such as SPARC Open Access Newsletter and Cites & Insights. I've written about this in Cites & Insights ( http://citesandinsights.info), most recently in the September 2006 issue, mourning the failure of a group attempt to get more visibility for the formal gray literature.

What's formal gray literature? In this case, electronic publications with ISSNs, established missions, reasonably regular publication, and a track record--but without a price and without being refereed journals. In the view of one indexing-service head, such publications are inherently more ephemeral than publications that cost money or than publications with peer review--and that's even true for a five-year-old "gray" publication as compared to a refereed journal that dies after two issues.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Staffing an Institutional Repository

Need to make a case for staff for that institutional repository?

Dorothea Salo, self-styled repository rat and author of Caveat Lector, has some great tips based on her experience, in Staffing an Institutional Repository.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?

The postprint of Charles Bailey's Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia? is now available. While the focus is not open access, Charles clearly and succinctly explains some of the key policy topics related to open access.

Abstract:

Three critical issues—-dramatic expansion of the scope, duration, and punitive nature of copyright laws; the ability of Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems to lock-down digital content in an unprecedented fashion; and the erosion of Net neutrality, which ensures that all Internet traffic is treated equally—-are examined in detail and their potential impact on libraries is assessed. How legislatures, the courts, and the commercial marketplace treat these issues will strongly influence the future of digital information for good or ill.

Forwarded from SCHOLCOMM.

Ajit Pyati, open source and open access in libraries

We librarians are a collaborative lot - and OA Librarians are no exception. Ajit Pyati is a PhD student who would love to see open access become a reality because to him, it means a more equitable world, one more in line with the values of our profession. Ajit, an editor of the pioneering InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies in its formative years, emphasizes that he is just a part of the team. InterActions, an open access journal, was one of the first e-journals produced by the California Digital Library. Ajit is, in a way, a second-generation OA advocate, one who became involved with OA when he joined the local journal team.

Currently, Ajit is working on a PhD, studying technology development in libraries, specifically open source, and to some extent open access. The direction of Ajit's studies was influenced by a visit to Vancouver last summer, where he met John Willinsky and learned about the Public Knowledge Project, which, among other things, developed the Open Journal Systems software, a free open source publishing software in use by open access publishers around the world. Simon Fraser University Library [where I work] is a partner in OJS, and provides support and some development for the OJS software, as well as a suite of open source products called reSearcher [GODOT link resolver, CUFTS knowledgebase, CUFTS journal database (A to Z list), dbwiz (federated search tool), and more. [Disclosure: I work with the reSearcher team].

This brief introduction to Ajit's work already illustrates two key areas of support that libraries are providing for open access. The California Digital Library provides free access to and support for the bepress publishing software for California faculty, faciliating the development of open access journals by California faculty (and graduate students, in the case of InterActions). UCLA has supported the development of InterActions by providing funding for the graduate students who work on the journal. Perhaps this is a model with broader application? Funding is so important for graduate students - and isn't participating in publishing a great learning experience? Simon Fraser University Library actively contributes to the development and support of OJS, and provides hosting and support services on a cost-recovery basis.

It was my pleasure recently to meet Ajit when he came to Vancouver to interview people for his research. Ajit sees open source as an option that gives libraries more control over what we do; with open source, we do not follow developments, we lead them.

Library schools take note: this passioniate, very intelligent PhD candidate, with a temperament that strikes me as ideal for teaching, is anticipating graduation in June 2007. One example of Ajit's work, an article called WSIS: Whose Vision of an Information Society? can be found in First Monday.
Best of luck with that PhD, Ajit - I can't wait to see the results of your thesis!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

BASE, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, is a metasearch tool for the Bielefeld Digital Library. Substantial open access resources are included, both open access journals and open access archives. Searches can be limited to the free content, so this tool can be useful for everyone, not just the Bielefeld Digital Library users.

Thanks to Ilkay Holt, E-LIS Editor, Turkey.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

AcademicBlogs: The Academic Blog Portal

AcademicBlogs: The Academic Blog Portal is looking like a great start to a comprehensive pathfinder on this topic. There is a section for academic librarian bloggers - please add your own!

Thanks to Steve Bell, via Peter Suber on Open Access News.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

electrified.ca

Check out electrified.ca and get excited about e-learning! electrified.ca is a new free ezine by Laurie the Librarian! The first issue features my articles About E-LIS and a tips sheet for Depositing in E-LIS. electrified.ca looks terrific - congrats to Laurie Prange of Yukon College.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Still More Hybrid Journal Programs: T & F and RSC

In the last several days, both Taylor & Francis (last week) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (yesterday) have announced hybrid OA journal programs. T & F's OA option is called iOpenAccess. RSC's doesn't seem to have a snazzy name (I may have missed something). Both are the usual sort of thing; authors or other submitters can pay a fee in order for their accepted articles to be made freely available. I won't go into too many details here; Peter Suber does his usual great job and provides much information and commentary on both options on his blog (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html). There are also press releases for both:

Taylor & Francis: http://www.informa.com/corporate/investors/press_releases/2006/2006-09-28_20017377567.htm;jsessionid=783FB2EE031A3EF1293484D00ED96C8E

Royal Society of Chemisty: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/September/02100602.asp

There's more information on the RSC option at https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3366.html and at http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/OpenScience/FAQ.asp

I will mention a few things, though. First, I noticed that both programs are not cheap; $3100 US for T & F and 1000-2500 UKP for RSC. These may be the most expensive submission fees for hybrid OA journals; will this be a deterent for some authors? Second, the T & F OA option will only apply to 175 of their STM journals. The T & F journal suite includes many social sciences and humanities titles; I wonder if OA figures into the planning for these journals? Finally, I was pleased to see that T & F will be looking at subscription costs for those journals that are included in the iOpenAccess program:

We undertake to review the subscription prices of each journal with respect to the uptake of the iOpenAccess initiative, and the relevant information will be published on each journal’s home page at www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

RSC has indicated that they may do the same.

An important final question: Which big publishers have not established a hybrid OA journal program? There may be a few but nothing comes to mind. I'll have to think about it.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Update

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an innovative open access project in more than one sense. This is a peer-reviewed philosophy encyclopedia aiming for top quality through a prestigious editorial board and invitation to write articles by the experts in a variety of areas. SEP was developed by the philosophers themselves, and is experimenting with an open access funding method with tremendous potential if successful: fundraising to create an endowment fund for ongoing access through covering SEP's modest operating costs. This fundraising effort is a collaboration between libraries, philosophy departments, U.S. funding agencies, and Stanford University. Funds contributed by libraries are matched by other donors.

If every library that can afford a specialized online encyclopedia like this were to commit about what such a resource would cost for three years of subscription, there would be more than enough for the endowment for SEP. This is what is so exciting about the model, in my opinion - just a little bit of rethinking about those purchase dollars can mean permanent change for optimum access for all.

If your library has already committed a little, have another look and see how many others are participating, and whether you could commit a little more. If your library isn't participating yet, give this some thought. For more details, see the SEP website - oh, and check out the new interface while you're there, it looks great!

Dramatic Growth of Open Access September 06 update

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues! I just published my September 2006 Dramatic Growth update on Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. Here is the abstract:

The number of open access journals included in DOAJ continues to increase at a rate of about 1.5 per calendar day, while the increase in material in open access archives in showing a dramatic increase in the rate of growth, for all archives followed, as well as absolute growth. There have been some significant events in the past quarter which the author predicts will accelerate the rate of growth of OA, including funding agencies' open access policies, hybrid open access journal programs, new OA presses and significant work on models for small publishers to transition to open access.

Elsevier and Wellcome Trust Come to Agreement

The trail-blazing Wellcome Trust, one of the largest research funders in the United Kingdom, requires open access to the results of research that it funds.

On September 29, 2006 Elsevier and Wellcome announced an agreement that will allow Elsevier-published researchers to comply with the Wellcome mandate. This is wonderful news for OA advocates. As Peter Suber notes, this could be a "win-win-win."

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Sometimes the most open access is print

Sometimes it makes sense to drop print production as a necessary efficiency for online open access - but not for things like topographic maps, which people need access to in places where there is no interest access, and the specialized equipment for printing maps well is not common. Canadians, please note that our government is currently in the process of dropping production of print maps - for information and advocacy action suggestions, please see: http://mapsforcanadians.ca/.

Thanks to Carla Graebner.

OA Librarians and Societies: Two Perspectives

T. Scott Plutchak thinks we OA advocates are too hard on societies; you can read his blogpot It Gets Lonely Out Here. My sympathies to T. Scott, who reports to one of the very few provosts who signed the letter opposing FRPAA. This has to be a lonely situation for an OA advocate.

Dorothea Salo on Caveat Lector presents another point of view in her blogpost Unyielding opposition?. As Dorothea points out, it would be a lot easier to be supportive of scholarly societies if they did not themselves exhibit unyielding opposition to open access, FRPAA, NIH, PubChem, etc.

Personally, I am completely against this anti-OA activities on the part of some scholarly societies, but totally for the concept of scholarly societies. I think libraries should work cooperatively with societies to provide support - financial and technical, not just moral - to enable scholarly societies to transition to open access.

Another of Dorothea's points: "I may be alone in this, but I’m also irked by one specific phrase I see in scholarly publishers’ contributions to the open-access debate: “subscription-funded activities.” I’ll make my stance as clear as I know how: libraries are not responsible for supporting society activities unrelated to the scholarly literature".

You're not alone, Dorothea. When we have a scholarly communications system that has been in crisis for decades, it is irreponsible to charge more than necessary to fund other activities.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for pointing out these two blogposts.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Google support

Here's what comes up when you google the phrase "support open access."

Digital University / Library Presses

Charles Bailey is writing a very helpful series for libraries and others serious about creating change. Digital University / Library Presses # 11 is now available on Digital Koans.

Publishing Cooperatives: An Alternative for Non-Profit Publishers

Many professional societies feel caught in a bind about open access publishing. They support the goal of freely available research, but depend on revenues from traditional subscriptions to sustain themselves.

Raym Crow, a senior consultant for SPARC, has just published an important paper about how to resolve this dilemma. He proposes that societies form publishing cooperatives rather than attempting to move completely to an open access model by themselves.

Crow builds on the work of others who have wrestled with this challenge, such as John Willinsky. He offers new hope that societies can meet their "twin imperatives of financial sustainability and mission fulfillment." That mission is to share their knowledge with the world.

Article: OA for the medical librarian

If we may blow our own horn, an article written by Heather Morrison and me has recently been published in the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (JCHLA)
(http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla.html). Entitled "Open access for the medical librarian", the article is based on a presentation we gave at the Canadian Health Libraries Association Conference in Vancouver, BC on May 14, 2006. JCHLA has recently become an OA journal (kudos to the CHLA!) so the article can be easily accessed at http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla27/c06-025.pdf. It can also be found at:

E-LIS: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00007201/
Simon Fraser University institutional repository: http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/2508
University of Calgary institutional repository: https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/43468

Take your pick!

Two OA projects that could use your help!

Tenn-Share is creating a list of Open Access Databases; please add your suggestions! Thanks to Peter Suber of Open Access News for the tip.

The Canadian Library Association's Information Commons Interest Group is building a list of Open Access Advocates Worldwide, wiki-style. Should you, or someone you know, be added to the list? If so, please register (it's fast and easy), and add names and links to contact information. Thanks to the CLA Info Commons group [disclosure: I'm a member], and to Peter Suber for the idea of expanding the Canadian list to a worldwide list.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Free open source open access federated searching

An open version of the open source federated search tool dbwiz is available, for searching open access resources, thanks to Simon Fraser University Library. dbwiz is part of the open source reSearcher software suite. Comments?

[Disclosure: I work for SFU Library, and coordinate participation in reSearcher for BC academic libraries. This is a purely personal viewpoint, not endorsed by SFU library or BC ELN].

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Libraries and open access

Are we librarians doing our bit to support open access?

Dorothea Salo has an interesting perspective piece on libraries, librarians and open access on Caveat Lector. Dorothea talks about her work on a review of Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

American Chemical Society: Hybrid too

Yet another commercial publisher has established a hybrid journal option for its articles. This time, it's the American Chemical Society (ACS). Beginning in October, authors in ACS journals will be able to provide free online access to their articles for a fee; this charge will range from $1,000 to $3,000 US, "depending on whether the author is an ACS member or is affiliated with an institution that subscribes to ACS journals". Authors will also be able to place their articles on their personal websites and in institutional repositories.

No word on whether or not there will be any changes to subscription costs (as there will be with the Cambridge OA project).

There is a news release about the ACS OA option at http://tinyurl.co.uk/4mug. Peter Suber, as always, has some interesting things to say about this development; see http://tinyurl.co.uk/8p86

Perhaps, soon, we'll be asking ourselves, "which commercial publishers do not have a hybrid journals program"?

Two OA Milestones in One

This month marks the beginning of the second hundred, # 101, of the SPARC Open Access News by Peter Suber! Many thanks for keeping us all informed, Peter. This issue focuses on the remarkable momentum in hybrid open access journals, with four publishers launching new programs in the last month alone!

Open-models for exchange of library research

Web 2.0 has provided librarians with collaborative technologies to improve the exchange and uptake of our own research.

To that end, we have started a wiki for LIBR534. I envision it as a knowledge-base for library school students, librarians and faculty interested in health information sources and services.

Here is UBC HealthLib-Wiki - http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca

I have loaded the shell only - think of it as a strong hull. I am working out details of the editing policy, and my formation of the Gentlemen's Wiki Administrative Club, of which I will be the cruise director. Think 21st Century on the SS Normandie.

We will customize the wiki logo, top left - soon. If you have an idea for a cool logo, let me know. Jeremiah came up with a caduceus logo, with headphones - love that. In the meantime, browse around - introduction, editing policies, etc are falling into place. - Dean

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Preliminary Accouncement

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Preliminary Announcement

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the first international PKP conference will be held from July 11–13, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The conference will promote and celebrate the quality use of the PKP open source software suite – Open Journal Systems (OJS); Open Conference Systems (OCS); and the Open Archives Harvester.

Further details are available on the PKP Web Site. Ou, en français à culture.libre.ca (Merci, Olivier!)

OA Librarian types note: there will be either a preconference or conference stream relating to library roles, thanks to the OA Librarian types at SFU Library, one of the partners in PKP: Lynn Copeland, G.W. Brian Owen, and Mark Jordan, among others.

Vancouver is a beautiful city, located in the aptly named province, Beautiful British Columbia (in my opinion), and home to several of the OA Librarian blog team (Lesley Perkins, Dean Giustini, and Heather Morrison).

Open Access to Policy Poster Sessions

** as posted to Canadian listservs **

CLA's Information Policy Working Group, part of the CLA Standing Committee on Intellectual Property and Public Access, sponsored a Student Poster Session at CLA 2006, with exciting and informative results!

The student poster sessions are now available in E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies, along with open access sessions at CLA 2006, at:
http://tinyurl.co.uk/z22r

Congratulations and thanks to poster developers and presenters Martin Dowding, Frederic Murray, Jeremiah Saunders, Robin Featherstone, David Ley, Heather McKend, Iva Seto, and Catherine Sinnott. For those involved in LIS Education - whether as teachers or students - it's not too soon to start thinking about the 2007 posters!

cheers,

Heather Morrison
Member, CLA Information Policy Working Group

http://www.cla.ca/about/committees/informationpolicy.htm
Member, CLA Information Commons Interest Group
http://www.infocommons.ca/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Chief E-LIS Editor, Canada http://eprints.rclis.org/

Heather's comment: many thanks to all the students for sharing their work as open access, and to E-LIS for providing a venue to distribute information on these important policy topics (privacy, freedom of information, media and trade policy, info policy and public health, and intellectual property and genetically modified foods.

OhioLINK Recommends Steps to Ensure That Ohio Remains Available to Ohio Scholars

OhioLINK Recommends Steps to Ensure That Ohio Research Remains Available to Ohio Scholars

Columbus, Ohio (August 30, 2006) – Ohio faculty, scholars and researchers publish thousands of scholarly articles each year, in the world's leading scholarly journals. Yet there is no guarantee that Ohio will have access to research produced by its own scholars as the costs and quantity of scholarly journals keep rising beyond the reach of Ohio higher education. OhioLINK, a consortium of 85 academic libraries and the State Library of Ohio, has released recommendations that will help authors and their institutions retain the right to disseminate their works electronically, thereby assuring access to Ohio research for the Ohio scholarly community and beyond. The recommendation document, including a sample author publication agreement, is available for downloading at www.ohiolink.edu/journalcrisis .

OhioLINK also recommends placing research articles and related material in freely accessible digital repositories, such as its own Digital Resource Commons. This will help ensure that research published by Ohio scholars will be openly accessible for research and scholarship.

“The OhioLINK library community believes that research and works produced by Ohio scholars should remain accessible to scholars in Ohio and beyond, regardless of whether that scholar’s institution can afford to buy the published research. These recommendations move Ohio another step closer to turning that belief into a reality,” Tom Sanville, OhioLINK’s executive director, said.

Some of OhioLINK’s recommendations to Ohio institutions, faculty and other researchers include:
1. Publish in journals that have responsible rights policies whenever possible.
2. Retain the non-exclusive right to make works openly accessible and usable for the author’s own non-commercial educational and research purposes.
3. Deposit works in a campus repository or the Ohio Digital Resource Commons so that those works are available to scholars in Ohio and beyond.

In making these recommendations, OhioLINK joins many organizations around the nation and the world who are seeking to protect authors’ rights to freely disseminate their own works, including the University of California, The Boston Library Consortium and the European Commission. While many journal publishers have changed their policies to embrace an author’s right to archive and share their own works for educational and research purposes, it remains the author’s responsibility to ensure they do not sign away their rights in publisher agreements.

Kudos to OhioLINK!

Peter Suber presents an excellent summary of the key points relating to open access, and useful comments on Open Access News.

University of California Libraries supports open access and other transformative publishing models

Dear Colleagues,

I’m pleased to inform readers of this list that an updated version of the University of California Libraries Principles for Acquiring and Licensing Information in Digital Formats is now available. Building upon principles originally established by the UC Libraries in 1996, the July 2006 revision jointly developed by UC collection development and scholarly communication officers includes new principles that highlight the University’s interest in fostering a more open and sustainable scholarly communication environment. Specific principles set forth in this version include support for open access and other transformative publishing models, the right of academic authors to retain copyright to their works, and the use of multiple indicators of value as a basis on which to evaluate pricing. Other principles articulated here for the first time include support for the digitization of out-of-copyright material as an alternative to licensing where appropriate and an affirmation of the important role of third-party trusted archival repositories in the long-term preservation of digital information.

The revised principles can be found at http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/cdc/principlesforacquiring.html

Best wishes,

Ivy Anderson
Director of Collections
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President

Kudos, Ivy & the University of California Libraries!

Peter Suber has a very useful excerpt explaining the open access-related portions of this initiative on Open Access News.

OUP reports on Oxford Open results (so far)

A press release today from Oxford University Press reports on the first year (since July 2005) of the OUP hybrid journal program, Oxford Open. Some highlights:

• Almost 400 OA papers have been published, in 36 of the 49 journals that are participating in Oxford Open.
• 10% of the authors publishing in OUP life sciences journals have taken the OA route, with 5% of the medicine and life sciences authors and 3% of the humanities and social sciences authors doing so.
• The journal with the highest number of OA papers is Bioinformatics, which published over 50 OA papers.

As someone who pays a lot of attention to serial prices, I thought it was interesting to note that the 2007 online subscription costs for three journals, Bioinformatics, Carcinogenesis and Human Molecular Genetics, will be adjusted to reflect the number of freely available articles these publications contained in 2005-2006. This is good to see (presumably, the prices will be adjusted downward) but I wonder what the threshold is for setting a cost adjustment into motion? How many OA papers does it take to do this?

OUP is going to carry on with the Oxford Open program. The 49 journals that are presently involved will continue and it is expected that other Oxford titles will join.

The Movement for Open Access Law

In an important recent paper, "The Movement for Open Access Law", Michael W. Carroll argues that the time is right for open access to legal scholarship. The paper offers a good summation of the overall argument for open access, as well as specific insights about the applicability of OA to legal writings. As a bonus, it is highly readable and engaging.

Cornell University's Open Access Press Within D-Space

Cornell University has an operational open access press within their D-Space Community. More information can be found in Charles Bailey's blogpost, Digital University / Library Presses, Part 5: Internet-First University Press. If you're interested in how libraries can directly support change in scholarly communications through new publishing opportunities, read the whole series! Thanks, Charles.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Research: acquisition of open access research articles

Arthur Sale, Professor of Computing Research at the University of Tasmania (Australia), has researched how authors upload their papers in universities with mandatory deposit policies.

Amongst the significant findings is that by six months after publication date, more than 80% of authors have already deposited. Also it seems to take 2-3 years for a university mandatory policy to become fully institutionalized, though the process is almost instant with departmental mandates. The data is drawn from three sources: [1] University of Tasmania, [2] Queensland University of Technology in Australia, and [3] the University of Southampton in the UK.

The preprint of this paper is available in the UTas ePrints repository:
The acquisition of open access research articles (2006)

(originally found on SERIALST-L)

Nearly 80% of ARL Libraries either have or are planning IRs!

According to the latest SPEC kit, Institutional Repositories, nearly 80% of ARL Libraries either have, or are in the process of planning, an institutional repository. The average expenditure is high, but ironically, the majority of implementers report managing without a dedicated budget.

To me, this reflects a common irony in the wired world; that is, one can spend a great deal on a project, while your neighbour sets up on a shoestring. Sometimes the big spender ends up with a better product - but not always!

The front page and executive summary of this, and other SPEC kits from Issue 200, is now freely available, in another example of an OA-hybrid. To me, this represents real progress towards OA in a format (monograph) which is not truly part of the OA target. The SPEC Survey program is highly regarded amongst academic libraries, encompassing timely, key management topics in academic libraries, with the high response rate of the Institutional Repository survey (71%) being typical.

Many thanks to Charles Bailey on Digital Koans.

Thanks as always to Peter Suber, and kudos to ARL!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

When you are at home in a library, you can learn anything

The title of this post is from an open access Library Reports assignment - written by none other than open access advocate Peter Suber! This is an assignment that I think many librarians will enjoy, which talks about using libraries throughout the semester, with aims like getting comfortable with the library.

For some other interesting ideas of Peter's, listen to the podcast interview of Peter Suber with John Udell - the basics of open access are covered by those who need them, but also topics like blogging and open access. Oh, and libraries and librarians are mentioned several times, too. Well worth listening to, even for those with some expertise on OA. Details and the links can be found on Open Access News.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Open Access Archives, Metadata, and Authority Control

It should come as no surprise that the quality of searching in those open access archives will be greatly enhanced through attention to key metadata, such as standardized entry of author names - what we librarians have done for years, in the guise of authority control.

This has come up recently on the American Scientist Open Access Forum under the topic about true names...searching and measuring (look after the end of the alphabet for this topic, as it begins with a non-capitalized letter). Thanks to Librarian and Professor Sheila Corrall at the University of Sheffield for making the connection with authority control.

Those interested in continuing this discussion are invited to do so, at an operationally-oriented open archives list, such as OAI-General - or, perhaps a library-oriented list?

In my opinion, the key values and skills of librarianship - preserving information, making it accessible, organizing it and helping users to find what they need, whether immediately (reference) or at any time (informaiton literacy) - will be every bit as necessary in the open access environment, if not moreso, than in the subscriptions / purchasing world.

OA Blogdiggity

Just for fun, or to get serious about it, check out Blogdigger Groups to combine the contents of two or more blogs on a topic (say, for example, open access). Here are the results for the group on "open access and open archive."

SHERPA Juliet, and the UK Natural Environment Research Council OA Mandate

The UK Natural Enviroment Research Council is the latest funding agency to announce an OA Mandate, NERC Guidance on Access to Research Outputs.

Details can be found on the new SHERPA Juliet site, which lists and summarizes research funders' open access policies.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, who comments that, this is wonderful news, and with one exception, this policy is all that one could ask.

From my point of view, this is wonderful news, period! The one exception that Peter refers to is reference to publishers' embargo periods. My reading of the policy is that it reflects a willingness to accept current publisher practices, but reserves the right to shift to a stronger policy in the event of publisher backsliding.

Many thanks to Bill Hubbard and the SHERPA crew for Juliet!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The hybrid OA announcements continue: APS FREE TO READ

Today's hybrid OA announcement is from the American Physical Society (APS). They are expanding their OA article program to "any article or group of articles published in the Journals of the American Physical Society back to 1893". The name of this project is FREE TO READ.

The submission fees in the FREE TO READ program will vary, ranging from $975 US in the Physical review journals (A-E) to $1300 US for Physical review letters. The cost for Reviews of modern physics will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

An interesting paragraph appears in the announcement:

"The FREE TO READ initiative represents a path by which APS could gradually transition to full Open Access. If the community (especially institutions and funding agencies) shows continued support for this initiative, a sustainable level may be reached in which the APS can recover its costs, offset its risks, and eliminate subscriptions for some or all of its journals."

Sounds like the folks at APS are thinking ahead a bit. Not a bad thing.

Unlike many of the other recent hybrid OA announcements, there is a webpage to reference. There's a FREE TO READ FAQ at http://publish.aps.org/FREETOREAD_FAQ.html.

Book review: "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access To Research and Scholarship"

In the most recent issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Marian Burright (Collection Management Librarian for Life Sciences, University of Maryland) reviews the book "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access To Research and Scholarship" written by John Willinsky.

In his book, John Willinsky explains the advent of open access and situates OA within the economics of scholarship by covering online journal publishing, copyright law issues, alternative publishing venues as well as the ten "flavors" of open access and their economic models.

As Marian Burright highly recommends this read to every academic librarian, follow this link for the complete book review: http://www.istl.org/06-summer/review2.html

The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. John Willinsky. MIT Press Cambridge: MA, 2006. List Price: $34.95.
ISBN: 0-262-23242-1

Still another hybrid OA journal option: BMJ Unlocked

I try to be a good serials librarian and blog journal-related OA announcements, Recently, I've paid particular attention to announcements about hybrid journal programs but I missed this one. I'll mention it in brief here.

On August 3, BMJ Journals announced that they now have an option by which authors with papers accepted for publication by a BMJ journal can pay to make their papers open access. This program is called Unlocked. Unlocked employs a two-tier pricing system, charging either £1,200/$2,220 US/€1,775 or £1,700/$3,145 US/€2,515, depending on the journal.

Unlike some of the other recently announced hybrid programs (e.g. Elsevier, Wiley, Cambridge), it looks like the Unlocked option applies to all of the titles in the BMJ suite of journals; no list of participating titles was given in the announcement.

And yes, the BMJ annoucement does use the words "open" and "access".

Another hybrid OA journal program: Cambridge Open Option

On the heels of the Wiley announcement about their New Funded Access Service (see my August 8 post) and a similar announcement from BMJ (see the separate post that follows about this), Cambridge UniversityPress has announced that they too are establishing a hybrid OA option. As with the offerings from other publishers, authors who have had articles accepted for publication in certain Cambridge journals can opt to make their articles openly accessible for a charge of $2700 US or 1500 pounds. The journals included in this program are:

Biofilms
Cardiology in the young
Development and psychopathology
Epidemiology and infection
Experimental agriculture
Expert reviews in molecular medicine
Genetical research
Geological magazine
Journal of agricultural science
Journal of plasma physics
Journal of tropical ecology
Laser and particle beams
Psychological medicine
Visual neuroscience
Zygote

A couple of interesting notes about the Cambridge Open Option:

1) Unlike the announcements from Elsevier and Wiley about their hybrid OA options, the Cambridge announcement actually uses the term "open access" a few times.

2) Unless I've missed something, this is the first announcement of this nature that has included mention of adjusting the subscription costs for hybrid OA journals. This is nice to see:

"It is anticipated that the subscription prices of the participating journals will be adjusted in the future to take into account the impact of the Open Access publishing model. The level of change will depend on the uptake of the Cambridge Open Option by authors. Any subscription price
changes will occur on a title by title basis."

I haven't been able to find a web page for the Cambridge Open Option but the press release is making the rounds on lists (I saw it on the American Scientist Open Access Forum) plus Peter Suber has blogged the news as well.

Aug. 15 deadline alert for ACRL / ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication

Apply now for the second ACRL/ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication December 6-8, 2006, at Duke University, Durham, NC. The deadline for application is August 15, 2006. Acceptance to the Scholarly Communication program is competitive and limited to 100 individuals.

This jointly sponsored institute offers tools and techniques to build a scholarly communication program or move an existing one to the next level. Participants will assess their campus environment before the institute and engage in 2½ intensive days of active learning. During the institute, participants will develop customized program plan components to implement at their home institutions. The Institute sponsors are seeking participation from a wide range of academic libraries from community colleges to research institutions. Larger institutions are encouraged to propose teams that reflect various institutional perspectives, such as librarians, library administrators, faculty, and campus administrators.

The Friends of the ACRL are supporting 4 scholarships to cover the $600 registration fee for the institute. Scholarships will be awarded to individuals from diverse backgrounds and those employed at smaller institutions or serving professionally underrepresented minorities.

Complete details about the program as well as the online application form and instructions can be found at www.ala.org/acrl/events (Click “ACRL/ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication”). Applicants can direct questions concerning the program or application process to Kara Malenfant at 312-280-2510; kmalenfant@ala.org.

Wiley's "New Funded Access Service"

Following on Elsevier's footsteps, John Wiley & Sons have announced a program that seems to be an author-fee OA option but, like Elsevier, doesn't use the words "open access". According to the announcement, "authors will have the option of paying a fee to ensure that their article
is available to non-subscribers upon publication via Wiley InterScience" (www.interscience.wiley.com). Interestingly, Wiley is aiming this service at authors with papers that have been accepted for publication who also have to deposit their papers in an archive. Even more interesting, "Wiley will deposit the final PDF of the article into the funder's archive". The cost of making a Wiley article accessible to "non-subscribers" is $3,000 US.

Again, as with the Elsevier "sponsored articles" service, Wiley's "New Funded Access Service" option is only applicable to a segment of journals on the Interscience platform, at least initially. These are:

American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A
American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B - Neuropsychiatric Genetics
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Anatomical Record
Arthritis and Rheumatism
Arthritis Care and Research
Bioessays
Cell Motility and the Cytoskeleton
ChemBioChem
Developmental Dynamics
Electrophoresis
European Eating Disorders Review
European Journal of Immunology
genesis
Genetic Epidemiology
Glia
Hippocampus
Human Brain Mapping
Human Mutation
International Journal of Cancer
International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research
Journal of Basic Microbiology
Journal of Cellular Biochemistry
Journal of Cellular Physiology
Journal of Comparative Neurology
Journal of Gene Medicine
Journal of Medical Virology
Journal of Neurobiology
Journal of Neuroscience Research
Journal of Pathology
Journal of Separation Science
Macromolecular Bioscience
Microscopy Research and Technique
Molecular Nutrition and Food Research
Molecular Reproduction and Development
NMR in Biomedicine
Pediatric Pulmonology
Proteins
Proteomics
Proteomics - Clinical Applications
Signal Transduction
Statistics in Medicine
Synapse
Yeast

I couldn't find a web page giving more information but the announcement is making the rounds on lists. I saw the announcement on liblicense-l on the late afternoon (MST) of August 8.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

E-LIS reaches 4,000 eprints milestone

Rome, 2006-08-01

E-LIS, the international archive for Library and Information Science (LIS) eprints at http://eprints.rclis.org, has reached the milestone of over 4000 eprints stored. The news was brought by the coordinator of E-LIS, Imma Subirats Coll. Speaking from Rome (Italy), Imma congratulated the international team of 63 national editors from 45 countries who work to fill the archive and maintains its metadata. "They continue to do a wonderful job." she said.

In Padua (Italy), E-LIS founder Antonella De Robbio added "We are very grateful to the CILEA consortium for maintaining the server for us. Their operations have been very reliable. I am sure that their pioneering work will be acknowledged by LIS history."

Speaking in Novosibirsk (Russia), Thomas Krichel, a volunteer for E-LIS, noted "There can be no doubt that E-LIS is becoming the subject-based archive of choice for the LIS community. Our operation is technically robust, and there is great deal of work going on to cater for the metadata associated with the papers. But E-LIS can not and will not rest on its laurels. It is our hope to be working more closely with the organizers of LIS conferences, such as we have done with the ASIS&T and Collnet meetings."

In Philadelphia, (USA), the national editor for the USA, Norm Medeiros, added "Before uploading the papers from last year's American Society for Information Science and Technology annual meeting, we solicited permission from each corresponding author. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Most authors gave enthusiastic approval at the prospect of having their papers on E-LIS. The ASIS&T papers represent an important and lasting collection that E-LIS is proud to host."

Speaking in Vancouver (Canada), Heather Morrison, the editor for Canada and a well-respected open access campaigner, said "This type of pro-active action sets the E-LIS team apart."

In Mumbai, (India), V. L. Kalyane, the editor for India and member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Information, Library & Society, simply said "Congradulations".

Thanks to Thomas Krichel for this press release.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Consumer Groups Support Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006

In May two United States senators, John Cornyn and Joseph Lieberman, introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) of 2006. FRPAA would require all US government agencies that fund over $100 million in research per year to support open access publication of any resulting research.

Library organizations immediately announced support for FRPAA. Today a consortium of consumer groups, coordinated by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, announced their support as well. Momentum for open access continues to grow.

Forget Faculty - Let's Sell Open Access (OA) To Librarians

Meredith Farkas over at Information Wants to Be Free has been blogging about the skills needed for 21st century librarianship. Her most recent post (July 29th) finds her "selling" information literacy, and while I like some ideas, she includes a few snoozers - don't we all.

What I like about her blog is her honest attempt at enumerating librarian skills and attitudes for the new information economy. What I don't like is her conspicuous omission of open access, or even a mention of it. In fact, the information literacy post today mentions "peer-review", but not a whit about access. Open access should not be far from the lips of every academic librarian (here's Meredith's Library success wiki and her "access" section).

Open access. Isn't it odd that some librarians miss its connection to absolutely everything we do? and the fact that it's part of the biggest communication and publishing revolution since Gutenberg?

I think OA Librarian needs to work a little harder in getting the message out. Dean

Ranganathan Classics Coming to D-List

The Ranganathan Classics are coming to D-List! - for details, please see Gary Price's post on Resource Shelf.

Michael May, dList classics editor, posted some interesting comments on Ranganathan and OA on the SPARC Open Access Forum.

Thanks to Gary Price, Michael May and others at d-List, and of course, Peter Suber, for the information.

More Journals in Elsevier's "Sponsored Articles" Program

On May 25, I posted news about Elsevier's "sponsored articles" program, which allowed authors of accepted articles to pay $3,000 US to make their article freely available to readers (on top of any other fees). At that time, it applied to six Elsevier journals:

Nuclear Physics A
Nuclear Physics B
Nuclear Physics B
Proceedings Supplements
Nuclear Instruments and Methods A
Physics Letters B
Astroparticle Physics

As of late yesterday, the list of participating journals has been increased to 40, with the addition of 34 more titles:

American Journal of Otolaryngology
Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Artificial Intelligence
Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics
Cancer Letters
Cardiovascular Pathology
Catalysis Communications
Cell Calcium
Cellular Immunology
Computer Communications
Discrete Applied Mathematics
Epilepsy & Behavior
European Journal of Radiology
Experimental Cell Research
Food and Chemical Toxicology
GenomicsInsect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
International Journal of Parasitology
Journal of Complexity
Journal of Computer and System Sciences
Journal of Molecular Biology
Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry
Journal of Symbolic Computation
Journal of Systems and Software
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Metabolism
Methods
Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology
Neurobiology of Disease
NeuroImage
NutritionPediatric
Neurology
Surface Science
Theoretical Computer Science

So, Elsevier takes a further step in the "hybrid" OA journal environment (not that they're using the words "OA" or Open Access" at all).

Open Source, Open Access - And Open Search?

Gunther Eysenbach's cogent editorial "The Open Access Advantage" over at the open-access Journal of Medical Internet Research hits several points square on the head. The one I find most appealing is that incremental benefits accrue to researchers who publish in open-access journals; the data is clear and unequivocal. Another is the simple truth that open source tools like those developed by UBC's Public Knowledge Project are better alternatives to the commercial OA publishers.

Eysenbach also articulates an important distinction between OA giants like BioMedCentral (one of the so-called commercial or "for profit" OA publishers) and the leaner, meaner OA pioneers like CMAJ and BMJ. Though, I'd be more inclined to applaud outfits like PubMedCentral than the journals or websites he mentions.

And speaking of PubMed, it truly is a pioneer in open search, something health librarians have been advocating since we "let go" of our paranoia that end-user searching was a threat to our profession. Open search merged with open access.

There is little point in making scientific research open access in the absence of coherent open search. That means, a unified search tool - not fragmentary attempts that we've seen in 2006 by Google (sorry - I'm really hammering Google these days) and others.

Some new open, forward-thinking pioneer will find the solution - but let's hope it's sooner rather than later.

OA in the U.S. / Honorary OA Librarian of the Day

New in E-LIS: Peter Suber's Open Access in the United States, in Jacobs, Neil, Eds. Open Access: Key strategic, technical and economic aspects. Chandos Publishing. Peter hints at a long and in-depth leadership history of the U.S. in open access, beginning with Arpanet in 1965, but focuses on a more thorough treatment of the current top 10 U.S. OA initiatives. Worth reading! Let's all hope someday Peter has the time to complete this history...maybe after 100% OA implementation?

If you haven't checked out Open Access News yet today, please note, today's OA News is very highly recommended for OA Librarian types, with no less than 3 librarian-related news items - at least, so far! Peter Suber is hereby recognized as Honorary OA Librarian of the Day.

The librarian items of the day are:
Library Groups Support EC report OA Recommendations

Looking for OA Library Journals

Notes on the LITA Preconference

Thanks, Peter!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Institute on Scholarly Communication Accepting Applicants

The Association of Research Libraries and Association of College and Research Libraries are currently accepting applications for the Institute on Scholarly Communication. The 2.5 day immersion program will equip participating librarians with the tools to educate other library staff members, and to engage in a dedicated outreach plan on their campuses. Participants are encouraged to apply in teams, particularly if they work for larger institutions.

The deadline to apply is August 15, and the application is here. The institute will be held December 6-8, 2006. This is the second offering of 2006, because the first session proved extremely popular. If you're in a position to create change on your campus, or want to be in this position, you should apply for the Institute on Scholarly Communication!

July 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the July 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter's Summary:

This issue takes a close look at the big step toward OA mandates at the RCUK, the big step toward an OA mandate at the NIH, and the case for mandating OA to electronic theses and dissertations. The Top Stories section takes a brief look at the Royal Society's decision to switch to hybrid OA journals, the PLoS preview of PLoS ONE and its first-ever fee increase, the results to date of Oxford's OA experiments, protests within the American Anthropological Association about the AAA decision to oppose FRPAA, the Science Commons launch of Scholar's Copyright, some new OA policies at three research institutions, and more news and comment on FRPAA.

Heather's comments:

The section on OA to theses and dissertations is thorough, and very much worth reading. While the focus of the open access movement has been on the peer-reviewed research article, from my viewpoint the opening up of access to resources such as theses is one of the more remarkable impacts of the open access movement. Until recently, theses and dissertations were among the more difficult resources to access; due to the expense and concerns about loss of unique or few paper copies, libraries have tended to discourage interlibrary loans. With open access archives, this situation is rapidly changing; the resources, such as theses and dissertations, that were once among the least accessible, are quickly becoming among the most readily accessible. This is important for librarians to know, and not just open access advocates; everyone who works on a reference desk, in library instruction, or interlibrary loans, needs to be aware of the growing OA theses and dissertations, to provide appropriate service.

The comments on the protest of the American Anthropological Association members on the society's decision to oppose FRPAA is well worth noting. According to one member of the Steering Committee, not even the Steering Committee was consulted before this position was taken. This may be the case with other associations and societies as well - members of associations might want to have a look to see what their association is saying.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access June 2006

My June 2006 Dramatic Growth of Open Access Update is now available.

Abstract:

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues in the second quarter of 2006, although at a somewhat less hectic pace than the first quarter. Since I've only started noting growth on a quarterly basis beginning last December, it is possible that this reflects seasonable variation, i.e. two months of this period fall within the summer semester in the northern hemisphere, a slower time at academia in general.

Growth continued very strong in both the gold and green roads. DOAJ, today at 2,292 journals, added 134 journal titles, an increase of about 1 and 1/2 titles per day (calendar days, not business days), about an equivalent of a 25% annual increase. More than half a million items were added to an OAIster search, for a total of more than 7.6 million items, or about the equivalent of a 24% annual increase. At the current rate of growth, an OAIster search can be anticipated to encompass more than a billion items before the end of 2007.

The most significant change was a drop in the % increase to Highwire Free Press Online, from an 18% increase in the first quarter to a less than 1% increase in this quarter. It is too soon to draw any conclusions from this change, which could reflect Highwire procedural timing.

Stevan Harnad comments that a missing element is the excellent data available from ROAR, the Registry of Open Access Repositories. An excellent point, and something I'm meaning to add.

Reearch Councils U.K. Open Access Position Announcement

Very important - and very, very good news for open access today, from the U.K.!

The Research Councils U.K. today released their Open Access Position Announcement. In brief, each Council is developing its own policy, reflecting disciplinary differences.

The Medical Research Council has announced a very strong OA mandate policy (required deposit in PubMedCentral / PMC-UK when available) - preferably immediately, but no more than 6 months after publication.

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council "will require a copy of any resulting published journal article or conference proceedings to be deposited, at the earliest opportunity, in an appropriate e-print repository". This policy refers to respecting publishers' copyright and embargo policies - which some might see as a weakness, but might actually refer to authors who have agreements with publishers predating this policy announcement, a sensitivity reflected elsewhere in the RCUK announcement.

The Economic & Social Reearch Council policy says: "For awards from grant applications submitted from 1 October 2006, it will be mandatory, at the earliest opportunity, to:

* Personally deposit, or otherwise ensure the deposit of, a copy of any resultant articles published in journals or conference proceedings, in the ESRC awards and outputs repository.
* Wherever possible, personally deposit, or otherwise ensure the deposit of, the bibliographical metadata relating to such articles, including a link to the publisher's website, at or around the time of publication, in the ESRC awards and outputs repository.

One other council is "strongly encouraging" open access, while the rest are still developing their policies.

For more comments, see:

JISC Welcomes RCUK's statement on access to research outputs

Peter Suber's notes and comments on Open Access News (and continue to watch OA News for further comments, of course).

Thanks to Stevan Harnad on the American Scientist Open Access Forum for sharing the news.

The Open Access Movement and Information for Development

Papers and summary reports from the Open Access Movement and Information for Development online discussion forum coordinated by Sue Adams of the Coady International Institute are now available online and open access.

Contents:

Heather Morrison, Canada. Open Access for Librarians in Developing Countries.

Lydia Anjiah, East Africa. Open Access: Is it a Futile Option for Developing Countries?

Olutoyin Meijiuni, Nigeria. Open Access, Adult Education and Development in Nigeria.

Batchuluun Yembu, Mongolia. Open and Distance Education in Mongolia: Possible Relevance of Open Access.

Arlene Whetter, Vietnam. Open Access and Information for Development in Vietnam.

DidiBahini Youth Forum, Nepal. The "Open Access" (OA) Movement and Information for Development.

Sabina Iseli-Otto, Canada. Open Access and Information for Development: Summary of Online Discussion Messages.

Translations into local languages are welcome.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Microsoft Creative Commons Add-Ins

A nifty tool for self-archivers! Those who use Microsoft Office now have a means of easily adding their Creative Commons licenses directly to Word, Excel, or Powerpoint!

Thanks, Microsoft, and thanks to Chris Burns from Kwantlen University College for the tip.

Dean Giustini joins Biomedical Digital Libraries Advisory Board!

OA Librarian blogger Dean Giustini has joined the Biomedical Digital Libraries Advisory Board!

Congratulations, Dean, and thanks!

In other news, Biomedical Digital Libraries is also moving to an open peer review process, as Marcus Banks explains in a recent editorial on The Future of Biomedical Digital Libraries.

Open Access Presentation at the Canadian Library Association

Newly self-archived in E-LIS!

Morrison, Heather and Waller, Andrew and Vézina, Kumiko (2006) Open Access: Policy, Academic, and University Perspectives. Delivered at Canadian Library Association Conference 2006, Ottawa, Ontario (Canada).


It was my very great pleasure to be a part of this panel of passionate librarian open access advocates at the Canadian Library Association last week!

I presented an update on open access policy developments and talked about why it is funding agencies are so fond of open access; Andrew Waller talked about university libraries' questions and thoughts about the economics of switching to open access; and Kumiko Vézina presented some data from her recently-completed research with faculty members at 6 major Québec Universities. A couple of highlights: Kumiko's findings on the % of faculty who are willing to self-archive are almost the same as those reported by Swan and Brown. It came as a bit of a surprise that 27% of faculty reported that they have already published in an open access journal - more than any of us had thought, but less than any of us would like to see, of course!

The very best part came at the end of the session - the questions, both at the presentation and afterwards - about how to find open access resources, where to publish open access, how to become an open access advocate.

Open Access presenters, here is a tip: be sure to keep up with Peter Suber's Open Access News, right up to presentation time! There were no less than 3 items that morning that we needed to fit in....

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Self-archiving for librarians: the options are multiplying!

Abstract

Not very long ago at all, librarians had few or no options for self-archiving. This is changing dramatically. In the near future, for example, a university librarian in British Columbia may have six or more open access respositories to choose from: a university IR, the COPPUL ANTS repository, BCcampus SOL*R, E-LIS, DLIST, and other LIS repositories, as well as conference options for conference papers. There are advantages to having all these options. A little friendly rivalry can only help to sharpen the repository software. Some repositories can accomodate formats, such as audiovisual, that others cannot. The challenge for all of us involved in open access repositories will be to figure out how to work together, so that we are all promoting self-archiving first, as well as our own options. We also need to keep the user in mind, and find search options that make it easy for the user to find what they are looking for, regardless of which archive houses the item.

Details

One of my favorite themes to write about is the Dramatic Growth of Open Access.

One sign of this growth for librarians is what I am seeing as a dramatic expansion in opportunities for self-archiving for librarians.

A couple of years ago, when I first started thinking about self-archiving, I wasn't sure what archives were available. LIS Archives are still pretty new - E-LIS was just established in 2003.

Now, many a librarian in BC has a number of options for self-archiving already, and the options are expanding. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries has an institutional repository program, so every university librarian either has an institutional repository handy, or will within the next few years.

Building on one of these repositories, D-Space at the University of Calgary, the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) have a new repository, still in pilot stage, called ANTS (Animated Tutorials Sharing Project), which is capturing imaginations throughout western Canada.

For BC librarians, there is also a provincial repository originally designed for learning objects, the SOL*R repository of BCcampus. BC academic librarians are very excited about the potential of participating in this repository for sharing of learning materials such as tutorials. The Academic Librarians in Public Service (ALPS) group of BCLA has formed a new subcommittee, the BCcampus Shareable Online Resources Team, to develop a space for sharing within the BCcampus repository. [Disclosure: I am the current Chair of ALPS].

Then, of course, there is our very own subject repositories - E-LIS, DLIST, and others, which many of us at OA Librarian are very much involved with.

For conference presentations, there is often an option to post presentations on the conference website as well.

This is all fabulous, of course! This means choice for the author, and a little friendly rivalry won't hurt to encourage development of the repositories. At the moment, there are real advantages to having many repositories. Some of the repositories can accomodate multimedia, for example, while others cannot.

The challenge for all of us involved in LIS self-archiving will be to figure out how to work together. Encouraging self-archiving, and making it easy for the user to find materials regardless of which archive houses them, is more important than who deposits in which archive.

If anyone knows of yet more repository options for librarians, I'd love to hear about them - please post a comment!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Now OA! 7th International Conference on Webometrics...

The 52 papers from the International Workshop on Webometrics, Scientometrics & Seventh COLLNET meeting are now available in E-LIS.

This is truly an international event and effort in more than one sense! One of the topics covered by many of the presenters is international cooperation in science. The presenters themselves are from all over the world - from the U.S. to Iran, Brazil to China to Germany & France, and more.

E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies, is truly an international effort, too. We are volunteers from more than 50 countries, all working together to build this open archive that supports 22 languages.

Researchers - many thanks for sharing your work!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Evidence Based Librarianship and Open Access

Issue 1:2 of the open access journal, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, has just been released.

This issue includes my commentary, Evidence Based Librarianship and Open Access.

Abstract:

Evidence based practice, whether in librarianship or any other profession, depends on access to the evidence, and access to opportunities to share one’s own evidence. Open access (OA) is the perfect complement to evidence based librarianship. OA provides the optimum access to the evidence for librarians everwhere, and the optimum means of dissemination. This article compares examines access to the LIS literature in the print and electronic media, and the impact of open access.

About the journal:

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice is an international journal developed by the Canadian Library Association's Evidence Based Librarianship Interest Group (EBLIG). EBLIG recently announced a new membership offer for international librarians interested in joining the EBLIG only (not CLA). Evidence Based Library and Information Practice is hosted by the University of Alberta Libraries, and uses the free, open source Open Journal Systems software.

dLIST Information Sciences Digital Archive Announces New Editors

We are pleased to announce the dynamic new team of editors for dLIST, the Digital Library of Information Science & Technology. These Information/Library & Information Science faculty and librarians will be responsible for specific subjects.

* Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Asst. Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development, University of Houston Libraries, Houston

* Anita Coleman, Asst. Prof., University of Arizona, Tucson

* Marija Dalbello, Assoc. Prof., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

* Fernando Elichirigoity, Asst. Prof., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

* Kristin R. Eschenfelder, Assoc. Prof., University of Wisconsin at Madison

* Cheryl Knott Malone, Assoc. Prof., University of Arizona, Tucson

* Paul Marty, Asst. Prof., Florida State University, Tallahassee

* Michael May, Adult Services Librarian, Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Dubuque

* Soo Young Rieh, Asst. Professor, University of Michigan

dLIST is a cross-institutional, subject-based, open access digital archive for the Information Sciences, including Archives and Records Management, Library and Information Science, Information Systems, Museum Informatics, and other critical information infrastructures. The dLIST vision is to serve as a trusted archive and source for scholarly communication in the Information Sciences, broadly understood. dLIST seeks to positively impact and shape scholarly communication in our closely related fields. Editors represent diverse sub-disciplinary communities and work closely with scholars in different fields such as Digital Humanities and Digital Libraries (Marija Dalbello), Government Information and Social Informatics (Kristin Eschenfelder), Information Behaviors (Soo Young Rieh), Museum Informatics (Paul Marty), Scholarly Communication (Charles Bailey), Science Technology Studies (Fernando Elichirigoity), and Classics (Michael May). More information about each of the dLIST editors is available at http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/editors.html.

The new team invites you to self-register, self-archive and explore the many unique features of dLIST.

Some dLIST features are:

* DL-Harvest, http://dlharvest.sir.arizona.edu, an open access aggregator, which brings together materials from 14 global and open access archives in the Information Sciences for meta-searching and access to the full-text

* Detailed Usage Statistics, http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/es/index.php?action=show_detail_date;range=4w provide usage statistics of each item in dLIST

* RSS feeds and subscription alerts for items deposited in dLIST are available both by individual subjects (example: Academic Libraries) as well as the entire archive and anybody can be alerted automatically and quickly about new dLIST works, http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/feeds.html

* A streamlined new web-based submission interface that lets authors upload and deposit their works easily

* Software patches and modifications (useful to Eprints archive maintainers) by Joseph Roback, http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/tnnd.html

* dLIST Classics is a new project that will be making fundamental and leading Library and Information Science texts openly accessible in dLIST.

For more information about dLIST and to self-register please visit http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/ or email dlist at u dot arizona dot edu.

dLIST, Digital Library of Information Science & Technology
Email: dlist at u dot arizona dot edu
Contact: Garry Forger, Learning Technologies at the University of Arizona

Scholar's Copyright

The Scholar's Copyright initiative of Science Commons provides an easy means for researchers to ensure they keep all the rights they need for open access, through an addendum (three different forms) to add to their copyright transfer agreement. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.

Institutional Support Key Variable in Success of Open Access Publishing

Thanks to Peter Suber for alerting us to a new study by McCabe and Snyder, Academic Journal Prices in a Digital Age: A Two Sided Market Model. One of the conclusions of the study is that author's fees for open access journals--which can be a stumbling block to support of open access among academics--can be reduced to nothing, given strong institutional support of open access publishing.

June 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber's June 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter is available. Highlights include analysis of the Kaufman-Wills study, the Elsevier hybrid journals, and an update on the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006.

Canadian Parliamentary Library - Beacon of Access

An enduring symbol of Canada's heritage, and history, is our Parliamentary Library. The library was originally completed in 1876, less than a decade after Confederation, and a century after the United States Declaration of Independence.

The octagonal jewelbox of a library is the only part of Canada's original Houses of Parliament to have survived the 1916 fire. A quick-thinking librarian by the name of Alpheus Todd and library clerk Connie MacCormac closed the iron doors to the library just as the fires raged through Centre Block, saving it and all the book from almost certain destruction.

A recent $136 million dollar renovation is a reminder to all open access advocates: long before digital, virtual libraries, the pillar of access was physical libraries. Canada's Parliamentary Library is a case in point, and worth every penny of the hefty sum to preserve access to its treasures for future generations of Canadians, and researchers.