Chemists Without Borders Open Access Open Source Teleconference Series

** with apologies for cross-posting **

Any assistance in promoting this series of free events would be most appreciated. Please feel free to forward this message to any parties for whom it might be of interest.

Please join Chemists Without Borders for a special series of teleconference meetings on Open Access and Open Source. For more background, please see the link from the Chemists Without Borders website http://www.chemistswithoutborders.org/ to the Open Chemistry Position Statement.

Thursday, April 5 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Heather Joseph: Federal Research Public Access Act

Heather Joseph, Executive Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), will talk about the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). FRPAA is anticipated to be re-introduced this spring. The purpose of this bill is to require all U.S. Federal research granting agencies with portfolios of over $100 million (11 agencies altogether) to develop policies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund. FRPAA has been endorsed by many higher education leaders and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. Chemists Without Borders is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access; should we support FRPAA?
More information about FRPAA can be found on the SPARC website, at:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/index.html

As the Executive Director of SPARC, Heather Joseph is very involved in advocacy for FRPAA. Before joining SPARC, Heather worked for many years in the publishing industry, and was formerly Executive Director of the BioOne publishing cooperative.

Thursday, June 7, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Peter Suber: Open Access Questions & Answers
Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge Project, author of Open Access News, at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Peter Suber, one of the world's leading academics in the area of open access, will join Chemists Without Borders for a question and answer session on any aspect of open access.

Thursday, September 6 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Jean-Claude Bradley: Open Source Chemistry
Chemists Without Borders' own Jean-Claude Bradley, Coordinator for E-Learning at the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, will talk about the Useful Chemistry approach to open source chemistry, founded by Bradley.
More information about Useful Chemistry is available at:
http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/

Chemists Without Borders: participation in this special series is the same as for regular teleconferences. Watch for a reminder. Not a member? No problem - contact us and let us know you would like to participate. There is no charge, other than regular long distance rates, to join the teleconference.

Heather Morrison
Member, Chemists Without Borders
http://www.chemistswithoutborders.org/
http://chemistswithoutborders.blogspot.com/

"Doing Good, Doing Well" John Willinsky

New course at UBC that might be of interest to OA Librarians:

LLED 565A - Section 951 - 3 credits
Developments in Scholarly Publishing: Doing Good and Doing Well
Instructor: John Willinsky> >Term 2 - July 3 to 16 http://www.lled.educ.ubc.ca/courses/summer2007/565A-951.htm

Topics
1. Origins of scholarly publishing (E Eisenstein, A Johns, JW)
2. Copyright, patents and ownership (Y Benkler)
3. Open science, open data, open source (PA David)
4. Journal publishing and scholarly societies (T Bergstrom)
5. Peer review, traditional and open (medical studies)
6. Archival projects and research sites (J McGann)
7. New roles and expectations for libraries (R Crow)
8. Indexes, searching, and citation (E Garfield)
9. Scholarly blogging, wikis, podcasts, and ebooks
10. PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference (3 sessions: 10 hours)
11. Postcolonial knowledge circulation (Altbach; JW)

Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has launched a Petition for Publicly Funded Research in the United States. Please sign!

Library Student Journal

The University of Buffalo Department of Library and Information Studies publishes a peer-reviewed open access journal, Library Student Journal.

The Library Student Journal site also features a blog, forum, and a new listserv for library students internationally.

Thanks to Eli Guinnee, Editor-in-Chief

SPARC web site redesigned

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, has redesigned the SPARC Web Site to improve http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifresource access for librarians, authors, and publishers

Please update your Web sites and scholarly communication pages with these key links:
SPARC resources on the Federal Research Public Access Act:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa
SPARC resources on the NIH Public Access Policy:
SPARC resources for authors: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author
SPARC resources for publishers: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publisher
Journal Pricing: http://www.arl.org/sparc/pricing
Open Access: http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess
Repositories: http://www.arl.org/sparc/repositories
The SPARC-ACRL Forum: http://www.arl.org/sparc/forum
Current SPARC Publisher Partners: http://www.arl.org/sparc/partner/partnerlist.html

Open Access Course

Fellow OA Librarian team member Heather Morrison will be teaching a course on OA this spring at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) at the University of British Columbia. The formal name for the course is LIBR 559K: Topics in Computer-Based Information Systems: Open Access. The goals of the course are:

To provide overview of the basic concepts of Open-access. The open access movement is one of the key trends in librarianship today, one that presents librarians and archivists with challenges, but also significant opportunities for leadership. This course will provide students with an overview of open access, key definitions, how and why libraries and archives are involved in open access, trends, policies, and implications for librarians and archivists.

I haven't really checked but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is the first university course devoted to OA in its entireity (though I'm sure that OA is an element in many other courses these days). Congratulations to Heather for developing and teaching this course!
I look forward to hearing more from her about it.

The full description for the course can be found at http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/coursdes/libr/libr559k.htm

Open Access (OA) and Web 2.0 - What's the connection?

Greetings fellow OA librarians,

On my sabbatical, I've had the distinct pleasure (and luxury) to contemplate some of the synergies created between open access and social software. But more than that, I've been able to determine for myself how some of these trends fit into a larger whole for our profession.

OA is not, despite its name, about access exclusively - although, it's our raison d'etre as librarians. OA is also about librarians being able to participate as equal partners in the academic enterprise. Some of the most rewarding work I have done in the past year is collaborate with physicians on the launch of our new OA journal called Open Medicine. Our launch is imminent.

Further, the core values that are brought out into the open through open access are linked to the notions of collaboration and socialization in web 2.0. Knowledge begins with conversations - one of the reasons we use blogs. Content-creation via wikis is important for exploration, and discovery. Using social tagging to organize websites is a simpler means of subject analysis and description. If librarians are good at getting their message out, web acolytes will see that we have expertise in description beyond simple taxonomies in the emerging 2.0 discourse.

For those of you interested in wikis, this article in Nature Medicine might be of interest. Dean

Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States

The new report:
Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States
MIRACLE Project Research Findings
is at:
http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub140abst.html

gives some background to where OA material is being stored.
The report is 167 pages but their summary gives a sense:

In this report, the authors describe results of a nationwide census of institutional repositories in U.S. academic institutions. The census is one of several activities of the MIRACLE Project, an IMLS-funded research program based at the University of Michigan.

A considerable portion of the scholarly record is born digital, and some scholarship is produced in digital formats that have no physical, in-the-hand counterparts. The proliferation of digital scholarship raises serious and pressing issues about how to organize, access, and preserve it in perpetuity. The response of academic institutions has been to build and deploy institutional repositories (IRs) to manage the digital scholarship their learning communities produce.

Richard Baer

OAIster: a union catalog of digital resources

OAIster, in addition to having passed the 10 million record landmark, has a new look and feel as well! For example, the OAIster web page now describers OAIster as a union catalog of digital resources. I like this - it seems easier to relate to this description than OAI-PMH metadata harvesting search tool. This could be because I'm a librarian, though!

If you know the name of a particular repository, you can do an OAIster search and enter the repository name as a search term, for an alternative way to search the other repository. For example, a search for "information literacy" and "E-LIS" yields all the documents in E-LIS on information literacy.

How do the results of an OAIster search of another repository compare with a direct search of another repository? Could this be an interesting question for a reference class?

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.

Happy Birthday - and Valentine's Day - to BOAI!

Today is the 5th anniversary of what many of us see as the first major, international defining moment of the open access movement - the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

And, what a birthday it is! The European Union Petition for Guaranteed Public Access to Publicly-Funded Research Results now has more than 20,000 signatories, including more than 1,000 institutional signatories; a new study just released shows that 85% of European researchers support the EU open access mandate; in Brussells, Ministers & Rectors have signed the Berlin Declaration; and tomorrow, in the U.S., is a student-led National Day of Action on Open Access.

Thanks to Peter Suber for a very modest alert about BOAI (he was one of the drafters of the statement). For more details on recent events, see Open Access News.

Belgian Officials Endorse OA

Next week, 13 senior officials in Belgian research and education - Ministers, and Rectors - will sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.

This is hugely significant; the signing will take place two days before the EC-hosted conference, Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area, in the context of the EU Petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

Details 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.

Custom Search Engine for DOAJ

A couple of months ago, using Google co-op's Custom Search Engine (CSE) capability, Lukethelibrarian explains on his blog that he created a custom search engine that will perform a search across all the english language journals found in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) collection.

Try out the DOAJ search engine for english journal content!

Lukethelibrarian is also looking for volunteers to help him refine his DOAJ CSE service. To volunteer, go to the main search page of his CSE and look for the "volunteer" link in the lower left part of the page. He is also looking forward to any suggestions or feedback.

Kudos!

Mandate Momentum in 2007!

The February 2007 SPARC Open Access Newsletter has been released. Peter's feature this month is the Mandate Momentum in 2007. As Peter says, "In the first month of 2007 we saw four adopted OA mandates, five pledges to adopt OA mandates, and five significant calls for OA mandates."

Time to set aside the furore over the PR pitbull episode, enjoy - and support - these historic initatives.


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 model for an online journal?

I was catching up with a great source of book reviews and everything else at
Political Theory Daily Review http://www.politicaltheory.info/
when I saw that The New Leader was back.
It had stopped publication as a print magazine in 2005 but was back at www.thenewleader.com


I would paste some of the announcement but cannot because the page announcing this is an image. They are calling it a bimonthy virtual magazine and publishing the issue as one large pdf.
It was indexed in Academic Search Premier and MAS Ultra article by article.

If they pick it up again, I wonder how they will handle the full text. You could index the titles from the bookmarks and the PDF does allow cutting and pasting so you can take it apart and print, email what you like.
But I have not noticed other magazines using quite this publishing model. I've furled this one and will see how they handle archiving and if Ebsco picks up the new version.
Richard

On the opposition to open access

The following message was posted to a number of listservs in Canada. OA Librarians in other countries might wish to alert local librarians about the issue of media slant. Please feel free to use portions of this message and customize for the local situation if you would like; e.g., you might want to replace the Canadian LIS OA journals with ones that your own colleagues will be familiar with.

An article in Nature on Wednesday, January 24, by Jim Giles, PR's "pit bull" takes on open access, reveals that the American Association of Publishers hired the "pit bull of public relations", Eric Dezenhall, as a consultant on strategies to oppose the open access movement.

According to Nature, "The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review...."

When assessing arguments against open access, it is important to consider where the messages are coming from. Dezenhall's previous clients include the former Enron chief and, according to Business Week, Exxonmobile (to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace).

Equating public access with government censorship is absurd. There are many open access publishers (including CACUL, with their Occasional Papers Series, and Evidence Based Librarianship, which members of CLA's own EBL Interest Group are very much involved in) who perform peer review. The Directory of Open Access Journals currently lists over 2,500 fully open access, peer-reviewed journals, and the numbers are growing rapidly.

In addition to fully open access journals, there are many journals which allow authors to retain copyright so that they can self-archive their works for open access, and also many which have hybrid open access models.

For those who do not have access to Nature, there is an excerpt on Open Access News, at:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116966479599813483


Open Access News also details follow-up articles (in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Washington Post), as well as comments from bloggers.

My own comment, Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for OA!
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/01/stop-fighting-inevitable-and-free.html
focuses on the substantial funds spent by publishers to lobby against open access ($300,000 - $500,000 for this one consultation alone; Elsevier's lobbying budget in the U.S. alone is in the millions annually).

Heather Morrison

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.

OAIster reaches 10 million records

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - OAIster Reaches 10 Million Records.
http://www.oaister.org/

We live in an information driven world, one in which access to good information defines success. OAIster's growth to 10 million records takes us one step closer to that goal.

Developed at the University of Michigan's Library, OAIster is a collection of digital scholarly resources. OAIster is also a service that continually gathers these digital resources to remain complete and fresh. As global digital repositories grow, so do OAIster's holdings.

Popular search engines don't have the holdings OAIster does. They crawl web pages and index the words on those pages. It's an outstanding technique for fast, broad information from public websites. But scholarly information, the kind researchers use to enrich their work, is generally hidden from these search engines.

OAIster retrieves these otherwise elusive resources by tapping directly into the collections of a variety of institutions using harvesting technology based on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. These can be images, academic papers, movies and audio files, technical reports, books, as well as preprints (unpublished works that have not yet been peer reviewed). By aggregating these resources, OAIster makes it possible to search across all of them and return the results of a thorough investigation of complete, up-to-date resources.

Ann Devenish, Publication Services Project Manager at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, notes that Harvesting by OAIster is a primary selling point when we talk to scientists and researchers about the visibility, accessibility, and impact of their contributions in an institutional repository. From their own experiences they know that a search using one of the popular search engines can bring back thousands (if not, millions) of results which will require careful and time-consuming screening, with no guarantee that they will ever get to the content they seek. A search of OAIster, across hundreds of open and scholarly archives and millions of records, brings back results with the key metadata elements that allow for quick identification of, and easy navigation to, the content they seek.

OAIster is good news for the digital archives that contribute material to open-access repositories. [OAIster has demonstrated that] OAI interoperability can scale. This is good news for the technology, since the proliferation is bound to continue and even accelerate, says Peter Suber, author of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. As open-access repositories proliferate, they will be supported by a single, well-managed, comprehensive, and useful tool.

Scholars will find that searching in OAIster can provide better results than searching in web search engines. Roy Tennant, User Services Architect at the California Digital Library, offers an example: In OAIster I searched roma and 'world war,' then sorted by weighted relevance. The first hit nailed my topic, the persecution of the Roma in World War II. Trying 'roma world war' in Google fails miserably because Google apparently searches 'Rome' as well as 'Roma.' The ranking then makes anything about the Roma people drop significantly, and there is nothing in the first few screens of results that includes the word in the title, unlike the OAIster hit.

OAIster currently harvests 730 repositories from 49 countries on 6 continents. In three years, it has more than quadrupled in size and increased from 6.2 million to 10 million in the past year. OAIster is a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service.

For more information about University of Michigan's OAIster Project, visit
http://www.oaister.org/, or contact Kat Hagedorn at khage@umich.edu.

Congratulations & thanks to the University of Michigan's OAIster/ Metadata Harvesting Librarian Kat Hagedorn and OAIster.

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.

World's biggest open access english language journals portal

Open J-Gate describes itself as the "World's largest open access english language journals portal". Unlike DOAJ, which is limited to peer-reviewed journals, Open J-Gate includes both peer-reviewed journals and professional and industry journals - a total of 3,933 journals, as of January 20, 2007.

In addition to this substantial content and frequent updating, About Open J-Gate reveals a number of search features that might appeal to librarians, such as:

Well designed journal classification
All journals are classified in a three-level hierarchical system to provide for better relevancy in search results.

Table of Content (TOC) Browsing
Users can browse the TOC of latest issue and the back issues.

Easy-to-Use search functionalities
Database allows various search options for the user�s convenience. The subscriber can search by Title, Author, Abstract, Author's Address/Institution, Keywords, etc.

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 OA journal: International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies

From Juan Cole:

The URL is:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journalissues.php?issn=17512867&v=1&i=1

Registration needed but seems to be fully OA.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Details of first issue:

The first issue of the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies is up on the Web and freely accessible. There are several good articles. The table of contents is:

The Islamist imaginary
Islam,Iraq,and the projections of empire
Authors: Raymond W. Baker

Media and lobbyist support for the US invasion of Iraq
Authors: Janice J. Terry

Beating the drum:Canadian print media and the build-up to the invasion of Iraq
Authors: Tareq Y. Ismael

The United States in Iraq:the consequences of occupation
Authors: Stephen Zunes

Toward regional war in the Middle East?
Authors: Richard Falk

Reconstructing the performance of the Iraqi economy 1950-2006: an essay with some hypotheses and many questions
Authors: Roger Owen

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.

Petition for OA to publicly-funded research in Europe

Please sign the petition for OA to publicly-funded research in Europe - either individuals or organizations can sign, and it's easy & online. For details about the initiative, see 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.

Release Your Research, Increase Your Impact

From the University of Alberta Libraries News page:

The University of Alberta Libraries is pleased to present Open Access: the Sea Change in Scholarly Publishing, a forum with Dr. John Willinsky on Tuesday, March 20, 1:30pm at the Myer Horowitz Theatre.

Dr. Willinsky proposes that current changes in scholarly publishing are poised to increase the global circulation of knowledge, while improving its scholarly and public quality. He will discuss ways in which the publishing choices that faculty and graduate students make can extend the contribution and reach of their work. He will also highlight the Open Journal Systems software, a system which can reduce the economic and energy demands of journal publishing, while adding to the rigor and coherence of the academic enterprise.

Dr. Willinsky’s award-winning Public Knowledge Project is the world’s leading open source software for journal publishing, and his recent book The Access Principle (MIT Press, 2006) has won this year’s Blackwell Award for Scholarship. He is Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology at the University of British Columbia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Registration is free and open to all.

Thanks to Pam Ryan

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 OA Journal: International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership

The International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership (IJEPL) is a joint publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, and the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University.

The mission of IJEPL: IJEPL seeks to build bridges between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners by enriching the policy and leadership knowledge base, and promoting exploration and analysis of policy alternatives.

IJEPL's Open Access Policy: By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings 90 days after initial publication. Copyright for articles published in IJEPL is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal.

Articles are published individually as they complete the peer review process.

Thanks to Simon Fraser University Library's Percilla Groves, and Dan Laitsch of the SFU Education Department. IJEPL is published using the free, open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) software.

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 OA Journal: Child Health and Education/ Santé et Éducation de l'Enfance

Child Health and Education/ Santé et Éducation de l'Enfance is a new open access journal, from Simon Fraser University.

Child Health and Education: An Interdisciplinary Journal provides an international forum for publishing empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles, papers, essays, and reviews that contribute to improving the lives of young children and their families.

Child Health and Education: An Interdisciplinary Journal was made possible through the support and guidance of:

* SFU Serial Publications Fund
* Public Knowledge Project at SFU
* Graphically Speaking Services Inc. (Website design services)

Authors publishing in Child Health and Education retain copyright. Child Health and Education is published using the free, open source Open Journals Systems (OJS) software.

Thanks to Percilla Groves.

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 Research (OAR): Call for Papers

Open Access Research (OAR) http://ojs.gsu.edu/oar, is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that will enable greater interaction and facilitate a deeper conversation about open access, including topics such as:

open access journals
institutional support for open access
open access publishing services and software
open access repositories (both institutional and subject-based)
electronic theses and dissertations
the impact of open access on scholarly research and communications.

If you are engaged in research relating to open access, or if you have an article in mind, please contact us. OAR's first issue will be in August, 2007 and will subsequently be published three times a year. Submissions received by March 31, 2007 will be considered for the August issue; subsequent submissions will be considered for future issues.

Send inquiries to:

William Walsh
Head – Acquisitions
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur St. SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
wwalsh@gsu.edu

Editors-in-Chief: John Russell (University of Oregon), Dorothea Salo (George Mason University), William Walsh (Georgia State University), Elizabeth Winter (Georgia Institute of Technology). Please see our website for a full list of editors and editorial board members. Open Access Research is published by the Georgia State University Library using Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) software.

[Disclosure: I am on the Editorial Board].

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.

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Call for Papers: Deadlines

** with apologies for cross-posting **

The final deadline for the call for papers has been extended to Wednesday, February 7th. Preliminary review of abstracts will begin on January 15th. Those who are intended to take advantage of the extra time for developing a proposal may wish to submit a preliminary proposal by January 15th. The Open Conference Systems abstract submission process makes it very easy for the author to modify an initial proposal. If you are submitting a preliminary proposal, please include a note to this effect with the abstract.


First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Vancouver, July 11-13, 2007
WEBSITE: http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/493

The Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University is pleased to announce that the first international PKP conference will be held from July 11-13, 2007 in
Vancouver. The conference will provide opportunities for those involved in the organization, promotion, and study of scholarly communication to share and discuss innovative work in scholarly publishing, with a focus on the contribution that open source publishing technologies (such as Open Journal Systems) can make to improving access to research and scholarship on a global and public scale. The conference will appeal to all those with an interest in the future of scholarly publishing community: software developers and technical support specialists; journal publishers, editors, and staff; librarians; and researchers in scholarly publishing.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Abstract Deadline (required): January 15, 2007
Paper and PowerPoint Submission (desired but not required for public posting): July 1, 2007
This conference, which uses Open Conference Systems developed by the Public Knowledge Project, enables participants to submit abstracts online at http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/submit.php.

Presentations can include:
* Single papers (abstract max of 500 words)
* Multiple paper sessions (overview max of 500 words)

Call for Papers Announcement
The conference stream for those involved in the practices and study of journal publishing will focus on the following themes and topics:
* Scholarly publishing in developing countries;
* Open access and the academy: reforming and opening the peer review process, implications for academic freedom;
* New journals, new models: the how and why of starting a new journal, new economic models for old journals, encouraging open
data and related practices;
* Promotion and growth: building readership, authorship, and reviewership; open access is public access - challenges and benefits;
* Improving the features and design of publishing software

The conference stream for librarians and information specialists will focus on the following themes and topics:
* The role of libraries in supporting and developing emerging or alternate forms of scholarly communication, e.g., the library as publisher, implications for collections budgets and policies;
* Incorporating and supporting open access publications as part of current collections and related services;
* Using PKP software and related open source tools in libraries, e.g., "best practices" or case studies.

The conference stream for open source software developers and other technical experts working with PKP software will address the
following:
* Understanding and working with PKP software and its "plug-in" architecture;
* Building a PKP developers' community including software contributions and collaborative projects;
* PKP software development priorities and plans.

Emerald's turn at hybrid OA

I'll keep this short as the news is three days old and has already been caught by the ever-reliable Peter Suber on his blog (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_12_31_fosblogarchive.html#116801966650743317).
Anyway, Emerald has announced a trial hybrid OA program for their engineering journals, called Emerald Asset. The most interesting thing about Emerald Asset is that no fee is requested from accepted authors; in return for having their articles made openly accessible, authors "will be asked to submit a summary of their research findings highlighting their practical application. "

The announcement from Emerald can be found at http://engineering.emeraldinsight.com/pr/asset.htm?PHPSESSID=cc49ebb9293d698d6bedef2041768ab4.

Karger introduces "Author's Choice"

Joining the bandwagon, Karger has just announced its own hybrid journal trial program, entitled "Author's Choice". Under Author's Choice, articles in eight journals can be made OA for a cost of $2,500 US. The journals for which this applies are:

Cytogenetic and Genome Research
Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders
Dermatology
Developmental Neuroscience
European Neurology
Medical Principles and Practice
Neurodegenerative Diseases
Pathobiology

Author's Choice is described as a "trial model". This is likely why only eight of Karger's approximately 85 journals are included in the program.

No mention was made in the announcement of a corresponding reduction in subscription costs (maybe this will come later, after the "trial" period).

The $2,500 US payment is in addition to "any standard charges for supplementary pages, color images etc. which may apply".

More information about Author's Choice can be found on the Karger site at http://content.karger.com/services/choice.asp. Peter Suber has also blogged this at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_12_31_fosblogarchive.html#116791849595590997
(I blog in his shadow...)

Out of the cataloguing business..into Digital Strategies

McMaster University Library is Getting out of the Cataloguing Business...and into several interesting new areas. There will be several new librarian positions - the most interesting, from an OA Librarian perspective, is:

Digital Strategies Librarian: This position will be responsible for developing our digital library program; building our digital infrastructure; assisting with implementation of an institutional repository; and developing strategies to align us with programs at the provincial and national level such as Alouette.

Cataloguers will be moving into "tiered reference".

Thanks to McMaster University Librarian Jeffrey Trzeciak

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.

BMC article processing charge to increase

BioMed Central's standard article processing charge (APC) is set to increase from 750 to 850 pounds starting in January 2007. This will cover "the BMC-series of journals and other titles for which peer review is organised in-house". Some "in-house" journals will have higher APCs. The standard APC for "independent" BMC journals will rise to 800 pounds on July 1, 2007 though some of these will have different APCs.

The BMC announcement of this change can be found at http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/pr-releases?pr=20061220. Peter Suber has, of course, already noted the change on his fine blog at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_12_17_fosblogarchive.html#116673666883616482.

I'm not surprised to see these increases. I suspect we'll see similar increases from other publishers. Fortunately, the BMC submission fees are still cheaper than most others.

British Medical Journal & Open Access

At least two articles that discuss open access (or touch on related issues, such as Web 2.0) are featured in this week's British Medical Journal. The first, authored by John Wilbanks, Executive Director of MIT's Science Commons Project, discusses open access and freely-available open source software in science; the second is an article that I wrote about Web 2.0 but whose main ideas are inspired by open access. I'd like to thank my LIBR534 students (and my colleague Greg Rowell) for helping me understand the synergy created by open access and Web 2.0. Merry Xmas, Dean

Another reason for opening access to research - John Wilbanks.

How Web 2.0 is Changing Medicine: Is a Medical Wikipedia the next step? - Dean Giustini

Happy Holidays from OA Librarian!

Happy Holidays from OA Librarian! Time to the enjoy the fun open access stuff - like sharing free photos from http://www.flickr.com/

Christmas dance (without hats)
Georgie Sharpe, CC: Some Rights Reserved
http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiesharp/311749961/

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.

PLoS One About to Launch

Thanks to Peter Suber and Liz Allen for the exciting news that PLoS ONE is about to launch.

The Public Library of Science has been one of the highest profile open access publishers since 2003. Their initial publishing model is an example of "Open Access 1.0." PLoS ONE is typical of "Open Access 2.0," a more democratic system in which readers are encouraged to annotate, rank, and comment about articles.

Open access has always been about increasing access to scientific literature, and now more than ever will focus on enhancing discussion as well.

Welcome Richard Baer!

OA Librarian's newest blog team member is Richard Baer, a Librarian at Camosun College Library in Victoria, British Columbia, and teacher in the Langara College Library Technician program. Richard has several blogs of his own, including Richard's Libtech Tips.

Welcome Richard!

BCLA response to draft CIHR policy

The British Columbia Library Association response to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research consultation on theDraft Policy on Access to Research Outputs has been posted, and is available for download.

Highlights: BCLA congratulates CIHR for developing a draft policy that is considered exemplary, a role model for other funding agencies.

"This draft policy will make research funded by Canadian taxpayers readily available to many more Canadians, as well as to researchers around the world. In a province like British Columbia, this will particularly make a difference to students, faculty, high school students, and health care professionals outside of the major research centres. This policy is considered exemplary by open access advocates, for good reason. The support for open access to research data is particularly noteworthy. This is an area where Canada has an opportunity to become a world leader, advancing research in the medical arena more quickly for the benefit of all, and also advancing Canadian economic interests in the knowledge economy.

Several particular strengths of the policy we would like to highlight are the requirement to deposit peer-reviewed research articles immediately on publication, the encouragement to retroactively archive important articles, and the indication that a researcher’s track record in providing access will be considered with future grant applications."

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.

Newspaper chain goes Creative Commons!

Gatehouse Media has added Creative Commons licenses to their chain of 96 newspapers.

Thanks to Richard Baer.

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.

DOAJ hits 2500

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (www.doaj.org) has reached a notable milestone. According to an announcement released on December 15, 2006
(www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempl&templ=061215), there are now 2500 OA journals in the DOAJ, with OA journals being defined as "quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web". The number of DOAJ OA journals has grown steadily; 1.5 additions a day has been quoted as an average and approximately 500 journals have been added (so far) in calendar 2006.

Congratulations to the DOAJ!

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 DOAR: Search Repository Contents

These folks have beat us to the search engine we've wanted for years! Very impressive, especially since it's still in beta:
Open DOAR: Search Repository Contents - uses google custom search to search contents of all the Open DOAR repositories.

Thanks to Richard Baer.

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.

PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Second Call for Papers

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Second Call for Papers
Vancouver, July 11-13, 2007
WEBSITE: http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/493

The Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University is pleased to announce that the first international PKP conference will be held from July 11–13, 2007 in Vancouver. The conference will provide opportunities for those involved in the organization, promotion, and study of scholarly communication to share and discuss innovative work in scholarly publishing, with a focus on the contribution that open source publishing technologies (such as Open Journal Systems) can make to improving access to research and scholarship on a global and public scale. The conference will appeal to all those with an interest in the future of scholarly publishing community: software developers and technical support specialists; journal publishers, editors, and staff; librarians; and researchers in scholarly publishing.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Abstract Deadline (required): January 15, 2007
Paper and PowerPoint Submission (desired but not required for public posting): July 1, 2007
This conference, which uses Open Conference Systems developed by the Public Knowledge Project, enables participants to submit abstracts online at http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/submit.php.

Presentations can include:
• Single papers (abstract max of 500 words)
• Multiple paper sessions (overview max of 500 words)

Call for Papers Announcement
The conference stream for those involved in the practices and study of journal publishing will focus on the following themes and topics:
* Scholarly publishing in developing countries;
* Open access and the academy: reforming and opening the peer review process, implications for academic freedom;
* New journals, new models: the how and why of starting a new journal, new economic models for old journals, encouraging open data and related practices;
* Promotion and growth: building readership, authorship, and reviewership; open access is public access - challenges and benefits;
* Improving the features and design of publishing software

The conference stream for librarians and information specialists will focus on the following themes and topics:
* The role of libraries in supporting and developing emerging or alternate forms of scholarly communication, e.g., the library as publisher, implications for collections budgets and policies;
* Incorporating and supporting open access publications as part of current collections and related services;
* Using PKP software and related open source tools in libraries, e.g., “best practices” or case studies.

The conference stream for open source software developers and other technical experts working with PKP software will address the following:
* Understanding and working with PKP software and its “plug-in” architecture;
* Building a PKP developers’ community including software contributions and collaborative projects;
* PKP software development priorities and plans.

Heather G. Morrison
PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Committee

Peter Suber: heart of the open access movement

Of all the organs, the heart is the most vital; it is the most central in function, the one on which we all depend.

The legendarily hard-working Peter Suber manages, amazingly, to keep so up to speed on open access happenings around the world that his Open Access News blog is the authoritative source for OA news - and perspectives.

Many of us are very aware of how fast Peter is at reporting the news. If you haven't been following as closely, let me express it this way: many people think I'm pretty good at keeping up - but, I often find out what is happening in my own country by reading Peter's blog. He is so fast, I'm just waiting for the day when he reports one of my posts on OA Librarian or The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics - before I write it! (If this happened, I'd be surprised - but, only a little).

The heart, of course, is more than an organ; it is a symbol - of love, and of kindness. How appropriate a symbol, for a diplomat in an arena long known for heated debate, although lately it appears that tempers are beginning to cool and reason will likely prevail.

How appropriate too, for this fine writer who, among other things, drafted the Budapest Open Access Initiative with such beautiful phrases as an old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good.

Peter's qualifications as an honorary librarian go back to his days as a professor at Earlham College, where his Library Reports Assignment is a librarian's dream - an assignment "simply to use the library throughout the semester to help you understand and assess the reading"; one rationale of the assignment "simply to become comfortable using the library". Open Access News so frequently covers open access leadership and initiatives by librarians, it is a better source for this news than OA Librarian (although OA Librarian is more focused, and a pathfinder as well as a newsblog - so stay with us!).

There is so much happening in open access, it's impossible for anyone to completely keep up, although Peter is still the best.

Peter - thank you so much for all that you do; your speed of reporting speeds up open access action, in my opinion, and your sage comments help keep us all on track; so, keep on keeping up - or hurry up, if you can...


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

John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project

OA Librarians may be interested in my blogpost about John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project, posted on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics

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 Access Principle: now available in DLIST

Dr. John Willinsky's award-winning book, The Access Principle, is now available in DLIST. The Access Principle is also available for free downloand, or sale, from MIT Press - worthy of consideration as a Christmas gift for that academic administrator friend - or open access afficianado, perhaps?

Open Access Magazine Collection

Inspired by suggestions from BC Electronic Library Network partner libraries, the reSearcher team has set up a collaborative Open Access Magazine Collection for the CUFTS knowledgebase. For more details, please see the BC ELN website.

Heather Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network

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.

CLA Task Force on Open Access

In response to member interest, the Canadian Library Association has created a Task Force on Open Access.

The mandate of this Task Force is to prepare a report for CLA Executive Council providing:
(1) a draft Policy Statement on Open Access in the Canadian Library
Association;
(2) recommendations on procedures and practices to implement the Policy
should it be approved;
(3) a draft CLA Position Statement on Open Access in Canadian libraries.

The Task Force is very interested in hearing from you!

To keep up to date, please see the CLA Information Commons Interest
Group Wiki page on the Task Force on Open Access, at:
http://www.infocommons.ca/wiki/index.php? title=CLA_Open_Access_Task_Force

Or, please feel free to contact the Convenor or any of the Members to
share your thoughts about open access. For contact information, visit
the CLA website at:
http://www.cla.ca/about/committees/openaccess.html

If there are similar groups in other countries - we'd love to hear from you!
Heather Morrison, Convenor, CLA Task Force on Open Access

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.

Kumiko Vézina: new Chief E-LIS Editor, Canada

On December 1, 2006 Kumiko Vézina, became the Chief E-LIS Editor for Canada.

Kumiko is the Electronic Resources Librarian at Concordia University in Montréal and is working on her thesis; her research focuses on open access. Kumiko is fluently bilingual in english and french. She was one of the original members of the E-LIS Canada team, and is also a member of the OA Librarian Team.

Kumiko takes over from Heather Morrison, who remains a part of the E-LIS Canada editorial team, along with Andrew Waller and Shelley Brown.

For information about E-LIS, the Open Archive in Library and Information Studies, please contact Kumiko - or, if you are from another country, look up the volunteer Editor for your country under E-LIS: Who We Are.

Partnership (new open access LIS journal)

Partnership, the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, launched its first issue this week! From the website, simply click on CURRENT to view the Table of Contents.

Among the Open Access related items:

The Welcome Message from Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Richards, outlining our philosophy of open access and high standards for rigorous peer review;

Open Access Initiatives in India - an Evaluation, by Leila Fernandez

Libre accès à la recherche scientifique : opinions et pratiques des chercheurs au Québec, by Kumiko Vézina. [This research was presented last summer in English at the Canadian Library Association - the presentation is available in E-LIS]. In brief, researchers in biology and life sciences at 6 major universities in Quebec were surveyed about their knowledge and practice of open access. Vézina's study confirms the findings of Swan and Brown, that if authors were required to self-archive, over 80% would do so willingly. One surprise of this study is that about a third of the researchers reported having already published in an open access journal.

Beyond the Patriot Act: Rulings from the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) and their Effects on Canadian Libraries, by Andrew Waller, is highly recommended, as it addresses important issues in scholarly communications, even though it is not directly on open access.

Under News and Announcements:
First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
Depositing Your Work in E-LIS: the Open Archive for Library and Information Science

There are many other articles that will be of interest to librarians - from video streaming to e-learning, to professional development, to profiles of librarians and news from all the provincial library associations which form the Partnership.

Disclosure: there is a close relationship between OA Librarian and Partnership! I am the BCLA rep, and Editor, Theory / Research. Two of the OA Librarian team, Kumiko Vézina and Andrew Waller, are among the authors of the first issue. Many thanks to the Partnership of library associations across Canada for their support for this venture, and to Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Richards.

The deadline for submissions to the peer-reviewed sections (Innovations in Practice, Theory and Research, Conference Spotlight) for the Spring issue is February 28, 2007. International submissions 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.

UBC Google Scholar one of top-rated medical librarian blogs!

According to Oliver Obst, four US / Canadian blogs "are a continuous source of knowledge, information, and tips" - including UBC Google Scholar Blog, one of the other blogs by OA Librarian blog team member Dean Giustini.

Obst' article on Web 2.0, p. 50 in the Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries, presents a table of the top-ranked blogs by or for medical librarians, according to Technorati. UBC Google Scholar Blog ranks second!

Congraulations, Dean!

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.

One Small Step for Athabasca University

From Terry Anderson's the Virtual Canuck blog comes the news of the first Canadian university open access policy that I am aware of.

Excerpt:

Athabasca University requests that academic and professional staff deposit an electronic copy of any published research articles (as elsewhere accepted for publication) in an Athabasca University repository. The contract with the publisher determines whether the article is restricted (lives in the repository as a record of the University’s research but is not accessible online by searchers) or open access (accessible online by searchers).

Comment:

Congratulations to Athabasca University for taking one small step forward. However, this is a weak policy, for two reasons, and I would strongly suggest that other universities considering an open access policy not emulate this one.

First, it requests rather than requires academic and professional staff to deposit published research. Experience has shown that policies that request deposit simply do not work, whereas policies that require deposit are extremely effective. Also, rather than beginning with voluntary compliance, the nature of open access is that it makes more sense to start with the requirement - because as soon as faculty and staff experience the impact advantage, and other advantages of convenience, with open access, from a requirement, they will quickly come to appreciate open access, and so they will happily voluntary self-archive.

Second, it leaves the question of open access up to the publishers. Even setting aside the rights of the university, its students and alumni and taxpayer funders at a public institution like Athabasca - universities wishing to educate faculty members about open access would do well to also advise faculty members about their rights, too. Authors and scholars do not need to give up their copyright in order to have their work published; the only copyright that an author need give a publisher, is simply the right to publish; authors can do this and retain their copyright, too.

The vast majority of traditional publishers already routinely allow self-archiving of preprints or peer-reviewed postprints, or both. Authors can find out their publisher's policy by looking at the Sherpa Romeo Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving. Even if a publisher is not listed here, or is listed as not giving the "green" light to self-archiving, there is a good possibility that the publisher will grant such rights on request.

Authors wishing to ensure that they retain their rights can use tools such as an Author's Addendum. Examples can be found at the SPARC Author Rights page, or at the Science Commons Scholar's Copyright Project.

As a former student of Athabasca University, where I did about half of my fourth year of undergraduate work, in business administration and psychology, I think I can speak from the perspective of an alumnus. Researchers and teachers of Athabasca, consider this: when your students graduate, it is possible that they will enjoy access to the same electronic resources your library provides to you and to active students.

Many alumni, however, will not have this access. If they live and work away from major centres, they likely will not have much access to academic resources, even in Canada's wealthy western provinces (Alberta and British Columbia). Come to think of it - isn't serving people who are either away from major centres, or for whom an in-person visit to an academic library would be difficult - one of the original, and still one of the major, points of distance education - and hence Athabasca University?

As a proud former student, I would like to point out that, if Athabasca University's new open access policy is not exemplary in the area of self-archiving, AU has long been a leader in open access publishing, as the home of ICAAP, the International Coalition for the Advancement of Academic Publishing. ICAAP publishes a number of open access journals, using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) software, including AU's own The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

Athabasca began as, and still is: an open university. A place where you can get a start on your university studies, even if it is mid-semester, or you can't get to a traditional university program for whatever reason. What could possibly make more sense, than for an open university to fully embrace open access?

For examples of stronger policies, please see ROARMAP, the Registry of Open Access Repositories Material Archiving Policies - and for evidence of their effectiveness, click on the growth rate option.

Have you heard of other open access policies - in place, or in development - at Canadian universities? If so, we would like to hear from you. Or, let us know about policy developments in other countries, or if you have comments on the Athabasca policy.

Thanks to Pam Ryan.

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.

Ray English, or: the Open Access Genie

Of the many great pleasures of this year's Charleston conference - one of the highlights, for me, was the opportunity to meet the opening keynote speaker Ray English.

Ray's topic, building on the conference theme of Unintended Consequences, was Unintended Consequences of the Profit Motive: Or Why the Open Access Genie is Out of the Bottle.

In a nutshell, Ray is questioning whether the focus on profit - and the subsequent price increases for serials so far above inflation that today's 8% increases (still, far above inflation) are portrayed as "good news"- is the reason behind the unleashing of the open access genie.

This inquisitive open access librarian, meanwhile, is wondering: is Ray English the open access genie?

Ray has been one of the leaders of two of the most active associations in open access, since their inception: SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition, and the Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL) Scholarly Communications Committee (currently co-chaired by Joyce Ogden and John Ober).

In the words of Rick Johnson, Founding Executive Diretor of SPARC and currently SPARC Senior Advisor:

Ray has been a chief contributor almost since the founding of SPARC. As a member of the SPARC Working Group in 1998-99 and the SPARC Steering Committee since 2000, he played a crucial role in charting and guiding SPARC's course. He was -- and continues to be -- instrumental in introducing SPARC to libraries beyond ARL, which account for more than half of SPARC's membership. He has been a vital collaborator with SPARC staff in efforts to raise the profile of scholarly communication issues and build support for constructive change.

From my vantage point, Ray’s efforts appear to have been the catalyst for ACRL’s strategic engagement with scholarly communications issues. He is a natural coalition builder, and so it was only logical that a strong collaborative bond between the SPARC and ACRL scholarly communications initiatives would be a product of his efforts. He has served as the key link in the allied efforts of SPARC and ACRL. He has been a leader within the Open Access Working Group (OAWG), a SPARC-organized framework for collective advocacy of open access as a public policy matter. And now, of course, he is the chair of SPARC, following in the footsteps of Ken Frazier and Jim Neal.

Ray has been especially energetic in his support of expanded public access to taxpayer-funded research. He has been tireless in his efforts to mobilize library support and communicate this to the U.S. Congress. Ray’s work to leverage the influence of ACRL members across the nation has been absolutely essential.

Even when it comes to less glamorous activities, Ray is always generous with his time and support. For example, he has played an invaluable role in helping frame the SPARC-ACRL Forum programs at the ALA midwinter and annual conferences. His contributions invariably make our communications programs more topical and incisive and stir interest in important issues facing academic libraries.

Bottom line: he's amazing. I benefitted gratefully from his wise counsel throughout my years as SPARC's director.

SPARC did not begin as an organization for open access advocacy, of course - rather, the original purpose was, and remains transformational change in scholarly communications. In Ray's words, Open access emerged as a visible movement after SPARC got started and it's clearly become the most powerful strategy for transformational change; but we need to continue to address other issues in scholarly communications, such as finding ways to introduce competition into a marketplace that has not been feeling the effects of this force.

Ray's advice for the OA Librarian?
I think the most important thing anyone in the US can do at this point is to support the Federal Research Public Access Act. There are a variety of ways to do that, from individual letters to Congress to developing more organized support. In terms of access to information I think it's probably the most important bill that's ever been introduced into Congress. I'd also encourage all librarians to work at the campus level to inform / educate faculty about scholarly communications issues. The ACRL / ARL Scholarly Communications Institute is a great way to develop strategies and plans for doing that.

The ACRL / ARL Scholarly Communications Institutes fill up fast - the deadline for the December Institute was August 15th. Watch for the next one - and register early!

For all your contributions to transforming scholarly communications, Ray - past, and hopefully long into the future - thank you.

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

Search this blog

OA Librarian now has a search box, courtesy of google.

Special Award: Non-Librarian Working for Our Cause

Charleston Advisor has issued a special award to Peter Suber as a Non-Librarian Working for our Cause, for his work on the Open Access News blog and SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Congratulations, Peter - very well deserved!!!

Several of the other Readers' Choice Awards are open-access related:

Hybrid Open Access is recognized as the Best Contract Option;

Google News Archive is the Best New Product

and Flickr wins a Best Content award.

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.

Great Idea # 1 from Charleston: Institutional Repositories

Anthony Ferguson of Hong Kong University, one of the plenary speakers from the final day of the recent Charleston conference, presented his top 10 great ideas to take away and present at home as if they were his own. # 1 on Tony's list? Institutional repositories. Specifically, collaborative institutional repositories, or, a single IR for Hong Kong's 8 universities.

Hong Kong should unite with China's open access movement to require the results of all research supported by either government to be self-archived. One thing to stress with the Hong Kong government is that IR's will not only facilitate the sharing of research information between scholars, but also with the public, who have no access to research journals.

Other great ideas:
#2: hand held devices - not ideal.
#3: incorporate web 2.0 into our integrated library systems
#4: get our library stuff in our students' path
#5: redesign our library web page
#6: publicly available rights management database for e-book collections
#7: make porting library content to course management systems a #1 priority
#8: don't forget the importance of books!
#9: datasets: we need to recruit or reassing an existing staff member to work with datasets
#10: get publishers to sponsor scholarly brain tunes

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 in Practice

With all the talk about open access these days, it may not be obvious that the role of the advocate is the tip of the iceberg. The real size and strength of the open access movement is best measured by the very great many people whose work focuses on implementing open access, not talking about it!

In a recent presentation at the Charleston 2006 Conference, Open Access in Practice, several of us talked about what we are doing to implement open access.

George Machovec of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) talked about open access linking and listing for CARL members, who share access to 80 open access title lists through Gold Rush. George is also Managing Editor of the for-profit Charleston Advisor, which practices an interesting twist on the author payment model for OA: some of the reviews from each Advisor are OA - and it is the author who is paid (an honorarium). Charleston Advisor also has a generous author copyright policy, which facilitates author self-archiving.

Heather Whitehead of the Colorado School of Mines described the process she and her colleagues employed in creating a specialized open access journal list, which is shared with the other CARL members through Gold Rush. The Colorado School of Mines list includes specialized titles not (yet?) in DOAJ. Audience members encouraged Heather to share her list with DOAJ! In turn, Heather encouraged audience members to think about creating and sharing other specialized lists. None of us can vet and select all of the open access resources by ourselves - but if we work together, who knows what we can accomplish?

As for me, it was my great pleasure to talk about how we librarians are sharing our own work through E-LIS: the Open Archive for Library and Information Science. As a voluntary collaboration of editors from all over the world, E-LIS is not only a model for sharing for librarians; in my opinion, it is a model for how we can work together in a global society. I talk about some of the benefits of E-LIS for searchers and for depositing authors.

We conclude with some notes about the reality of open access - the substantial, and growing resources, and what this means for librarians. Much of our work is exactly the same in the open access environment. We connect people with information - whether the information is purchased, or freely available. We build collections, through careful selection and preservation; again, it does not matter whether or not the resources are purchased.

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.

Physics: well on the way to full OA

Physics looks to be well on the way to a full open access publishing model for scholarly communications, backed by a consortium led by CERN. This is one of the more remarkable stories about open access today. Details and Peter Suber's comments are available 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.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: Domain Change

There has been a domain change to Charles' Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography - for details, see Digital Koans.

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 2006: the month of the mandate!

The November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter is online.

The story of the month: mandates! As Peter Suber puts it: We've never had a month like October 2006. Depending on how you count, more OA mandates came into being in October 2006 than in all previous months combined. I count six adopted mandates, two proposed mandates, two adopted near-mandates, and one adopted mandate limited to data. That comes to eleven actions in five countries (UK, Austria, Canada, the US, and China).

Wow!

Peter also begins to explore the phenomenon of the no-fee open access journal. An interesting finding of the Kaufmann-Wills report was that fewer of half of open access journals charge processing fees; in fact, OA journals are less likely to charge fees than subscription-based journals.

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.

Poised for change: Rick Johnson

The scientific paper and its historic container, the journal, are poised for change. The possibilities and demands of science together with new enabling technologies are just too compelling to resist ~

So says Richard Johnson, in Will Research Sharing Keep Pace with the Internet?. The Journal of Neuroscience 26(37):pp. 9349-9351, recently self-archived in E-LIS.

The world wide web has opened up potential for scholarly communications that go far beyond open access to the scholarly peer-reviewed journal article, an item born in the print era and bearing the limitations of print, even when transferred to the web. It is now possible for researchers to work together and share information in ways that go far beyond the limitations of print, such as publishing of data for re-use and ease with which people from different disciplines and different areas of the world can work together.

Rick talks about the gridlock that has slowed change in academic, a gridlock that flows from the prestige culture of the university. The movement by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) towards policy involving physical products of research and data, as well as open access to the peer-reviewed literature, is presented as a potential means of breaking the gridlock.

Rick Johnson was the founding Executive Director of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition, and currently SPARC Senior Advisor, is one of the pioneers of Creating Change in scholarly communications, and well as one of the early leaders of the open access movement, one of the participants in the meeting that led to the Budapest Open Access Initiative , a defining moment in open access history.

This article is only one of the articles Rick has recently self-archived in E-LIS. Thank you for your leadership - now, and for all these years, Rick. And thank you for sharing your work through E-LIS.
_____________________________________________________

If you, too, are poised for change, please consider joining the SPARC Open Data Discussion List, with moderator Peter Murray-Rust.


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

Open Access Update

Charles Bailey has updated Open Access Update - a great way to search many open access resources.

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 OA Information Literacy Journal: Call for Papers

Communications in Information Literacy, a forthcoming new open access journal, has just issued a Call for Papers.

Thanks to Laurie the Librarian.

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.

ProQuest offers OA option for theses

ProQuest now offers an open access option for publishing theses - a little more expensive than their traditional thesis publishing services, but at $150 total, including traditional fees and an addition $95 for open access, for a doctoral thesis, for publishing and ongoing preservation, this does seem pretty reasonable.

Note: this is not an error. The price listed on the ProQuest web site is $150, one hundred and fifty dollars - total publishing cost, including open access, for a doctoral thesis...


Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.

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.

LISZen

LISZen is a search tool using google custom search to search over 500 LIS-related blogs - including OA Librarian!

Thanks to 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.

E-LIS Introduces Usage Statistics for Authors

* Apologies for cross-posting *

We are glad to announce that a new Statistics module has been implemented in E-LIS, E-prints in Library and Information Science. The purpose of the statistics is to promote E-LIS repository and authors self-archiving as well, by demonstrating the accessibility and usage of deposited documents by access and downloads .

Usage statistics (abstracts, downloads) are now available by the following elements:

• Most viewed eprints in the last four weeks
• Most viewed eprints in this year
• Most viewed eprints in the last year
• Most viewed eprints in all years
• Repository-wide statistics by year/month
• Repository-wide statistics by country

You can see the implementation of the Statistics at http://eprints.rclis.org/. The use of statistics is basic for the development of Open Acess Model and for the achievement of our first objective: to promote self-archiving among researchers.

Some examples of statistics results are the following:
• Prosser, David C. ( 2003) Scholarly communication in the 21st century : the impact of new technologies and models. Serials : the journal for the serials community 16(2):pp. 163-167 .
• Suber, Peter (2006) Open Access in the United States, in Jacobs, Neil, Eds. Open Access : Key strategic, technical and economic aspects. Chandos Publishing .
• Estivill Rius, Assumpció and Abadal Falgueras, Ernest and Franganillo, Jorge and Gascón García, Jesús and Rodríguez i Gairín, Josep Manuel (2005) Uso de metadatos Dublin Core en la descripción y recuperación de artículos de revista digitales = Use of Dublin Core metadata for describing and retrieving digital journals . In Proceedings DC-2005 International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Madrid (Spain).
• Parmar, Arvind Singh and Kumar, Sanghmitra A. and Prakash, Thushara (2004) Bibliometric analysis of information seeking behaviour related literature

We encourage other repositories to implement statistics for each archived document. E-LIS uses EPrints Software module, but also DSpace has developed an Add-On for Statistics.

Some comments to the use of the statistics in E-LIS are the following:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

"All authors crave impact - we hope that what we write will affect readers and will make a difference. However, often it is difficult to tell if our work has even been read. Now we have a clue. The newly implemented download statistics in E-LIS tell me fascinating stories about the usage of my work - papers that I thought 'old news' are still being downloaded, the geographical distribution of readers is greater than I would have guessed. This is a wonderful tool for both authors and readers and shows, once again, the power of self-archiving. Now all I need to know is what the readers thought of my work!"
David Prosser
SPARC Europe

"Having statistics for each article posted in E-LIS can be a valuable tool for the study of the development of the intellectual production in librarianship and information science. This and the use of bibliometric techniques would help us assess library development around the world…"
Julio Santillan Aldana
Responsible of the open access journal Biblios
E-LIS Editor for Peru

"The Eprint Statistics feature is an impressive new addition to E-LIS. It presents clear and immediate data on use of documents in the repository, something every author wants to see. I've found myself checking the statistics on my documents regularly and have also discovered that it's a very effective recruitment feature for E-LIS; colleagues who have never deposited in E-LIS have done so very soon after seeing the Eprints Statistics function in action".
Andrew Waller
Author and E-LIS Editor for Canada

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

For any information about the implementation do not hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,

E-LIS Team

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 vs. IRs

Which gets mentioned more on web pages? To find out, go to GoogleDuel here.

Higher Education and Library Leader Voice Support for FRPAA

Announcement from SPARC - with thanks to Peter Suber, Open Access News:

Washington, DC - In remarks at a forum on "Improving Access to Publicly Funded Research," leaders of major higher education and library organizations voiced their support for the goals of recent measures to expand public access to research funded by the US Government. The forum was co-sponsored by Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

"I fully support the aims and the specifics of the Cornyn/Lieberman Federal Research Public Access Act [FRPAA]," said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs of NASULGC. Introduced last May, FRPAA (S.2695) would require all US federal agencies that fund over $100 million on external research to ensure the resulting peer-reviewed research articles are available free on the Internet within six months of publication. "Scholars and the public are on the right side of this matter. Cornyn/Lieberman should become law."

Shulenburger rejected claims by some publishers that open access to research articles after a six-month embargo, called for by FRPAA, will undermine journals and the peer review they orchestrate. "We now have significant experience with journals that voluntarily have permitted articles they published to be made available for free after delay periods ranging from zero delay to one year's and that evidence is not consistent with an apocalyptic collapse of the subscriber base." He added, "These journals would not have taken that step voluntarily had they been overly concerned about catastrophic loss of subscribers."

John Vaughn, Executive Vice President of AAU, reiterated his organization's support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy that makes the results of NIH-funded research freely available. He said he prefers non-legislative means of improving access to federal research, such as NIH is pursuing, but noted that the prospect of a legislative solution has motivated positive movement by publishers that otherwise might not have been forthcoming.

Commenting on the growing numbers of university administrators who have spoken out recently in support of public access legislation, SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph noted that they consider public access "mission critical" to advancing the goals of higher education institutions.

ARL Executive Director Duane Webster said, "The research library community vigorously advocates passage of FRPAA. This legislation is an essential step toward broadening access to widely needed information resources."

Librarians from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California (UC) highlighted local efforts to aid faculty in retaining rights to deposit their works in open online archives. UC is contemplating a system-wide policy that would routinely grant to the university "a limited, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license to place in a non-commercial open-access online repository the faculty member's scholarly work published in a scholarly journal or conference proceedings." MIT has developed an addendum that authors of journal articles can use to amend journal publishers' copyright transfer agreements and secure open-archiving rights.

Commenting on the issue of rights management, CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch said "universities need to take seriously the asymmetrical nature of negotiations" when faculty members face publishers on copyright transfer agreements. "Universities will do well to follow the lead of MIT and UC and provide institutional support for faculty negotiations. If universities negotiate on behalf of faculty this also helps publishers ultimately by reducing the number of special agreements and thus benefits the entire scholarly publishing system in the end."

Papers and slides from speakers at the forum are available at http://www.arl.org/forum06/.

###

Additional links:
Forum remarks by David Shulenburger: http://www.arl.org/forum06/shulenburger.pdf
Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA): http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.2695:
List of higher education supporters of FRPAA: http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/institutions.html
AAU Statement on the NIH Public Access Proposal: http://www.aau.edu/issues/NIHPubAccProp.pdf
NIH Public Access Policy: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

ARL
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is located on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and SPARC Europe are an international alliance of academic and research libraries and organizations working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. SPARC's advocacy, educational, and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

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.

Cool new search tool for OA News!

Open Access News now features a cool new search tool! This works much better than the previous search tool.

Try it out, from the right-hand side of Open Access News. To find the URL for some of Peter's Newsletter features, try a search for newsletter and the topic. For example, "newsletter quality" brings up Peter's feature in the October Newsletter at the very top; "newsletter funding agencies" brings up Peter's feature from August listing the 10 key things to consider when examining funding agency policies.

This is useful for much more than Peter's own works, of course - it works pretty well for a search tool for my blogposts about open access, too - I can use this search to find all of Peter's reference to my Dramatic Growth of Open Access series!

Try a search for "OA Librarian" - not all the references are to our blog here...but they're all pretty interesting!

Peter built this tool using Google Custom Search; for details, see Open Access News.

Thanks Peter - this will help us all get more organized!

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.

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Call for Papers

First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Call for Papers

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 provide opportunities for those involved in the organization, promotion, and study of scholarly communication to share and discuss innovative work in scholarly publishing, with a focus on the contribution that open source publishing technologies (such as, but not restricted to, PKP's OJS, OCS, and OA Harvester) can make to improving access to research and scholarship on a global and public scale

The conference will appeal to all segments of the PKP community: software developers and technical support specialists; journal publishers, editors, and staff; librarians; and researchers in scholarly publishing. As well, prospective and first time users of OJS and other PKP software will be able to learn more about the systems and establish contacts with the PKP community. Experienced implementers and developers will have an opportunity to participate in technical sessions and exchange information. All attendees will be able to attend a range of topical sessions on trends in scholarly communication and publishing, open access initiatives, open source software, academic and library communities, and future plans for OJS, OCS, and the Open Archives Harvester.

The conference will commence with an opening keynote session on the evening of July 11 with John Willinsky, the founder of the Public Knowledge Project and creator of the OJS software. There will be several pre-conference workshops on July 11, and the main conference program will present a combination of concurrent and single track sessions concluding at noon on July 13.

The Call for Papers and link to online submission form can be found at:
http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/callforpapers.php

For more details about the conference, see the PKP Conference web site at:
http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/

best,
Heather G. Morrison
PKP Conference - Communications
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phone: 604-268-7001
Fax: 604-291-3023
Email: heather dot eln dot bc dot ca
Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca

Helping authors keep their rights!

Authors do not have to sign over copyright to publish. The only copyright that publishers need - is permission to publish!

The Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition (SPARC) has made available an Author's Addendum, to be attached to any author copyright transfer form, clarifying that the author is retaining their rights, for example for self-archiving purposes.

The Author's Addendum, and related resources such as the Author's Rights brochures, can be found on the SPARC Author's Rights 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.

Persian OA / E-LIS blog

Alireza Noruzi, Iranian E-LIS Editor, has created a blog in Persian called E-LIS: Open Access Archive for LIS, which is designed to promote E-LIS and open access in general. Thanks, Alireza!

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.