FRPAA introduced in the US House of Representatives (May 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter)

Peter Suber just released the May 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month is concise analysis of the introduction of FRPAA and what you can do to help.

Who will preserve open access news?

Peter Suber just posted the last post to Open Access News. Closure of the blog is partly for technical reasons (the choice was either to close or migrate), and partly because the real news nowadays is posted at the Open Access Tracking Project.

Open Access News will remain as it is and where it is, for now, thanks to Google. But what about the long term? Shouldn't someone be preserving this monumental resource, and, my fellow librarians, shouldn't this someone be one of us?

Many thanks to Peter Suber and to sponsors Open Society Institute, SPARC, and the Wellcome Trust.

Open Access Week declared for October 18 - 24, 2010

David Wiley's letter of support for FRPAA

David Wiley has posted his own letter of support to his representative for FRPAA. An excellent example if people are looking for ideas on how to participate effectively.

Campus open access publishing funds: SPARC resources and webcast

SPARC has issued a set of resources on Campus Open Access Publishing Funds, and is hosting a free webinar on May 5th with SPARC Consultant Greg Tannenbaum. Note that OA Library Andrew Waller is among the experts listed!

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine tutorial on blip TV

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) tutorial now available on blip TV, thanks to OA Librarian Richard Baer.

Congress takes another stride toward public access to research -- Federal Research Public Access Act introduced in the House of Representatives

ALLIANCE FOR TAXPAYER ACCESS
www.taxpayeraccess.org

For immediate release
April 15, 2010

For more information, contact
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org

Congress takes another stride toward public access to research
Federal Research Public Access Act introduced in the House of Representatives

Washington, DC – Fueling the growing momentum toward openness, transparency, and accessibility to publicly funded information, the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2010 (FRPAA) has been introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and a bi-partisan host of co-sponsors. The proposed bill would build on the success of the first U.S. mandate for public access to the published results of publicly funded research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

“Free and open access to scientific literature and data are the underpinnings of discovery in the digital age,” said Stephen Friend MD PhD, President and Co-Founder of Sage Bionetworks. “Full collaboration among researchers is essential, and we have the power now to communicate, collaborate, and innovate in ways that were previously unimaginable. I applaud the sponsors of the Federal Research Public Access Act for their commitment to ensuring the kind of access scientists need to make progress on improved disease treatments and diagnostics in the digital world.”

Like the Senate bill introduced in 2009 by Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX), H.R. 5037 would unlock unclassified research funded by agencies including: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

H.R. 5037 follows closely on the heels of a recent expression of interest in public access policies from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which issued a request for public comment on mechanisms that would leverage federal investments in scientific research and increase access to information that promises to stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness.

“This bill recognizes the urgent need – and opportunity – to use digital technology to increase the pace of innovation,” added Elliot Schwartz, Vice President for Economic Studies at the Committee for Economic Development. “The bill is a crucial, welcome move toward advancing research through openness and avoiding making the taxpayer pay twice for taxpayer-funded research… it is good public policy.”
The introduction of H.R. 5037 was also welcomed by leaders in the higher education community, who recognize this legislation helps to ensure the United States is positioned to continue to fuel education and innovation.

"Conducting critical research that enriches and improves lives has always been a key mission of universities in this country, including Ohio State," said E. Gordon Gee, president of The Ohio State University. "Disseminating the knowledge gained from that research is an equally important part of our institutions' public purpose. The Federal Research Public Access Act will further spread new knowledge, and it has my full support."

“Advancing research is at the core of the mission of higher education, and broadening access to the scholarly record is a critical step in helping research to advance to its fullest potential,” added Karen Hanson, Provost and Executive Vice President, Indiana University. “The current system for exchanging the results of research is deeply flawed, and major changes – like this bill – are required. I welcome the introduction of the Federal Research Public Access Act.”

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access thanks and congratulates Representative Doyle and all of the bill’s co-sponsors for championing this pivotal legislation, and calls on organizations and individuals to write in support of the bill through the Web site at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

For more information about the Federal Research Public Access Act and the broad coalition that supports its passage, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

###

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

WorldCat rights and responsibilities for the OCLC cooperative

OCLC has released the next draft of their WorldCat rights and responsibilities for the OCLC cooperative.

My comments can be found on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. In brief, my suggestion is that the OCLC Record Use Policy Council should scrap this draft, and begin fresh with a vision of how library bibliographic records should be shared for a world with an internet as free and open as it can be. Library catalogue records should be freely accessible and part of a robust and growing public domain. OCLC should refrain from using OCLC or WorldCat branding on records which are, if anything, someone else's creative work. If anyone should sign a catalogue record, it should be the cataloguer - not OCLC.

Please read the draft policy and contribute your own comments.

Open Access Week: join!

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) 2nd annual conference: registration now open

OA journals and TOC RSS feeds

Here's an interesting blog post from the other day, dealing with OA journals and table of contents feeds:

http://tinyurl.com/yahf7ra

April 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the April 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlighted this month: a brief poetic thought for spring on the winter coat and OA; results of Peter's quest for a verb to describe making something OA; and the monthly roundup.

In the interests of intellectual freedom

According to Stevan Harnad, his comments posted to Phil Davis' blog have not appeared. While blog owners have every right to moderate comments (or not allow comments, as is the policy at OA Librarian), in this case Harnad is an academic expert, a Canada Research Chair, attempting to quite appropriately respond to Phil Davis' critique of his work. If commenting is permitted, Harnad's comments should be commented IN, not out. The primary purpose of this post is to assist with intellectual freedom, a topic that Phil Davis should be familiar with as a librarian.

For the record, while my expertise is not at Harnad's level on this topic, I have read Davis' 2008 study and Alma Swan's synopsis, and I concur with Harnad. I also have posted comments to Phil Davis' blog, on topics on which I have considerable expertise, and they have not appeared.

Harnad's comments, from liblicense:

Phil,

Thanks for the helpful feedback.

I'm afraid you're mistaken about meta-analysis. It can be a
perfectly appropriate statistical technique for analyzing a large
number of studies, with positive and negative outcomes, varying
in methodological rigor, sample size and effect size. It is a way
of estimating whether or not there is a significant underlying
effect.

I think you may be inadvertently mixing up the criteria for (1)
eligibility and comparability for a meta-analysis with the
criteria for (2) a clinical drug trial (for which there rightly
tends to be an insistence on randomized control trials in
biomedical research).

Now I would again like to take the opportunity of receiving this
helpful feedback from you to remind you about some feedback I
have given you repeatedly http://bit.ly/dkieVi on your own 2008
study -- the randomized control trial that you suggest has been
the only methodologically sound test of the OA Advantage so far:

You forgot to do a self-selection control condition. That would
be rather like doing a randomized control trial on a drug - to
show that the nonrandom control trials that have reported a
positive benefit for that drug were really just self-selection
artifacts -- but neglecting to include a replication of the
self-selection artifact in your own sample, as a control.

For, you see, if your own sample was too small and/or too brief
(e.g., you didn't administer the drug for as long an interval, or
to as many patients, as the nonrandom studies reporting the
positive effects had done), then your own null effect with a
randomized trial would be just that: a null effect, not a
demonstration that randomizing eliminates the nonrandomized drug
effect. (This is the kind of methodological weakness, for
example, that multiple studies can be weighted for, in a
meta-analysis of positive, negative and null effects.)

[I am responding to your public feedback here, on the liblicense
and SERIALST lists, but not also on your SSP Blog, where you
likewise publicly posted this same feedback (along with other,
rather shriller remarks) http://j.mp/d91Jk2 because I am assuming
that you will again decline to post my response on your blog, as
you did the previous time that you publicly posted your feedback
on my work both there http://bit.ly/8LK57u and elsewhere -
refusing my response on your blog on the grounds that it had
already been publicly posted elsewhere!...]

- Stevan Harnad

PS The idea of doing a meta-analysis came from me, not from Dr.
Swan.

U.S. action alert: quick web vote for public access comments

New SPARC release: Guide to exloring campus-based OA funds

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has released a website that is designed to act as a guide for those institutions who wish to explore campus-based OA funds. The site can be found at http://www.arl.org/sparc/openaccess/funds/index.shtml and includes a guide to design and implementation of OA funds, a FAQ, implementation tools, case studies, and a "living" document that describes OA funds in action.

Disclosure: I manage one of the funds that is discussed in the guide (the Open Access Authors Fund at the Univeristy of Calgary) and my input was solicited for this project.

March SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the March 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: Open Access, Markets and Mission.

OpenAIRE Press Release

European Countries join forces to realize the EC Open Access pilot: OpenAIRE

OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe), a three-years project funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, has now taken up its work to implement Open Access on a pan-European scale. This ambitious effort unites 38 partners from 27 European countries.

The main goal of OpenAIRE is to support the Open Access pilot, launched by the European Commission in August 2008. This Open Access pilot, which covers about 20% of the FP7 budget, commits researchers from 7 thematic areas (Health, Energy, Environment, Information & Communication Technology, Research Infrastructures, Socio-economic sciences & Humanities and Science in Society) to deposit their research publications in an institutional or disciplinary Open Access repository, to be made available worldwide in full text. OpenAIRE will establish underlying structures for researchers to support them in complying with the pilot through European Helpdesk System, build an OpenAIRE portal and e-Infrastructure for the repository networks and explore scientific data management services together with 5 disciplinary communities.

“The implementation of a Europe wide infrastructure for Open Access is a milestone for the success of Open Access,” says Dr. Norbert Lossau, Scientific Coordinator of OpenAIRE and Director of Göttingen State and University Library, Germany. “The project consortium will work closely together with the European Commission, the ERC and many other stakeholders (such as SPARC Europe, LIBER, EUA) to achieve the broadest possible impact.”

The project consortium incorporates the best available expertise for Open Access & repository infrastructures in Europe and will establish a distributed support structure based on a network of liaison offices covering all European Union member states plus Norway. Consortium partners have been identified in each country, or in the case of Luxembourg, have pledged their support for the development and implementation of strategies and services for Open Access, that have gained acceptance in the international community since 2003, the launch of the Berlin Declaration.

[thanks to Peter Suber at the Open Access Tracking Project]

New Open Access Fund at SFU Library

Excerpt:

At its January 2010 meeting, the Senate Library Committee adopted sweeping recommendations that will make SFU one of only three Canadian universities to embrace Open Access (OA) publishing. “We’re going to put our money where our mouth is,” says Bird. OA Journals are scholarly peer-reviewed journals freely available on the web without subscription fees, but they are often supported through Article Processing Charges (APCs) levied to authors. Fees range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per accepted paper. Prominent examples are BioMed Central, Public Library of Science, and Hindawi.

(Thanks to Gwen Bird).

Note also that there is a link to the full SFU OA Strategy document at the bottom of this page.

Kudos to Gwen Bird & SFU Library!

Global Knowledge Exchange Network launched

The Global Knowledge Exchange Network has just launched - here is a description, from the About page:

The Global Knowledge Exchange Network (GKEN) is a community for scholars and practitioners to share and explore new ideas and emerging trends related to scholarly research or everyday practice. More specifically, the community is devoted to understanding the changing role of information –its creation, management, dissemination and use– in scholarly research, higher education and business practice.

The project is sponsored jointly by the Harvard Business School Knowledge and Library Services and the Copenhagen Business School Library. The GKEN Founding Team includes Mary Lee Kennedy and Gosia Stergios (Harvard Business School), and René Steffensen and Leif Hansen (Copenhagen Business School).

Science Commons Symposium: February 20, Redmond Washington

Lineup looks very interesting!

SPARC webcast: Library-press partnerships

Library-press partnerships in action: The new University of California Publishing Services
A SPARC Webcast
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
1:00 – 2:00PM EST

Free, but registration required.

ARL ACRL Scholarly Communication Institute Webinar Series

Registration is now open for Strengthening Programs through Collaboration, the ARL ACRL Scholarly Communication Institute Webinar Series.

[Disclosure: Julie Garrison & I are co-coordinators of this series, and fellow OA Librarian Andrew Waller is among the confirmed speakers].

February 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the February 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: analogies between the politics of open access and the politics of clean energy.

Mark your calendars: Open Access Week October 18-24, 2010

Harvard response to OSTP consultation on open access

Well said!!!

University of Calgary Students' Union passes resolution to support OA

On November 23, 2009, the Students' Academic Assembly (SAA) at the University of Calgary passed a resolution supporting Open Access. Here is the text of the resolution:

WHEREAS Open Access is defined as free, unrestricted access to high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship over the Internet[1],

WHEREAS the SU recognizes that the development of scholarly research is funded by the public through government grants and student tuition,

WHEREAS the SU believes that Open Access improves the educational experience for students,

WHEREAS the SU believes that all students should have access to full scholarly records as they are pursuing their education regardless of an institution’s ability to afford scholarly research subscriptions,

WHEREAS the SU believes open access allows for researchers to maximize the impact of their research through increased visibility in a timely manner,

WHEREAS the SU supports and is encouraged by the initiatives and funding the University of Calgary Library and Cultural Resources have dedicated to Open Access[2],

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the SU calls upon each University of Calgary faculty and researcher to support Open Access initiatives, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the SU continue to advocate for Open Access in all of its advocacy initiatives[3]

Moved: M. Martin
Seconded: D. Pagan

[1] “Student Statement on the Right to Research,” Available: www.righttoresearch.org
Accessed: November 18, 2009.
[2] Initiatives as of October 2009 have included the $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund, being an active partner in the national Synergies project that stores and provides open access to research in Canada, the organization of Open Access Week and expanding the University of Calgary Press to include open access publishing, e-books and print on demand.
[3] Examples would include advocacy at the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (CASA), Council of Alberta University Students (CAUS), Canadian Roundtable of Academic Materials (CRAM) and SPARC.

This resolution came in part out of the OA Week activities at the University of Calgary, in which the University of Calgary Students' Union (SU) was very active. This policy is now an official lobbying priority for the SU.

The SAA also endorsed SPARC's Student Statement on the Right to Research.

Thanks to Meg Martin for all the information.


Disclosure: I work in Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary.

Public comments on OSTP consultation due Jan. 21

From Open Access News last Friday:

The public comment period on the Obama administration's consultation on OA for federally-funded research expires this Wednesday.  The original deadline was January 7, but was extended until January 21.

If you haven't already submitted a comment, use your weekend to write one and send it off no later than Wednesday.  You can submit your comment by email or through the OSTP blog. 

All signs suggest that the Obama administration is willing to generalize the NIH policy in some form and extend it across the federal government.  Show your support for this move!  You know that opponents are showing their opposition. 

And please spread the word to others who might write comments. 

January 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, or 2009 - Open Access Year Worldwide?

Peter Suber just released the January 2010 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Featured this month: Open Access in 2009: "2009 was Open Access Year in the Netherlands, but it might have been Open Access Year worldwide..."

Laura Brigg's OA Concept Map

Cool OA concept map. Thanks, Laura!

Version 77, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

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

E-LIS: Over 10,000 documents

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

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

December 11, 2009 Dramatic Growth of Open Access

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

U.S. OA Action Alert

From Peter Suber on Open Access News:


The Obama administration wants OA for federally-funded research

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments (by Peter Suber)

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

University of Ottawa

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

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

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

December 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

OA Librarian Kumiko Vezina featured in Concordia Journal

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

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

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

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

Peter Suber's Knowledge as a Public Good

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

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

Austrian Science Fund: more good news for OA funding

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

October 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: September 30, 2009

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

Abstract

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

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

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

For links to COPE, see Andrew's post.

Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE)

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

More details can be found here:

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

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

PLoS One wins ALPSP award for publishing innovation!

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

Free webcast of OASPA conference

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

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

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

Caroline Sutton, PhD
Publisher Co-Action Publishing

Workshops on creating open access journals

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

Please join me for ALCTS Webinar September 23rd

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

Description

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

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

Kudos to Harvard and for FRPAA support letter and DASH!

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

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

What an impressive and inspiring start to the semester!

September 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

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

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

Comments for OA Librarian closed

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

SPARC CALLS ON CAMPUSES TO COORDINATE OPEN-ACCESS POLICY EFFORTS

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

August 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

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

ARL SPEC Kit on Authors' Addenda

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

Hat tip to the Open Access Tracking Project.

July 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

PKP 2009 Conference: Full Program now available

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

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

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

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

E-LIS Team wins OAI6 Poster Prize!

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

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

June 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

PKP Conference 2009 - Early Bird Registration Ends June 8

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

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

Our prestigious international speakers include:

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

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

Additional conference highlights include:

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

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

We very much hope to see you in July!

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

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

Library faculties now in the lead in departmental OA mandates!

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

Why not teach students to use OA resources?

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

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

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

Hat tip to Open Access News.

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

Excerpt:

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

May 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

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

ACRL new website (Scholarly Communications section)

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

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

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

E-LIS now has over 9,000 documents

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

This is also the 500th post on OA Librarian.

Clear up OA MIsunderstandings with April SPARC Open Access Newsletter

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

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: March 31, 2009

** with apologies for cross-posting **

I just posted the Dramatic Growth of Open Access for March 31, 2009

Synopsis:

This quarter, the growth of open access has been dramatic in open access journals, open access archives, and, perhaps most noteworthy, open access policies. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is on the verge of an important milestone - 4,000 fully open access, peer-reviewed journals, double the number of the largest commercial publisher. DOAJ is growing at the rate of 2 titles per day. OpenDOAR lists 1,373 repositories, an increase of about 70 this quarter. Scientific Commons now encompasses 26 million items, an increase of 2 million. 663 journals are now voluntarily participating in PubMedCentral, an increase of 119 (22%) this quarter. 447 journals provide immediate free access through PubMedCentral, an increase of 29 (7%) this quarter. There are 11 more open access policies, for a total of 72 policies worldwide, and 4 more proposed policies, for a total of 14 proposed policies. One decrease is noted - not in open access per se, but rather subscription journals providing free back issues: Highwire Press seems to have 212,000 fewer free articles, a decrease of 10%. This is a bit puzzling, as Highwire has added 1 more completely free site, and there is an increase of 11 sites providing free back access. Any background on what is happening here would be most appreciated.

For details and links, go to:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/03/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-march-31.html

YouTube.EDU

New YouTube Channel, just for higher ed videos! Thanks, You Tube - Chronicle of Higher Education - and Open Access News.

Richard Poynder Interviews Helene Bosc!

Richard Poynder has just published an interview with early open access pioneer (and librarian) Hélène Bosc.

U.S. OA Librarians: ATA Legislative Action: Oppose Conyers Bill

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has created a Legislative Action Centre that makes it easy to oppose the Conyers bill with just a few clicks!

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Preliminary Program Available

PKP Conference Program Available

The Public Knowlege Project is pleased to announce the preliminary program for the Second International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference, to be held in Vancouver from July 8 - 10, 2009:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/

Highlights include:

- An opening keynote address by PKP founder and principal investigator, Dr. John Willinsky

- Pre-conference Workshops on various PKP software applications and communities:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/workshops

- A post-conference Workshop on creating open access journals led by Dr. David Solomon and Dr. Caroline Sutton:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/workshops#coaj

- A day-long series of sessions from the Open Humanities Press on monograph publishing:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/paper/view/184

- A wide range of sessions for editors, libraries, and developers, from speakers from around the world:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/presentations

Spaces are limited for the workshops and the conference, so please register early to avoid missing out on what promises to be a fascinating conference:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/registration

I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!

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

April Issue of Learned Publishing online, with some open access

The April issue of Learned Publishing is now online. Kudos to Editor-in-Chief Sally Morris and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) for going as far with open access as they think they can - some content is provided free by ALPSP, other content through author choice. All content is freely available after one year. Learned Publishing was the early leader in developing an author-friendly license to publish that is still a good model.

Make all academic research databases free for everyone

A call for open access from outside of academe! Article by Chris Bowers, Open Left.

Thanks to Gilbert Bede.

OA Librarian Movers & Shakers - Library Journal 2009

Library Journal's latest Movers and Shakers includes OA Librarian's own Dean Giustini and noted OA librarian Dorothea Salo. Congrats, Dean & Dorothea!

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Open Access Week: October 12 - 23, 2009

Mark your calendars and start your planning for Open Access Week 2009!

March 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the March 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The focus is on the re-introduction of the Conyers bill, an attempt to reverse the NIH Public Access Policy by changing US copyright law. Essential reading and urgent action item for US OA librarians.

U.S.: Open Access / Copyright Urgent Call to Action

CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 – The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

February 11, 2009

Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.111hr801).

All supporters of public access – researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others – are asked to please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. As always, it’s important to let us know what action you’re able to take, via http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/log.html.

H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:

1. Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.

2. Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.

3. Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.

4. Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.

5. Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.

Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.

All supporters of public access -- researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others -- are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place.

Thank you for your support and continued persistence in supporting this policy. You know the difference constituent voices can make on Capitol Hill.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Heather or myself anytime.

All best,

Jennifer

--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org

Open Access Timeline Moves to Open Access Directory

You know there is a lot going on in open access, when not even Peter Suber can keep up! Peter just moved his Open Access Timeline to the Open Access Directory. Now, OA community, it is up to us to keep this up to date!

Open access policy options for funding agencies and universities

Peter Suber's Open Access policy options for funding agencies and universities, February 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, is highly recommended as a resource for anyone working on OA policy development.

If you are working on OA policy, as always I am happy to review draft documents and make suggestions for approaches to policy (no charge!) - please drop me a line at heatherm dot eln dot bc dot ca or hgmorris at gmail dot com

Sebastian Boell creates Master List of LIS journals, finds that 16% are open access

Sebastian Boell has self-archived a thesis in E-LIS, producing a Master List of LIS journals and his finding that 16% are open access.

Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

STM on institutional repositories

The Society of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers has openly released a document for publishing executives on institutional repositories. While this document clearly shows continuing resistance to public access through institutional repositories, and a fair bit of confusion, there are some positives here as well. One example is STM's open recognition of the value of the IR for public access, the feature of the first paragraph. To me, this is a bit of a milestone, not unlike when publishers first began to acknowledge the value of OA as a philosophical ideal. The open posting of the document, too, is a step forward. Let's hope that this is an initial sign that we're moving past some of the debate, towards a most welcome discussion of the issues.

My detailed comments are on IJPE. See also comments by Peter Suber and Stevan Harnad.

OA Librarian is hot!

I picked this up from my colleague Paul Pival's blog The Distant Librarian. Thanks, Paul.

According to the HotStuff 2.0 blog, OA Librarian is presently ranked #9 out of 442 active library-related blogs, a rise of 21 places from #30. I'd say that's a pretty good spot to be in! (The Distant Librarian is in the neighborhood as well, at a definitely not-too-shabby 45).

Here's the background to HotStuff 2.o and the rankings:

"RSS feeds from over 800 library related blogs are collated on a daily basis and analysed in an attempt to discover new and/or interesting topics. Not all of the blogs have posted something new since HotStuff was launched, so the number of active blogs is lower."

"Just for fun, every day the last 3 blog posts from each blog are analysed to give a “Hot or Not” score. Points are gained for using words that haven’t been used frequently in the past, but lost for using words that are declining in popularity. You can see the current scores on the Hot or Not page!"

ELPUB 2009 - Final Call for Papers - NEW DEADLINE January 29, 2009

ELPUB 2009 - Final Call for Papers - NEW DEADLINE January 29, 2009

*** apologies for cross-posting ***

Due to numerous requests for a postponement, and compatible with the review process and the publication time, the deadline for abstracts submission has been extended to January 29: NEW DATE!

ELPUB 2009 - Final Call for Papers - NEW DEADLINE January 29, 2009 (abstract submission)
Rethinking Electronic Publishing : Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies
13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

10 - 12 June 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.elpub.net
elpub2009@elpub.net

Electronic publishing via the Internet is continuously changing its shapes and models, challenging traditional players to adapt to new contexts. Innovative technologies enable individuals, scholars, communities and networks to establish contacts, exchange data, produce information, share knowledge. Open access sources and commercial players make contents available for a heterogeneous audience in a diversity of environments. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models, technologies, methods and concepts.

See website for detailed author instructions: http://www.elpub.net. All submissions are subject to peer review (double-blind) and accepted by the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Printed proceedings are distributed during the conference. Electronic versions of the contributions will be archived at: http://elpub.scix.net and indexed by the major indexing agents.

Join the "ELPUB Electronic Publishing Conference" group on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3D36376184362

ELPUB 2009 and OAI 6 are just 3 days in time and 400 km in space (4 hours by train, 50 minutes by plane) away from each other: take this unique chance to participate in both, enjoying two exciting scientific events in electronic publishing and scholarly communication and visiting Italy and Switzerland.
--
ELPUB 2009, www.elpub.net
General Chair: Susanna Mornati, CILEA, Italy
Programme Chair: Turid Hedlund, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
mailto: elpub2009@elpub.net

ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit updated

NEWS

For Immediate Release

January 13, 2009

New look, updated content for ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit

CHICAGO – The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has released an updated version of its popular Scholarly Communication Toolkit in a new format and with updated content. The toolkit continues to provide context and background by summarizing key issues to offer quick, basic information on scholarly communication topics. It also links to examples of specific tools, including handouts, presentations and videos for libraries to adapt and use on their own campuses. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit is freely available at http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/.


“Library services involve education of the next generation, infrastructure for long term knowledge access and advocacy for rights and practices that lead to a sustainable system of scholarly peer-review, its distribution and preservation," explains Kim Douglas, university librarian at California Institute of Technology and co-chair of ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Committee. “The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit supports library staff seeking to align their programs with an essential byproduct of their parent institutions – the creation, protection, dissemination and archiving of new knowledge.”


“Given the current economic climate, it's natural to ask if scholarly communication activities are a luxury or a distraction,” said Richard Fyffe, librarian of the college for Grinnell College and co-chair of ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Committee. “We define scholarly communications issues as central to the mission of virtually every kind of academic library because they are central to the mission of our institutions. We feel libraries need to maintain a commitment to awareness, understanding, ownership and activism.”

The updated toolkit serves as a resource for scholarly communication discussions inside the library, outreach programs to faculty and administrators and library school students seeking to incorporate these issues into their course work. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee, as part of its efforts to keep the toolkit current, encourages librarians to contribute tools and case studies on their local scholarly communication campaigns. Simply post a comment describing your tool and provide a link in the appropriate tab.

The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit is available online at http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/.

Thanks to Adrian Ho.

Second International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference: Deadline for Call for Papers Extended

The final deadline for the call for papers for the 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference (Vancouver, July 8 - 10, 2009) has been extended to February 9, 2009.

Quick links:

PKP 2009 Conference website:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009

Call for papers:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/cfp

About the conference:

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 - 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will appeal not just to members of the PKP community, but to anyone interested in trends and developments for scholarly publishing and communication. There will be a wide range of topical sessions on new reading and publishing technologies; open access initiatives; alternative publishing and funding models; national and international collaborative projects; new roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers and others; and sustainability for open access publishing and open source software. 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, developers, and system administrators will have an opportunity to participate in technical sessions and exchange information.

The conference will commence with an opening keynote session on the evening of July 8 convened by John Willinsky, the founder of the Public Knowledge Project. There will be several pre-conference workshops on July 8, and the main conference program will present a combination of concurrent and single track sessions during on July 9 and 10. The conference will conclude with three special symposia on community and network building intended for each of the core PKP constituents: journal editors and publishers; librarians; and software developers.

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 - 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.

Vote for the OA Proposal to the Obama Transition Team's Citizen's Briefing Book

The U.S. Open Access Working Group has posted an OA proposal to the Obama transition team's Citizen's Briefing Book. Please vote for the proposal! Details and links are available on Open Access News.

ELPUB 2009 - Final Call for Papers

ELPUB 2009 - Final Call for Papers
Rethinking Electronic Publishing : Innovation in Communication Paradigms
and Technologies
13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

10 - 12 June 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.elpub.net

Electronic publishing via the Internet is continuously changing its shapes
and models, challenging traditional players to adapt to new contexts.
Innovative technologies enable individuals, scholars, communities and
networks to establish contacts, exchange data, produce information, share
knowledge. Open access sources and commercial players make contents
available for a heterogeneous audience in diversity of environments, from
business to private life, from educational and cultural activities to
leisure time, and in a large variety of devices, from personal computers to
mobile media.

New opportunities and new needs challenge us to rethink electronic
publishing, to innovate communication paradigms and technologies, to make
information not just a flat equivalent of a paper but a truly digital
format, to allow machine processing and new services, to face the future of
mobile life. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in
e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models,
technologies, methods and concepts.

We welcome a wide variety of papers from members of the communities whose
research and experiments are transforming the nature of electronic
publishing and scholarly communications. Topics include but are not
restricted to:

- New publishing models, tools, services and roles
- New scholarly constructs and discourse methods
- Innovative business models for scholarly publishing
- Mobile distribution of e-contents, e-books
- M2M publishing services
- Multilingual and multimodal interfaces
- Services and technology for specific user communities, media, and content
- Content search, analysis and retrieval
- Interoperability, scalability and middleware infrastructure to facilitate
awareness and discovery
- Personalization technologies (e.g. social tagging, folksonomies, RSS)
- Semantic web, metadata, information granularity, digital objects
- Data mining, text harvesting, dynamic formatting
- Knowledge linking, discovery, presentation
- User generated contents
- Usage and citation impact
- Security, privacy and copyright issues
- Digital preservation, content authentication
- Recommendations, guidelines, interoperability standards

Author Guidelines
Contributions are invited for the following categories:
- Single paper (abstract minimum of 1,000 and maxximum of 1,500 words)
- Tutorial (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Workshop (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Poster (abstract max of 500 words)
- Demonstration (abstract max of 500 words)
See website for detailed author instructions: http://www.elpub.net.
Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and
present their work.

Key Dates:
November 15th 2008: Opening date for submission of abstracts.
January 15th 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts (in all
categories).
February 23rd, 2009: Notification of acceptance of submitted proposals.
April 6th, 2009: Deadline for submission of final papers.

All submissions are subject to peer review (double-blind) and accepted by
the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted full papers will be
published in the conference proceedings. Printed proceedings are
distributed during the conference. Electronic versions of the contributions
will be archived at: http://elpub.scix.net and indexed by the major
indexing agents.

ABOUT ELPUB
The ELPUB 2009 conference will keep the tradition of the previous
international conferences on electronic publishing, held in the United
Kingdom (in 1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999), Russia (2000),
the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil (2004), Belgium (2005),
Bulgaria (2006), Austria (2007) and Canada (2008), which is to bring
together researchers, lecturers, librarians, developers, business
executives, entrepreneurs, managers, users and all those interested in
issues regarding electronic publishing in a wide variety of contexts. These
include the human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal,
commercial, and other relevant aspects that such an exciting theme
encompasses.

Three distinguishing features of this conference are: broad scope of topics
which creates a unique atmosphere of active exchange and learning about
various aspects of scholarly communications and electronic publishing;
combination of general and technical issues; and a condensed procedure of
submission, revision and publication of proceedings which guarantees
presentations of most recent work. ELPUB 2009 will offer a variety of
activities, such as workshops, tutorials, panel debates, poster
presentations and demonstrations. Social events and sight-seeing tours will
also be available to participants (at additional costs). Please see the
conference web site for details.

Conference Location: Milan, Italy. Milan is the largest metropolitan area
in Italy, one of the largest in Europe: 7,4 million population. It is the
Italian capital of industry and business and well renowned as one of the
world capitals of fashion and design. Milan is one of the oldest artistic
centres in Northern Italy and its surroundings include the beautiful Alps
and the famous Garda, Maggiore and Como lakes. All this makes Milan a
perfect place for sight-seeing, cultural visits and exciting shopping, not
to mention enjoying Italian food and wines.

Conference Host: The State University of Milan is the third largest
university in Italy after Rome and Naples. The venue is the main building,
in the centre of Milan, 3 minutes on foot from the Cathedral. It was made
in 1450 under Duke Francesco Sforza, who also built the famous Castle.
ELPUB 2009 is organized by CILEA, a consortium of Italian Universities
founded in 1974 to promote the use of advanced ICT in academic and research
environments, to support technological transfer and to manage ICT services,
facilities and infrastructures. Within CILEA, the AePIC team deals with
innovative e-publishing technologies and models, promoting Open Access to
knowledge through sustainable online publishing.

General Chair:
Susanna Mornati, CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT, Segrate, Italy
mornati@cilea.it

Programme Chair: Turid Hedlund, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki,
Finland
turid.hedlund@hanken.fi

Conference information: elpub2009@elpub.net
Conference web site: http://www.elpub.net

Join the "ELPUB Electronic Publishing Conference" group on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3D36376184362

ELPUB 2009 and OAI 6 are just 3 days in time and 400 km in space (4 hours
by train, 50 minutes by plane) away from each other: take this unique
chance to participate in both, enjoying two exciting scientific events in
electronic publishing and scholarly communication and visiting Italy and
Switzerland.

A substantial start to 2009! Peter Suber's January SPARC OA Newsletter

What a way to start 2009! Peter Suber just released the January 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The feature this month is highlights of the very substantive progress in implementing open access in 2008 - far more than just the numbers, this piece succinctly captures the major events of 2008 - the widely heralded such as the strong NIH mandate, the Harvard mandate, and the Springer acquisition of BioMedCentral - to the more important but perhaps less noticed events - such as the fact that BMC achieved profitability before being bought by Springer. Highly recommended as a review for those who keep up, or an overview for those who don't always have the time.

Noted OA Advocate Harold Varmus to lead Obama's science advisory council

Noted OA advocate Harold Varmus - co-founder of Public Library of Science and former director of NIH - will lead Obama's science advisory council. Thanks to Heather Joseph via Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

Please vote! OA proposal for Obama administration now in top 12

Forwarding from Peter Suber on Open Access News. Please register and vote for OA - it only takes a minute!

OA proposal for Obama administration now in top 12

The proposal to require OA for publicly-funded research has climbed to the 12th spot on Obama CTO, the unofficial web site collecting recommendations for the Obama administration, up one rank from last week.

The OA idea was posted to the site on November 15, and broke into the top 25 on December 4.  Keep spreading the word:  ranks are determined by user votes.

PKP Conference Call for Papers: January 15 Deadline Reminder

The Public Knowledge Project would like to remind interested participants that the call for papers deadline of January 15, 2009 for the second international PKP conference to be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is approaching. More information on conference topics and audiences is available on the conference website at:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009/schedConf/cfp

Conference registration is also open on the website. The first PKP conference held in 2007 was oversubscribed so registrants are encouraged to register early for the 2009 event. Early bird rates are also available until June 8, 2009.

PKP welcomes inquiries from prospective conference sponsors. We would like to thank those who have already confirmed their sponsorship support for the 2009 conference:

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
Athabasca University
Canadian Library Association Open Access Interest Group
Gibson Library Connections
Simon Fraser University Library
University of British Columbia Library
University of Victoria Libraries

Heather Morrison
PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Organizing Committee
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/pkp2009

SPARC and ACRL Announce Slate for Denver Forum on Open Educational Resources

For immediate release
December 15, 2008

For more information, contact:

Jennifer McLennan
SPARC
(202) 296-2996 ext. 121
jennifer@arl.org

Kara Malenfant
ACRL
(312) 280-2510
kmalenfant@ala.org

SPARC and ACRL Announce Slate for Denver Forum
on Open Educational Resources

Washington, DC & Chicago, IL – December 15, 2008 – Four pioneers from the Open Educational Resources community will offer their insights into “The transformative potential of Open Educational Resources (OER)” at the next SPARC-ACRL Forum, to be held during the 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Denver, CO.

The forum, hosted by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), will introduce OER and the philosophy behind them to the wider library community, highlight examples of how different constituencies are currently advancing OER on campuses, and offer suggestions for how libraries can further engage to support OER.

OER are a logical extension of what the library community supports in the Open Access movement, and underscore the need for the larger playing field on which scholarly communication takes place to be made more equitable. OER focus not only on journals, but also on full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques that are critical in the learning environment.

Forum presenters will include:

• Richard Baraniuk, an architect of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which aims to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education (http://www.capetowndeclaration.org); founder of Connexions, an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web (http://cnx.org); and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University.

• David Wiley, also a leader of the Cape Town Declaration; Chief Openness Officer for Flat World Knowledge, a new approach to college textbooks offering rigorously reviewed textbooks online free of cost to students (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com); and Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University.

• Nicole Allen, leader of the Student PIRGs’ Make Textbooks Affordable campaign, which aims to develop a textbook market with both a vibrant used book market and a plethora of learning content that is priced and sold fairly (http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org).

• Mark Nelson, Digital Content Strategist for the National Association of College Stores, the trade association representing the higher education retail industry. He facilitates NACS three-pronged digital course materials strategy—partnerships, enhanced trade infrastructure, and education and awareness (http://www.nacs.org).

The 18th biennial SPARC-ACRL Forum will be held from 4:00 – 5:30 PM on Saturday, January 24, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Centennial D. The ACRL Scholarly Communications Discussion Group will also host an open conversation about issues that surface at the Forum from 4:00 – 5:30 PM on Sunday, January 25 in room 403 of the Colorado Convention Center.

The Forum will be available via SPARC podcast at a later date. For more information, visit the SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

##

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

ACRL
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), represents more than 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. It is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access and Happy Holidays from OA Librarian!

An Early Edition of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access is now available. In brief: while content recruitment for the IR may seem slow, on a global level the growth is phenomenal - more than 24 million publications in Scientific Commons, growing by close to 150,000 publications a week. DOAJ is now at over 3,780 journals, 780 more than last year, a growth rate of 2 titles per day. There are 59 open access mandates, 11 in process, and many more coming. 2009 is predicted to be a year of Walking the Talking, a shift in focus from debate to implementation.

Happy Holidays to everyone from the OA Librarian Team. While some of us may be blogging over the holidays, others will be enjoying a wedding and honeymoon, or just Working Less, resting up for a busy 2009!

Marunouchi winter illumination 2006-01 HAMACHI http://www.flickr.com/photos/mawari/323922061/

SCOAP3 at ALA Midwinter

Going to ALA Midwinter? Check out the SCOAP3 Information session:

Saturday, January 24, 2009
10:30 a.m.–noon
Colorado Convention Center, Room 705

Details are available on the SPARC Open Access Forum.

SPARC Open Access Newsletter December 2008: Peter Suber's Predictions

Peter Suber has just released the December 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Highlights this month are Peter's predictions for 2009, with a focus on the impact of the Obama administration and the world's economic crisis. There is also a section with a list of open access "cross-over" points - some, such as the majority of TA publishers allowing self-archiving, were crossed some time ago.

Directory of OA Librarian Profiles moves to Open Access Directory

The list of Librarians and Honorary OA Librarians from the OA Librarian Table of Contents is now part of a new list on the Open Access Directory, Interviews and Profiles.

Along with links to posts celebrating OA Librarian heroes, this new OAD list begins with links to Richard Poynder's celebrated interviews of various leaders of the open access movement, and links from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) website, such as the SPARC Innovators series.

Please join us in building this list, and in so doing building or helping to build the possibility for writing the fascinating story of the open access movement. If you're researching on Open Access News and come across a link to an interesting story about an open access hero, please add it to the Open Access Directory. Or, do you know of open access hero about whom nothing has been written? If so, please consider writing something, even if it just a brief paragraph or two.

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers

ELPUB 2009 - First Call for Papers
Rethinking Electronic Publishing : Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies
13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

10 - 12 June 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.elpub.net

Electronic publishing via the Internet is continuously changing its shapes and models, challenging traditional players to adapt to new contexts. Innovative technologies enable individuals, scholars, communities and networks to establish contacts, exchange data, produce information, share knowledge. Open access sources and commercial players make contents available for a heterogeneous audience in diversity of environments, from business to private life, from educational and cultural activities to leisure time, and in a large variety of devices, from personal computers to mobile media.

New opportunities and new needs challenge us to rethink electronic publishing, to innovate communication paradigms and technologies, to make information not just a flat equivalent of a paper but a truly digital format, to allow machine processing and new services, to face the future of
mobile life. The ELPUB 2009 conference will focus on key issues in e-communications, exploring dissemination channels, business models, technologies, methods and concepts.

We welcome a wide variety of papers from members of the communities whose research and experiments are transforming the nature of electronic publishing and scholarly communications. Topics include but are not restricted to:

- New publishing models, tools, services and roles
- New scholarly constructs and discourse methods
- Innovative business models for scholarly publishing
- Mobile distribution of e-contents, e-books
- M2M publishing services
- Multilingual and multimodal interfaces
- Services and technology for specific user communities, media, and content
- Content search, analysis and retrieval
- Interoperability, scalability and middleware infrastructure to facilitate awareness and discovery
- Personalization technologies (e.g. social tagging, folksonomies, RSS)
- Semantic web, metadata, information granularity, digital objects
- Data mining, text harvesting, dynamic formatting
- Knowledge linking, discovery, presentation
- User generated contents
- Usage and citation impact
- Security, privacy and copyright issues
- Digital preservation, content authentication
- Recommendations, guidelines, interoperability standards

Author Guidelines
Contributions are invited for the following categories:
- Single paper (abstract minimum of 1,000 and maxximum of 1,500 words)
- Tutorial (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Workshop (abstract min. of 500 and max. of 1,000 words)
- Poster (abstract max of 500 words)
- Demonstration (abstract max of 500 words)
See website for detailed author instructions: http://www.elpub.net.
Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and present their work.

Key Dates:
November 15th 2008: Opening date for submission of abstracts.
January 15th 2009: Deadline for submission of abstracts (in all categories).
February 23rd, 2009: Notification of acceptance of submitted proposals.
April 6th, 2009: Deadline for submission of final papers.

All submissions are subject to peer review (double-blind) and accepted by the international ELPUB Programme Committee. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Printed proceedings are distributed during the conference. Electronic versions of the contributions will be archived at: http://elpub.scix.net and indexed by the major
indexing agents.

ABOUT ELPUB
The ELPUB 2009 conference will keep the tradition of the previous international conferences on electronic publishing, held in the United Kingdom (in 1997 and 2001), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1999), Russia (2000), the Czech Republic (2002), Portugal (2003), Brazil (2004), Belgium (2005),
Bulgaria (2006), Austria (2007) and Canada (2008), which is to bring together researchers, lecturers, librarians, developers, business executives, entrepreneurs, managers, users and all those interested in issues regarding electronic publishing in a wide variety of contexts. These include the human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal, commercial, and other relevant aspects that such an exciting theme encompasses.

Three distinguishing features of this conference are: broad scope of topics which creates a unique atmosphere of active exchange and learning about various aspects of scholarly communications and electronic publishing; combination of general and technical issues; and a condensed procedure of
submission, revision and publication of proceedings which guarantees presentations of most recent work. ELPUB 2009 will offer a variety of activities, such as workshops, tutorials, panel debates, poster presentations and demonstrations. Social events and sight-seeing tours will also be available to participants (at additional costs). Please see the conference web site for details.

Conference Location: Milan, Italy. Milan is the largest metropolitan area in Italy, one of the largest in Europe: 7,4 million population. It is the Italian capital of industry and business and well renowned as one of the world capitals of fashion and design. Milan is one of the oldest artistic
centres in Northern Italy and its surroundings include the beautiful Alps and the famous Garda, Maggiore and Como lakes. All this makes Milan a perfect place for sight-seeing, cultural visits and exciting shopping, not to mention enjoying Italian food and wines.

Conference Host: The State University of Milan is the third largest university in Italy after Rome and Naples. The venue is the main building, in the centre of Milan, 3 minutes on foot from the Cathedral. It was madein 1450 under Duke Francesco Sforza, who also built the famous Castle.
ELPUB 2009 is organized by CILEA, a consortium of Italian Universities founded in 1974 to promote the use of advanced ICT in academic and research environments, to support technological transfer and to manage ICT services, facilities and infrastructures. Within CILEA, the AePIC team deals with
innovative e-publishing technologies and models, promoting Open Access to knowledge through sustainable online publishing.

General Chair:
Susanna Mornati, CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT, Segrate, Italy
mornati@cilea.it

Programme Chair: Turid Hedlund, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki,
Finland
turid.hedlund@hanken.fi

Conference information: elpub2009@elpub.net
Conference web site: http://www.elpub.net

Join the "ELPUB Electronic Publishing Conference" group on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3D36376184362

ELPUB 2009 and OAI 6 are just 3 days in time and 400 km in space (4 hours by train, 50 minutes by plane) away from each other: take this unique chance to participate in both, enjoying two exciting scientific events in electronic publishing and scholarly communication and visiting Italy and
Switzerland.