OA Librarian

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

2009-11-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-02T22:27:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-09-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-05T17:35:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-09-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

ARL SPEC Kit on Authors' Addenda

2009-07-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-06-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-02T22:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

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