[eIFLoa] Fwd: [SOAN] SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 8/2/08
Iryna Kuchma
iryna.kuchma at eifl.net
Mon Aug 4 13:36:21 EEST 2008
apologises for cross posting
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Suber <peters at earlham.edu>
Date: 2 Сер 2008 20:29
Subject: [SOAN] SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 8/2/08
To: SPARC Open Access Newsletter <SPARC-OANews at arl.org>
The SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #124
August 2, 2008
by Peter Suber
Read this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm
----------
SOAN is published and sponsored by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC).
http://www.arl.org/sparc/
Additional support is provided by Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), experts
in converting research documents to XML.
http://www.dclab.com/public_access.asp
----------
Gratis and libre open access
In February 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative called for a
kind ofonline
access to research literature that was free of charge and free of most usage
restrictions. It offered a name ("open access") for the unified concept,
but it didn't suggest names for the two component parts.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
In a February 2003 article, I distinguished those two parts and called them
the "removal of price barriers" and the "removal of permission barriers".
But those were negative terms, and I didn't think to offer matching
positive ones describing kinds of access rather than kinds of accessbarriers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/acrl.htm
When the Bethesda and Berlin statements came out (June and October 2003)
they followed the Budapest statement in calling for the removal of both
price and permission barriers. As a result, all three components of
theBudapest-Bethesda-Berlin (BBB) definition
of OA now call for both sorts of free online access.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
But unfortunately we still don't have widely accepted terms for the two
sorts of free online access: (1) the kind which removes price barriers
alone and (2) the kind which removes price barriers and at least some
permission barriers. This gap in our vocabulary has caused confusion and
conflicts, not least because it created pressure to use the term "open
access" for each.
In April 2008, Stevan Harnad and I proposed the terms "weak OA" and "strong
OA" for these two species. I wrote a blog post to explain what we meant.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/strong-and-weak-oa.html
But we quickly realized that "weak OA" was needlessly pejorative and started
looking for more neutral and descriptive language. Stevan launched a public
discussion on the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind08&L=american-scientist-open-
access-forum&D=1&F=l&O=D&P=38999
Unfortunately, however, the discussion hasn't come up with clear winners.
If the terms Stevan and I introduced in April had been better chosen, and
widely supported, I'd have used them 100 times already in my blog and
newsletter. I need them almost every day.
In the absence of terms that are neutral, accurate, and widely supported,
I've decided to make a provisional decision as an individual writer while
the larger discussion continues. For now, my choice is to use "gratis" and
"libre". They are accurate, neutral, and descriptive. In the neighboring
domain of free and open source software, they exactly express
thedistinction I have in mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_Libre
The terms may be unfamiliar in the domain of OA or scholarly communication.
But as far as I can see at the moment, that's their only drawback, and it's
one I may be able overcome by writing this article. Their relative
unfamiliarity is even a kind of advantage. They're not common words with
clouds of common connotations. "Weak/strong" were not objectionable because
of their new definitions, but because of their preexisting connotations, and
"gratis/libre" won't run into that problem.
This choice is personal in the sense that I'm making a decision for my own
writing. It's provisional in the sense that I'll continue to look for
better terms.
I've already used "gratis/libre" in a few blog posts. But I didn't want to
use them frequently until I had time to write up this longer case for them.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/more-on-freeopen-and-textdata.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-two-sidedness-of-oa.html
Here's the updated heart of my April 2008 blog post using "gratis/libre" in
place of "weak/strong". But while my original post described a decision
Stevan Harnad and I reached together, in this version I'll speak for myself.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/strong-and-weak-oa.html
The term "open access" is now widely used in at least two senses. For some,
> "OA" literature is digital, online, and free of charge. It removes price
> barriers but not permission barriers. For others, "OA" literature is
> digital, online, free of charge, and free of unnecessary copyright and
> licensing restrictions. It removes both price barriers and permission
> barriers. It allows reuse rights which exceed fair use.
>
> There are two good reasons why our central term became ambiguous. Most ofour success stories deliver OA in
> the first sense, while the major public statements from Budapest,
> Bethesda, and Berlin (together, the BBB definition of OA) describe OA in
> the second sense.
>
> I've decided to use the term "gratis OA" for the removal of price barriers
> alone and "libre OA" for the removal of price and at least some permission
> barriers. The new terms allow us to speak unambiguously about these two
> species of free online access.
>
> On this new terminology, the BBB definition describes one kind of libre
> OA. A typical funder or university mandate requires gratis OA. Many OA
> journals provide libre OA, but many others provide only gratis OA.
>
> There is more than one kind of permission barrier to remove. Therefore,
> there is more than one kind or degree of libre OA.
>
> I've often wanted short, clear terms for what I'm now calling gratis and
> libre OA. But I've also wanted a third term. In my blog and newsletter I
> often need a generic term which means "gratis or libre OA, we don't know
> which yet". For example, a press release may announce a new free online
> journal, digital library, or database, without making clear what kind ofreuse rights it allows. Or a new journal will make its articles available
> online without charge but say nothing about its access policy or licensing
> terms. I will simply call them "OA". I'll specify that they are gratis or
> libre OA only when I learn enough to do so.
>
> The two new terms will help us avoid ambiguity without resisting current
> usage, which would be futile, or revising the BBB definition, which would
> be undesirable.
>
I learned a lot from the emails leading up to the "weak/strong" announcement
in April, and especially from the emails and blog posts afterwards. Here's
a mini FAQ responding the sorts of questions I've heard.
* Why introduce new terms at all? Weren't we doing fine before?
We were not doing fine. Our central term was (and is) widely used to cover
two non-equivalent sorts of free online access. As long as we don't have
narrower terms for the two sorts, then we'll continue to use the broader
term "OA" for each, aggravating the ambiguity rather than resolving it.
* Are you saying that we should stop using the term "OA" and only use
thenarrower terms?
Not at all. I'm only introducing terms for sub-species when we need to
speak unambiguously about sub-species. When we don't need that level
ofprecision, "OA" is
the perfect term, indeed, the only term.
"Gratis OA" and "libre OA" will supplement "OA", not supplant it --roughly
as "simple carbohydrate" and "complex carbohydrate" supplement
"carbohydrate" without supplanting it.
* Isn't the green/gold distinction the same as the gratis/libre distinction?
No. The green/gold distinction is about venues (repositories and journals),
while the gratis/libre distinction is about user rights or freedoms. Green
OA can be gratis or libre, but is usually gratis. Gold OA can be gratis or
libre, but is also usually gratis.
It's easier for gold OA to be libre than for green OA to be libre. Both
both can be libre. It follows that the campaign to go beyond gratis OA to
libre OA is not just about journals (gold OA), even if it is primarily about
journals.
For more on how these two distinctions differ, see the table I posted to my
blog this morning,
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/greengold-oa-and-gratislibre-oa.html
* Are you trying to legislate usage?
No. I'm in no position to legislate usage. If I were, usage would never
have become ambiguous!
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-04.htm#progress
I am proposing these terms for others to use as well. But even if I were
able to legislate usage, this choice would still be personal and
provisional. I need terms to use in my own writing, and I'll use these
until I find better ones. I don't want to preempt the search for better
terms, by myself or others, and I don't want to tie my hands about
using thefruits
of that search.
* Are you trying to revise the BBB definition of OA?
No. It hasn't changed and I don't want to change it. Nor --slightly
different thing-- am I retreating from my endorsement of it. (I was
theprincipal drafter
of the Budapest statement and stand by it.)
I'm simply trying to clarify communication by introducing terms for
different sorts of free online access. It's all about vocabulary, and not
at all about policy.
There is a problem to solve. It's not that the BBB definition has changed,
or needs to change, but that the term "open access" has changed, and is now
widely used in both a BBB and non-BBB sense. As I've argued elsewhere, our
term has spread faster and further than the BBB definition. That usage is a
fact of life, and support for the BBB definition doesn't make it go away.
There are roughly two ways to approach this problem. We could fight thetide
of usage and try to make "OA" refer to nothing but BBB OA again. But that's
unwinnable. (I deliberately say nothing about the advantages and
disadvantages of winning it if it were winnable; that's a pointless
exercise.) Or we could cure the ambiguity by using separate names, like
"gratis OA" and "libre OA", for the two important things which have been
going under the same name. That's more than winnable. It's easy. It will
support unambiguous communication without fighting usage, without modifying
the BBB definition, and without giving anyone a reason to diminish their
support for it.
* Is "libre OA" synonymous with "BBB OA"?
No. Because there is more than one kind of permission barrier to remove,
there is more than one kind or degree of libre OA. BBB OA is one kind or
subset of libre OA. But there are others, and not all libre OA is BBB OA.
For example, permitting all uses except commercial use (the CC-NC license)
and permitting all uses except derivative works (the CC-ND license) are not
equivalent to one another and --ignoring certain subtleties-- not compatible
with the BBB definition. But they all remove price barriers, they all
remove at least some permission barriers, and therefore they are all libre
OA.
We shouldn't speak as if there were just one kind of libre OA. Gratis OA
may be just one thing (freedom from price barriers), but libre OA is a
*range* of things (freedom from price barriers and one or more permission
barriers).
* What's the best way to refer to a specific type of libre OA?
With a license. We'll never have unambiguous, widely-understood technical
terms for every useful variation on the theme. But we're very likely to
have clear, named licenses for every useful variation on the theme, and
we're already close. Licenses are more precise than single terms and not
nearly as susceptible to misunderstanding or divergent usage.
* What's the borderline between gratis and libre OA?
Gratis OA removes no permission barriers and libre OA removes one or more
permission barriers. (Both of them remove price barriers.)
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1073#comment-189844
But what does it mean to remove a permission barrier? If copying a short
excerpt is permitted by "fair use" (or "fair dealing" or the local
equivalent), then users may do it without asking anyone's permission.
Hence, there are no permission barriers in the way. If copying full text
and redistributing it to others exceeds fair use, then users must ask
permission, take the legal risk of proceeding without it, or err on the side
of non-use. In general, when a use requires permission, users face a
permission barrier. This doesn't mean that permission is denied, only that
permission is not already given and must be sought if one wishes to proceed.
When rightsholders grant permission in advance for uses that exceed fair
use, then they remove permission barriers. As a practical matter, there are
two ways to remove permission barriers: (1) with copyright holder consent,
through a license or statement permitting uses that would otherwise be
impermissible or doubtful, and (2) with the expiration of copyright
and thetransition
of the work into the public domain.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/boundary-between-removing-no-permission.html
In short, gratis OA alone allows no uses beyond fair use, and libre OA
allows one or more uses beyond fair use.
* What's wrong with "full OA" (instead of "libre OA")?
"Full OA" implies just one degree or kind of OA, in fact a maximum. But
libre OA is a range of many positions, corresponding to the many permission
barriers which we could remove.
Hence, "full" isn't a good word to contrast libre OA with gratis OA. But
it's a perfectly good word to contrast OA journals with hybrid OA journals.
For example, I see no problem with saying that "full OA" journals provide
OA to all their articles, while "hybrid OA" journals provide OA to some and
not others.
* What's wrong with "free" access?
The main problem is that some people already use "free" to mean gratis
("free as in beer") and some people already use it to mean libre ("free as
in speech"). It would be very hard to give this widely used and versatile
word a narrower meaning for some special purpose, and make it stick. Making
"free" a technical term would increase ambiguity, not decrease it.
It's relevant that "gratis" and "libre" emerged to resolve an ambiguity
endemic in the "free" software movement.
* Why was the original "weak/strong" announcement presented as a joint
decision with Stevan Harnad?
Simply because Stevan and I came up with it together. (Not because we are a
cabal.) The background is important. Stevan wanted to recognize
themovement's many gratis OA success stories. But because gratis OA
doesn't
meet the terms of the BBB, he felt it necessary to revise the BBB. I wanted
to join him in recognizing the many gratis OA success stories, but I didn't
want to revise the BBB. Whether the BBB needed revision became a tactical
disagreement of growing importance between us, showing up in many of our
blog posts, taking more of our time, and perhaps even overshadowing our
agreements on most issues of substance and strategy. As we talked it out,
however, we realized that our disagreement on the BBB arose from an
inadequate vocabulary for the varieties of free online access. Once we had
that vocabulary we could agree in our speech as much as we agreed in
substance, and we could take revision of the BBB off the table. It was a
beautiful resolution --except that we settled too quickly on the wrong pair
of words ("weak/strong").
To show the new terms in action, here's how they help clarify the major
points of substance and strategy on which Stevan and I agree. We agree that
gratis OA is a necessary but not sufficient condition of libre OA. We agree
that gratis OA is often attainable in circumstances when libre OA is not
attainable. We agree that gratis OA should not be delayed until we can
achieve libre OA. We agree that libre OA is a desirable goal above and
beyond gratis OA. We agree that the desirability of libre OA is a reason to
keep working after attaining gratis OA, but not a reason to disparage
thedifficulties or
the significance of gratis OA. We agree that the BBB definition of OA does
not need to be revised.
* Why do we have to recognize this distinction at all?
Because there really is a difference between removing price barriers alone
and removing both price and permission barriers, and because this difference
really matters to users, strategies, and policies. The distinction by
itself isn't new or even controversial. All that's new here is the proposal
to use certain terms to name its two parts. But even if you don't
like theterms I plan to use, and even if you don't plan to use any
special terms
yourself, understanding the distinction itself is necessary to understand
the day-to-day progress and discussions of the OA movement.
----------
Round-up
Here's what happened, or what I noticed, since the last issue of the
newsletter, emphasizing action and policy over scholarship and opinion. I
put the most important items first, with double asterisks, and otherwise
cluster them loosely by topic. Most of the time I link to blog posts at
Open Access News (where I am now assisted by Gavin Baker), not to
thesources themselves, because I only want to use one link per item
and
the blog posts usually bring many relevant links together.
** The Humanities and Social Sciences branch of France's Agence Nationale de
la recherche (ANR) adopted an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-mandate-at-france-anr.html
** The National Research Council Canada adopted an OA mandate to take effect
in January 2009.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/canada-nrc-adopts-oa-mandate.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-oa-mandate-from-nrc.html
** The European Commission announced that it is "developing an open
accesspilot in FP7. More information will be available soon." That's
all we know
so far.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/european-oa-pilot-coming.html
* The European Commission released a green paper on Copyright in
theKnowledge Economy. Question 19 asks whether researchers should
"enter into
licensing schemes with publishers in order to increase access to
works....Are there examples of successful licensing schemes enabling online
use of works for teaching or research purposes?" Comments are due by
November 30, 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/ec-green-paper-on-l.html
* The American Psychological Association decided to charge a $2,500 fee to
deposit peer-reviewed manuscripts by NIH-funded authors in PMC. At the same
time it rescinded permission for NIH-funded authors to self-archive to their
institutional repositories. After a week of widespread criticism, the APA
retracted the deposit fee for re-examination and reaffirmed its 2002 policy
allowing no-fee self-archiving to institutional repositories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/apa-will-charge-authors-for-green-oa.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-interim-policy-from-apa.html
* The Norwegian government is considering an OA mandate, and is seeking
advice from the Norwegian Research Council and the Norwegian
Association ofHigher Education Institutions.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/norwegian-government-considers-oa.html
* The Victorian government is considering OA for public-sector information
and publicly-funded research. Comments on its discussion paper are due by
August 22, 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/victorian-govt-considering-oa-for-psi.html
* The Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences is considering an OA
mandate. (The Stanford School of Education adopted an OA mandate in June
2008.)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/stanford-school-of
-humanities-and.html
* The Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University, Steven Schwartz, drafted an
OA mandate for his university. He posted it to his blog for comments while
he considers submitting it to the University Senate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/macquarie-vc-preparing-to-propose-oa.html
* The Delft University of Technology launched a temporary fund (April -
December 2008) to help faculty pay publication fees at fee-based OA
journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/dutch-university-launches-temporary-oa.html
* Boston University's Superfund Basic Research Program is providing OA to
its research results. It encourages its researchers to publish in OA
journals (and agrees to pay publication fees); it hosts a wiki for research
communication and collaboration; it plans to host an OA repository; and it
encourages other Superfund Basic Research programs elsewhere to provide OA
to their research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-policy-at-boston-u-research-center.html
* The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) recommends that
scholars retain copyright when publishing journal articles, and use the
SPARC Canadian Author Addendum to do so.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/caut-advises-authors-to-retain.html
* The US Defense Department issued a memo reaffirming the right
ofresearchers to publish unclassified research, reversing a drift
toward
the suppression of results during the Bush years.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-open
-research-and-national.html
* SPARC Europe and DRIVER agreed to work together to support institutional
repositories throughout Europe.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/sparc
-europe-and-driver-work-for.html
* The Association of Universities in the Netherlands and the
Association ofIndian Universities agreed to collaborate in many areas
of common interest, including "open access to scientific and scholarly
publications."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/dutch-indian-partnership-will-promote.html
* The Nature Publishing Group launched a free service to deposit
peer-reviewed author manuscripts directly into PMC (or UKPMC) when authors
are under OA mandates from funders like NIH, HHMI, MRC, or the Wellcome
Trust. At the same time it said would be willing to accommodate university
mandates as well, and eventually deposit directly into institutional
repositories. In both cases it would embargo the deposits until six months
from the date of publication.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nature-will-deposit-into-disciplinary.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nature-launches-its-manuscript-deposit.html
* One condition of Nature's willingness to deposit directly into
institutional repositories (see previous item) is that the repositories
support batch uploading. Les Carr reported that both EPrints and DSpace
supported batch uploading, and both support the SWORD (Simple Web-service
Offering Repository Deposit) protocol.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/npg-conditions-for-ir-deposits-are-met.html
* Deposits in PubMed Central have grown significantly since December 2007.
Every month since January 2008 has topped the previous monthly deposit
record.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-evidence-that-mandates-work.html
* The NIH released the author addendum it requires when NIH employees (not
to be confused with external grantees) publish articles based on NIH-funded
research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/author-addendum-required-for-nih.html
* The NIH clarified and restated the four deposit options under its OA
policy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nih-clarifies-deposit-options-under-oa.html
* SPARC and ARL released their analysis concluding that the NIH policy does
not affect US copyright law in any way.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/sparc
-arl-response-to-aap-re-nih-policy.html
* William Patry also concluded that the NIH policy does not affect US
copyright law and need not be reviewed by the House of Representatives
Judiciary Committee (which has jurisdiction over copyright matters). Patry
is the Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, and former copyright counsel to
the House Judiciary Committee.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/william-patry-on-nih-policy-and.html
* Two Nobel laureates, John Sulston and Joseph Stiglitz, said
the"innovation system" was broken and called for greater "
access to the benefits of knowledge" and loosening the grip of intellectual
property rights on scientific results.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nobelist-calls-for-openness-in-science.html
* Science Commons formulated four recommendations for open science.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/four-recommendations-for-open
-science.html
* Harvard created an FAQ for Publishers to accompany the OA mandate at
theHarvard Faculty
of Arts and Sciences.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-oa-mandates-at-harvard.html
* Plant Genome is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the Crop Science
Society of America.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/another-society-launches-oa-journal.html
* The Journal of Foot and Ankle Research is a new, peer-reviewed OA journal
published by BioMed Central.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of-podiatry.html
* BioData Mining is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from BioMed Central.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-on-data-mining-in-life.html
* Energies is a new peer-reviewed OA journal of energy and "Related
Scientific Research, Technology Development and Studies in Policy and
Management", published by the Molecular Diversity Preservation
International.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-on-energy-research-and.html
* The International Journal of Cuban Studies is a new peer-reviewed OA
journal published by the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at
London Metropolitan University.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of
-cuban-studies.html
* The Journal of Transport and Land Use is a new peer-reviewed, no-fee OA
journal from the Center for Transportation Studies at the University
ofMinnesota.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of
-transport-and-land.html
* The International Journal of BioSciences and Technology is a new
peer-reviewed OA journal sponsored by the VM University.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of-biotech.html
* Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies is a new, peer-reviewed OA journal
published by the University of California, Los Angeles' James S. Coleman
African Studies Center.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of-african-studies.html
* The Armenian National Academy of Sciences launched two new, peer-reviewed
OA journals: the Armenian Journal of Mathematics and the Armenian Journal of
Physics.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/2-new-oa-journals-from-armenian-academy.html
* Theological Librarianship is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the
American Theological Library Association.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of-theological.html
* Wide Screen is a new peer-reviewed OA journal of cinema "from historical,
theoretical, political, and aesthetic perspectives." It expects to publish
the first issue in February 2009.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-journal-of-cinema.html
* Physics is a new journal from the American Physical Society. The
inaugural issue is OA, but it doesn't mention a standing access policy or a
subscription price.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-physics-journal-from-aps-may-be.html
* Oxford University Press announced plans to launch an OA journal of OA
databases: Database: The Journal on Biological Databases.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/forthcoming-journal-on-oa-databases-in.html
* Historical Studies of Digital Entertainment Media is a forthcoming,
peer-reviewed OA journal from the How They Got Game project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/announcing-new-oa-journal-of-historical.html
* The Ibero-American Network and Portal of Open Access Veterinary Scientific
Journals offers OA to veterinary journals from Spain, Portugal, and Latin
America.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-to-veterinary-science-from-spain.html
* Rangifer, the journal of "Research, Management and Husbandry of Reindeer
and other Northern Ungulates", converted to OA after 26 years of TA
publication.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/rangifer-converts-to-oa-after-26-years.html
* After seven years of TA publishing, Science and Technology of Advanced
Materials converted to no-fee OA with its January-March issue.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/materials-science-journal-converts-to.html
* The Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine
converted to OA moved to BioMed Central.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/journal-of-emergency-medicine-converts.html
* Three journals from Revues.org converted to OA: (1) Balkanologie: Revue
d'études pluridisciplinaires, (2) Lapurdum: Revue d'études basques, and (3)
the Revue historique des armées.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/three-french-journals-convert-to-oa.html
* The African Journal of Paediatric Surgery converted to OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-items-from-medknow.html
* Urban Library Journal (formerly known as Urban Academic Librarian)
announced plans to convert to OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/urban-library-journal-converts-to-oa.html
* Acta Zoologica Sinica will convert to OA and change its title to Current
Zoology in January 2009.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/chinese-zoological-journal-will-convert.html
* The Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte provided OA to
the backfile (1967-2001) of its journal, Ius Commune.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-to-backfile-of-max-planck-law.html
* The average impact factor for Hindawi journals with IFs rose by more than
14% last year.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/growth-in-hindawi-journals-impact.html
* The hybrid OA journal, Genome Research, boosted its impact factor
significantly in 2007, from 10.3 to 11.2.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/hybrid-oa-journal-boosts-impact-factor.html
* For the third year in a row, Oxford University Press lowered the
subscription prices of its hybrid Oxford Open journals to reflect growing
author uptake of the OA option.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oxford-lowers-prices-on-hybrid-oa.html
* The 2009 prices for Elsevier hybrid journals will reflect the rate of
author uptake. The company doesn't say whether the prices will go down or
merely rise more slowly than they would otherwise.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/moderate-cost-increases-at-elsevier.html
* The NorthEast Research Libraries consortium (NERL) joined the CERN SCOAP3
project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nerl-joins-scoap3.html
* The Great Western Library Alliance joined the CERN SCOAP3 project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/gwla-joins-scoap3.html
* The Gates Foundation gave a $900,000 grant to The Future of Children, a
peer-reviewed OA journal from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs and the Brookings Institution.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/gates-foundation-supports-oa-journal.html
* BMJ, which already provides OA to its research articles, adopted a policy
of continuous publishing, releasing them online as soon as they are ready.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/bmj-adopts-continuous-publishing.html
* OA journal publisher, Scientific Journals International, which was not
previously green, decided to permit postprint archiving.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/gold-oa-publisher-now-green-too.html
* Richard Poynder is requesting help in his research on Scientific Journals
International.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/researching-sji.html
* Gunther Eysenbach named Dove Medical Press and Libertas Academica (run by
the same person, Tom Hill a.k.a. Tim Hill) as spammer of the month for
spamming researchers to solicit articles.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-oa-publishers-spamming-researchers.html
* The University of Crete launched an institutional repository, E-Locus.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/u-of-crete-launches-ir.html
* The University of Milano - Bicocca launched an institutional repository,
Bicocca Open Archive.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/u-of-milano-bicocca-launches-ir.html
* Algoma University launched an institutional repository, DigitalAlgoma.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-ir-from-algoma-u.html
* Médecins Sans Frontières repeated the May 2008 announcement of the launch
of its institutional repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-ir-from-mdecins-sans-frontires.html
* The Audiovisual Communications Laboratory at Switzerland's Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne launched a repository, blog, and
discussion forum to advance its work on openness as a way to facilitate the
reproducibility of research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-for-reproducible-research.html
* The US Department of Energy (DOE) launched the DOE Data Explorer (DDE), an
open data repository for DOE-funded research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/open-data-repository-at-doe.html
* India launched a repository to hold all of its space exploration data.
The contents will be accessible only to Indian scientists for the first 18
months, after which it will provide OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-delayed-access-repository-of-space.html
* Participants in Google's X Prize contest learned that if they are US
citizens and plan to create a private remote-sensing system for Earth
imaging, then they may need to apply for a license from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The purpose, however, is not to
restrict space data but to compel it to be shared with all countries that
agree to similar sharing.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/mutualized-oa-to-space-data.html
* The JISC Information Environment Team launched a web site to "gather ideas
and opinions about how repositories are defined...."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/defining-repositories.html
* SHERPA compiled a list of common ways in which OA repositories
inadvertently block search engine crawlers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/how-to-hide-oa-content-from-search.html
* The DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European
Research) project added a current awareness service in the D-NET platform.
Users can sign up to receive alerts on new contents matching a stored
search.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/mydriver-service-offers-personalized.html
* Shirley Fung launched Molecular Biology Databases, a website evaluating
the openness of databases in molecular biology according to the criteria
laid out by Melanie Dulong de Rosnay.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/tracking-openness-of-databases.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/taxonomy-for-openness-of-data.html
* NASA and the Internet Archive launched a unified, OA version of 21 major
collections of NASA images.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/nasa-to-launch-oa-image-collection.html
* The U.S. National Archives joined the World Digital Library.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/us-national-archives-joins-world.html
* The DOAJ added a page of statistics by country.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-journal-statistics-by-country.html
* SHERPA launched a Google Maps extension to OpenDOAR, showing OA
repositories by country.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/googlemaps-extension-to-opendoar.html
* Columbia University is looking for a Digital Repository Coordinator.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/columbia-u-looking-for-ir-coordinator.html
* Galapagos NV transferred a large collection of its drug and small-molecule
data to the public domain. EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute will
host and manage the data with the help of a major grant from the Wellcome
Trust.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-commercial-drug-data-moves-to.html
* The Geochemical Society adopted a statement recommending open data to
funding agencies, publishes, and researchers. (The statement was adopted in
November 2007, but the online version was undated until last week.)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/open-data-policy-from-geochemical.html
* The Open Knowledge Foundation released its Open Software Service
Definition version 1.0. In short, an open software service combines open
source software and open data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/open-data-open-software-open-service.html
* The CARe project (Candidate Gene Association Resource) from the US
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute finds a new way to balance patient
privacy and open data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-balance-of-oa-and-patient.html
* The National Institute of Standards and Technology released a preview of
its Digital Library of Mathematical Functions.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/preview-release-of-digital-library-of.html
* The Open Access Directory opened five new lists for community editing and
enlargement: Data repositories; OA journal business models; Publisher
policies on NIH-funded authors; Bibliography of open access; and
Implementation resources for the NIH policy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/list-of-data-repositories.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oad-list-of-business-models-for-oa.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/publisher-policies-on-nih-funded.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oad-launches-bibliography-of-open.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/oad-list-of-implementation-resources.html
* A consortium of major medical schools has announced MedPedia, the
professionally written wiki-based encyclopedia of medicine with separate
sections for lay readers and professionals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/major-medical-schools-announce-major.html
* The Gladstone Institutes at the University of California San Francisco
launched WikiPathways, a wiki of open data on biological pathways.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/wiki-of-open-data-on-biological.html
* To stimulate the communal annotation of human genome sequences, a group of
researchers developed a system to create stub Wikipedia articles directly
from gene databases.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/wiki-for-genes.html
* Walt Crawford launched a cluster of pages on OA at the PALINET wiki.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/palinet-cluster-of-wiki-pages-on-oa.html
* Google officially launched its Knol project, which hosts "authoritative"
OA articles by named authors, who may choose to allow contributions by
readers, to allow Google ads (and share revenue with the company), and to
use their preferred CC license.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/google-launches-knol-project.html
* The Lyon Municipal Library became the first French partner of the Google
Library project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/first-french-partner-for-google-book.html
* ETC-Press is a new OA press from a partnership of Carnegie Mellon
University (CMU) and Lulu.com.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-oa-press-from-carnegie-mellon.html
* At Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the press and library are working together
to publish a series of dual-edition (OA/TA) monographs.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/oa-monographs-from-bauhaus-universitt.html
* The 200 World eBook Fair began giving away one million OA ebooks at its
now-annual, month-long online book fair.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/1m-oa-books.html
* Lulu and Scribd struck a deal under which Lulu will provide some of its OA
content in Scribd's iPaper format.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/scribd-and-lulu-partner.html
* A new book-length guide to OA for authors: Kylie Pappalardo,
Understanding Open Access in the Academic Environment: A Guide for Authors,
Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, June 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/book-length-guide-to-oa-for-academic.html
* A new book on OA: E. Canessa and M. Zennaro (eds.), Science Dissemination
using Open Access, a new book published under a CC-NC-ND license by the
Science Dissemination Unit of the Abdus Salam International Centre for
Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, July 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-book-on-oa.html
* A new book on OA: Barbara Malina (ed.), Open Access Opportunities and
Challenges: A Handbook, the German UNESCO Commission, July 2008. A 144 pp.
collection of articles on OA by 38 authors. This is an English translation
of Open Access: Chancen und Herausforderungen - ein Handbuch, published on
June 6, 2007.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/another-book-on-oa.html
* A forthcoming book on OA: Gary Hal, Digitize This Book! The Politics of
New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now, University of Minnesota Press,
October 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/forthcoming-book-on-oa.html
* Italy's Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare signed the Berlin
Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/italian-physics-institute-signs-berlin.html
* James Evans published a study concluding that when researchers have access
to more articles, they read and cite fewer of them (contradicting several
previous studies).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/online-researchers-have-access-to-more.html
* The Biosciences Federation released a survey of some learned societies and
their members on OA journals. The BSF draws a number of anti-OA conclusions
without support from the survey or other evidence.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/survey-of-some-learned-societies-and.html
* Alma Swan shared some preliminary findings from an unpublished study
showing that institutions with OA mandates had the least difficulty
populating their repositories and institutions with author deposit had the
least difficulty collecting metadata.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-evidence-that-mandates-work_27.html
* In an informal poll on the JISC-Repositories list, Kate Price found that
most universities prefer to combine their OA repository and central
publications database rather than create separate resources.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/universities-prefer-combined-oa.html
* Four major organizations released a major report on digital preservation,
concluding (among other things) that OA works as well as statutory copyright
reform to secure the permissions needed for preservation. The study was
jointly produced by the Library of Congress National Digital Information
Infrastructure and Preservation Program, the Joint Information Systems
Committee, the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, and the
SURFfoundation.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-facilitating-digital.html
* Scientific Commons passed the milestone of 20 million publications and 8
million authors.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/milestone-for-scientific-commons.html
* In June, RePEc passed several important milestones, among them 140,000,000
cumulative abstract views, 600,000 listed works, and 350,000 articles
listed. The number of papers in RePEc has grown by 20% less than one year.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/repec-june-2008-update.html
* The University of Florida's Digital Collections passed the milestone of
two million OA pages.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/digitization-milestone-at-u-florida.html
* E-LIS passed the milestone of 8,000 deposited documents.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/milestone-for-e-lis-repository.html
* The University of Hertfordshire IR passed the milestone of 2,000th
articles on deposit.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/milestone-for-hertfordshire-ir.html
* SHERPA's RoMEO passed the milestone of listing more than 400 publisher
copyright and self-archiving policies.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/milestone-for-romeo.html
* The George Eastman House and the Bibliothèque de Toulouse joined Flickr
Commons and will provide OA to some of their images there. The Biblioteca
de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian is also
providing OA to part of its collection on Flickr, though not as part of
Flickr's Commons project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/new-partners-for-flickr-commons.html
* The UK Office of Public Sector Information launched the Public Sector
Information Unlocking Service to help citizens re-use government
information.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/unlocking-uk-psi-for-re-use.html
* Under an agreement with the US Government Accountability Office,
Public.Resource.Org began providing OA to scanned copies of Congressional
legislative histories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-on-gao-and-publicresourceorg.html
* A new blog, Open Education News, officially launched with the support of
the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/launch-of-open-education-news.html
* Microsoft's External Research Division announced a set of free software
tools to support scholarly communication and OA, including an article add-in
for Word (for the NLM DTD and XML mark-up), a Creative Commons add-in for
Word, the Microsoft e-Journal Service, and the Microsoft Research Output
Repository Platform.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/free-microsoft-tools-for-scholarly.html
* Fedora Commons released version 3.0 of its Fedora repository software.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/fedora-30-released.html
* DSpace and Fedora agreed to collaborate on a number of common goals, for
example to promote open-source repository software over proprietary software
and to synchronize their development to facilitate the interoperability of
key components.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/dspace-and-fedora-to-collaborate.html
----------
Coming this month
Here are some important OA-related events coming up in August.
* August 22, 2008. Deadline for comments on the Victorian government
discussion paper on OA for public-sector information and publicly-funded
research.
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/edic/inquiries/access_to_PSI/EDIC_PSI_Discussion_Paper.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/victorian-govt-considering-oa-for-psi.html
* OA-related conferences in August 2008
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/2008#August
* Other OA-related conferences
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Events
==========
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http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm
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Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
peter.suber at earlham.edu
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