Getting ready for the fall term and looking for a quick update on what you need to know about open access? Here is a brief update with my pick of "must know" items for the busy librarian.
How much open access is there?
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists over 2,800 journals as of August 2007. Growth rate: more than 1 title per calendar day.
An OAIster search encompasses more than 12 million records from over 850 repositories.
Scientific Commons includes more than 16 million publications by more than 6 million authors in 877 repositories.
The world's largest open access archive is PubMed Central, which exceeded the one million mark in June 2007.
A few key resources for helping faculty with open access questions:
Research funders open access mandate policies: Sherpa JULIET
Where to publish OA (OA & hybrid publishers): DOAJ new journal search feature for authors
Publisher self-archiving policies: Sherpa ROMEO
How authors can retain copyright:
SPARC Author Addendum
Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Author's Addendum
CARL Addenda de l'auteur canadien
Science Commons Scholar's Copyright Project
Update August 20, 2007 (thanks for the anonymous comment!
Open Access Mandate Policies in Progress
U.S. National Institutes of Health: strengthening from request to a requirement. In progress, as part of current Appropriations Bill, to be voted on by the U.S. Senate in the near future. If you're from the U.S. - call your Senator, and voice your support!
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR): policy on Access to Research Outputs anticipated in near future. This is expected to be a strong policy; Canadian medical researchers are well advised to take action on open access now, including archiving of past research results.
U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA): has not been brought to Congress yet.
For info on U.S. policies, see the SPARC Advocacy website
Europe: Europe-wide mandate policies in the works. As with any policy initiative of this breadth and scope, this might take a while.
Plus: to generalize a bit, similar discussions are happening around the world.
To keep up with all the open access mandate initiatives, tune in to Peter Suber's Open Access News
Great site for quick stats and entry points to OA-complaint resources. One thing, can you also provide an update on the status of FRPAA and the NIH policy?
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