The Ontario Institutes of Cancer Research (OICR) Open Access Policy will give researchers worldwide immediate access to OICR data (from Portal 2:3, the OICR Newsletter).
Text of the announcement:
The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is taking the lead in 2008 and making the research it funds available to the public through an open access policy that takes effect July 1. OICR’s policy, “Access to Research Outputs,” provides the guidelines for OICR’s scientists when they publish their work and describes the institutional repository where all publications from OICR scientists will be deposited for public accessibility.
The policy, which builds on the policy in place at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), requires OICR researchers to provide unrestricted access to their publications within six months of publishing, either through self-archiving of the journal article in the OICR Institutional Repository or through publication in open access journals. The large majority of publishers already offer such accessibility within their copyright agreements.
“The main reason behind implementing an open access policy at OICR is that it allows the world to read OICR’s published papers and to benefit from the research funded by the Ontario government,” says Francis Ouellette, OICR’s Associate Director of Informatics and Biocomputing and a key member of the panel tasked with developing this policy for OICR. “It is important for people to know that what we do here at OICR is important and relevant, and they can do that by reading the papers that our researchers publish.”
Open access publishing has gained increasing attention and support over the past decade with the growth of the Internet and digital publishing. In addition, an increasing number of research institutions like OICR, as well as funding agencies like CIHR, have adopted open access policies to ensure publicly funded research is made freely available to the public.
Ouellette says researchers are starting to recognize that open access publishing and repositories greatly expand readership not only within the international research community itself, but also among the public.
“The average person knows how to use a basic search engine and knows how to find information and articles that are relevant to their disease,” Ouellette says. “If they have open access to research publications, even if they can’t fully understand the content, they can take that paper to their physician and ask about the disease. Open access empowers patients and their families – and since the research at OICR is publicly funded, they should have access to it.”
Ouellette feels that in addition to federal funding agencies, it is up to organizations like OICR who are developing new policies to lead the way and prove that open access can work.
“OICR has developed a very important policy for the open accessibility of its research output,” Ouellette says. “I think it will become a model policy for the Canadian research community.”
For details as released by Francis Ouellette at the ELPUB conference, and my comments, please see this IJPE post.
Congratulations once more to OICR for a very progressive policy that is indeed a model in many respects, and a fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Three forthcoming OA policies announced at ELPUB in Toronto
Three new open access policies were announced by Canadians at the ELPUB 2008 conference in Toronto last week.
Stanford Faculty of Education
John Willinsky, in his home town of Toronto, announced the Stanford Faculty of Education unanimous OA mandate, as detailed by Peter Suber on Open Access News. What was most remarkable about John's announcement is the ease of the decision - the question was raised about whether Stanford's Faculty of Education should adopt a policy similar to Harvard's, and the answer was yes!
Comment: watch for more and more reports along these lines - institutional OA policies that come much, much easier than earlier victories. Why? Thanks to these early victories, we have models. Harvard did not have the Harvard OA mandate to refer to - but now, all of us do!
National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
Kathleen Shearer, research associate at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), talked about an open access policy in the works at Canada's NSERC, one of Canada's three major federal funding agencies, anticipated for March 2009. The NSERC policy is likely to resemble that of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, with expectation of OA within 6 months of publication via OA publishing (preferred and encouraged) or self-archiving. Kathleen stressed that OA policies need to be accompanied by strong implementation strategies, and that libraries have a key role to play in OA education, advocacy, and infrastructure.
Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
Francis Ouellette of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research announced that an OICR Policy on Access to Research Outputs is nearing completion and details will be released within the next couple of weeks, adapted from the CIHR's Open Access policy document. An OICR institutional repository will be established, and OICR funded scientists will be expected to deposit peer-reviewed journals articles in the IR as soon as they are accepted for publication, and made freely accessible within 6 months of publication. OICR encourages publication in fully open access journals, and has plans for a fund for direct reimbursement of OA article processing fees for OICR-funded research, up to a maximum of $3,500 if the first, last or corresponding author is funded by the OICR. It is assumed that if scientists belonging to multiple institutions are contributing to a publication, they will share proportionately the cost of publication. Researchers are also expected to immediately deposit publication-related resesarch data into a publicly accessible database.
Comments: Kudos to OICR and the open access policy team, chaired by Jim Till. OICR funds about 60 principal investigators at about $75 million per year, and is in a growth process; in the next few years, OICR is expected to grow to about 120 principal investigators. While OICR follows the CIHR open access policy, clarification of expectation of access via a reprint request button for articles embargoed beyond six months is an important improvement. The optional OA-publication-specific funding is a welcome addition which will really help in the transition to open access. The maximum limit of $3,500 is very generous, more than most current OA article processing fees and even to cover even the researcher with a major breakthrough with an article well-suited for the very highest end journals in scholarly publishing.
Note: watch for OA policies at other Canadian provincial funding agencies - discussions are underway!
Could Canada become the first country in the world to mandate that all publicly funded research be open access? That day is not yet here - but with these announcements and more to come, it might not be long...
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Stanford Faculty of Education
John Willinsky, in his home town of Toronto, announced the Stanford Faculty of Education unanimous OA mandate, as detailed by Peter Suber on Open Access News. What was most remarkable about John's announcement is the ease of the decision - the question was raised about whether Stanford's Faculty of Education should adopt a policy similar to Harvard's, and the answer was yes!
Comment: watch for more and more reports along these lines - institutional OA policies that come much, much easier than earlier victories. Why? Thanks to these early victories, we have models. Harvard did not have the Harvard OA mandate to refer to - but now, all of us do!
National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
Kathleen Shearer, research associate at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), talked about an open access policy in the works at Canada's NSERC, one of Canada's three major federal funding agencies, anticipated for March 2009. The NSERC policy is likely to resemble that of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, with expectation of OA within 6 months of publication via OA publishing (preferred and encouraged) or self-archiving. Kathleen stressed that OA policies need to be accompanied by strong implementation strategies, and that libraries have a key role to play in OA education, advocacy, and infrastructure.
Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
Francis Ouellette of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research announced that an OICR Policy on Access to Research Outputs is nearing completion and details will be released within the next couple of weeks, adapted from the CIHR's Open Access policy document. An OICR institutional repository will be established, and OICR funded scientists will be expected to deposit peer-reviewed journals articles in the IR as soon as they are accepted for publication, and made freely accessible within 6 months of publication. OICR encourages publication in fully open access journals, and has plans for a fund for direct reimbursement of OA article processing fees for OICR-funded research, up to a maximum of $3,500 if the first, last or corresponding author is funded by the OICR. It is assumed that if scientists belonging to multiple institutions are contributing to a publication, they will share proportionately the cost of publication. Researchers are also expected to immediately deposit publication-related resesarch data into a publicly accessible database.
Comments: Kudos to OICR and the open access policy team, chaired by Jim Till. OICR funds about 60 principal investigators at about $75 million per year, and is in a growth process; in the next few years, OICR is expected to grow to about 120 principal investigators. While OICR follows the CIHR open access policy, clarification of expectation of access via a reprint request button for articles embargoed beyond six months is an important improvement. The optional OA-publication-specific funding is a welcome addition which will really help in the transition to open access. The maximum limit of $3,500 is very generous, more than most current OA article processing fees and even to cover even the researcher with a major breakthrough with an article well-suited for the very highest end journals in scholarly publishing.
Note: watch for OA policies at other Canadian provincial funding agencies - discussions are underway!
Could Canada become the first country in the world to mandate that all publicly funded research be open access? That day is not yet here - but with these announcements and more to come, it might not be long...
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Monday, June 23, 2008
University of Calgary funds Open Access Authors Fund
Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, University of Calgary has just announced a new Open Access Author's Fund.
Text of the announcement:
University of Calgary professors and graduate students will now have access to a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund designed to increase the amount of publicly available research.
The new fund, announced today by Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, is the first of its magnitude in Canada.
“I am proud that the University of Calgary is taking leadership in this movement to increase the worldwide accessibility of cutting-edge research,” said Hickerson (left).
The new fund will provide U of C faculty and graduate students with financial support to cover Open Access author fees. Open Access publishing is a rapidly expanding development in the exchange of research information. An increasing number of academic journals make research literature openly available via the internet without the restrictions on authors and without the high costs to users imposed by traditional subscription-based publications.
This new publishing model does, however, often require that authors pay fees contributing to the costs of publication. With the establishment of this new fund, researchers at the University of Calgary will have the freedom to exercise their own choice in publishing decisions. Open Access publishing is emerging as the best hope for a sustainable and responsible course of action for the future of scholarly communication.
“The Open Access movement is a significant initiative in bringing our research activity more quickly and broadly to the awareness of the scholarly community and to the public at large,” said Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-President, Research. “The establishment of this fund by Libraries and Cultural Resources is a crucial development for our faculty and graduate students.”
Open Access publishing allows authors to retain copyright control over their work and promotes broad educational use of the latest information. Open Access is also a key means by which university research can serve the larger community, providing public access to the new findings in everything from cancer treatment to global warming.
Comment: The key to a long-term, sustainable open access future is transitioning economic support from subscriptions to open access. Kudos to the University of Calgary for taking an early leadership step in the right direction.
Thanks to Andrew Waller. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Text of the announcement:
University of Calgary professors and graduate students will now have access to a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund designed to increase the amount of publicly available research.
The new fund, announced today by Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, is the first of its magnitude in Canada.
“I am proud that the University of Calgary is taking leadership in this movement to increase the worldwide accessibility of cutting-edge research,” said Hickerson (left).
The new fund will provide U of C faculty and graduate students with financial support to cover Open Access author fees. Open Access publishing is a rapidly expanding development in the exchange of research information. An increasing number of academic journals make research literature openly available via the internet without the restrictions on authors and without the high costs to users imposed by traditional subscription-based publications.
This new publishing model does, however, often require that authors pay fees contributing to the costs of publication. With the establishment of this new fund, researchers at the University of Calgary will have the freedom to exercise their own choice in publishing decisions. Open Access publishing is emerging as the best hope for a sustainable and responsible course of action for the future of scholarly communication.
“The Open Access movement is a significant initiative in bringing our research activity more quickly and broadly to the awareness of the scholarly community and to the public at large,” said Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-President, Research. “The establishment of this fund by Libraries and Cultural Resources is a crucial development for our faculty and graduate students.”
Open Access publishing allows authors to retain copyright control over their work and promotes broad educational use of the latest information. Open Access is also a key means by which university research can serve the larger community, providing public access to the new findings in everything from cancer treatment to global warming.
Comment: The key to a long-term, sustainable open access future is transitioning economic support from subscriptions to open access. Kudos to the University of Calgary for taking an early leadership step in the right direction.
Thanks to Andrew Waller. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Richard Poynder interviews Leslie Chan
The University of Toronto's Leslie Chan is one of the Canadian early leaders in the open access movement, recognized around the world (and here at home) for his work on open access, particularly for the developing world through his work as Associate Director of Bioline International.
Richard Poynder's interview ofLeslie Chan in Open and Shut is well worth reading, both to learn about Leslie Chan and for some interesting perspective on open access, scholarship and the developed and developing worlds.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the tip and a useful excerpt. My recommendation, though, is to read the original.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Richard Poynder's interview ofLeslie Chan in Open and Shut is well worth reading, both to learn about Leslie Chan and for some interesting perspective on open access, scholarship and the developed and developing worlds.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the tip and a useful excerpt. My recommendation, though, is to read the original.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
STM Issues Statement on Digital Copyright Exceptions: A Great Case for Author's Rights!
The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers has just issued several statements on digital copyright exceptions.
These are disturbing statements. Clearly some of the very wealthy and highly profitable companies behind the STM - noted for their anti-OA lobbying efforts - have plans to make every effort to influence copyright laws, at an international level, for their own private benefit, and to limit uses of material made available through library subscription, both through influencing law and through influencing licensing practise.
One of the disturbing elements of the STM statement is its complete lack of recognition of authors, as well as other contributors to scholarly publishing.
For example, the STM statement says: "For example, journal articles, academic treatises and textbooks are published by STM publishers for the very purpose of contributing to scholarly communication and education", and talks about libraries as consumers with no mention of the scholars that write the journals articles and perform the peer review free of charge, nor the contributions of those who fund the research and/or pay the salaries of the researchers.
Disturbing as this is, there is a bright side: this is the best case for author's rights I have seen so far! Libraries should post this prominently on their scholarly communications websites. When scholars are giving away their copyright, they should be aware of who they are giving it to.
These are disturbing statements. Clearly some of the very wealthy and highly profitable companies behind the STM - noted for their anti-OA lobbying efforts - have plans to make every effort to influence copyright laws, at an international level, for their own private benefit, and to limit uses of material made available through library subscription, both through influencing law and through influencing licensing practise.
One of the disturbing elements of the STM statement is its complete lack of recognition of authors, as well as other contributors to scholarly publishing.
For example, the STM statement says: "For example, journal articles, academic treatises and textbooks are published by STM publishers for the very purpose of contributing to scholarly communication and education", and talks about libraries as consumers with no mention of the scholars that write the journals articles and perform the peer review free of charge, nor the contributions of those who fund the research and/or pay the salaries of the researchers.
Disturbing as this is, there is a bright side: this is the best case for author's rights I have seen so far! Libraries should post this prominently on their scholarly communications websites. When scholars are giving away their copyright, they should be aware of who they are giving it to.
STM response to Science Foundation Ireland OA policy consultation: critique
Thanks to Peter Suber for pointing to, and commenting on, the STM anti-OA response to the Science Foundation Ireland's open access policy consultation. As usual, I agree with Peter's thorough and thoughtful comments, and would like to add that there is a serious factual misstatement in the STM response (a claim that only 30 journals make articles freely available after an embargo period; the evidence suggests that the actual number is hundreds or thousands of journals).
Details:
Excerpt from the STM Comments.
"An alternative route to open access involves making the article freely available online following publication after some embargo period, typically six, twelve or more months in duration. This approach assumes that an article has little value after its embargo period. For the vast majority of journals this is a dangerous and fallacious assumption. Data from the DC Principles Group of Publishers shows that only about 1% of active learned journals have business models that allow this approach: even in this small group of titles very few indeed, 0.1% (30 journals) make content available by the embargo period in SFI’s draft policy." No citation provided.
Here is what the DC Principles group says on the DC Principles website:
Principle 3. As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support the following forms of free access:
[snip]
* The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher’s business and publishing requirements.
If the DC Principles Group is making back issues of their journals freely available, and they are not the only ones to do this - how many journals are there?
Here are a few indications of what the numbers might actually be:
There are more than 3,400 fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ is a vetted list which includes only fully open access, peer reviewed journals. The Electronic Journals Library is a more inclusive list, including journals with free back issues; Electronic Journals Library lists over 18,000 free journals. Highwire Press lists 42 completely free sites, and 249 sites with free back issues. Over 400 journals make their articles freely available in PubMedCentral; as of March 2008, 321 made these articles freely available immediately on publication. For the analysis, see this post on IJPE.
In sum, while I don't have the exact figures for how many journals make back issues freely available, clearly the numbers are in the hundreds (Highwire, PubMedCentral), or thousands (Electronic Journals Library) - not just 30!
Details:
Excerpt from the STM Comments.
"An alternative route to open access involves making the article freely available online following publication after some embargo period, typically six, twelve or more months in duration. This approach assumes that an article has little value after its embargo period. For the vast majority of journals this is a dangerous and fallacious assumption. Data from the DC Principles Group of Publishers shows that only about 1% of active learned journals have business models that allow this approach: even in this small group of titles very few indeed, 0.1% (30 journals) make content available by the embargo period in SFI’s draft policy." No citation provided.
Here is what the DC Principles group says on the DC Principles website:
Principle 3. As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support the following forms of free access:
[snip]
* The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher’s business and publishing requirements.
If the DC Principles Group is making back issues of their journals freely available, and they are not the only ones to do this - how many journals are there?
Here are a few indications of what the numbers might actually be:
There are more than 3,400 fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ is a vetted list which includes only fully open access, peer reviewed journals. The Electronic Journals Library is a more inclusive list, including journals with free back issues; Electronic Journals Library lists over 18,000 free journals. Highwire Press lists 42 completely free sites, and 249 sites with free back issues. Over 400 journals make their articles freely available in PubMedCentral; as of March 2008, 321 made these articles freely available immediately on publication. For the analysis, see this post on IJPE.
In sum, while I don't have the exact figures for how many journals make back issues freely available, clearly the numbers are in the hundreds (Highwire, PubMedCentral), or thousands (Electronic Journals Library) - not just 30!
Put yourself in the patient's shoes: no embargoes to medical research
One of the side-benefits of medical research is that businesses get to profit from some of the money spent on research. This is a fine thing, but it is essential to remember that this is not the point.
There are those in the open access movement who are very sensitive to the desires of publishers to retain revenues, and willing to compromise by allowing for embargo periods before open access. This is generous, but my plea is to please remember the point of medical research: preventing and alleviating human suffering.
For anyone considering whether an embargo period on open access is fair, or how long an embargo period is fair, please put yourself in the patient's shoes.
Imagine that you are in your own living room, talking with your loved one who has just received a diagnosis of a terminal or very serious illness, that cannot be treated with yesterday's treatments.
If a new treatment or cure is made possible with money paid for by your tax dollars, how long do you think you, your loved one and your health care providers should wait to read the results?
If a new line of research has opened up that shows some promise of a new treatment, how long should we hold off on making the results available to all researchers so that everyone available and interested can build on what has been done, and advance our knowledge towards the cure?
For more of my writings on this topic, please see In Lieu of Flowers: An Open Letter to the American Association of Cancer Research and Open Access: to Help the Helpers.
There are those in the open access movement who are very sensitive to the desires of publishers to retain revenues, and willing to compromise by allowing for embargo periods before open access. This is generous, but my plea is to please remember the point of medical research: preventing and alleviating human suffering.
For anyone considering whether an embargo period on open access is fair, or how long an embargo period is fair, please put yourself in the patient's shoes.
Imagine that you are in your own living room, talking with your loved one who has just received a diagnosis of a terminal or very serious illness, that cannot be treated with yesterday's treatments.
If a new treatment or cure is made possible with money paid for by your tax dollars, how long do you think you, your loved one and your health care providers should wait to read the results?
If a new line of research has opened up that shows some promise of a new treatment, how long should we hold off on making the results available to all researchers so that everyone available and interested can build on what has been done, and advance our knowledge towards the cure?
For more of my writings on this topic, please see In Lieu of Flowers: An Open Letter to the American Association of Cancer Research and Open Access: to Help the Helpers.
Knowledge, Now! Or why we cannot afford embargoes
Through open sharing and knowledge and a collaborative rather than competitive approach, the world's researchers came together to map the human genome within a few short years; an advance that would have taken decades, if not centuries, pursuing more traditional approaches to science.
We humans have other problems to resolve, and we need to figure them out quickly. One is global warming. Figuring out how to slow or reverse the trend is an urgent need. We need to find environmentally friendly ways of producing and consuming energy, and the sooner the better. In our globalized world, we need to learn how to live together in peace.
It is understandable that publishers accustomed to a subscriptions approach to disseminating information worry about whether open access will impact their revenues - whether these are needed revenues, or hefty profits. It is generous that many in the open access movement are more than willing to compromise, to agree to embargoes or delays on open access.
However, we cannot afford embargoes. The point of scholarly research is advancing knowledge. In the course of pursuing knowledge, money is spent. Some will profit by this, whether they sell laboratory equipment, or publish the results of research. This is a fine thing, but it is not the point. If the lab finds a better way of doing research and no longer needs to purchase an outdated piece of equipment, would we say that the lab must continue doing research the old way, to keep the equipment-makers in profits? Of course not!
We humans have other problems to resolve, and we need to figure them out quickly. One is global warming. Figuring out how to slow or reverse the trend is an urgent need. We need to find environmentally friendly ways of producing and consuming energy, and the sooner the better. In our globalized world, we need to learn how to live together in peace.
It is understandable that publishers accustomed to a subscriptions approach to disseminating information worry about whether open access will impact their revenues - whether these are needed revenues, or hefty profits. It is generous that many in the open access movement are more than willing to compromise, to agree to embargoes or delays on open access.
However, we cannot afford embargoes. The point of scholarly research is advancing knowledge. In the course of pursuing knowledge, money is spent. Some will profit by this, whether they sell laboratory equipment, or publish the results of research. This is a fine thing, but it is not the point. If the lab finds a better way of doing research and no longer needs to purchase an outdated piece of equipment, would we say that the lab must continue doing research the old way, to keep the equipment-makers in profits? Of course not!
Please stand against the Canadian DMCA!
Following is my letter to Joyce Murray, MP, Vancouver Quadra, with copies to Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, Josée Verner, and Stephen Harper, Prime Minister, with respect to the recently introduced Bill C-61, also known as "the Canadian DMCA". For more info and action steps, please see Michael Geist. The Canadian Library Association opposed Bill C-61.
As a constituent, prolific author and creator, and professional librarian with expertise in the area of information policy, I am very concerned about Bill C-61 and the lack of public consultation on this important policy matter, and request your most vigorous opposition to the Bill.
Copyright law should balance the rights of creators and consumers, and reflect the public interest, not just the commercial marketplace.
Contemporary copyright law should reflect contemporary society, a society where the circle of creators is expanding to include everyone, and where free sharing of knowledge is rapidly becoming a norm, as exemplified by such phenomena as Wikipedia, the popular flickr, the blogosphere, and in academia and education, the growing trends towards open access and open education.
Canadian copyright reform should reflect this trend toward sharing which favors the growth of democracy, culture, and education. For example, it would be timely to eliminate Crown copyright in favor of public domain for government documents.
Our schools should not need an exemption to provide copies of work made freely available over the internet. This (free sharing) should be the default for all works made available in this manner, unless the copyright owner has taken measures to clearly indicate that the work is not free for sharing.
The technological protection measures provisions render all the otherwise beneficial aspects of the bill meaningless. It should not be illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that prevent legal use. Indeed, it should be illegal to implement technological protection measures to prevent legal use.
Democracy requires public consultation. The WIPO treaty should first be introduced and debated in parliament before any attempt is made to draft a bill to implement its provisions. The public should be invited to participate in discussion before a bill of this nature is even drafted. Bill C-61 should be immediately withdrawn in favour of a public consultation on copyright.
It is good that the rights of libraries to send interlibrary loans directly to patrons via electronic means is recognized. When a library does send an interlibrary loan to a patron, it is reasonable to expect that the item will be for that individual's use only.
However, it is not reasonable to demand that the item be printed by the individual within 5 days. This is not in step with current reality, where many are deliberately not printing information for environmental reasons; it also discriminates against anyone without ready access to a printer. This provision also discriminates against smaller and poorer libraries, that will not have the means to purchase technologies to enforce this provision.
Respectfully,
Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
As a constituent, prolific author and creator, and professional librarian with expertise in the area of information policy, I am very concerned about Bill C-61 and the lack of public consultation on this important policy matter, and request your most vigorous opposition to the Bill.
Copyright law should balance the rights of creators and consumers, and reflect the public interest, not just the commercial marketplace.
Contemporary copyright law should reflect contemporary society, a society where the circle of creators is expanding to include everyone, and where free sharing of knowledge is rapidly becoming a norm, as exemplified by such phenomena as Wikipedia, the popular flickr, the blogosphere, and in academia and education, the growing trends towards open access and open education.
Canadian copyright reform should reflect this trend toward sharing which favors the growth of democracy, culture, and education. For example, it would be timely to eliminate Crown copyright in favor of public domain for government documents.
Our schools should not need an exemption to provide copies of work made freely available over the internet. This (free sharing) should be the default for all works made available in this manner, unless the copyright owner has taken measures to clearly indicate that the work is not free for sharing.
The technological protection measures provisions render all the otherwise beneficial aspects of the bill meaningless. It should not be illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that prevent legal use. Indeed, it should be illegal to implement technological protection measures to prevent legal use.
Democracy requires public consultation. The WIPO treaty should first be introduced and debated in parliament before any attempt is made to draft a bill to implement its provisions. The public should be invited to participate in discussion before a bill of this nature is even drafted. Bill C-61 should be immediately withdrawn in favour of a public consultation on copyright.
It is good that the rights of libraries to send interlibrary loans directly to patrons via electronic means is recognized. When a library does send an interlibrary loan to a patron, it is reasonable to expect that the item will be for that individual's use only.
However, it is not reasonable to demand that the item be printed by the individual within 5 days. This is not in step with current reality, where many are deliberately not printing information for environmental reasons; it also discriminates against anyone without ready access to a printer. This provision also discriminates against smaller and poorer libraries, that will not have the means to purchase technologies to enforce this provision.
Respectfully,
Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
CLA / ABC Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries
The CLA / ABC Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries, approved by the CLA Executive on May 21, 2008 has just been posted to the CLA website.
Text:
Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values, therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.
CLA encourages Canadian libraries of all types to:
* support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
* raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
* support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
* support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.
Comment: congratulations and thanks to the Canadian Library Association for yet another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement, my fellow members of the CLA Open Access Task Force, and everyone else who has helped with open access developments at CLA over the years.
Text:
Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values, therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.
CLA encourages Canadian libraries of all types to:
* support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
* raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
* support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
* support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.
Comment: congratulations and thanks to the Canadian Library Association for yet another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement, my fellow members of the CLA Open Access Task Force, and everyone else who has helped with open access developments at CLA over the years.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Free government pubs, from the BC Legislative Library
From Jane Taylor, Director, BC Legislative Library:
If you haven't seen it already, have a look at our new web catalogue at http://www.llbccat.leg.bc.ca/#focus
* Follow the Checklist link to the British Columbia Government Publications Monthly Checklist to have a look at these new features:
* You can now go straight from the Checklist to the full text, either to our downloaded copy, or to the original government website if it's still active.
* You can print a PDF version of individual Checklist issues.
* You can sign up for an RSS feed to alert you about new issues.
* Issues back to November 1990 are included. Just note that back issues may contain out-of-date information for addresses, prices and government weblinks.
* You can now download MARC records using Z39.50. Click on the tab for instructions.
* As of April 1st this year, the Library has over 12,000 downloaded BC government publications available through the catalogue, and if we discover electronic versions of older ones, we will download them and add the URLs to our bibliographic records.
Many thanks to Jane Taylor and the BC Legislative Library for yet another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement
If you haven't seen it already, have a look at our new web catalogue at http://www.llbccat.leg.bc.ca/#focus
* Follow the Checklist link to the British Columbia Government Publications Monthly Checklist to have a look at these new features:
* You can now go straight from the Checklist to the full text, either to our downloaded copy, or to the original government website if it's still active.
* You can print a PDF version of individual Checklist issues.
* You can sign up for an RSS feed to alert you about new issues.
* Issues back to November 1990 are included. Just note that back issues may contain out-of-date information for addresses, prices and government weblinks.
* You can now download MARC records using Z39.50. Click on the tab for instructions.
* As of April 1st this year, the Library has over 12,000 downloaded BC government publications available through the catalogue, and if we discover electronic versions of older ones, we will download them and add the URLs to our bibliographic records.
Many thanks to Jane Taylor and the BC Legislative Library for yet another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement
Friday, June 06, 2008
Canadian Association of Research Libraries calls for Canadian OA Mandate
From Open Access News (ps=Peter Suber)
CARL calls for Canadian OA mandate
CARL calls for Canadian OA mandate
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has released its April 2008 submission on Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. (Thanks to the INIST Libre Accès blog.) Excerpt:
There is a real opportunity for Canada to join a worldwide movement to improve the accessibility of research results, and increase the research impact of federal investments....
Recommendation[s]:
That all granting councils and funding agencies implement policies that require their funded researchers make their research publications available free of charge....
That the Canadian government invest in the development of a digital repository infrastructure to support access to research data and publications....
PS: In two past posts (one, two) I've blogged six other pro-OA submissions to the same committee.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Author's Rights Negotitations: Research Ideas
Open Access, and particularly open access policies, creates opportunities for researchers to rethink about their copyright, and seek to retain their rights when they publish in scholarly journals. Here are some ideas for small, doable research projects that could be very helpful to advance our understanding about progress on Author's Rights. If you are considering such research, please consider openly posting your work on the web (with links from the Open Access Directory). This could, in my opinion, facilitate ad hoc collaborations. Others could comment on your research methodology even before you start, and/or others could do research using the same set of questions / approach elsewhere, so that results can be compared.
Following is a recent contribution I've made to the Open Access Directory:
A small study could help to get started on understanding what is happening around author's rights. For example, interview researchers in one or a few departments at one university about their experiences with seeking more rights than what a standard contract allows. How many have sought additional rights? What methods did they use - one-on-one negotiations, author's addenda? What were the results? The recent requirement policy of the US NIH means that there are likely many US authors with recent experiences in this area. A qualitative study of this nature could provide a great set of questions to follow up with a survey approach. The ideal would be a survey representative of all researchers everywhere - a smaller sample would be very useful, though. If anyone tries this, please write up your research methodology and post a link under Research in Progress - this would greatly facilitate ad hoc collaborations. Someone else might use your survey questions!
Following is a recent contribution I've made to the Open Access Directory:
A small study could help to get started on understanding what is happening around author's rights. For example, interview researchers in one or a few departments at one university about their experiences with seeking more rights than what a standard contract allows. How many have sought additional rights? What methods did they use - one-on-one negotiations, author's addenda? What were the results? The recent requirement policy of the US NIH means that there are likely many US authors with recent experiences in this area. A qualitative study of this nature could provide a great set of questions to follow up with a survey approach. The ideal would be a survey representative of all researchers everywhere - a smaller sample would be very useful, though. If anyone tries this, please write up your research methodology and post a link under Research in Progress - this would greatly facilitate ad hoc collaborations. Someone else might use your survey questions!
Open Access Permissions: Research Idea
A simple way to obtain a rough measure of permissions or full OA (the element of open access that goes beyond free to read, to providing permission to reuse the material in a variety of ways, from downloading and redistributing (including, or not including, commercial re-use), to making derivatives), is to review the DOAJ journals and note which journals use Creative Commons licensing, which license, and which ones use which license. It would be helpful to follow the DOAJ Subject lists for this, as there could be disciplinary differences, and also to note the publishers. BMC uses CC-BY, for example, and is a large enough publisher to impact the percentage of journals using CC-BY in biomedicine. It would be a good idea to download the DOAJ title list on a particular date, and work with that. Otherwise, the ongoing dramatic growth of DOAJ will mean your title list will keep changing as you research.
For a smaller but useful study, just look at one of the DOAJ subject areas, or a few very different subject areas to get some idea of the range. This could be useful information in and of itself, and/or as a pilot project for a larger study.
It is important to note that lack of CC licensing does NOT mean that a journal is not willing to provide permissions-OA, only that the journal has not expressed permissions-OA in this manner.
Another interesting research question would be whether DOAJ journals that are not using Creative Commons licensing consider their journals to be providing some aspect of permissions OA. A survey approach, working cooperatively with DOAJ to distribute the survey to DOAJ journals, might be workable.
I just contributed this idea to the Journal Business Models section of the Open Access Directory.
For a smaller but useful study, just look at one of the DOAJ subject areas, or a few very different subject areas to get some idea of the range. This could be useful information in and of itself, and/or as a pilot project for a larger study.
It is important to note that lack of CC licensing does NOT mean that a journal is not willing to provide permissions-OA, only that the journal has not expressed permissions-OA in this manner.
Another interesting research question would be whether DOAJ journals that are not using Creative Commons licensing consider their journals to be providing some aspect of permissions OA. A survey approach, working cooperatively with DOAJ to distribute the survey to DOAJ journals, might be workable.
I just contributed this idea to the Journal Business Models section of the Open Access Directory.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
America Competes Act and Open Access
The The America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act (COMPETES) has been cited in a couple of the responses to the extended consultation period made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health on the new requirement aspect of the Public Access Policy.
Open Access will advance the goals of COMPETES.
American researchers will benefit from the open access impact advantage. There is a substantial body of evidence that articles that are made openly accessible are more likely to be read and cited, as documented in Steve Hitchcock's bibliography. This enhances the status and career of the researcher, and means the work is more likely to be built upon in the scientific process which generally involves a series of incremental steps. Open Access to American research raises the priority of American research interests throughout the global scholarly community.
COMPETES includes the goal - both wise and kind - of enhancing educational opportunities to help Americans to develop the key skill sets needed for research and innovation for the future, and particularly to reach out to assist those with low-incomes, underrepresented minorities, and to assist students and teachers at high-needs schools.
Open Access will facilitate progress towards this goal. It is the wealthiest institutions and regions that currently enjoy the best access to the scholarly literature, while poorer institutions and regions are left behind. With Open Access, students and teachers at a rural school in a poorer neighborhood have all the materials needed for success at university and beyond, in the workforce or business community.
Open Access does not impact on research destined for the commercial market. The NIH policy clearly states that the policy applies to articles accepted for publication. If a company does not wish to make research available while a patent is pending, they will not want to publish the results!
Public comments to the NIH policy are due by 5:00 p.m. Saturday, May 31. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Open Access will advance the goals of COMPETES.
American researchers will benefit from the open access impact advantage. There is a substantial body of evidence that articles that are made openly accessible are more likely to be read and cited, as documented in Steve Hitchcock's bibliography. This enhances the status and career of the researcher, and means the work is more likely to be built upon in the scientific process which generally involves a series of incremental steps. Open Access to American research raises the priority of American research interests throughout the global scholarly community.
COMPETES includes the goal - both wise and kind - of enhancing educational opportunities to help Americans to develop the key skill sets needed for research and innovation for the future, and particularly to reach out to assist those with low-incomes, underrepresented minorities, and to assist students and teachers at high-needs schools.
Open Access will facilitate progress towards this goal. It is the wealthiest institutions and regions that currently enjoy the best access to the scholarly literature, while poorer institutions and regions are left behind. With Open Access, students and teachers at a rural school in a poorer neighborhood have all the materials needed for success at university and beyond, in the workforce or business community.
Open Access does not impact on research destined for the commercial market. The NIH policy clearly states that the policy applies to articles accepted for publication. If a company does not wish to make research available while a patent is pending, they will not want to publish the results!
Public comments to the NIH policy are due by 5:00 p.m. Saturday, May 31. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Canadian OA Librarians
Dean Giustini records some notes from talks with Canadian OA librarian leaders Lindsday Glynn, Lorie Kloda and Denise Koufougiannakis on UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Hypothesis: decline in author submissions if no self-archiving allowed
Hypothesis: author submissions will decrease at toll-access journals that do not allow author self-archiving, resulting in a decline in quantity of articles published, or quality, or both. Rationale: authors who are educated about open access, aware of the OA impact advantage, or impacted by open access policies, are likely to seek open access friendly venues for publishers. The rate of submission decline will vary, depending on the discipline, relevant open access policies, and the availability and credibility of open access alternatives (open access journals and self-archiving friendly journals).
This hypothesis was developed for the Research Questions section of the Open Access Directory (OAD).
For a more poetic expression, see Whither White, Fair RoMEO?
This hypothesis was developed for the Research Questions section of the Open Access Directory (OAD).
For a more poetic expression, see Whither White, Fair RoMEO?
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Open Access Research Questions
Following are a few of the more substantial entries I've recently contributed to the Research Questions section of the Open Access Directory, repeated here so that a copy is kept of the original questions, and so that there is one copy of the questions under my name as the author. Please join us at the OAD to add and refine questions - and be sure to add a note about any research in progress! Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in pursuing any of the following and my questions are not completely clear.
Hypothesis: there is a rural / urban split in subscription-based access. This will appear in many countries, developed and developing alike. The largest gap will be evident for the public, followed by educational institutions. There will be some gaps even for research institutions, i.e. even a remote / field location of a research university will not always have the same access as the main campus.
This can be tested with a case scenario, e.g. a member of the public in a particular location. Does the location have a public library, and if so, what scholarly subscriptions, if any, are available? What about ILL services? Is there a local college or university campus - if so, is there walk-in access? If walk-in access is available but not close by, what would be involved for the person to take advantage? Is it a simple trip to a larger centre, something the person would be likely to do for other reasons such as shopping anyways? Or, is it an expensive trip?
This research would be very well-suited for collaboration in different regions.
Note likely confounding factor: there will also likely be a rural-urban split in quality and availability of internet. This may be inconsistent (e.g., some very remote locations are very well-served via satellite).
Hypothesis: there is a split in subscription-based access based on relative wealth, both across and within countries and sectors. A mid-sized college in a poorer area will tend to have fewer subscriptions and may not have as robust support for interlibrary loans services. Note: poorer colleges and universities need to attract students. Not all will be happy to advertise less access. Perhaps an anonymous study would help?
[from OAD:} It's also important to distinguish demand for access from people without access. Some of those without access may not care to have it. How well can we measure the demand for access among those who don't currently have it?
Heather's addition:
* On the other hand, demand for access may be due to lack of access. Is there research on demand for reading materials or right-to-read among illiterate people?
Medline free usage jump
When Medline was made freely available, usage jumped a hundred fold. This may be worth exploring and documenting in detail. Is there a relationship between free availability of Medline and the emergence of evidence-based medicine? Possible approaches: usage statistics, surveys, interviews.
Library Support for Open Access
* Library support for open access. (Can be by nature of support, type / size of library and region / location). Types of support:
* Journal hosting (see Karla Hahn's recent ARL study on library publishing activities) [date? link?]
* Payment of article processing fees
* Economic support (and/or commitments) for open access initiatives, e.g. SCOAP3, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* Institutional and disciplinary repositories (note: the Canadian Association of Research Libraries does an annual survey). # of repositories, type, contents, staffing by type and FTE.
* Educational - number and type of workshops. See recent SPEC kit on scholarly communications activities.
Library use of open access resources. (Can be by nature of use, type / size of library and region / location).
* Inclusion of DOAJ and other open access lists in link resolving services. (Statistics on hits / downloads?).
* Local open access collection development.
* Interlibrary loan searching for open access resources.
Library support for open access as measured by library website design.
* Is there a link to information about open access and scholarly communication? If so, where - the library home page, placed prominently or not-so-prominently, several clicks in, etc.?
* Does this differ by library type, size, region or country?
* Is there a correlation between library OA support and OA success at the organization?
Hypothesis: there is a rural / urban split in subscription-based access. This will appear in many countries, developed and developing alike. The largest gap will be evident for the public, followed by educational institutions. There will be some gaps even for research institutions, i.e. even a remote / field location of a research university will not always have the same access as the main campus.
This can be tested with a case scenario, e.g. a member of the public in a particular location. Does the location have a public library, and if so, what scholarly subscriptions, if any, are available? What about ILL services? Is there a local college or university campus - if so, is there walk-in access? If walk-in access is available but not close by, what would be involved for the person to take advantage? Is it a simple trip to a larger centre, something the person would be likely to do for other reasons such as shopping anyways? Or, is it an expensive trip?
This research would be very well-suited for collaboration in different regions.
Note likely confounding factor: there will also likely be a rural-urban split in quality and availability of internet. This may be inconsistent (e.g., some very remote locations are very well-served via satellite).
Hypothesis: there is a split in subscription-based access based on relative wealth, both across and within countries and sectors. A mid-sized college in a poorer area will tend to have fewer subscriptions and may not have as robust support for interlibrary loans services. Note: poorer colleges and universities need to attract students. Not all will be happy to advertise less access. Perhaps an anonymous study would help?
[from OAD:} It's also important to distinguish demand for access from people without access. Some of those without access may not care to have it. How well can we measure the demand for access among those who don't currently have it?
Heather's addition:
* On the other hand, demand for access may be due to lack of access. Is there research on demand for reading materials or right-to-read among illiterate people?
Medline free usage jump
When Medline was made freely available, usage jumped a hundred fold. This may be worth exploring and documenting in detail. Is there a relationship between free availability of Medline and the emergence of evidence-based medicine? Possible approaches: usage statistics, surveys, interviews.
Library Support for Open Access
* Library support for open access. (Can be by nature of support, type / size of library and region / location). Types of support:
* Journal hosting (see Karla Hahn's recent ARL study on library publishing activities) [date? link?]
* Payment of article processing fees
* Economic support (and/or commitments) for open access initiatives, e.g. SCOAP3, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* Institutional and disciplinary repositories (note: the Canadian Association of Research Libraries does an annual survey). # of repositories, type, contents, staffing by type and FTE.
* Educational - number and type of workshops. See recent SPEC kit on scholarly communications activities.
Library use of open access resources. (Can be by nature of use, type / size of library and region / location).
* Inclusion of DOAJ and other open access lists in link resolving services. (Statistics on hits / downloads?).
* Local open access collection development.
* Interlibrary loan searching for open access resources.
Library support for open access as measured by library website design.
* Is there a link to information about open access and scholarly communication? If so, where - the library home page, placed prominently or not-so-prominently, several clicks in, etc.?
* Does this differ by library type, size, region or country?
* Is there a correlation between library OA support and OA success at the organization?
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
CLA Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries
Today, the Canadian Library Executive approved a Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries, as follows. The wording may not be exact. The final wording will be posted on the CLA website.
CLA Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries
Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values (from the 2005 CLA Resolution on Open Access), therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.
CLA encourages libraries of all types to:
• support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
• raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
• support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
• support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.
Many thanks to CLA President Alvin Schrader, the CLA Executive, and all of the members of the CLA Open Access Task Force.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
CLA Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries
Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values (from the 2005 CLA Resolution on Open Access), therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.
CLA encourages libraries of all types to:
• support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
• raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
• support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
• support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.
Many thanks to CLA President Alvin Schrader, the CLA Executive, and all of the members of the CLA Open Access Task Force.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
PubMedCentral Journals baseline data
As of May 17, 2008, 8.7% of the journals indexed in MEDLINE / PubMed are full participants in PubMedCentral. Of these, 200 are traditional, non-open-access publishers. Good news though this is, this shows that there is much more work to do!
Thanks to Michael Rogawski on the SPARC Open Access Forum. According to Rogawski, there are 5,194 (mostly) biomedical and life sciences journals indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, and 452 journals fully participating in PMC.
Full participation in PMC is essential for medical journals, not only for access, but for preservation, too.
The approximate number of journals in PubMed (5,200) can be found on the National Library of Medicine's fact sheet, What is the difference between Medline and PubMed?, accessible from the Medline site. (I can't find a link from PubMed, though).
The exact number of journals indexed in Index Medicus / PubMed as of March 2008 according to the NLM website is 5,271.
It will be interesting to review this data in the future as part of the quarterly Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Thanks to Michael Rogawski on the SPARC Open Access Forum. According to Rogawski, there are 5,194 (mostly) biomedical and life sciences journals indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, and 452 journals fully participating in PMC.
Full participation in PMC is essential for medical journals, not only for access, but for preservation, too.
The approximate number of journals in PubMed (5,200) can be found on the National Library of Medicine's fact sheet, What is the difference between Medline and PubMed?, accessible from the Medline site. (I can't find a link from PubMed, though).
The exact number of journals indexed in Index Medicus / PubMed as of March 2008 according to the NLM website is 5,271.
It will be interesting to review this data in the future as part of the quarterly Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Open Access Reserves List
Researchers who are faculty, too, are soon likely to see a clear benefit to them of open access: the ease of creating a list of reserve readings for students.
When materials are open access, all that one needs to do is to note the citation and add a link. No authentication needed, no copyright permissions. If you're planning to use an article or book chapter year after year - or it is clear that others would and should read the items - it is worthwhile contacting the author to inquire about making a copy open access, and it is worth the author's time to make this happen.
This hit home today when I did a search of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Metadata Harvester and came up with a list of search results that looked a lot like the reserves list for a course at the library where I used to work.
It was not unusual for professors to put copies of their own work on reserve, to make sure they were accessible to students, whether the library could afford to subscribe to or purchase the content or not - clearly, a desire to open up access even in the print world.
If I am seeing this, I think we are close to the point in time when others will begin to see it, too. Once we begin to see what those institutional repositories can do, it will become much easier to recruit content.
Added May 16: see also Klaus Graf's 2005 blogpost on Archivalia called Electronic Reserves and Open Access. Klaus asks: Can administrators of Electronic Reserves (ERs) and staff using them in order to support Open Access (OA)? and concludes: Administrators and staff of ERs should support OA by asking for permission to make OA versions of ER materials available. Klaus Graf's post is in the public domain.
When materials are open access, all that one needs to do is to note the citation and add a link. No authentication needed, no copyright permissions. If you're planning to use an article or book chapter year after year - or it is clear that others would and should read the items - it is worthwhile contacting the author to inquire about making a copy open access, and it is worth the author's time to make this happen.
This hit home today when I did a search of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Metadata Harvester and came up with a list of search results that looked a lot like the reserves list for a course at the library where I used to work.
It was not unusual for professors to put copies of their own work on reserve, to make sure they were accessible to students, whether the library could afford to subscribe to or purchase the content or not - clearly, a desire to open up access even in the print world.
If I am seeing this, I think we are close to the point in time when others will begin to see it, too. Once we begin to see what those institutional repositories can do, it will become much easier to recruit content.
Added May 16: see also Klaus Graf's 2005 blogpost on Archivalia called Electronic Reserves and Open Access. Klaus asks: Can administrators of Electronic Reserves (ERs) and staff using them in order to support Open Access (OA)? and concludes: Administrators and staff of ERs should support OA by asking for permission to make OA versions of ER materials available. Klaus Graf's post is in the public domain.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
PMC: free and open access: limits to unlimited!
PubMedCentral has a new feature: a search can now be limited to Open Access Articles! Very cool! The irony of creating Limiting, to find the Unlimited, is simply delicious!
Check this out at at Entrez PubMed PMC. Click Limits.
Total PMC open access articles as of May 13, 2008: 70,588.
Free and open access are obviously not the same thing in PMC terminology; the total number of free research / review articles is 1,139,216.
Fortunately, PMC posts its Definition of Open Access, based on the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing:
An Open Access Publication1 is one that meets the following two conditions:
* The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
* A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
Comment: kudos to PMC for posting their definition of open access! It would be great if all search services did this.
Check this out at at Entrez PubMed PMC. Click Limits.
Total PMC open access articles as of May 13, 2008: 70,588.
Free and open access are obviously not the same thing in PMC terminology; the total number of free research / review articles is 1,139,216.
Fortunately, PMC posts its Definition of Open Access, based on the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing:
An Open Access Publication1 is one that meets the following two conditions:
* The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
* A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
Comment: kudos to PMC for posting their definition of open access! It would be great if all search services did this.
PubMed: more than a quarter free!
Entrez PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's free online version of Medline, has a total of over 8.4 million indexed items with links to fulltext. Of these, more than 2.3 million link to free fulltext.
Does this mean that already more than a quarter of the world's medical literature is freely available online?
Here are the numbers, for May 13, 2008, as recorded on the Open Access Directory
2,349,343. May 13, 2008. Number of free fulltext articles on deposit at PubMed Central. To update this number, search PubMed with a limit to "Links to Free Full Text " from the Entrez PubMed search box.
8,413,363 May 13, 2008. Total number of articles in Entrez PubMed with "Links to Full Text".
Does this mean that already more than a quarter of the world's medical literature is freely available online?
Here are the numbers, for May 13, 2008, as recorded on the Open Access Directory
2,349,343. May 13, 2008. Number of free fulltext articles on deposit at PubMed Central. To update this number, search PubMed with a limit to "Links to Free Full Text " from the Entrez PubMed search box.
8,413,363 May 13, 2008. Total number of articles in Entrez PubMed with "Links to Full Text".
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Open Access Using OJS - how fast?
How fast can a journal issue be published using Open Journal Systems (OJS)?
Based on a special issue of Topics in Scholarly Communications I created this afternoon for an upcoming presentation, it appears - pretty darn fast!
Altogether, this special one-article issue took me a total of four and a half hours - mind you, that includes writing and revising that one article and creating the 52-slide presentation complete with pictures and detailed notes - not to mention doing the laundry, feeding the cat, and keeping up with Open Access News.
Subtracting all these extras, the actual software time for this issue, for all roles from author to section editor, layout, and publishing the issue, could not have taken more than an hour, at the very most.
If the presentation is of interest, watch for a copy in E-LIS later this week.
Based on a special issue of Topics in Scholarly Communications I created this afternoon for an upcoming presentation, it appears - pretty darn fast!
Altogether, this special one-article issue took me a total of four and a half hours - mind you, that includes writing and revising that one article and creating the 52-slide presentation complete with pictures and detailed notes - not to mention doing the laundry, feeding the cat, and keeping up with Open Access News.
Subtracting all these extras, the actual software time for this issue, for all roles from author to section editor, layout, and publishing the issue, could not have taken more than an hour, at the very most.
If the presentation is of interest, watch for a copy in E-LIS later this week.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Free to read: great for business!
There are many flavors of open access; green, gold, public access, free to read, free to write. One thing that every aspect of open access has it common, is that it brings many benefits throughout our society, what the Budapest Open Access Initiative called "an unprecedented public good".
Consider how making research articles free to read for anyone with an internet connection, opens up new possibilities for the business community. The wealth of knowledge developed by our universities and researchers becomes freely available to everyone from the large corporation, to the budding entrepreneur. And why not? One of the arguments for open access is that taxpayers should have access to the results of research that they have funded. Businesses are taxpayers, too!
There are many ways in which we can all benefit from business access to research. First, of course, is the economic benefits when the commercial sector flourishes. Then, too, there are many ways that business can benefit from our collective knowledge to the advantage of all; consider, for example, how many companies would really like to be environmentally friendly. Why not help them out, and share what we know?
For more on this topic, please see my blogpost, Open Access: Good for Business!
Consider how making research articles free to read for anyone with an internet connection, opens up new possibilities for the business community. The wealth of knowledge developed by our universities and researchers becomes freely available to everyone from the large corporation, to the budding entrepreneur. And why not? One of the arguments for open access is that taxpayers should have access to the results of research that they have funded. Businesses are taxpayers, too!
There are many ways in which we can all benefit from business access to research. First, of course, is the economic benefits when the commercial sector flourishes. Then, too, there are many ways that business can benefit from our collective knowledge to the advantage of all; consider, for example, how many companies would really like to be environmentally friendly. Why not help them out, and share what we know?
For more on this topic, please see my blogpost, Open Access: Good for Business!
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Jim Till on the IRCSET policy
Jim Till has posted a comment on the IRCSET policy.
Peter Suber and I have speculated that the IRCSET policy might be the best model so far, however Jim points out that the combination of the first key principle: 1. This publication policy confirms the freedom of researchers to publish first wherever they feel is the most appropriate, and the stipulation "should adhere", might constitute a loophole which would render this policy ineffective.
Good points, Jim!
Jim Till, author of Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure, is one of the reasons we have Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Peter Suber and I have speculated that the IRCSET policy might be the best model so far, however Jim points out that the combination of the first key principle: 1. This publication policy confirms the freedom of researchers to publish first wherever they feel is the most appropriate, and the stipulation "should adhere", might constitute a loophole which would render this policy ineffective.
Good points, Jim!
Jim Till, author of Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure, is one of the reasons we have Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
40 new PubMedCentral journals in last 60 days!
40 more journals have begun adding content to PubMedCentral in the last 60 days! To view the list, go to PMC Journal List - New.
Of these, 22 or more than half make content available immediately! An additional 6 make content available within 12 months or less, indicating that articles published in these journals clearly fit the NIH Public Access policy. In other words, 70% of these new PMC journals clearly facilitate compliance with the NIH policy.
Kudos to every one of these journals, and to PMC for creating this list.
Librarians - to support the transition to OA, why not prioritize subscribing to OA policy-friendly journals? Journals could qualify by being fully open access, actively contributing content to PubMedCentral within the NIH acceptable embargo period, or having author-self-archiving policies that fit with OA policy compliance.
Aggregators - why not develop convenient lists, to make it easy for libraries to consider these factors in subscription decisions?
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Of these, 22 or more than half make content available immediately! An additional 6 make content available within 12 months or less, indicating that articles published in these journals clearly fit the NIH Public Access policy. In other words, 70% of these new PMC journals clearly facilitate compliance with the NIH policy.
Kudos to every one of these journals, and to PMC for creating this list.
Librarians - to support the transition to OA, why not prioritize subscribing to OA policy-friendly journals? Journals could qualify by being fully open access, actively contributing content to PubMedCentral within the NIH acceptable embargo period, or having author-self-archiving policies that fit with OA policy compliance.
Aggregators - why not develop convenient lists, to make it easy for libraries to consider these factors in subscription decisions?
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Open Access: to research, or to implement
Peter Suber, in the May 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, presents an extensive list of questions, highly recommended for anyone interested in research open access!
Librarians - here is another perspective. All we need to do is to rethink, just a little, what a library collection is in an open access age. The moment we understand that a library can build a collection, and that the concept of purchase need never enter the equation, then we can begin to shift those collection dollars from purchase to creating open access, working creatively and cooperatively in partnership with our faculty and scholarly publishers.
This shift - which is already happening, with so many libraries involved in digitizing collections for open access, publishing, institutional repositories, and the SCOAP3 Consortium - would change the answers to many of the fine questions Peter asks; indeed, it would make many of these questions moot!
Librarians - here is another perspective. All we need to do is to rethink, just a little, what a library collection is in an open access age. The moment we understand that a library can build a collection, and that the concept of purchase need never enter the equation, then we can begin to shift those collection dollars from purchase to creating open access, working creatively and cooperatively in partnership with our faculty and scholarly publishers.
This shift - which is already happening, with so many libraries involved in digitizing collections for open access, publishing, institutional repositories, and the SCOAP3 Consortium - would change the answers to many of the fine questions Peter asks; indeed, it would make many of these questions moot!
Amazing OA Progress in April 2008
Peter Suber just released the May 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter's feature article this month is "What we don't know about open access: research questions in need of researchers".
Also worth highlighting: the absolutely amazing progress towards open access reflected in Peter's Roundup Section. There are 10 items reporting open access mandate news, all very good news and including 5 new university open access policies, by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), Stirling University, Southampton University, Queen Margaret University, Sweden's University College of Borås, with more in the works. Wow!
Details:
The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) adopted its long-awaited OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/ircset-adopts-oa-mandate.html
The new OA mandate at the NIH took effect for the majority of NIH grantees.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/day-worth-celebrating.html
The UK Medical Research Council revised its OA mandate. When the MRC pays for a gold OA article, then it will demand the removal of key permission barriers, not merely the removal of price barriers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/revision-to-oa-mandate-at-mrc.html
The European Commission recommended OA for publicly-funded research in its April 10 report on tech transfer.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/ec-recommends-oa-for-publicly-funded.html
Stirling University adopted an OA mandate (on March 5, announced April 9), the first university-wide mandate in the UK the second (after Harvard's) to be adopted by faculty rather than administrators.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/stirling-u-adopts-oa-mandate.html
The University of Southampton adopted a university-wide OA mandate (announced April 4). Its School of Electronics and Computer Science has had a departmental mandate since 2001.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/university-wide-oa-mandate-at.html
Scotland's Queen Margaret University adopted an OA mandate (on February 19).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/queen-margaret-university-adopts-oa.html
Sweden's University College of Borås adopted an OA policy encouraging faculty to deposit their journal articles in the institutional repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/oa-policy-at-sweden-university-college.html
The European University Association (EUA) released an updated version of its OA recommendations. The EUA calls on universities to mandate OA to their research output and to support OA mandates for publicly-funded research. The EUA has 791 institutional members in 46 countries.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/eua-updates-its-oa-recommendations.html
The Open University is considering an "immediate deposit / optional access" OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/richard-poynder-interviews-bill.html
Also worth highlighting: the absolutely amazing progress towards open access reflected in Peter's Roundup Section. There are 10 items reporting open access mandate news, all very good news and including 5 new university open access policies, by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), Stirling University, Southampton University, Queen Margaret University, Sweden's University College of Borås, with more in the works. Wow!
Details:
The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) adopted its long-awaited OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/ircset-adopts-oa-mandate.html
The new OA mandate at the NIH took effect for the majority of NIH grantees.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/day-worth-celebrating.html
The UK Medical Research Council revised its OA mandate. When the MRC pays for a gold OA article, then it will demand the removal of key permission barriers, not merely the removal of price barriers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/revision-to-oa-mandate-at-mrc.html
The European Commission recommended OA for publicly-funded research in its April 10 report on tech transfer.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/ec-recommends-oa-for-publicly-funded.html
Stirling University adopted an OA mandate (on March 5, announced April 9), the first university-wide mandate in the UK the second (after Harvard's) to be adopted by faculty rather than administrators.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/stirling-u-adopts-oa-mandate.html
The University of Southampton adopted a university-wide OA mandate (announced April 4). Its School of Electronics and Computer Science has had a departmental mandate since 2001.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/university-wide-oa-mandate-at.html
Scotland's Queen Margaret University adopted an OA mandate (on February 19).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/queen-margaret-university-adopts-oa.html
Sweden's University College of Borås adopted an OA policy encouraging faculty to deposit their journal articles in the institutional repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/oa-policy-at-sweden-university-college.html
The European University Association (EUA) released an updated version of its OA recommendations. The EUA calls on universities to mandate OA to their research output and to support OA mandates for publicly-funded research. The EUA has 791 institutional members in 46 countries.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/eua-updates-its-oa-recommendations.html
The Open University is considering an "immediate deposit / optional access" OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/richard-poynder-interviews-bill.html
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives – the South Asian Scenario
Wonderful newopen access book on open access from UNESCO! by Anup Kumar Das.
Thanks to Moninder Buber.
Thanks to Moninder Buber.
Best open access funder mandate anywhere?
Working on an open access policy for your funding agency or university? Here is potential model to point people to! The recently announced policy of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology is described by Peter Suber as possibly the best funder mandate anywhere on Open Access News.
From the IRCSET Press Release: The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology (IRCSET) has taken moves today to ensure that research papers published by its funding recipients will be made available in an open access repository, within six months of their first publication. The new development is in line with best international practice and is designed to enhance the public accessibility of State funded research.
From the Policy:
Conditions to which IRCSET funded Award Recipients
should adhere:
1. All researchers must lodge their publications resulting in whole or in part from IRCSET-funded research in an open access repository as soon as is practical, but within six calendar months at the latest.
2. The repository should ideally be a local institutional repository to which the appropriate rights must be granted to replicate to other repositories.
3. Authors should deposit post-prints (or publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings;
4. Deposit should be made upon acceptance by the journal/conference. Repositories should release the metadata immediately, with access restrictions to full text article to be applied as required. Open access should be available as soon as practicable after the author-requested embargo, or six month, whichever comes first;
5. Suitable repositories should make provision for long-term preservation of, and free public access to, published research findings.
6. IRCSET may augment or amend the above requirements wherever necessary to ensure best practice in Open Access.
Comment: as Peter Suber points out, strengths of this policy are that it is a requirement, "part of IRCSET’s terms and conditions in offering and providing funding to researchers", the maximum 6-month deposit, the requirement for immediate deposit even when access is delayed (very important to fit in with the workflow of the busy researcher). Congratulations to IRCSET!
The full Press Release and Policy are very much worth reading.
From the IRCSET Press Release: The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology (IRCSET) has taken moves today to ensure that research papers published by its funding recipients will be made available in an open access repository, within six months of their first publication. The new development is in line with best international practice and is designed to enhance the public accessibility of State funded research.
From the Policy:
Conditions to which IRCSET funded Award Recipients
should adhere:
1. All researchers must lodge their publications resulting in whole or in part from IRCSET-funded research in an open access repository as soon as is practical, but within six calendar months at the latest.
2. The repository should ideally be a local institutional repository to which the appropriate rights must be granted to replicate to other repositories.
3. Authors should deposit post-prints (or publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings;
4. Deposit should be made upon acceptance by the journal/conference. Repositories should release the metadata immediately, with access restrictions to full text article to be applied as required. Open access should be available as soon as practicable after the author-requested embargo, or six month, whichever comes first;
5. Suitable repositories should make provision for long-term preservation of, and free public access to, published research findings.
6. IRCSET may augment or amend the above requirements wherever necessary to ensure best practice in Open Access.
Comment: as Peter Suber points out, strengths of this policy are that it is a requirement, "part of IRCSET’s terms and conditions in offering and providing funding to researchers", the maximum 6-month deposit, the requirement for immediate deposit even when access is delayed (very important to fit in with the workflow of the busy researcher). Congratulations to IRCSET!
The full Press Release and Policy are very much worth reading.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Creative Commons licenses for open access
Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to obtain licenses indicating how their work may be used. CC licenses are readable by machines as well as by humans. CC can simplify the process of relating and understanding permissions, for authors, publishers, and readers alike.
There are many CC licenses. Here are some options that are most likely to be useful for open access authors and publishers:
attribution-noncommercial-sharealike: this allows others to reuse your work, as long as you are appropriately attributed, but not to sell the work for a profit. Derivatives of your work are allowed, as long as the person making the derivative shares the work with others as you have with them. Rockefeller University Press just implemented this CC license (thanks to Peter Suber on
Open Access News).
attribution-sharealike: as above, but allows for commercial uses as well.
While I recommend the use of Sharealike to facilitate further dissemination of a work as open access, this element is not absolutely necessary for a creative commons open access license. attribution-noncommercial and just plain attribution are perfectly suitable as open access licenses, too.
There are other CC licenses that are perfectly compatible with open access, such as public domain, or that may be of interest, such as the GNU GPL (open source) license.
Many open access authors and publishers are beginning to use Creative Commons licenses. CC licenses cover a great many of the situations creators would like to cover - but not all. For example, the Sharealike element applies to derivatives; some creators (myself included) might like to see Sharealike applied to exact copies of the original, too. If CC does not quite fit, no worries - you can choose the closest license, or not use CC at all. What is important is making your work open access.
There are many CC licenses. Here are some options that are most likely to be useful for open access authors and publishers:
attribution-noncommercial-sharealike: this allows others to reuse your work, as long as you are appropriately attributed, but not to sell the work for a profit. Derivatives of your work are allowed, as long as the person making the derivative shares the work with others as you have with them. Rockefeller University Press just implemented this CC license (thanks to Peter Suber on
Open Access News).
attribution-sharealike: as above, but allows for commercial uses as well.
While I recommend the use of Sharealike to facilitate further dissemination of a work as open access, this element is not absolutely necessary for a creative commons open access license. attribution-noncommercial and just plain attribution are perfectly suitable as open access licenses, too.
There are other CC licenses that are perfectly compatible with open access, such as public domain, or that may be of interest, such as the GNU GPL (open source) license.
Many open access authors and publishers are beginning to use Creative Commons licenses. CC licenses cover a great many of the situations creators would like to cover - but not all. For example, the Sharealike element applies to derivatives; some creators (myself included) might like to see Sharealike applied to exact copies of the original, too. If CC does not quite fit, no worries - you can choose the closest license, or not use CC at all. What is important is making your work open access.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Open Doors and Open Minds
SPARC and Science Commons have just released a White Paper outlining the Harvard faculty open access policy, and steps that others can take to implement such a policy at their own institution, beautifully named OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution.
Highly recommended! Thanks to Ray English on SCHOLCOMM.
Highly recommended! Thanks to Ray English on SCHOLCOMM.
Monday, April 28, 2008
For Sale: New, Improved, Locked-Down Version of Cell Wall
[Reader caution: take this post with a large grain of salt]
New improved, locked-down version of Cell Wall
Earlier today, IJPE announced the sale of a plain PDF version of Cell Wall for 50 Euros or US dollars. Now we are pleased to announced the same of a new, improved version of Cell Wall, featuring restrictive DRM technology and a secretive contract purchase license, for a mere hundred Euros or US dollars!
The DRM-protected version is locked down. Text cannot be modified. This will protect your purchase from accidental changes you might make to a more open version. Inquire about our forthcoming "green" version, with additional lock-down technology to prevent any possibility of printing the document, at a modest additional cost.
This purchase features a special "secrecy" license contract. To sign up, all you need to do is to agree to the following:
I agree that my purchase of Cell Wall is completely confidential. I greatly appreciate IJPE's keeping of my purchase private. I will never take any action publicly that could reveal this purchase, such as speaking or writing in such a way as to indicate having read the article, for example by citing it.
Full attribution of Cell Wall
Cell-wall structural changes in wheat straw pretreated for bioethanol production
Jan B Kristensen1, Lisbeth G Thygesen, Claus Felby, Henning Jørgensen,and Thomas Elder
Biotechnology for Biofuels Volume 1
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/home
Heather's Comment: this scenario, while somewhat absurd, illustrates some of the uses that can be made of an item with a CC-BY license with an open access articles such as Cell Wall.
Allowing for commercial reuse of a work, means allowing for resale without compensation for author or publisher.
Allowing for derivatives means allowing for derivatives that the author or publisher would have issues with, for a variety of reasons. Many open access authors and publishers would not like the idea of someone adding DRM to OA work, as with this scenario.
New improved, locked-down version of Cell Wall
Earlier today, IJPE announced the sale of a plain PDF version of Cell Wall for 50 Euros or US dollars. Now we are pleased to announced the same of a new, improved version of Cell Wall, featuring restrictive DRM technology and a secretive contract purchase license, for a mere hundred Euros or US dollars!
The DRM-protected version is locked down. Text cannot be modified. This will protect your purchase from accidental changes you might make to a more open version. Inquire about our forthcoming "green" version, with additional lock-down technology to prevent any possibility of printing the document, at a modest additional cost.
This purchase features a special "secrecy" license contract. To sign up, all you need to do is to agree to the following:
I agree that my purchase of Cell Wall is completely confidential. I greatly appreciate IJPE's keeping of my purchase private. I will never take any action publicly that could reveal this purchase, such as speaking or writing in such a way as to indicate having read the article, for example by citing it.
Full attribution of Cell Wall
Cell-wall structural changes in wheat straw pretreated for bioethanol production
Jan B Kristensen1, Lisbeth G Thygesen, Claus Felby, Henning Jørgensen,and Thomas Elder
Biotechnology for Biofuels Volume 1
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/home
Heather's Comment: this scenario, while somewhat absurd, illustrates some of the uses that can be made of an item with a CC-BY license with an open access articles such as Cell Wall.
Allowing for commercial reuse of a work, means allowing for resale without compensation for author or publisher.
Allowing for derivatives means allowing for derivatives that the author or publisher would have issues with, for a variety of reasons. Many open access authors and publishers would not like the idea of someone adding DRM to OA work, as with this scenario.
Matt Cockerill on For Sale: Cell-Wall Structural Changes
Here is Matthew Cockerill's comment on http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/04/for-sale-cell-wall-structural-changes.html
(posted with permission):
Anyway, this isn't problematic and it is not a theoretical possibility,
it is already happening in the real world.
There are plenty of service providers (including Infotrieve and the
British Library) who will, if requested deliver a printed copy (or an
electronic copy, for that matter) of an OA article, on payment of a
service fee (but not a copyright fee).
From BioMed Central's point of view, this is a good thing. There are a
fair number of information professionals, whether working at pharma
companies or in the academic sector, who value the convenience and
time-saving of being able to go to a single source to order up a range
of documents (both OA and non-OA), and to have them all promptly
delivered as a collection. Both Infotrieve and the BL will do this,
charging users a service fee to do so.
A "no commercial use" constraint would prevent this kind of
redistribution, and so lessen the ease of availability of OA articles in
that context.
Matt
PS obviously, if the wording suggested that the service provider *owned*
the research article concerned, or that the user *must* pay a fee in
order to read it, or that the fee concerned was a copyright fee, then
that would be false advertising.
Heather's comment: a document delivery fee-for-service (as charged by Infotrieve and the British Library) is different from charging for the content per se. There has to be a way to enable this kind of distribution, with a blanket commercial license. More later...
(posted with permission):
Anyway, this isn't problematic and it is not a theoretical possibility,
it is already happening in the real world.
There are plenty of service providers (including Infotrieve and the
British Library) who will, if requested deliver a printed copy (or an
electronic copy, for that matter) of an OA article, on payment of a
service fee (but not a copyright fee).
From BioMed Central's point of view, this is a good thing. There are a
fair number of information professionals, whether working at pharma
companies or in the academic sector, who value the convenience and
time-saving of being able to go to a single source to order up a range
of documents (both OA and non-OA), and to have them all promptly
delivered as a collection. Both Infotrieve and the BL will do this,
charging users a service fee to do so.
A "no commercial use" constraint would prevent this kind of
redistribution, and so lessen the ease of availability of OA articles in
that context.
Matt
PS obviously, if the wording suggested that the service provider *owned*
the research article concerned, or that the user *must* pay a fee in
order to read it, or that the fee concerned was a copyright fee, then
that would be false advertising.
Heather's comment: a document delivery fee-for-service (as charged by Infotrieve and the British Library) is different from charging for the content per se. There has to be a way to enable this kind of distribution, with a blanket commercial license. More later...
For sale: cell-wall structural changes
[Reader caution: do not take seriously!]
A high-quality PDF of the following article is now available! To access your copy, please send 50 Euros or US$ to the author of IJPE.
Cell-wall structural changes in wheat straw pretreated for bioethanol production
Jan B Kristensen1, Lisbeth G Thygesen, Claus Felby, Henning Jørgensen,and Thomas Elder
Biotechnology for Biofuels Volume 1
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/home
[Note for Revenue Canada: this is not a serious business venture, rather a hypothetical illustration of one model for open access - CC-BY. In the unlikely event that anyone contacts the author for a copy of this article, as an avid open access advocate I will point out that the article is freely available from BioMedCentral, and other sources].
A high-quality PDF of the following article is now available! To access your copy, please send 50 Euros or US$ to the author of IJPE.
Cell-wall structural changes in wheat straw pretreated for bioethanol production
Jan B Kristensen1, Lisbeth G Thygesen, Claus Felby, Henning Jørgensen,and Thomas Elder
Biotechnology for Biofuels Volume 1
http://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/home
[Note for Revenue Canada: this is not a serious business venture, rather a hypothetical illustration of one model for open access - CC-BY. In the unlikely event that anyone contacts the author for a copy of this article, as an avid open access advocate I will point out that the article is freely available from BioMedCentral, and other sources].
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Access to Knowledge (A2K): promoting user access a central objective of copyright law
African Copyright & Access to Knowledge, is probing the relationship in African countries between national copyright environments and access to hard-copy and digital learning materials. The project is probing this relationship within an access to knowledge (A2K) framework – a framework which regards the protection/promotion of user access as one of the central objectives of copyright law.
Sponsors of the African Copyright & Access to Knowledge include South Africa's Shuttleworth Foundation and Canada's International Development and Research Center / Centre de recherches pour le developpment international, previously recognized on IJPE for Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement for IDRC's ambitious plans to make all IDRC-funded research openly accessible in the IDRC repository.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Sponsors of the African Copyright & Access to Knowledge include South Africa's Shuttleworth Foundation and Canada's International Development and Research Center / Centre de recherches pour le developpment international, previously recognized on IJPE for Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement for IDRC's ambitious plans to make all IDRC-funded research openly accessible in the IDRC repository.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Industry Committee on Canada's Science and Technology Strategy
Michael Geist has posted his reply to the Industry Committee on Canada's Science and Technology Strategy, along with links to the replies of others posted online.
Here is my response to the consultation:
April 18, 2008
Dear Mr. James Rajotte and Committee Members,
Re: Study on Canadian Science and Technology
It is wonderful to see this all-party committee working together on a matter that will make such a great difference to the future of Canada. Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. The comments that I am making are as an individual professional librarian and adjunct faculty member with expertise in the areas of open access and scholarly communications.
Science, research and development are indeed essential for positioning Canada for the knowledge economy, as pointed out in your News Release. Furthering our knowledge through research is important for other reasons as well. There is an urgent need for humankind to figure out how to live in harmony with our environment, and with each other. For example, research is needed to identify ecologically sound agricultural practices and business opportunities.
The results of federally funded research performed in government and higher education should be made openly accessible to all. The taxpayers (individuals or businesses) who have funded this research have a right to read the results, without having to pay again. This concept applies to all peer-reviewed publications arising from federally funded research, as well as all research data with the exception of limitations necessary to protect individual privacy.
Open access refers to literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and permissions barriers.
According to the Budapest Open Access Initiative http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml, open access is:
By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited
Open Access is the best way to achieve maximum benefit from Canadian research dollars. While researchers at Canada’s largest universities enjoy substantial access to the research literature, other Canadians are largely without access. An entrepreneur in a rural area, for example, is likely to have access to only a tiny portion of the world’s scholarly literature through their local public library. The same is true of the rural doctor, nurse. college or high school teacher, librarian, engineer, journalist, lawyer, politician and civil servant, to name a few examples.
Making the knowledge created through federal funding readily available to all these people benefits us all. For example, if our doctors and nurses have an easy means to keep up with the latest developments and look up the latest research on our conditions, everyone benefits. Many patients, too, nowadays are taking charge of learning about their own conditions, and want to be able to access the research literature.
Governments and universities around the world have developed, or are developing, policies requiring open access to the results of research that they fund.
Here in Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has a Policy on Access to Research Outputs requiring open access to results of CIHR-funded research, within 6 months of publication. Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council adopted a policy in favor of open access in 2004, and currently has a pilot Aid to Open Access Journals program. The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance and Genome Canada have open access policies, and other research funders in Canada are considering such policies.
Internationally, l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche has a strong open access policy. All of the Research Councils UK either have, or are developing, open access policies. The US National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest medical research funder, implemented a Public Access Policy in 2004. Effective April 7, 2008, the NIH voluntary Public Access Policy becomes a requirement for Public Access within 12 months of publication. About 400 publishers are voluntarily cooperating with NIH to make all of their journals openly accessible, not just the work funded by NIH.
The European University Association recently unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for open access mandates to be developed in every university in Europe. At Harvard, an open access policy came from the faculty themselves; the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences have extended to Harvard a non-exclusive license to make their work available to everyone through the Harvard institutional repository.
Here is my response to the consultation:
April 18, 2008
Dear Mr. James Rajotte and Committee Members,
Re: Study on Canadian Science and Technology
It is wonderful to see this all-party committee working together on a matter that will make such a great difference to the future of Canada. Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. The comments that I am making are as an individual professional librarian and adjunct faculty member with expertise in the areas of open access and scholarly communications.
Science, research and development are indeed essential for positioning Canada for the knowledge economy, as pointed out in your News Release. Furthering our knowledge through research is important for other reasons as well. There is an urgent need for humankind to figure out how to live in harmony with our environment, and with each other. For example, research is needed to identify ecologically sound agricultural practices and business opportunities.
The results of federally funded research performed in government and higher education should be made openly accessible to all. The taxpayers (individuals or businesses) who have funded this research have a right to read the results, without having to pay again. This concept applies to all peer-reviewed publications arising from federally funded research, as well as all research data with the exception of limitations necessary to protect individual privacy.
Open access refers to literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and permissions barriers.
According to the Budapest Open Access Initiative http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml, open access is:
By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited
Open Access is the best way to achieve maximum benefit from Canadian research dollars. While researchers at Canada’s largest universities enjoy substantial access to the research literature, other Canadians are largely without access. An entrepreneur in a rural area, for example, is likely to have access to only a tiny portion of the world’s scholarly literature through their local public library. The same is true of the rural doctor, nurse. college or high school teacher, librarian, engineer, journalist, lawyer, politician and civil servant, to name a few examples.
Making the knowledge created through federal funding readily available to all these people benefits us all. For example, if our doctors and nurses have an easy means to keep up with the latest developments and look up the latest research on our conditions, everyone benefits. Many patients, too, nowadays are taking charge of learning about their own conditions, and want to be able to access the research literature.
Governments and universities around the world have developed, or are developing, policies requiring open access to the results of research that they fund.
Here in Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has a Policy on Access to Research Outputs requiring open access to results of CIHR-funded research, within 6 months of publication. Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council adopted a policy in favor of open access in 2004, and currently has a pilot Aid to Open Access Journals program. The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance and Genome Canada have open access policies, and other research funders in Canada are considering such policies.
Internationally, l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche has a strong open access policy. All of the Research Councils UK either have, or are developing, open access policies. The US National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest medical research funder, implemented a Public Access Policy in 2004. Effective April 7, 2008, the NIH voluntary Public Access Policy becomes a requirement for Public Access within 12 months of publication. About 400 publishers are voluntarily cooperating with NIH to make all of their journals openly accessible, not just the work funded by NIH.
The European University Association recently unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for open access mandates to be developed in every university in Europe. At Harvard, an open access policy came from the faculty themselves; the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences have extended to Harvard a non-exclusive license to make their work available to everyone through the Harvard institutional repository.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Open Access for the Australian Medical Librarian
Andrew Waller & I have just posted a copy of our latest article, Open Access for the Australian Medical Librarian, in E-LIS.
This is an updated and revised version of our "Open Access for the Medical Librarian", published in the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association in 2005.
Abstract:
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good” (Budapest Open Access Initiative)1. Recent events are transforming the possibility of this unprecedented public good into a reality, with medical literature leading the way. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists close to 3,200 fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals as of February 2008. More than 400 of the journals in DOAJ are in the health sciences. DOAJ is growing rapidly, adding more than 1.5 titles per calendar day. PubMedCentral (PMC) is the world’s largest open access archive, with well over a million items. An international network, PMC International, is envisioned, with copies of the whole archive around the world for preservation and security, as well as a local option for deposit. Watch for rapid growth of PMC as medical research funders, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, the U.K. Medical Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, among others, are requiring public or open access to the research they fund. There are implications, and leadership opportunities, for librarians in the open access environment.
This is an updated and revised version of our "Open Access for the Medical Librarian", published in the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association in 2005.
Abstract:
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good” (Budapest Open Access Initiative)1. Recent events are transforming the possibility of this unprecedented public good into a reality, with medical literature leading the way. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists close to 3,200 fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals as of February 2008. More than 400 of the journals in DOAJ are in the health sciences. DOAJ is growing rapidly, adding more than 1.5 titles per calendar day. PubMedCentral (PMC) is the world’s largest open access archive, with well over a million items. An international network, PMC International, is envisioned, with copies of the whole archive around the world for preservation and security, as well as a local option for deposit. Watch for rapid growth of PMC as medical research funders, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, the U.K. Medical Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, among others, are requiring public or open access to the research they fund. There are implications, and leadership opportunities, for librarians in the open access environment.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Open Access Class May-June 2008 Syllabus
The Syllabus for LIBR559K, the Open Access Class, which I teach at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, for May-June 2008, has been posted.
The Required and Recommended readings and resources would be a good starting point for anyone wanting to learn about open access.
Another good starting point is Dean Guistini's Top Five (5) Ways for Librarians to Contribute to Open Access (OA) Movement
The Required and Recommended readings and resources would be a good starting point for anyone wanting to learn about open access.
Another good starting point is Dean Guistini's Top Five (5) Ways for Librarians to Contribute to Open Access (OA) Movement
An Author's Letter to Go with the Addendum
Here is an example of a successful letter used by author Greg Linnell to gain permission for providing open access to a forthcoming article, to be published in a subscription-based journal. Publication details have been removed for privacy reasons, and to facilitate use of the letter as an example for other authors.
Enclosed you will find a signed copy of [your journal's] author’s contract together with a signed copy of the SPARC Canadian Author’s Addendum to Publication Agreement.
My intention is for my contribution, “insert title here,” should it be accepted, to appear on [institutional or disciplinary repository, e.g. E-LIS.] As mentioned in the Addendum, [journal title] will be mentioned as the source for the first publication of the article.
[Insert statement of your support / involvement with OA, e.g. "I have been a long-time supporter of open access and am currently a member of the Canadian Library Association’s Task Force on Open Access"]. If you wish to learn more about the Addendum please consult the following Canadian Association of Research Libraries brochure: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/author/EngBrochure.pdf
Thank you for all of your hard work in getting things going again at [journal title]. I am sure that I am not the only contributor who is extremely appreciative of your efforts!
Thanks and congratulations, Greg!
Enclosed you will find a signed copy of [your journal's] author’s contract together with a signed copy of the SPARC Canadian Author’s Addendum to Publication Agreement.
My intention is for my contribution, “insert title here,” should it be accepted, to appear on [institutional or disciplinary repository, e.g. E-LIS.] As mentioned in the Addendum, [journal title] will be mentioned as the source for the first publication of the article.
[Insert statement of your support / involvement with OA, e.g. "I have been a long-time supporter of open access and am currently a member of the Canadian Library Association’s Task Force on Open Access"]. If you wish to learn more about the Addendum please consult the following Canadian Association of Research Libraries brochure: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/author/EngBrochure.pdf
Thank you for all of your hard work in getting things going again at [journal title]. I am sure that I am not the only contributor who is extremely appreciative of your efforts!
Thanks and congratulations, Greg!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
BCLA Submission to Study on Canadian Science and Technology
The British Columbia Library Association has just submitted a very pro-open-access response to the Canadian Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology's Study on Canadian Science and Technology.
BCLA’s comment on the Study on Canadian Science and Technology focuses on the issue of federally funded research performed in government and higher education.
BCLA believes that federally funded research should be openly accessible to everyone, everywhere. Taxpayers, whether they are individual or businesses, should have access to the results of research that they have funded. The entrepreneur in the smaller or more remote center looking for ideas and opportunities to set up the kind of new businesses Canada needs, businesses that are prepared to thrive and grow in a knowledge economy, businesses that work with instead of against our environment, has just as much right to the results of research funded by the Canadian government, as does the large, wealthy corporation.
Rural doctors and other health professionals have a right to the results of the very latest research funded by Canadian tax dollars. Their patients have a right to benefit from this access for their health professionals, and they also have a right to read the research literature for themselves, if they choose.
All Canadians benefit from public access to the results of federally funded research. If a civil servant, politician, teacher, parent, or school trustee is able to make a better, more informed decision because they have access to the best and latest knowledge; this is for the good of all.
BCLA strongly supports the principle and practice of Open Access. The association adopted a Resolution on Open Access in 2004, and is recognized on the Open Access Timeline as one of the first library associations in the world to do so.
Kudos to BCLA for yet another fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Update April 16 - reply from the Standing Committee (via the Information Policy Committee list):
This is to acknowledge that the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Industry Science and Technology has received your organization’s brief for the study of Canadian Science and Technology.
The Committee thanks you for your important contribution to their work on this topic.
Should you wish to follow the Committee’s work on this study, please consult the Committee’s website at the following address:
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteeHome.aspx?Lang=1&PARLSES=392&JNT=0&SELID=e17_&COM=13191
Also note that public meetings are available in a live audio feed on ParlVu at:
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/parlvu/guide.asp?view=&cat=&target=2008-3-20&event
BCLA’s comment on the Study on Canadian Science and Technology focuses on the issue of federally funded research performed in government and higher education.
BCLA believes that federally funded research should be openly accessible to everyone, everywhere. Taxpayers, whether they are individual or businesses, should have access to the results of research that they have funded. The entrepreneur in the smaller or more remote center looking for ideas and opportunities to set up the kind of new businesses Canada needs, businesses that are prepared to thrive and grow in a knowledge economy, businesses that work with instead of against our environment, has just as much right to the results of research funded by the Canadian government, as does the large, wealthy corporation.
Rural doctors and other health professionals have a right to the results of the very latest research funded by Canadian tax dollars. Their patients have a right to benefit from this access for their health professionals, and they also have a right to read the research literature for themselves, if they choose.
All Canadians benefit from public access to the results of federally funded research. If a civil servant, politician, teacher, parent, or school trustee is able to make a better, more informed decision because they have access to the best and latest knowledge; this is for the good of all.
BCLA strongly supports the principle and practice of Open Access. The association adopted a Resolution on Open Access in 2004, and is recognized on the Open Access Timeline as one of the first library associations in the world to do so.
Kudos to BCLA for yet another fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Update April 16 - reply from the Standing Committee (via the Information Policy Committee list):
This is to acknowledge that the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Industry Science and Technology has received your organization’s brief for the study of Canadian Science and Technology.
The Committee thanks you for your important contribution to their work on this topic.
Should you wish to follow the Committee’s work on this study, please consult the Committee’s website at the following address:
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteeHome.aspx?Lang=1&PARLSES=392&JNT=0&SELID=e17_&COM=13191
Also note that public meetings are available in a live audio feed on ParlVu at:
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/parlvu/guide.asp?view=&cat=&target=2008-3-20&event
Monday, April 14, 2008
Dean Guistini completes open access series
Dean Giustini has just posted the second part of his series on Canadian Involvement in Open Access, on the SLAIS 534 wiki.
[Disclosure: Dean mentions me as one of the prominent Canadians worth mentioning. Thanks, Dean!]
Graduates of the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies should be well grounded in open access!
[Disclosure: Dean mentions me as one of the prominent Canadians worth mentioning. Thanks, Dean!]
Graduates of the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies should be well grounded in open access!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
EBSCO's free database: GreenFILE
Kudos to EBSCO for creating and sharing a free, fulltext database called GreenFILE.
Description, from the EBSCO Press Release:
GreenFILE indexes scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports. This resource offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the environment. Drawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology, GreenFILE serves as an informative resource for anyone concerned about the issues facing our planet. The database contains nearly 300,000 records, full text for selected titles and searchable cited references for more than 200 titles as well.
What a beautiful illustration that there are Roles for the Aggregators in the process of Transitioning to Open Access.
Thanks, EBSCO!
Description, from the EBSCO Press Release:
GreenFILE indexes scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports. This resource offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the environment. Drawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology, GreenFILE serves as an informative resource for anyone concerned about the issues facing our planet. The database contains nearly 300,000 records, full text for selected titles and searchable cited references for more than 200 titles as well.
What a beautiful illustration that there are Roles for the Aggregators in the process of Transitioning to Open Access.
Thanks, EBSCO!
Open Notebook Science: Open Access, and Beyond
Jean-Claude Bradley discusses Open Notebook Science and implications for librarians, in a presentation prepared for my Issues in Scholarly Communications and Publishing class.
CISTI's Glen Newton calls Bradley's presentation a must-read for science librarians. I agree!
The world wide web opens up not only all the potential of open access - an unprecedented public good - but much more, besides.
Bradley and colleagues are recording all steps of experiments on blogs and wikis, developing automated approaches to standardizing metadata to describe metadata for steps in the research process, collaboratively sharing molecules wikipedia-style on Chemspider. Bradley discusses a future where much science progresses through machine-to-machine communications.
This is the future of scholarship, and this is what our library leaders need to learn about, now.
CISTI's Glen Newton calls Bradley's presentation a must-read for science librarians. I agree!
The world wide web opens up not only all the potential of open access - an unprecedented public good - but much more, besides.
Bradley and colleagues are recording all steps of experiments on blogs and wikis, developing automated approaches to standardizing metadata to describe metadata for steps in the research process, collaboratively sharing molecules wikipedia-style on Chemspider. Bradley discusses a future where much science progresses through machine-to-machine communications.
This is the future of scholarship, and this is what our library leaders need to learn about, now.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Issues in Scholarly Communications Class
Issues in Scholarly Communications, a course I developed and taught for the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies this term, is now over (alas, as I have very much enjoyed this course).
I am very proud of the work of all of my students, much of which can be found in the course practice journal, Topics in Scholarly Communications.
Many thanks to everyone who helped with the class, including in-person and distance speakers. Links to many of the presentations can be found from the Course Blog, and a few are posted in E-LIS as well. Notes from Joy Kirchner and Gwen Bird's presentations can be found on the course wiki.
Harder to capture is the contribution of Peter Suber, who joined the class for a distance question and answer session. As usual, Peter was able to answer any question in considerable depth, and provide detailed background information. Thanks, Peter!
What's next for me for teaching:
I'm working on a book on scholarly communications for Chandos, which would be useful for librarians at any level needing to quickly get up to speed in this area; this could also be used as a textbook for this course.
This May & June I'm teaching a one-credit course on open access at SLAIS.
This fall I'm co-teaching a course on Information Policy at SLAIS, with Devon Greyson of Social Justice Librarian.
I am very proud of the work of all of my students, much of which can be found in the course practice journal, Topics in Scholarly Communications.
Many thanks to everyone who helped with the class, including in-person and distance speakers. Links to many of the presentations can be found from the Course Blog, and a few are posted in E-LIS as well. Notes from Joy Kirchner and Gwen Bird's presentations can be found on the course wiki.
Harder to capture is the contribution of Peter Suber, who joined the class for a distance question and answer session. As usual, Peter was able to answer any question in considerable depth, and provide detailed background information. Thanks, Peter!
What's next for me for teaching:
I'm working on a book on scholarly communications for Chandos, which would be useful for librarians at any level needing to quickly get up to speed in this area; this could also be used as a textbook for this course.
This May & June I'm teaching a one-credit course on open access at SLAIS.
This fall I'm co-teaching a course on Information Policy at SLAIS, with Devon Greyson of Social Justice Librarian.
Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy in the 21st Century
Mark your calendars! October 23 - 25, 2008, in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the following events:
Oct. 23 (evening) & 24 (all day): Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy in the 21st Century. Vancouver Public Library. Registration Fee? You can afford it!
Saturday, Oct. 25: Media Democracy day. Vancouver Public Library. Free. Speakers & Media Fair.
Stay tuned for updates on the Information Policy Blog.
For more on gatherings of the Commons, please today's Open Access News, where Peter Suber writes notes about and links to two conferences:
Amsterdam: Economics of the Commons: Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Sounds and Images Online
Canberra, Australia: Foundations of Open: Technological and Digital Knowledge, Local 2020 Summit
Oct. 23 (evening) & 24 (all day): Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy in the 21st Century. Vancouver Public Library. Registration Fee? You can afford it!
Saturday, Oct. 25: Media Democracy day. Vancouver Public Library. Free. Speakers & Media Fair.
Stay tuned for updates on the Information Policy Blog.
For more on gatherings of the Commons, please today's Open Access News, where Peter Suber writes notes about and links to two conferences:
Amsterdam: Economics of the Commons: Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Sounds and Images Online
Canberra, Australia: Foundations of Open: Technological and Digital Knowledge, Local 2020 Summit
Friday, April 11, 2008
Dean Giustini on Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement
Dean Giustini has just blogged the first part of a series on Canadian involvement in the open access movement, Open Access Part I - Early Canadian Involvement to 1999, on the Open Medicine Blog.
This covers early Canadian leadership in the open access movement, from 1991 when Jean-Claude Guédon of the Université de Montréal founded Surfaces, to the work of Leslie Chan of Bioline International and Stevan Harnad.
Dean says he'll deal with the period 1999-2008 in part II.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
This covers early Canadian leadership in the open access movement, from 1991 when Jean-Claude Guédon of the Université de Montréal founded Surfaces, to the work of Leslie Chan of Bioline International and Stevan Harnad.
Dean says he'll deal with the period 1999-2008 in part II.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
From the CLA Task Force on Open Access
Just self-archived: Waller, Andrew and Morrison, Heather (2008) From the CLA Task Force on Open Access. Feliciter 54(2):50.
Abstract
In 2006, the Canadian Library Association created a Task Force on Open Access, to develop a policy on open access to CLA's own publications, and develop a Position Statement on Open Access for Canada's libraries. CLA now has a strong open access policy for CLA publications, and a Position Statement on OA for Canadian libraries has been drafted. This brief article is an updated on the work of the CLA Task Force on Open Access (OA) and the activity of the Canadian Library Association regarding Open Access.
Abstract
In 2006, the Canadian Library Association created a Task Force on Open Access, to develop a policy on open access to CLA's own publications, and develop a Position Statement on Open Access for Canada's libraries. CLA now has a strong open access policy for CLA publications, and a Position Statement on OA for Canadian libraries has been drafted. This brief article is an updated on the work of the CLA Task Force on Open Access (OA) and the activity of the Canadian Library Association regarding Open Access.
Responses to Library and Archives Canada's Canadian Digital Information Strategy
Responses to the Canadian Digital Information Strategy consultation are now online.
Thanks to Tracey on datalibre.ca
Thanks to Tracey on datalibre.ca
Monday, April 07, 2008
A Celebration of Research and Scholarship at Kwantlen University-College
Last week it was my very great pleasure to present at, and attend, A Celebration of Research and Scholarship at Kwantlen University College in Surrey, British Columbia.
My own presentation was on Open Access Publishing. I covered the basics, but clearly many of those I was speaking to are not only the converted, they are the leaders!
Ranjini Mendis, my co-presenter, merits recognition as one of the keys to Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement, for her pioneering work co-establishing (with John Willinsky) the first open access, fully online international journal on postcolonial studies to come out of Canada,
Postcolonial Text.
Balbir Gurm and Alice Macpherson also deserve recognition for their development of the open access journal, Transformative Dialogues, including developing their own unique approach to online journal software.
This was a fascinating event for me, and not only because of the keen interest in open access publishing.
As Canada's community colleges grow and evolve into university colleges and universities, it seems that they are bringing the close connection with the community along with them. It may be that a new model is evolving, one that has the flexibility to allow the academic scholar to follow a traditional path of research, or to enter into community-based research. Gira Bhatt spoke about just such an experience in her talk, "The Process of Establishing Trust: Partnering with the South Asian Community".
Gira works with community groups, many of whom have never been close before but are now coming together to work collaboratively for the good of their community. The academic - Gira, and Kwantlen, too - are seen as an important neutral central point to help the community to come together. Thus, paradoxically, the academic in this situation can be both neutral, and activist.
This is the potential of Public Knowledge, as outline by John Willinsky and others. Public Knowledge is about more than software.
My own presentation was on Open Access Publishing. I covered the basics, but clearly many of those I was speaking to are not only the converted, they are the leaders!
Ranjini Mendis, my co-presenter, merits recognition as one of the keys to Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement, for her pioneering work co-establishing (with John Willinsky) the first open access, fully online international journal on postcolonial studies to come out of Canada,
Postcolonial Text.
Balbir Gurm and Alice Macpherson also deserve recognition for their development of the open access journal, Transformative Dialogues, including developing their own unique approach to online journal software.
This was a fascinating event for me, and not only because of the keen interest in open access publishing.
As Canada's community colleges grow and evolve into university colleges and universities, it seems that they are bringing the close connection with the community along with them. It may be that a new model is evolving, one that has the flexibility to allow the academic scholar to follow a traditional path of research, or to enter into community-based research. Gira Bhatt spoke about just such an experience in her talk, "The Process of Establishing Trust: Partnering with the South Asian Community".
Gira works with community groups, many of whom have never been close before but are now coming together to work collaboratively for the good of their community. The academic - Gira, and Kwantlen, too - are seen as an important neutral central point to help the community to come together. Thus, paradoxically, the academic in this situation can be both neutral, and activist.
This is the potential of Public Knowledge, as outline by John Willinsky and others. Public Knowledge is about more than software.
Glen Newton suggests an additional criterion to the definition of open access
Glen Newton on ZZZOOT suggests an additional criterion to the definition of open access:
Open Access must include access by machines:
* At minimum one must allow crawls of the site/content or (to reduce the impact of badly configured crawlers) create a compressed XML file containing all metadata and either content, or direct links to content and make it available for download (and if bandwidth is still an issue put it on a P2P network like BitTorrent).
* Preferable is to offer some kind of API (OTMI) or protocol (OAI-PMH) to get at content and metadata and citations.
* Better is to offer access to the XML of the articles in addition to the PDF and/or HTML; if the XML actually has some semantic content, then we are approaching the optimum.
The end goal is to support and encourage text mining and analysis of the full-text (preferably semantically rich XML), metadata and citations to allow literature-based exploration and discovery in support of the scientific research process.
Comment: hear, hear!! Open Access is about more than incremental steps. The world wide web is a fabulous gift, that lets us do a very great deal more than we ever could before. We have serious issues to tackle, in this world of ours; issues like figuring out a solution to global warming, and how to live together in peace. We need to figure out how to speed up our learning - as this true open access can do - and we don't have a moment to waste.
Open Access must include access by machines:
* At minimum one must allow crawls of the site/content or (to reduce the impact of badly configured crawlers) create a compressed XML file containing all metadata and either content, or direct links to content and make it available for download (and if bandwidth is still an issue put it on a P2P network like BitTorrent).
* Preferable is to offer some kind of API (OTMI) or protocol (OAI-PMH) to get at content and metadata and citations.
* Better is to offer access to the XML of the articles in addition to the PDF and/or HTML; if the XML actually has some semantic content, then we are approaching the optimum.
The end goal is to support and encourage text mining and analysis of the full-text (preferably semantically rich XML), metadata and citations to allow literature-based exploration and discovery in support of the scientific research process.
Comment: hear, hear!! Open Access is about more than incremental steps. The world wide web is a fabulous gift, that lets us do a very great deal more than we ever could before. We have serious issues to tackle, in this world of ours; issues like figuring out a solution to global warming, and how to live together in peace. We need to figure out how to speed up our learning - as this true open access can do - and we don't have a moment to waste.
More baseline data from PubMed
Thanks to Jim Till on Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure for More (and better!) Baseline Data from PubMed.
Jim's data, dated April 6, 2008 - the day before the NIH new public access requirement took effect:
Some other data about the percentage of freely-accessible articles, obtained on the same day using the same key words:
Published within the last 2 years: 44366/144166=31%
Published within the last 1 year: 12241/67486=18%
Published within the last 180 days: 3894/30602=13%
Published within the last 90 days: 1012/11947=8%
Published within the last 60 days: 454/6475=7%
Published within the last 30 days: 143/2267=6%
As Jim points out, when the effects of the NIH mandate begin to be seen, these percentages are expected to rise dramatically!
What a great way to kick off OA Week, in recognition of the NIH mandate policy.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Jim's data, dated April 6, 2008 - the day before the NIH new public access requirement took effect:
Some other data about the percentage of freely-accessible articles, obtained on the same day using the same key words:
Published within the last 2 years: 44366/144166=31%
Published within the last 1 year: 12241/67486=18%
Published within the last 180 days: 3894/30602=13%
Published within the last 90 days: 1012/11947=8%
Published within the last 60 days: 454/6475=7%
Published within the last 30 days: 143/2267=6%
As Jim points out, when the effects of the NIH mandate begin to be seen, these percentages are expected to rise dramatically!
What a great way to kick off OA Week, in recognition of the NIH mandate policy.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
European Universities Association (EUA) urges universities to develop clear strategies to advance open access
The open access recommendations developed by the EUA Working Group on Open Access and endorsed by EUA Council in their spring meeting this year at the University of Barcelona, have now been published in the European Universities Association Newsletter, March 4, 2008. Kudos especially to Lesley Wilson, Secretary General of the EUA, and Sijbolt Noorda, chair of the Working Group on Open Access. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
The basic approach is one of setting up institutional repositories or sharing of repositories, at every university.
The basic policy: "University institutional policies should require that their researchers deposit (self archive) their scientific publications in their institutional repository upon acceptance for publication. Permissible embargoes should apply only to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit".
Comment: this is an excellent model for a policy. The only missing element, from my perspective, is the setting of a maximum embargo period. My suggestion is a maximum 6 months' embargo period, similar to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research policy, with a plan for review in the future with a view to decreasing the embargo period. The purpose of the embargo period is to provide publishers with a window of opportunity to adjust to an open access environment.
As a strong supporter of a fully open access scholarly communications system, including full open access publishing, and of disciplinary open access archives such as PubMedCentral, arXiv, RePEC, and E-LIS, it is my opinion that this green or self-archiving requirement policy is the optimum approach for open access policy. An article published in an open access journal can be deposited in a university repository. An article deposited in an institutional repository can also be deposited in a disciplinary repository. If the key journal for a particular faculty is not yet open access, the faculty member has the flexibility needed to publish in their preferred venue, while still meeting the requirements of their university.
Two key elements of this policy to point out: open access is required, not requested. Experience has shown that merely requesting open access simply does not work. Researchers are required to deposit immediately, while open access can be delayed or embargoed if necessary. This is a needed direction for the busy researcher; immediate deposit can be easily worked into one's workflow, keeping the time and attention busy researchers need to devote to fulfilling this requirement to the minimum necessary.
The EUA clearly plans to continue a leadership role in making results of research produced at European Universities open access, both in terms of policy and vision, and in exploring practical means of support such as finding ways to help authors pay article processing fees.
Thanks for the alert to Bernard Rentier, the blogging Rector of the Université de Liège, via Stevan Harnad on the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
The basic approach is one of setting up institutional repositories or sharing of repositories, at every university.
The basic policy: "University institutional policies should require that their researchers deposit (self archive) their scientific publications in their institutional repository upon acceptance for publication. Permissible embargoes should apply only to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit".
Comment: this is an excellent model for a policy. The only missing element, from my perspective, is the setting of a maximum embargo period. My suggestion is a maximum 6 months' embargo period, similar to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research policy, with a plan for review in the future with a view to decreasing the embargo period. The purpose of the embargo period is to provide publishers with a window of opportunity to adjust to an open access environment.
As a strong supporter of a fully open access scholarly communications system, including full open access publishing, and of disciplinary open access archives such as PubMedCentral, arXiv, RePEC, and E-LIS, it is my opinion that this green or self-archiving requirement policy is the optimum approach for open access policy. An article published in an open access journal can be deposited in a university repository. An article deposited in an institutional repository can also be deposited in a disciplinary repository. If the key journal for a particular faculty is not yet open access, the faculty member has the flexibility needed to publish in their preferred venue, while still meeting the requirements of their university.
Two key elements of this policy to point out: open access is required, not requested. Experience has shown that merely requesting open access simply does not work. Researchers are required to deposit immediately, while open access can be delayed or embargoed if necessary. This is a needed direction for the busy researcher; immediate deposit can be easily worked into one's workflow, keeping the time and attention busy researchers need to devote to fulfilling this requirement to the minimum necessary.
The EUA clearly plans to continue a leadership role in making results of research produced at European Universities open access, both in terms of policy and vision, and in exploring practical means of support such as finding ways to help authors pay article processing fees.
Thanks for the alert to Bernard Rentier, the blogging Rector of the Université de Liège, via Stevan Harnad on the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
The library as publisher: an emerging norm
Wonderful news!
According to a recent study of the Association of Research Libraries authored by Karla Hahn, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly Communications, at least 44% of 80 ARL libraries surveyed are involved in publishing, and another 21% are planning to get involved. That's 65% of the libraries surveyed (in numeric terms, 52 libraries).
This is, of course, an understatement of library involvement in publishing, as one of the criteria for ARL membership is a library's size. This means that the smaller Simon Fraser University Library, one of the partners in the Public Knowledge Project and home to close to a hundred journals, is not included in this survey.
With this support from libraries, the Dramatic Growth of Open Access is sure to continue!
For details and links, see Peter Suber's post on Open Access News.
This involvement of libraries in publishing is a key to Transitioning to Open Access
According to a recent study of the Association of Research Libraries authored by Karla Hahn, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly Communications, at least 44% of 80 ARL libraries surveyed are involved in publishing, and another 21% are planning to get involved. That's 65% of the libraries surveyed (in numeric terms, 52 libraries).
This is, of course, an understatement of library involvement in publishing, as one of the criteria for ARL membership is a library's size. This means that the smaller Simon Fraser University Library, one of the partners in the Public Knowledge Project and home to close to a hundred journals, is not included in this survey.
With this support from libraries, the Dramatic Growth of Open Access is sure to continue!
For details and links, see Peter Suber's post on Open Access News.
This involvement of libraries in publishing is a key to Transitioning to Open Access
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
JOVE: the Journal of Visualized Experiments
JOVE: the Journal of Visualized Experiments is a new open access video journal for biological research. This shows what the internet is for!
Thanks to Gilbert Bede.
Thanks to Gilbert Bede.
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