Wednesday 18 January 2012

Connotea: Bookmarks matching tag oa.new (50 items)

Connotea: Bookmarks matching tag oa.new (50 items)


SPARC Announces New European Leadership

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 07:22 AM PST

 
SPARC Announces New European Leadership
groups.google.com
" In a move that completes a year-long strategic restructuring of SPARC’s operations in Europe, Dr. Alma Swan has been appointed to the position of Director of European Advocacy, and Lars Bjørnshauge has been named SPARC’s Director of European Library Relations....Alma Swan, who co-founded Key Perspectives Ltd., a scholarly communications consultancy in 1996, has more than two decades in medical cell biology research and scholarly publishing. She holds graduate degrees in cell biology and business administration, and has experience in the university environment (as a faculty member of Leicester University) as well as in the publishing industry (serving as senior managing editor for Pergamon Press/Elsevier Science). Swan will be responsible for leading SPARC’s advocacy programs throughout Europe, with a concentration on regular outreach to the European Commission and European Parliament....Lars Bjørnshauge, a long-standing member of the SPARC Europe Board, has been serving as SPARC’s Interim European Director since October, taking on the overall management of the 93-member library organization. He will continue to lead SPARC’s high-level education and outreach programs, capitalizing on his more than twenty years’ experience in the library community. Prior to his decade-long service as Director of Lund Libraries, he held management positions at the Technical Knowledge Center & Library of Denmark (DTV) in Lyngby, as well as serving as head of department at the Royal Danish School of Librarianship in Copenhagen...."

Columbia Libraries Responds to White House OSTP

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 07:14 AM PST

 
Columbia Libraries Responds to White House OSTP
Scholarly Communication Program, (13 Jan 2012)
Read the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) responses to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) requests for information (RFI) on public access to scientific publications and data resulting from federally funded research.
Posted by columbiascp to oa.new on Wed Jan 18 2012 at 15:14 UTC | info | related

Call Your Congress Critter: The Research Works Act

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 07:02 AM PST

Just In Time: My Answers To The OSTP RFI On Digital Data

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 07:01 AM PST

 
Just In Time: My Answers To The OSTP RFI On Digital Data
bjoern.brembs.net
Bjoern Brembs' response to the White House call for comments on OA for publications arising from publicly-funded research.

Boycott Elsevier for Supporting SOPA

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:56 AM PST

 
Boycott Elsevier for Supporting SOPA
Stack Exchange Theoretical Computer Science Blog, (14 Jan 2012)
"[T]he author, Guillaume Aupy, opposes the controversial US bill SOPA, and encourages readers to boycott Elsevier for its support of the passage of SOPA...."

Response to RFI on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:54 AM PST

 
Response to RFI on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research
The Occam's Typewriter Irregulars, (11 Jan 2012)
Heather Etchevers' response to the White House call for comments on OA to publications arising from publicly-funded research.

If academia and industry were ScienceOnline. . .

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:51 AM PST

 
If academia and industry were ScienceOnline. . .
David Kroll
Terra Sigillata, (15 Jan 2012)

Challenges for Free Access to Law in a Multi-Jurisdictional Developing Country: Building the Legal Information Institute of India

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:43 AM PST

 
Challenges for Free Access to Law in a Multi-Jurisdictional Developing Country: Building the Legal Information Institute of India
SCRIPTed, (24 Dec 2011)
Abstract: This article analyses the complexities involved in providing free public online access to the “public legal information” of the Indian legal system. It starts with some of the causes of the complexity of Indian legal information then describes the considerable progress that has previously been made in the provision of free access to some types of legal information, but why the result is still below international standards. The article then explains a project to remedy some of these deficiencies, the Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India), being carried out by eight Indian law schools and an international partner. It has developed in its first year of public operation, the LII of India, a system with over 750,000 searchable documents and 151 databases. The considerable remaining challenges for creation of a world-standard and sustainable system are then outlined, and steps proposed to address them. The extent to which this collaborative project might be a model for development of free access to legal information in other countries is considered. By “public legal information” we mean that information which, as a matter of public policy, ought to be available for free public access in a society which values democracy and the rule of law. This has been argued elsewhere to include legislation, case law, treaties a country has entered into, reports proposing reform of the law, and such legal scholarship as authors have chosen or are required to make freely available to the public.[1] For the purpose of this article, this definition is assumed.

Academic Publishers: Suicide Bombers Against the Academy

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:41 AM PST

 
Academic Publishers: Suicide Bombers Against the Academy
Archaeopop: The Past in Popular Culture, (28 Dec 2011)
"I lost my marbles the other day when I saw this article from Cambridge University press offering to rent me some academic articles: For just £3.99, $5.99 or €4.49, users are now able to read single articles online for up to 24 hours, a saving of up to 86 per cent, compared with the cost of purchasing the article. Of course, you can’t save, print, or do anything with the article except read it on line, then it disappears. What useless crap! Say you’re doing some research and you need a citation. $5.99 might be OK if you only needed one article. But the average academic article has 20-100 citations. And honestly, a good article is not something you read once and have done with it – you need to check it a few times and do some re-reading to absorb it. So this rental is really just a ‘teaser’ – it’s just enough access to decide if you really need to have something, after which you have the privilege of buying one of these articles for $30-$75. Yes, that’s really how much they charge! For one fucking article!... Article rental is a scam. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg in the larger and much more heinous scam being run by the major academic publishers – Springer, Thomson, Elsevier, a few others – who are looting the academic commons for private profit while denying access to the public and increasing inequality...."

New Bill Would Put Taxpayer-Funded Science Behind Pay Walls

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:30 AM PST

 
New Bill Would Put Taxpayer-Funded Science Behind Pay Walls
www.propublica.org
"Both Issa and Maloney have received campaign contributions from the Dutch company Elsevier, which calls itself the world’s leading publisher of scientific and medical information. According to MapLight, a website that tracks political cash, Elsevier and its senior executives last year made 31 contributions to House members totaling $29,500. Twelve contributions totaling $8,500 went to Maloney; Issa received two for a total of $2,000....In response to the added value argument, Kevin Smith, scholarly communications officer at Duke University, argues that publishers don’t actually produce or add much themselves. The work comes from academics and from the peer reviewers who volunteer their time to read and critique the work of their fellow academics. According to Eisen, although publishers might contribute a little something to the peer-review process (organization, supervision, etc.), this pales in comparison to the work done for free....In his response to a recent White House request for information on public access in research, Harvard Provost Alan Garber calls the current situation an “access crisis.” He argues that public access is crucial to growing businesses, which need access to cutting-edge research to stimulate innovation, develop new products, improve existing ones, and create jobs...."

De Jure

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:23 AM PST

 
De Jure
www.dejure.up.ac.za
De Jure is a new OA law journal published by the University of Pretoria.

ESA Policy News: January 13 | EcoTone

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:19 AM PST

 
ESA Policy News: January 13 | EcoTone
www.esa.org
"[The Ecological Society of America's] letter on access to scholarly publishing requested that publishers retain their ability to experiment with models to increase accessibility to their journals’ content. “ESA respectfully requests that the Administration allow the scientific publishing community to continue to explore workable solutions that meet the dual goals of the scientific enterprise as well as provide resources to interested members of the public.” The Society’s letter sparked a lively online discussion among both members and non-members. The most vocal responses came from those who believe that all federally funded research, including that published in journals, should be available free of charge to all readers/users/interested consumers....ESA...has been successful with its first attempt at an alternative to subscriptions, with its open access journal Ecosphere, which is supported by author fees ($1250 for members)...."

PopVox Bill Report: The Research Works Act (RWA) (H.R. 3699)

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:10 AM PST

 
PopVox Bill Report: The Research Works Act (RWA) (H.R. 3699)
www.popvox.com
As of January 18, 2012, 313 people registered views on the RWA at PopVox. 3% in favor and 97% opposed.

Oppose H.R. 3699: To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 06:07 AM PST

 
Oppose H.R. 3699: To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.
www.popvox.com
An open letter from William Gunn to his representative, Nancy Pelosi. "I oppose H.R. 3699 ("To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector.") because: It will hurt the American economy by taking federal funds intended for American research and development and send it overseas to foreign publishing companies. It will hurt American competitiveness by making it harder for teachers to include up-to-date research in their classes. It will keep patients from being able to follow the latest research about their condition. It will even hurt scientists in large American institutions who have had to cancel subscriptions due to the ever rising cost. Publishing companies say this will hurt jobs, but in fact, the Houghton report showed that open access policies would add £172 million per year to the UK economy...."

New Zealand information on the Internet: the Power to Find the Knowledge

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 01:51 AM PST

 
New Zealand information on the Internet: the Power to Find the Knowledge
Alastair Smith
ResearchArchive, Te Puna Rangahau, Victoria University of Wellington, (12 Jan 2012)
Presented at LIANZA 2011, 30 October- 2 November 2011, Wellington. Abstract: In a world of apparently ubiquitous information, does knowledge still equal power? Whatever the answer to this question, we will not have power unless we can retrieve our knowledge. Despite the advances of the last decades, issues remain in finding information on the Web relating to Aotearoa. These include: the efficiency with which the global search engines index the NZ web space, searching for macronised words, the quality of Wikipedia information about NZ, and the availability of open access NZ research.
Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Wed Jan 18 2012 at 09:51 UTC | info | related

Diffusionism and open access

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 01:14 AM PST

 
Diffusionism and open access
Jingfeng Xia
Journal of Documentation 68 (1), 72-99 (13 Jan 2012)
Subscription access. From the Abstract: The article applies a tempo-spatial analysis to examine the diffusion movement of open access practices from the West to the entire world during the past several decades. Both maps and tables are used to support the analysis. The diffusionist theory is reviewed and applied to the understanding of open access. The paper discovers that technology is not the only factor determining the diffusion pattern of information systems as discussed in the literature. Cultural dissimilarities across countries have played a significant role in open access development. Open access can only be effectively established after it meets local standards. The findings help understanding of why open access has a disproportionate growth among developing countries, and even among developed countries, where the ICT infrastructure has been in place.
Posted by stevehit to oa.new on Wed Jan 18 2012 at 09:14 UTC | info | related

Usage Patterns of Open Genomic Data

Posted: 18 Jan 2012 01:11 AM PST

 
Usage Patterns of Open Genomic Data
Jingfeng Xia and Ying Liu
College & Research Libraries, (09 Jan 2012)
Pre-print. Abstract: This paper uses Genome Expression Omnibus (GEO), a data repository in biomedical sciences, to examine the usage patterns of open data repositories. It attempts to identify the degree of recognition of data reuse value and understand how e-science has impacted a large-scale scholarship. By analyzing a list of 1,211 publications that cite GEO data to support their independent studies, it discovers that free data can support a wealth of high quality investigations, that the rate of open data use keeps growing over the years, and that scholars in different countries show different rates of complying with data sharing policies.

Open knowledge saves lives. Oppose H.R. 3699! | e-Patients.net

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:24 PM PST

 
Open knowledge saves lives. Oppose H.R. 3699! | e-Patients.net
e-patients.net
"Right now, the great gift to the public that is the NIH Public Access Policy, is under serious attack with a proposed piece of legislation. H.R. 3699, aka The Research Works Act (RWA) would prohibit the deposit of the manuscripts mentioned above, seriously impeding the ability of patients and caregivers, researchers, physicians and healthcare professionals to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner. Oppose H.R. 3699!..."

Cameron Neylon, Response to the OSTP Request for Information on Public Access to Research Data

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:20 PM PST

 
Cameron Neylon, Response to the OSTP Request for Information on Public Access to Research Data
cameronneylon.net
"Thankyou for the opportunity to respond to this request for information and to the parallel RFI on access to scientific publications. Many of the higher level policy issues relating to data are covered in my response to the other RFI and I refer to that response where appropriate here. Specifically I re-iterate my point that a focus on IP in the publication is a non-productive approach. Rather it is more productive to identify the outcomes that are desired as a result of the federal investment in generating data and from those outcomes to identify the services that are required to convert the raw material of the research process into accessible outputs that can be used to support those outcomes...."

Publishers Back Bill to Ban Public Access Mandates to Federally Funded Research

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:12 PM PST

 
Publishers Back Bill to Ban Public Access Mandates to Federally Funded Research
www.publishersweekly.com
"The bill, however, has awakened public access advocates, and sparked a strong response. On his blog, Duke University Scholarly Communication Officer Kevin Smith said he was “stunned by the audacity” of Allen’s claim that research articles are “produced” by private sector publishers. “I think the producers of these works are sitting at desks and labs scattered around my campus, and thousands of other college and university campuses,” Smith wrote. “We cannot say it often enough. The intellectual work for scholarly publications is done by academics, not publishers. They own the copyright in those works up until they are asked to transfer it to the publisher as a condition of publication. And if publishers persist in interfering with that copyright ownership and insisting that scholars cannot take advantage of the tremendous opportunities that digital technologies offer, the solution is to stop giving them those copyrights.” U.C. Berkeley scientist Michael Eisen, a strong advocate of open access, has called on the University of California Press to quit the Association of American Publishers over the the group's efforts to block public access provisions. “The [UC] Press should denounce this bill and suspend its membership in the AAP until it reverses its opposition to the NIH Public Access policy. If it does not, the University must terminate their relationship immediately,” Eisen wrote, saying that the press, through its membership in AAP, was “complicit in this atrocious effort to place the private interests of a small number of publishers ahead of the public good.” Officials at the major library organizations have vowed to track the bill, but as the battle heats up, the Research Works Act appears to be facing an uphill battle in Congress. In 2010, Congress introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which would do the opposite of the Research Works Act: it would mandate public access to publicly-funded research...."

Open Access Battles Return

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:09 PM PST

 
Open Access Battles Return
blogs.bostonmagazine.com
"The scientific community meanwhile, has absolutely risen up in arms in a united front against it — it’s actually incredible to see it, a united front standing in defense of its own products and research that has brought with it some outstanding coverage of the issue. Read through some of it and get a sense for what’s going on, because, look: if you’re interested in science, education, or the freedom of information, this matters to you...."

Stop HR3699; The Open Access movement needs to get ACTIVE; the Scholarly Poor already do « petermr's blog

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 07:01 PM PST

 
Stop HR3699; The Open Access movement needs to get ACTIVE; the Scholarly Poor already do « petermr's blog
blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk
"I have been blogging for a week about HR3699 (Research Works Act). I have been trying to take personal action – apart from blogging I have mailed OUP and CUP asking them to stand up and be counted on their membership of AAP...."

STATEMENT FROM COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SANDRA AISTARS, RE: Introduction of H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 06:59 PM PST

 
STATEMENT FROM COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SANDRA AISTARS, RE: Introduction of H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act
copyrightalliance.org
"The Copyright Alliance praises U.S. Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) for their bipartisan introduction of H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act. The proposal would overturn an unprecedented federal government taking of copyrights from certain authors and researchers...."

On sharing research and the value of peer-review: Mendeley’s response to #SOPA and the Research Works Act.

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 06:57 PM PST

 
On sharing research and the value of peer-review: Mendeley’s response to #SOPA and the Research Works Act.
Mendeley Blog, (14 Jan 2012)
"The US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recently issued a Request for Information on their existing policy requiring some federally-funded work to be submitted to Pubmed Central, where it’s freely accessible to the public. We [at Mendeley] were pleased to have the opportunity to respond and a summary of our response is below...."

Plagiarist or Puppet? US Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s reprehensible defense of Elsevier’s Research Works Act

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 06:51 PM PST

 
Plagiarist or Puppet? US Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s reprehensible defense of Elsevier’s Research Works Act
Michael Eisen
it is NOT junk, (13 Jan 2012)
"I will point why I think [Carolyn Maloney's] letter [in defense of RWA] is ignorant, ill-informed, deceptive, patronizing, jingoistic and generally vile an a separate post. But first I want to point out something else that struck me about the letter....[I]t was hard not to detect a certain, umm, “similarity”, between the comments [Elsevier VP Tom Reller] posted as part of an ongoing dialog on my blog last week, and those sent out today by Rep. Maloney....COME ON. Several sections Rep Maloney’s letter are sentences long copies of Reller’s comments , and the overall content and style are all but identical. These were clearly written by the same person.... I’m not naive. I know this is the way our government works. Some monied special interest wants the shape the law to their liking, so they essentially buy a member of Congress by donating money to them and having their top executives do so as well. What they get for their money is access, a pliant ear, and the submission of legislation crafted to advance the narrow interests of the donor, often at the expense of the members own constituents and the broader public interest, and, in this case, in direct conflict with many issues the legislator has fought for in her career. Since the member of Congress doesn’t really care about the issue, or understand what the bill actually does, the donor provides their PR spin for them to use in defending it...."

A Tale of a Disappearing Website

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 01:52 PM PST

 
A Tale of a Disappearing Website
Martha Anderson
The Signal: Digital Preservation, (17 Jan 2012)
"Some of you may have heard the recent news that The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) program, including their website, was to be terminated on January 15 due to a loss of funding....It was only in recent weeks that some of our partners and staff at Library of Congress got in touch. “Did anyone archive this site? Should we archive this site?” questions started hitting my inbox. Usually when we get these sorts of questions, we look to see if we are already archiving the site in our own collections. If we aren’t here at LC, we cast a wider net to see if other partners are....I won’t go into questions of value and whether we should archive the site on this blog; I’ll leave that to the subject experts. For me, the more interesting question was (after determining that it had been archived) whether the archived version, given our current crawling technology, will satisfy the researchers and librarians who did find value in NBII.gov. So did anyone archive it? Well, yes. As best the crawler was able to do...."

SOPA and PIPA stink, but the RWA is more dangerous to science.

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 01:15 PM PST

 
SOPA and PIPA stink, but the RWA is more dangerous to science.
partiallyattended.com
"The RWA act is damaging as it will attempt to limit the ability of researchers to publish in open access journals. The is naked greed on the part of the commercial publishers...."

Down With the Research Works Act

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 09:55 AM PST

 
Down With the Research Works Act
Corante Boston
"Back in December, a short bill was introduced in the House called the "Research Works Act". Its backers, Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), describe it as something that will maintain the US's standing in scientific publishing. After looking over its language and reading a number of commentaries on it, I have to disagree: this looks to me like shameless rent-seeking by the commercial scientific publishers...."

SPARC honors Michael Nielsen as innovator for bringing Open Science into the mainstream

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 09:29 AM PST

 
SPARC honors Michael Nielsen as innovator for bringing Open Science into the mainstream
groups.google.com
"Michael Nielsen, a 37-year-old, Australian quantum physicist, just completed a 17-city tour in seven countries, doing a series of presentations to promote the open sharing of data and research to advance science. On top of that, he spent a month traveling to promote his book, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science (Princeton University Press, 2011). His talk of changing the culture of science has drawn audiences beyond typical academics. Nielsen’s passion, credibility as a scientist, and knack for storytelling has helped propel the issue of Open Science into the mainstream. For being a thought leader and demonstrating how doing science in the open can promote change and bringing the discussion to a new level, SPARC honors Nielsen as the January 2012 SPARC Innovator...."

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