Support for Federal Research Public Access Act
The National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists has made an announcement that they support the Federal Research Public Access Act. They point out that:
This [the passage of the bill] will allow unprecedented access to soil science literature. For soil scientists around the world, this could mean the difference between either ready access or no access to the latest knowledge in areas like soil science, biology, hydrology, education, and environmental health. For those in a position to develop soil science education programs in developing countries, this initiative will provide a needed resource to help this to happen.
Remedies for Journal Sale Practices
The Information Access Alliance (IAA), which represents seven major library associations in the U.S., has submitted its comments for the hearings on single-firm conduct and antitrust law. The comments discuss how journal publishers increase their profits by bundling their journals as packages and by charging exorbitant subscription prices for the packages:
The IAA and its member organizations and research libraries across the United States are convinced that the result of bundling practices by the leading for-profit scholarly journal publishers is detrimental to competition, results in increased prices to libraries, compromises the ability of librarians to make rational acquisition decisions based upon the desires and needs of their users, and, because of resource constraints of libraries, ultimately adversely affects the availability to researchers and the general public of scholarly journals.
IAA requests that there be an analysis of journal publishers’ business practices and an exploration of resolutions to the problems generated.
Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research Results
There is an online petition to muster "support for free and open access to European research and for the recommendations proposed in the EU’s ‘Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe‘." More than 7,000 people, including scholars, researchers, students, and librarians, have already signed the petition because they believe that free and open access to publicly funded research results is key to enhancing scholarly communication and advancing scholarship.
Click here to sign the petition.
Online Journal Created with Open Journal Systems
By using the Open Journal Systems, which is a free open source software program made available by the Public Knowledge Project, the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California has launched a new open access journal, International Journal of Communication:
The International Journal of Communication is an online, multi-media, academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The International Journal of Communication is an interdisciplinary journal that, while centered in communication, is open and welcoming to contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that meet at the crossroads that is communication study.
Moreover, the journal offers a virtual forum for discussions:
Readers are invited to submit comments and responses to articles that appear in the International Journal of Communication. In order to submit comments you will need to be a registered subscriber to the journal. Comments and responses should be limited to discussions of particular articles or reviews and will appear as appendages to the original journal piece. Authors will be encouraged to reply to reader responses, if they wish; and discussion threads may thus be created.
This new journal exemplifies how scholars can make use of available open source programs to provide an alternative channel for scholarly publishing and to cultivate a community of like-minded scholars/researchers for potential future collaborations. Kudos to the Annenberg Center!
Open Access as Future of Publishing
An article (Elsevier duo say the future is open) on the Information World Review Web site reports that two executives have left the publisher Elsevier for a company that specializes in open access publishing. One of them, Bryan Vickery, points out:
“The cost of publishing to research communities is too high. Once we all get into open access we can start competing properly. We are seeing lots of publishers trialling OA as they are under pressure from funding agencies, such as RCUK and Wellcome Trust, which want to see greater value from the research they fund.”
As the alternative scholarly publishing models gradually shape up, researchers will benefit by being able to expedite their communications with peers.
Copyright Conference
The Ball State University Libraries will host their Fourth Annual Copyright Conference, Digital Trek: To boldly explore copyright in teaching and learning, at the Alumni Center on Wednesday, April 11th. Here is a description of the conference:
The University Libraries at Ball State presents its 2007 Copyright Conference dedicated to what can be done in teaching and learning with someone else’s intellectual property in the Digital Age. Our speakers’ knowledge base is broad and includes not only nationally recognized intellectual property lawyers but also librarians with digital expertise and public administration experiences.
It will be of interest to faculty and librarians who wish to keep abreast of copyright, fair use, and digital rights issues.
Open Access in 2006
The January 2007 issue of SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN) is now online. It features Dr. Peter Suber’s review of the open access development in 2006:
2006 was the year of the OA mandate. Before 2006 we had precisely one OA mandate from a private research funder (Wellcome Trust), one OA mandate from a public research funder (France’s INRA or Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique), a couple of OA requests, exhortations, or non-mandates from public funders (US, Canada), and a good handful of proposed mandates for public funders (Australia, Canada, Finland, South Africa, UK, Ukraine, US, and the European Union). But progress exploded in 2006.
There is also a timeline that shows the historical progress of the open access movement. To view Dr. Suber ’s predictions of open access in 2007, visit the December 2006 issue of SOAN.
