Open Access Documentary Project
The Open Society Institute has provided financial support to the Open Access Documentary Project, which is "a collection of online videos celebrating the benefits of open access to scientific and medical research." From the SPARC enews:
The producers are now assembling an international editorial board and contacting institutions that hold archival and production resources that will be vital to the project. Principal production has begun in London, New York, and at CERN in Geneva, featuring video interviews with publishers and consumers of scientific and medical information in the developed and developing world —and with other stakeholders in open access including foundations, government agencies, and the media.
Authors and Their Rights
The Association of Research Libraries has made available a list of resources (Authors and Their Rights) that assist scholarly authors in understanding and managing their rights. From the overview:
US Copyright law gives the author of an original work, such as a scholarly article, the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display the copyrighted work. Copyright protection is now automatic. The author obtains these exclusive rights at the moment the copyrighted work has been “fixed in a tangible medium,” such as when a written work has been saved on a computer’s hard drive or printed.
The author retains these exclusive rights up until the moment the author signs a written agreement to transfer some or all of these exclusive rights. (By contrast, an author may give others non-exclusive permission to use the copyrighted work in a variety of ways, including through verbal agreement.) A transfer of any exclusive right is truly exclusive—once transferred, the author may no longer exercise that right. If the author intends to retain the right to make any further uses of the copyrighted work, or intends to grant others permission to make any use of the copyrighted work, the author must make this clear in a written transfer agreement.
Reliability of Impact Factor
BMC Medical Research Methodology is going to publish an article (Reliability of journal impact factor rankings) about using the impact factor as an indicator of journal quality. From the abstract:
Methods: Based on citations to journals in research and experimental medicine in 2005, Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo methods were used to estimate the uncertainty associated with these journal performance indicators.
Results: Intervals representing plausible ranges of values for journal impact factor ranks indicated that most journals cannot be ranked with great precision. Only the top and bottom few journals could place any confidence in their rank position. Intervals were wider and overlapping for most journals.
Conclusion: Decisions placed on journal impact factors are potentially misleading where the uncertainty associated with the measure is ignored. This article proposes that caution should be exercised in the interpretation of journal impact factors and their ranks, and specifically that a measure of uncertainty should be routinely presented alongside the point estimate.
University Publishing
The Association of Research Libraries has published a special double issue of ARL Bimonthly Report that addresses university publishing. Some of the articles are:
- University Publishing in a Digital Age: Highlights of the Ithaka Report
- University Research Publishing or Distribution Strategies?
- The University of California as Publisher
- Publishing Journals@UIC
- Synergies: Building National Infrastructure for Canadian Scholarly Publishing
Online Resources about Copyright and Public Domain
There is an updated version of Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States, a chart that summarizes copyright terms for different types of work. It was created by Peter Hirtle at Cornell University’s Copyright Information Center.
Another useful resource for learning about copyright is the Copyright Crash Course, which was created by Georgia K. Harper at the University of Texas Libraries. It provides an introduction to topics such as public domain, fair use, orphan works, Creative Commons, and TEACH Act.
Bill with Open Access Mandate Vetoed
The Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill, which carries an open access mandate for research funded by the National Institutes of Health, was vetoed by President Bush on Nov. 13th. Click here to see Dr. Peter Suber’s comments on the veto.
Intellectual Property Law and Open Content
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has made available a Webcast, Intellectual Property Law and Open Content. The presenter was Dr. Christine Harold from the University of Washington:
Harold’s presentation, entitled “Inventing Publics: Kairos and Intellectual Property Law” looks to explore the possibilities of the “open content” movement, specifically the licensing model offered by Creative Commons, as a productive alternative to other prevalent responses to the corporate hoarding of cultural resources.
Sustainability of Open Access Publishing
An in-depth analysis of the business models and sustainability of three open access publishers (the Public Library of Science, BioMed Central, and Hindawi Publishing Corporation) is now available. The analysis includes:
- Interviews (in podcast and written formats) with each executive exploring each organization’s approach in detail.
- A matrix comparison of the publishers’ views on 11 aspects of maintaining their operations, including: the financial viability of the company; the basis for charging publication fees; new and traditional impact factors; and the role of institutional memberships in the business model.
The materials are made available by the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL).
Creativity, Technological Revolution, and Law
TED has made available a Webcast of a presentation by Dr. Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School. The presentation topic is "How creativity is being strangled by the law."
Another Webcast of interest is a Google TechTalks presentation by Dr. James Boyle, a professor at Duke Law School. His presentation topic is "7 ways to ruin a technological revolution."
Update on Open Access Mandate
The November issue of SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN) features a discussion of the Senate’s approval of the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill:
We had a big victory in the Senate last month. For the first time ever, the Senate voted to demand an OA mandate at the NIH. Because the House of Representatives adopted the same language in July, this is also the first time ever that both houses of Congress have demanded an OA mandate at the NIH.
The OA mandate still has to clear two hurdles before it is law: the House and Senate versions of the bill have to be reconciled before going to the President, and then President has to sign it. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill on grounds unrelated to its OA provision. But the victory is important even if the bill faces a Presidential veto, and the importance is not merely symbolic: the Senate vote actually helps the mandate survive a veto.
There is also a report about a research study on scholarly societies’ support for open access:
We’ve found 425 societies publishing 450 full OA journals, and 21 societies publishing 73 hybrid OA journals. (Three societies publish both types of journal and are counted in each total; the list covers 468 societies altogether.)
The full list is OA in an Excel spreadsheet under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
http://www.co-action.net/projects/OAsocieties
Last but not least, there is a round-up of what happened in October in the realm of scholarly communication.
