Open Access News

(PS: This is not only very welcome news for OA to physics literature and the momentum coming out of the Berlin3 meeting. It's also a nice kind of homecoming. Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web client and server at CERN in 1990, and in 1991 he and CERN released the technology for the free use of all, essentially launching the WWW as we know it --without which, OA would either be an idle dream today or float on a very different infrastructure.)

(PS: This is just the summary. The report itself is either not online or very well hidden. I'd like to see it, since I suspect that the question about OA journals made it sound as if processing fees were to be paid by authors out of pocket rather than by author-sponsors such as employers or funders.)

SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online is a model for cooperative electronic publishing of scientific journals on the Internet. Especially conceived to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean countries, it provides an efficient way to assure universal visibility and accessibility to their scientific literature, contributing to overcome the phenomena known as "lost science". In addition, the SciELO model comprises integrated procedures for the measurement of usage and impact of scientific journals.

Excerpt (§28, p. 16): 'We have already reported on the lengths that the Government went to in ensuring that there was only one response to our Report on scientific publications in 2004. The Research Councils, to whom many of our recommendations were directed, did not all share the view of Government expressed in the Government Response. They have since indicated that they are to set out their own policy, which is likely to be based on principles placing a high value on the public accessibility of publicly-funded research. Lord Sainsbury told us that Research Councils were "totally independent" in their capacity to make policy on this front". He added that, as Government funds the Councils, "inevitably there is some influence in terms of their performance and we have a responsibility to monitor performance. They are independent. They take that independence very seriously and, if we overstep the mark, they tell us to go away". OST confirmed that Research Councils were free to implement their policy, provided that it was funded from within their existing allocations. OST is well aware that, given Research Councils' existing commitments and the levels of funding required to pursue any change of approach, the Research Councils would be unable to proceed properly without Government support. In view of their reliance on Government funding, there is an obvious and unhealthy difficulty for the Research Councils in arguing strongly against a reluctance by Government to support a policy which the Councils believe will be of benefit to the research community.'

Also see the CC announcement on the CC blog and Lawrence Lessig's posting on the Yahoo Search Blog. Excerpt from Lessig: 'It is hard to beat the excitement of these local CC-launches. But the launch today does it. Creative Commons will be just a piece -- a component -- designed to remove the uncertainty around what creators mean. Yahoo! will gather this creativity into a community. Our component helps people be clear about the freedoms they intend to give, and the freedoms they can rely upon.'

(PS: All search engines can offer this service and undoubtedly more and more of them will. As copyright locks down more content more tightly, searchers will want reuse rights almost as much as relevance. Search engines that find both will have an advantage. Conversely, authors and publishers who consent to grant more reuse rights than fair-use alone already provides should make their consent machine-readable for the next generation of search engines.)

From the body of the paper: 'While GPO has taken a leading role in developing online access tools and proposing "a new model for no-fee public access", the steps it is taking and the plans it is outlining are, at best, incomplete and, at worst, badly flawed. Oddly, even as GPO identifies the need for adequate funding for public access to government information it deprecates the role of depository libraries that provide large amounts of independent funding for long-term preservation and access to government information. While recognizing that it cannot rely solely on Congress for funds it nevertheless plans to increase the scope of its role without any long-term guarantee of adequate funding. While talking about public access it omits and avoids opportunities to assure that access will be free and fully functional. We believe the GPO’s proposed model will do more to endanger long-term access to government information than ensure it.'

(PS: I won't tell you how to spend your next $2,500 But it's a bad sign that the executive summary of this report misunderstands the upfront funding model for OA journals as an "author pays" model.)

'Concluding Recommendations....[3] Repository developments should demonstrably be set within the strategic aims of the host institutions or funding bodies and clearly relate to the strategic aims and objectives of the organisation bidding for funds – buy-in from institutional and other senior management must be assured for future sustainability. For example, JISC should consider funding projects seeking to use e-print repositories to support the RAE process. [4] Repository developments should, depending upon their primary focus, relate to the processes and practices of research, teaching or learning – buy-in from the community is unlikely to be extensive unless this happens. JISC should identify current practice of researchers, teachers and learners, and seek to base services on supporting their needs. [5] Support for the research infrastructure should be undertaken in collaboration with the Research Councils and in particular, with the RCUK Digital Curation and Archiving Working Group....[7] Continued support will be required for establishing institutional repositories – JISC may wish to consider funding a co-ordinating 'focus' initiative to provide technical support and support with policy and advocacy issues. [8] A different kind of support may be required for those institutions unable to provide their own repository infrastructure. JISC may want to consider providing a national service that smaller and less well funded institutions could use to provide repository services and functions on their behalf. JISC. [9] As more and more content becomes available it will become increasingly important to join-up content held in different places. JISC may want to consider funding projects that seek to find and link content held in different types of repository e.g. e-prints with data; learning objects with publications, and to investigate the challenges posed. [10] JISC should consider funding further technical development to support the provision of additional repository services. These could include 'smart tools' for automatic data extraction, automatic classification etc....[11] JISC should also address the issue of sustainability of repository software. [12] JISC should consider further work on IPR and authentication/authorisation mechanisms that would allow some content to be widely shared, and others to be available to more limited groups e.g. students studying on a particular course, or colleagues working on a research project. [13] JISC should consider investigating how more informal networks for sharing content and pre-prints might be supported, and mechanisms for incorporating shared content into a more managed repository framework at some point in the lifecycle.'

Also see the report's Annex 1 (Focus Group Report), Annex 2 (Software Developers Survey), and Annex 3 (Teaching and Learning Perspective).

(PS: Remember that if you want to submit comments on the orphan works problem to the U.S. Copyright Office, they are due by March 25 --this Friday. Reply comments are due by May 9. The easiest way to submit a comment is through the web form created by Free Culture, EFF, and Public Knowledge.)

At the same time, INRA and CNRS have signed the Registry of Institutional OA Self-Archiving Policies. INRIA and Inserm may sign soon as well.

The committee was appointed to put forward recommendations for the promotion of open access to scientific and scholarly publications in Finland. The recommendations were to be addressed to research funding agencies, organisations conducting research and scientific publishers....The committee's recommendations concern publications of all researchers residing in Finland, comprising those studies that will be published in Finland or abroad for which the authors do not expect payment....The aim of the recommendations is not to change the traditional standards used for evaluating the quality of scholarly publications, but to improve access to and the availability, distribution, visibility, usability and usefulness of the publications....[T]he committee recommends that:

• Higher education institutions and research institutes, individually or jointly, set up the necessary open access online archives in which researchers can deposit copies of their publications for free access on the internet;
• Researchers are encouraged to deposit copies of their publications in these open access electronic publication archives with a view to rapid accumulation of material in them.

The committee has separate recommendations for funding agencies (pay processing fees at OA journals, encourage grantees to deposit their work in OA repositories), universities (encourage faculty to submit their work to OA journals and deposit it in OA repositories), journals (offer OA to their articles and allow authors to archive postprints in OA repositories), libraries (support distribution of metadata and full-texts of OA research, support the creation of OA repositories throughout the country), and the Ministry of Education (implement these recommendations). (Thanks Kimmo Kuusela.)

(PS: The Science pages are not dated and I can't tell how new or old its policy is. These policies look progressive, but study the details. For example, normally authors who retain copyright have all the rights they need to self-archive their postprints in any kind of repository without any kind of delay. But while Nature lets authors retain copyright, its license to publish asks for exclusive rights to "publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store" the article "in all forms, formats and media" "for the full term of copyright" and specifically builds in a six-month embargo on self-archiving. The license to publish at Science has all the terms just mentioned from the Nature license except that Science allows self-archiving without an embargo, though only to personal web sites, not repositories. One nice feature of the Science license, especially if it is new, is that it retroactively extends the author re-use rights to all authors of previously published papers in Science. Let's hope that one day Science retroactively recognizes the right of author self-archiving where self-archiving is most useful to them and their readers, in interoperable repositories.)

(PS: Remember that if you want to submit comments on the orphan works problem to the U.S. Copyright Office, they are due by March 25 --this Friday. Reply comments are due by May 9. The easiest way to submit a comment is through the web form created by Free Culture, EFF, and Public Knowledge.)

DiPP has also announced the launch of Afrikanistik Online, another new OA journal, though AO web site is still under construction.

(PS: The first trickle of books may be growing, but it did not start this month. Google-digitized books appeared online at least as early as January, when I blogged an example.)

(PS: On the plus side, BJ will not oppose author participation in the NIH public-access program, will make the deposit in PMC itself, and will deposit the final, published version of the article. On the minus side, BJ is trying to control the author's decision and will insist on a six month embargo, contrary to the NIH request that authors permit public release "as soon as possible" after publication. Opposing the NIH request in this way not only opposes the public interest in rapid public release of publicly-funded medical research, but creates precisely the dilemma we feared in which authors must choose between conflicting requests from their funder and their publisher. My advice to NIH-funded authors publishing in BJ: either accept the BJ offer and self-archive your paper outside PMC immediately after publication, or decline the BJ offer, deposit your article in PMC yourself --it's as easy as sending an email attachment--, and request public release through PMC immediately after publication. You could also avoid the dilemma that BJ is creating for its authors by submitting your work to another journal.)

(PS: For those following this thread, there's been a lot of work on how OA increases impact since Steve Lawrence's pioneering work in Nature. For example, see Steve Hitchcock's thorough and continuously updated bibliography.)