Open Access News

From the body of the article: 'Given the...struggle simply to make Open Access happen many OA advocates argue that worrying about DRM today could prove a distraction from the more important task of "freeing the refereed literature." Since many also view DRM as synonymous with the use of "technical measures" designed to restrict access, rather than as a broad set of tools for managing rights in a digital environment, there is a tendency to see DRM as an issue for proprietary interests alone. The danger is, however, that if the OA movement fails to engage with the topic those proprietary interests may set the DRM agenda, to the possible detriment of OA. Nevertheless, some preliminary work on DRM is being done by the OA movement, and the growing success of the Creative Commons (cf. sources) may encourage OA advocates to take a greater interest in the topic....What [the] narrow view of DRM overlooks, however, is that digital rights management implies something broader than access control alone. It can also be used, for instance, to ensure correct author attribution, to certify document integrity and provenance, to prevent plagiarism, and indeed to enable creators assert their rights in ways that encourage – rather than restrict – access.'

(PS: The argument used by Santorum --that government shouldn't compete with private-sector companies-- has been used against OA to research literature as well. If the private-sector companies are not repackaging and reselling publicly-funded resources, then this argument might be taken seriously. But when they charge customers for something already paid by the customers' taxes, then the argument collapses. For example, if the private weather companies collected the same data at their own expense, then it might be wasteful duplication for the government to do so as well. But if the companies want to use publicly-funded data, then their request to be the sole distributors is simply the request to rip off the public. Governments have an obligation to prevent that from happening, not an obligation to step back and let it happen.)

(PS: This would make an excellent handout for faculty or administrators who need a primer.)

Chiropractic & Osteopathy - Fulltext v13+ (2005+). Continues Australasian Chiropractic & Osteopathy; ISSN: 1746-1340.

Behavioral and Brain Functions - Fulltext v1+ (2005+); ISSN: 1744-9081.

Globalization and Health - Fulltext v1+ (2005+); ISSN: 1744-8603.

(PS: The OA movement, especially in the US and Europe, has benefitted enormously from Rick's talents at coalition building, organization, and strategic thinking. He'll be missed in his role at SPARC, but fortunately he'll still be working for OA in new ways. Heather Joseph is a superb choice to take over at SPARC. Disclosure: SPARC publishes my newsletter, an arrangement that will not be affected by this transition.)

From E.O. Wilson's editorial in the inaugural issue: 'The goal of the publication — to establish a forum for cross-disciplinary discussion of natural and social sciences, practices, and policies related to sustainability — is an important step toward creating achievable sustainable practices through buy-in and consensus....One way or the other, open access (which is not the same as free access) to scientific resources is inevitable. No doubt, it will take many years for institutions, publishers, librarians, authors, users (a.k.a., readers), and others to adjust to the new routes and costs of retrieving the information they need. Open access will certainly make all those involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of science more aware of how interdependent they are. Sustainability will play a central role in defining these components of community structure by presenting clearly written, robustly linked, and well-argued cross-disciplinary science in an open access forum.'

Update. Also see the CSA press release on the launch (April 22, 2005).

(PS: Jan is one of the true leaders of OA in general and OA journal publishing in particular. We should all be glad that his new line of work will still include OA advocacy.)

Recommendation 1. The University of California should develop and encourage widespread faculty adoption of a postprint repository that leverages the existing infrastructure of and is managed by the University's eScholarship program....
Recommendation 3. The Office of Scholarly Communication should analyze the potential demand for repository services....Further, it should develop and practically assess marketing opportunities to ensure widespread adoption and use of the repository by UC faculty....
Recommendation 5. Widespread faculty acceptance and use of the repository will require the coordinated actions of diverse university constituencies. The Office of Scholarly Communication should be advised by a group able to inform and monitor repository progress, and to mobilize action or influence thinking in those constituencies....
Recommendation 7. The Office of Scholarly Communication should formally document and evaluate the repository's development to provide a route-map for others interested in hosting similar initiatives.' (Thanks to John Ober.)

(PS: Quick response to Stephen Ekker: You can publish in any prestigious journal that will accept your work and still have OA. If the journal is not itself OA, then you can deposit a copy of your article in an OA repository. Quick response to Charlotte Tschider: You've been hearing the misinformation that OA journals use an "author pays" model. When OA journals charge author-side fees, they are usually paid by the author's funding agency or employer, or waived, not paid by the author out of pocket. And most OA journals don't charge author-side fees at all.)

(PS: Nextance and Oracle say this service provides "open access" to corporate data, but it's not clear what they mean by the term. The service will certainly provide more intelligent searching of contract terms, but it probably won't be free of charge. In any case, think of how useful it would be to search across journal copyright transfer agreements looking for journal policies on self-archiving, author re-use, and rights retained by authors.)

This author-produced electronic version of a manuscript accepted for publication in Blood has not yet been subjected to final copyediting, fact checking, and proofreading and is not the definitive publisher-authenticated version that will be published in Blood in print and online. The American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the Editors of Blood disclaim any responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in this early author-produced electronic version of the manuscript or in any other version derived from it by the National Institutes of Health or any other third party. The final publisher-authenticated version of the manuscript will be made publicly available on the Blood website 12 months after its publication in Blood.

(PS: This is heel-dragging. The NIH request is for public access "as soon as possible" after publication. The Blood disclaimer is designed to frighten readers away from the public-access edition of the text even though it has been approved by Blood's peer-review process. BTW, no serious OA advocate ever said that online publishing, even OA publishing, was without costs. To say so at this late date, after this old misinformation has repeatedly been corrected, is to show that one is not paying attention.)

Scholarly communication is in a state of crisis that threatens to compromise the University of California's core mission. The crisis reduces the UC community's access to scholarly materials and limits the dissemination of UC's scholarship. A failure to respond will jeopardize UC's pre-eminence, its contributions to scholarly inquiry and the progress of knowledge, its effectiveness in teaching and learning, and its service to the citizens of California.

It is critical that the University, and the worldwide academic community of which it is a part, regain control of and strengthen scholarly communication processes. In these pursuits the committee:

• Calls upon the University to continue and extend its efforts to:
  • lead the academic community in its work toward effective and sustainable scholarly communication systems;
  • support publications and publishing innovations that disseminate scholarship to the broadest set of readers at the most affordable cost;
  • establish and sustain repositories and alternative publishing mechanisms that enable the broadest dissemination of UC's scholarship;
  • develop incentives and support for faculty use of effective, sustainable scholarly publishing mechanisms;
  • leverage its libraries' buying power to break the cycle of hyper-inflation in the cost of scholarly material by refusing to pay unsustainable prices.
• Calls upon the University's faculty to continue and extend their efforts to:
  • seize every opportunity to regain control of and maximize the impact of their scholarly communication;
  • manage their intellectual property in ways that allow retention of critical rights, in order to ensure the widest dissemination of UC's scholarship and its unfettered use within the University to support teaching and research;
  • recognize and value their colleagues' use of any venue for scholarly communication that meets standards of excellence in selection and peer-review;
  • eliminate affiliations with publishers whose publishing and pricing practices reveal a focus on profits at the expense of open scholarly publication;
  • support library actions that attempt to break the cycle of hyper-inflation in the cost of scholarly material even when such action reduces access to material.

(Thanks to John Ober.)

(PS: When I first blogged this technology, the news was that Remote Approach was developing scripts that would let publishers remotely disable PDF's and make them unreadable. Apparently that nightmare technology, which would make PDF's unacceptable for self-archiving, is not yet available.)