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Hala Essalmawi, ed., The Access to Knowledge Movement: Opportunities, Challenges and the Road Ahead, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, November 2009. Contents:
Update (4/18/10). The book link above is dead. Here's a new and working link. U.S. House Science committee considering OA -- in secret The Association of American Universities yesterday posted a series of documents relating to a previously-unpublicized effort by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology. From the proposal, Roundtable on Public Access to Federal Research and Data:
The proposal is undated, but the status report states the roundtable was convened in "early summer 2009". The AAU documents also include a list of participants and biographies of the roundtable members. From the status report, dated October 29, 2009: ... In-person meetings and conference calls have taken place over the summer and early fall, with the goal of producing a consensus report containing views and recommendations before the end of the year. The Roundtable report will be submitted to the HSTC and OSTP and subsequently will be made widely available to all stakeholders as well as the broader public. Members of the Roundtable will be available for comment regarding the report after its public release. ... Comment. Observers of American politics will know the central role of Congressional committees in policymaking. To date, two committees have given significant consideration to OA: the House Appropriations Committee, which passed the NIH mandate (and the earlier voluntary policy), and the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman introduced the anti-public access Fair Copyright in Research Works Act and which held a hearing on the bill. (FRPAA was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, but that committee has not held a hearing on that bill in either its current or previous form. In addition, questions about OA have occasionally been asked of executive branch officials and nominees in their oversight committees.) Noticeably absent from that list, as I've previously noted, are committees with jurisdiction over science or education -- arguably the committees best suited to consider policies issues facing the research community and higher education. This effort changes that. In addition, the involvement of the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first significant public engagement of the Obama White House with OA. (The Bush White House expressed mild concern about the NIH mandate, but ultimately signed a bill containing the measure.) Accordingly, this process has the opportunity to shape discourse about public access in a major way. Unfortunately, since it's secret, we don't have much to go on until the recommendations are released and the participants' vow of silence is lifted. At first glance, the proposal itself is fairly even-handed. The biggest criticism I can level so far is that, while presuming increased access to be beneficial, it fails to ask the crucial question of what exactly are the benefits of access and the costs of lack of access. Nevertheless, the proposal counters two claims sometimes heard from (or implied by) opponents of OA: that greater access is not necessary (e.g. that benefits from OA would be negligible) and that government has no proper role in access and preservation. There's also the question of focus. This roundtable was tasked with considering access and preservation to publications and data from federally-funded research, rather than a narrower focus only on peer-reviewed article manuscripts. While other types of documents should be considered, that shouldn't distract from a swift recommendation for a FRPAA-style mandate. In tagging the documents for the OATP, Peter remarks, "Is the membership list balanced? Read it and decide for yourselves." Of course, the theory behind this arrangement is that members will check their agendas at the door and work together as unbiased experts, so "balance" wouldn't matter. We'll only learn later (if ever) if practice followed theory in this case. Update. Post title revised to more accurately reflect the essence of the matter. Labels: Hot
Recruiting volunteers for the Open University Campaign
Kevin Donovan, Call for Participation: Join the Open University Campaign!, Students for Free Culture, October 27, 2009.
See also our past posts on the Wheeler Declaration. Guide to copyright and digitization
Cornell University Library Publishes New Digitization Manual, press release, October 29, 2009.
New report on undisclosed clinical trial data
Nancy Watzman, How Congress and Special Interests Kept Clinical Trial Data Secret, Sunlight Foundation, October 28, 2009.
A tale of two medical students
Sunil Bhopal and Rossetta Cole, Access to information for medical students - Sierra Leone, Healthcare Information For All by 2015, October 28, 2009.
OA Week commentary and outreach, part 1
A taste of comments and activities from Open Access Week:
Follow-ups and additional news announced for Open Access Week:
A national strategy on author funds?
Nicholas Joint, The “author pays” model of open access and UK-wide information strategy, Library Review, 2009. Only an abstract is OA, at least so far.
See also our past post on the UUK/RIN report.
Barbara Quint, HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books, Information Today, October 22, 2009.
One library's strategy to support the NIH policy implementation
Nancy F. Stimson, National Institutes of Health public access policy assistance: one library's approach, Journal of the Medical Library Association, October 2009.
U. Virginia to vote on OA mandate next month
Katherine Raichlen, Requiring the right rights, Cavalier Daily, October 26, 2009.
See also our past posts on the proposed policy at UVa (1, 2). Labels: Hot Study of unauthorized article-sharing
Ken Masters, Opening the non-open access medical journals: Internet-based sharing of journal articles on a medical web site, The Internet Journal of Medical Informatics, 2009. Abstract:
Update. Also see coverage by TechDirt and Ars Technica.
Catching up on news announced as part of Open Access Week:
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