Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #108
April 2, 2007
by Peter SuberRead this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-07.htm----------
SOAN is published and sponsored by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
http://www.arl.org/sparc/Additional support is provided by Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), experts in converting research documents to XML.
http://www.dclab.com/public_access.aspPaying for green open access
Two announcements in March showed that some publishers want to charge for OA archiving and at least one foundation is willing to pay for it. Neither amounts to a trend, but both could slow the progress of green OA, either by the direct imposition of new and needless costs or by confusing policy-makers about the economics of green OA.
First the American Chemical Society (ACS) re-announced its hybrid journal program, AuthorChoice, and reminded us that authors who wish to self-archive must pay the AuthorChoice fee. Then Elsevier and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) agreed that when an HHMI-funded author publishes in an Elsevier journal, HHMI will pay Elsevier a fee to deposit the peer-reviewed postprint in PubMed Central six months after publication. Here's a closer look at each policy.
* The ACS AuthorChoice program
ACS first announced AuthorChoice in August 2006 and re-announced it in March 2007. I looked for a change in the policy that might explain the second announcement but couldn't find one. Perhaps the uptake was lower than ACS expected. Perhaps it simply wanted to remind people of something it feared was being overlooked. (I know the feeling.)
ACS press release announcing AuthorChoice, August 14, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/pressrelease/author_choice/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_09_03_fosblogarchive.html#115747997209615778
ACS press release re-announcing AuthorChoice, undated but c. March 6, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/4authors/authorchoice/press_release.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117328108051594942
To review AuthorChoice, I'll draw on my nine questions for hybrid journal programs from SOAN for September 2006
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-06.htm#hybrid
Of the nine, the ACS gives a good and welcome answer to just one: it will let authors deposit articles in repositories independent of the ACS. It gives unwelcome answers to three more: it does not let participating authors retain copyright; it does not promise to reduce its subscription prices in proportion to author uptake (hence using the double-charge business model); and it will charge its AuthorChoice fee even to authors who want to self-archive. It leaves us uncertain on the remainder: Will it let participating authors use OA-friendly licenses? Will it waive fees in cases of economic hardship? Will it force authors to pay the fee if they want to comply with a prior funding contract mandating deposit in an OA repository? Will it lay page charges on top of the new AuthorChoice fee?
The ACS was not a green publisher before adopting AuthorChoice. Hence, its current position, disallowing no-fee, no-embargo self-archiving, is not a retreat.
Nor is the ACS first publisher to charge a fee for self-archiving. About a week before the ACS announced AuthorChoice, Wiley announced its hybrid program, Funded Access, which has the same effect. However, the ACS is the second, and so far Wiley and the ACS seem to be alone in this category.
Wiley charges $3,000 for OA archiving and deposits the published edition immediately upon publication. The ACS charges the same fee for the same benefit, but also offers discounts for ACS members and those affiliated with institutions subscribing to ACS journals.
At both publishers, these fees pay for gold OA, and I should make clear that I have no objection to charging for gold OA. On the contrary; if we are to have it, we must pay for it (through author-side publication fees, institutional subsidies, or some other way). However, I do object to charging for gold OA when authors only want green OA. It's like offering a car with a free bicycle to people who only want to buy a bicycle.
(BTW, by "green OA" I mean OA through a repository and by "gold OA" I mean OA through a journal. Gold OA includes peer review and green OA does not. Gold OA begins at the moment of publication and applies to the published edition of an article. Green OA is sometimes immediate, sometimes delayed, and can apply to any version of an article: a preprint, the published edition of the postprint, or the peer-reviewed but not copy-edited version of the postprint.)
As the ACS policy is currently worded, it only charges the fee for self-archiving the published edition of an article. Hence it leaves the door open for no-fee self-archiving of the final version of their peer-reviewed manuscript, rather than the published edition. On the American Scientist Open Access Forum, Stevan Harnad asked whether ACS planned to charge for that form of self-archiving as well. Adam Chesler, the ACS Assistant Director Sales and Library Relations, said yes.
Chesler's answer makes the ACS policy even worse than it seemed at first. It's bad enough to force authors to pay for gold OA in order to get green OA; at least they really get gold OA too, wanted or not. But under this new wrinkle in the policy, even self-archiving authors who don't get gold OA must pay for it.
Wiley's Funded Access journal program, announced August 6, 2006
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3247.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_08_06_fosblogarchive.html#115513188339719580
Scott Jaschik, Momentum for Open Access Research, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2006. ("Dean Smith, vice president for sales and marketing for the [ACS],...made it clear that while his group is moving a bit in the direction of open access, it doesn't like the movement.")
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/06/access
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_09_03_fosblogarchive.html#115754426246535022
Stevan Harnad, Trojan Horse from American Chemical Society: Caveat Emptor, Open Access Archivangelism, March 6, 2007.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/213-Trojan-Horse-from-American-Chemical-Society-Caveat-Emptor.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117328181251115822
Adam Chesler, ACS Author Choice Program, a post to the American Scientist Open Access Forum, March 8, 2007. (Chesler makes clear that ACS does not allow no-fee self-archiving even of the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind07&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&F=l&O=D&P=38497
* The HHMI-Elsevier deal
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is similar in many ways to the Wellcome Trust (WT), although it has kept a lower profile in the OA debates. The WT is the largest private funder of medical research in the UK, and the HHMI is, or was, the largest private funder of medical research in the US. (I haven't seen recent figures but HHMI might have been overtaken by the Gates Foundation.) HHMI agreed long ago to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals, and may have been the first funder anywhere to do so. With PLoS, it convened the 2003 meeting that produced the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. Now it's about to adopt an OA archiving mandate for HHMI-funded research.
The WT OA mandate requires deposit in PubMed Central (or its UK equivalent, UK PMC) and the forthcoming HHMI mandate will do the same. However, Elsevier allows OA archiving only through the author's personal web site or institutional repository. That's why HHMI and Elsevier first sat down to talk.
If neither side revised its policies, then HHMI-funded authors would have to shun Elsevier journals and Elsevier journals would have to shun HHMI-funded authors. Both organizations would gain from a compromise. But unfortunately that fact alone didn't determine which side had to budge. In this case, it was HHMI and it caved. It's a shame because it had considerably more bargaining power than Elsevier.
Elsevier already gives blanket permission for self-archiving in institutional repositories and could easily have added PubMed Central to the list of eligible destinations. For this purpose, the distinction between institutional repositories (IRs) and PubMed Central (PMC) is arbitrary. In openness, interoperability, and visibility to search engines, they are equivalent. If a PMC deposit hurts Elsevier, so does an IR deposit. If an IR deposit is harmless for Elsevier, so is a PMC deposit. Elsevier could have adapted to HHMI without incurring any new costs or risks. Instead, HHMI paid it to adapt.
HHMI will pay Elsevier$1,500$1,000 for each article published in a Cell Press journal and$1,000$1,500 for each article in any other Elsevier journal.
BTW, before anyone writes in, I know that for several other purposes, IRs and PMC are *not* equivalent. One of the chief differences is that PMC, like arXiv, dominates research in its field and attracts many readers directly, not just through external search engines. Another is that, unlike nearly every other OA repository, PMC provides extensive enhancements to deposited manuscripts before it disseminates them. I discussed these enhancements in SOAN for August and September 2005.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-05.htm#firstfruits
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-05.htm#nih
What if HHMI had stood firm and said that HHMI-funded authors could not publish in Elsevier journals until Elsevier allowed deposits in PMC on the same terms it used for deposits in IRs? Even if Elsevier wanted to sweeten the deal, it would have to admit that accommodating HHMI would be a bargain: it would lose nothing and become eligible to publish the high-quality research produced by HHMI-funded scientists. If Elsevier bluffed and argued that PMC deposits would increase the risk of journal cancellations above the risk from IR deposits, then it might have won an extra concession from HHMI --for example, delaying PMC deposits until six months after publication. If Elsevier bluffed again, it might have won yet another concession --for example, depositing only the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript rather than the published edition. In fact, HHMI gave Elsevier everything: payment *and* the six month embargo *and* deposit of an unedited version of the manuscript.
Elsevier could have permitted deposits in PMC straightaway; but it seems that HHMI could just as easily have required its grantees to deposit their postprints in their own IRs, rather than PMC. The snag there, unfortunately, is that not all HHMI grantees work at institutions with IRs. Hence, HHMI had good reason to call Elsevier's bluff.
HHMI could also have launched its own repository and deposited the articles itself. That would insure that the deposits took place and save on the expense. Then HHMI could invite PMC to harvest articles from the HHMI repository. However, the negotiation and outcome would have been virtually identical. Elsevier would still have agree to deposits in the HHMI repository; and while it would still face no new costs or risks, it would still have the same array of (apparently effective) bargaining gambits and the same incentive to play them.
HHMI wanted more than deposits in PMC. It also wanted to guarantee deposit and not leave it to the initiative of authors. That makes good sense, since authors are all too often overworked and preoccupied.
However, deposit in a repository is a clerical task whose cost is negligible. Les Carr and Stevan Harnad studied two months of log activity at a busy repository and found that the average deposit takes 10 minutes.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/
Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown found that even for authors new to self-archiving, few had trouble with their first deposit and even fewer had trouble with subsequent deposits.
http://cogprints.org/4385/
The job is not worth thousands of dollars per paper, or hundreds, or even tens. If the physical job of depositing papers is really what HHMI wanted, it should have put the job up for bidding. It could have gotten a much better deal.
Elsevier will undoubtedly deposit 100% of the papers that HHMI pays it to deposit. But before PMC provides OA to deposited articles, it reformats them according to its DTD, adds links to various OA databases, and asks the author to verify the correctness of the result. More than half the time, NIH-funded authors don't respond to these queries, thwarting OA at the final step. So even after paying high fees for deposit, and getting a 100% deposit rate for its money, HHMI may get a significantly lower final rate of OA.
WT avoids this problem by insisting that publishers deposit the same XML that produced the print and online editions, making it unnecessary to verify correctness with the author. But for HHMI to adopt the same solution, it would have to insist that Elsevier deposit the published edition, not just the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript. Imagine that: two birds with one stone.
It matters that there's slippage between PMC deposits and PMC OA. The only upside to the HHMI-Elsevier deal is more OA peer-reviewed articles reporting HHMI-funded research (even if embargoed and even if not the published editions). But how much more OA will HHMI actually get from this deal? The rate is likely to be worse than 100% and better than the background rate of spontaneous author self-archiving. But beyond that, no one knows.
If HHMI uses its internal OA mandate to ensure that its grantees work with PMC to validate the final form of the text, it could certainly improve the overall rate of OA and perhaps raise it to 100%. But if it's willing to exert itself in that way, it could deposit the papers itself or ensure that authors deposited them. Then it could save the money it's now paying Elsevier.
Under the HHMI deal, Cell Press will reduce its permissible embargo on OA archiving from 12 months tozerosix. That's a real concession and gave Elsevier a bargaining chip in the negotiation. But Elsevier journals outside Cell Press already permitted immediate self-archiving and the HHMI deal will lengthen the embargo to six months (for HHMI-funded authors), moving the bargaining chip back to HHMI.
WT and Elsevier struck a deal last September for the same reasons that HHMI and Elsevier struck one now. WT agreed to pay Elsevier higher fees than HHMI is paying ($3,000 per Elsevier article and $5,000 per Cell Press article), but it got more for its money. WT got immediate OA, while HHMI is getting embargoed OA. WT got OA to the published edition, while HHMI is getting OA to an unedited edition. WT got a Creative Commons license or equivalent; while HHMI could use CC licenses on deposited, unedited manuscripts, the published editions will remain under Elsevier's copyright with no significant reuse rights.
The WT-Elsevier deal from September 2006
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.authors/wellcometrustauthors
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_09_24_fosblogarchive.html#115953692676777951
The CC-style licensing WT requires
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX031743.html#P93_11823
Because WT wanted immediate OA to the published version, Elsevier bargained for, and won, compensation for the costs of peer review, as if it were providing gold OA. But the HHMI payments don't cover peer review, don't buy access to the published edition, and can't be construed as buying gold OA. HHMI is paying for green OA.
Elsevier's press release last September said that the WT payments would "help offset the cost of peer review and other publishing costs". The Elsevier-HHMI press release makes no similar claim. But perhaps we could justify the HHMI fees if we construed them as paying for peer review. That's a possibility, since all the articles in question have already been peer reviewed. But I just can't make this fit. Here's the problem: either the fees cover peer review or they don't. If they do, then HHMI really ought to get gold OA for its money, since peer review is the chief expense distinguishing journal publication from self-archiving. But gold OA ought to be immediate, not embargoed, and cover the published edition, not merely the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript. Hence, if HHMI is paying for gold, it's not getting it. But if the fees don't cover peer review, then we're back where we were and HHMI is only paying for green OA. Either way, I have to conclude that HHMI was ripped off. Or if that's too negative, Elsevier got a fantastic deal.
By my count, HHMI is paying Elsevier for three specific concessions or services: Cell Press is shortening its embargo period; Elsevier is adding PMC to the list of eligible repositories for OA archiving; and Elsevier is undertaking the labor of depositing articles in PMC. Only the first has any bargaining significance.
In sum, what's wrong with this picture? HHMI is paying a fee for green OA. Despite its fee, HHMI is not getting immediate OA. Despite its fee, HHMI is not getting OA to the published version of the article. Elsevier (beyond Cell Press) is even lengthening its embargo period. Elsevier is permitting embargoed deposits in PMC, but it already permits free and unembargoed deposits in IRs. Actually making the deposits is a semi-automated clerical task that doesn't come close to justifying these fees.
Thomas Cech, President of HHMI (and a Nobel laureate in chemistry) told the Chronicle of Higher Education, "There seems to be an emerging consensus that this is a viable business proposition and to some extent a fair price, to the extent that one can really know what a fair price is." But he seems to have been thinking of the price for gold OA, which includes immediate access to the published edition. There is no precedent, let alone emerging consensus, for pricing green OA. Nor is there precedent or consensus for pricing OA to embargoed access to unedited manuscripts.
The same Chronicle article added, however, that "Mr. Cech acknowledged that the terms of the agreement may need revision in the not-too-distant future, given the pace of evolution in the publishing world...."
* Overall
I'm not saying that the distinction between green and gold OA is immutable. Of course the two types can be blended. One blend --the best for researchers-- would charge no fee to the depositor and provide immediate access to the published edition. Another blend --the worst for researchers-- would charge a fee, impose an embargo, and limit access to the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript.
The problem with the HHMI-Elsevier deal is not that it blurs the distinction between green and gold but that it needlessly adopts the worst blend for researchers. The problem with the ACS deal is that it artificially clamps green and gold together and forces anyone wanting green to pay for gold to get it.
Elsevier is collecting fees for permitting embargoed green OA, and for making the deposits, when all its publishing costs are already covered by subscription fees. ACS is collecting fees for green OA, and for providing gold OA, when all its publishing costs are also already covered by subscription fees. (ACS has not yet said that it will reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake of the OA option.)
The ACS program will have low uptake. The price is high and very few authors who only want green OA will pay for gold OA. Elsevier will have uptake from each of its HHMI-funded authors. That's a larger class, but it's bounded and smaller than the class of HHMI-funded authors itself. I can't see that other funding agencies are likely to follow HHMI's lead, especially after studying the details of its deal. Even those who are tempted to pay publishers for their cooperation, or who have money to burn, will see that the Wellcome Trust is got much more for its money, and an outcome much more beneficial to research, than HHMI. But even if the direct damage is limited, these policies have let loose a dangerous new meme suggesting that publishers need compensation merely for permitting deposit in an OA repository, even if the OA edition is an unedited manuscript, even if the OA is embargoed, and even when all the publisher's costs are already covered by subscriptions. That's the real danger here.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
http://www.hhmi.org/
HHMI's plans to adopt an OA archiving mandate for HHMI-funded research (Nature, October 26, 2006).
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061023/full/443894b.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_10_22_fosblogarchive.html#116186794713693270
HHMI and Elsevier Announce Public Access Agreement, the press release from the HHMI, March 8, 2007.
http://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmielsevier20070308.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117336452582583348
Mark Chillingworth, Elsevier agree Open Access terms with Howard Hughes Medical Institute, IWRblog, March 8, 2007.
http://blog.iwr.co.uk/2007/03/elsevier_agree_.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117344916719572988
Rick Weiss, Health Findings From Institute To Be Free Online, Washington Post, March 9, 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802304.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117344979653408935
Richard Monastersky, Hughes Institute's Deal With Elsevier Will Open Up Access to Its Researchers' Work, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2007.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/03/2007030901n.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117345572989831207
Stevan Harnad, Double-Paying for Optional Gold OA Instead of Mandating Green OA While Subscriptions Are Still Paying for Publication: Trojan Folly, Open Access Archivangelism, March 13, 2007.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/215-Double-Paying-for-Optional-Gold-OA-Instead-of-Mandating-Green-OA-While-Subscriptions-Are-Still-Paying-for-Publication-Trojan-Folly.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117396030155802348
T. Scott Plutchak, Taking Time For Conversation, T. Scott, March 13, 2007.
http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2007/03/taking_time_for.html
Jim Till, Paying a fee for Green OA, Be accessible or be obscure, March 21, 2007.
http://tillje.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/paying-a-fee-for-green-oa/
----------
Round-up
Here's what happened, or what I noticed, since the last issue, emphasizing action and policy over scholarship and opinion. I put the most important items first, with double asterisks, and otherwise cluster them loosely by topic. Most of the time, I link to my blog postings, not to the sources themselves, because I only want to include one link and my blog postings usually bring many relevant links together.
** Twenty-two US federal government agencies formed an Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD) and plan to deposit the data generated by their research grantees in a network of OA repositories. They are considering an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117459920297766340
** Elias Zerhouni, Director of the NIH, told a Senate committee that the NIH public access policy should be strengthened from a request to a requirement.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117476534149036353
** Two Research Councils of the UK merged, one requiring OA (PPARC) and one merely encouraging it (CCLRC). The new merged entity, Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), will require OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_04_01_fosblogarchive.html#117543267986557282
** The draft FP7 Grant Agreement requires grantees to submit electronic copies of their publications to the EC and permits the EC to disseminate them "in whatever form and...by whatever medium". If adopted, the EU would already have in place the heart of an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117484041064336272
** CERN's Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment adopted the same statement on OA publishing adopted last month by CERN's ATLAS experiment.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117288344334731674
** Two more CERN experiments endorsed the Statement on Open Access Publishing first promulgated by CERN's ATLAS experiment in February 2007 (making four total), and a fifth CERN experiment agreed to endorse gold OA in some form but is still working out the exact language.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117440486979515363
** The European Research Council revealed (in its grant application guidelines) that it will pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117319383337821600
** When researchers funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) publish in Elsevier journals, HHMI agreed to pay Elsevier between $1,000 and $1,500 per article to deposit the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscripts in PubMed Central six months after publication.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117336452582583348
** The Université de Liège adopted an OA mandate, thanks to its rector, Bernard Rentier.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117390467891474707
** Ilmenau Technical University mandated that each book published by its university press must appear in an OA edition as well as a priced/printed edition.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117501377818577875
** Eight non-profit organizations launched a Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States, building on the European petition launched in January 2007. (Please sign it as an individual, encourage your institution to sign it as an institution, and spread the word!)
http://www.publicaccesstoresearch.org/
* Australia's Productivity Commission proposed an "author pays" OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117500224604901176
* Australia adopted repository-based research assessment, giving researchers one more strong incentive to deposit their research output in OA repositories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117285563541214695
* Nature Biotech announced a new policy, "recommending that raw data from proteomics and molecular-interaction experiments be deposited in a public [OA] database before manuscript submission."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117439670001819206
* Maxine Clarke, Publishing Executive Editor at Nature, said that Nature would consider requiring and not merely recommending OA for multimedia data if there were a suitable OA repository supporting annotation and long-term preservation.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117465625797780052
* Polimetrica released an Open Access Manifesto, apparently the first from a book publisher.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117396334453564689
* CERN published its proposal to establish a Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) and presented it at a meeting in Geneva.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117391977506991184
* The Catalan Physical Society signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117397527405671860
* A group of 18 public-interest advocacy organizations asked Congress to provide OA to the highly-regarded, publicly-funded, non-classified reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_04_01_fosblogarchive.html#117545802256092154
* The EC released the minutes of the second, October 2006 meeting of its High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries. The members discussed the then-forthcoming EC Communication on OA (released February 2007) with the help of an invited expert speaking for the interests of publishers but none speaking for the interests of researchers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117449828493859632
* Brian Crawford, Chairman of the Executive Council of the AAP's Professional/Scholarly Publishing division, published his third explanation and defense of the hiring of a controversial PR firm to oppose national OA policies.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117496662083616559
* The Association of American Publishers (AAP) publicly released its March 26 letter to Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds the NIH, opposing Elias Zerhouni's conclusion that the NIH policy should be strengthened from a request to a requirement.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117526221745302635
* "Economics" is a new open-access, open-assessment journal.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117288008663939538
* Wiley-Blackwell launched a new peer-reviewed OA journal, Archives of Drug Information, apparently the first full OA (as opposed to hybrid OA) journal for either company.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117319171360952021
* The Revue Electronique Francophone d'Informatique Graphique (REFIG) is a new OA journal of computer graphics.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117511387714701290
* The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117397439873018817
* The journal, Museum Anthropology, launched an OA supplement for book reviews, Museum Anthropology Review.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117483579711929949
* Persée added the OA backfiles of two more journals to its collection: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (1877 -1889) and Dialogues d’histoire ancienne (1974 - ).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117526464026522388
* The complete backfile of the journal, Folklore and Folk Music Archivist, is now OA, thanks to the hard work of Indiana University's Archives of Traditional Music.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117311247602297882
* The complete backfile of the journal, Sino-Japanese Studies, is now OA, thanks to the hard work of Konrad Lawson.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117413968172730826
* Hindawi launched the first 12 titles in a new "Research Letters" series of OA journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117439430594494790
* Hindawi joined the group of co-sponsors of ChemRefer, the search engine for OA research in chemistry.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117406671537112459
* Roman Chyla launched E-Journal, an ejournal management and publishing system running on Drupal, the open-source content management system.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117311697235445712
* MIT canceled access to the digital library of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) when the SAE refused to lift its onerous DRM.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117444629854233092
* John Vig, one of the candidates for president of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), is campaigning on platform of embargoed OA for the IEEE journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117529252691778246
* The University of Frankfurt Library launched the OA Virtual Library of Biology (Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Biologie).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117536391322851137
* Metaweb launched its first product, Freebase, an OA database for semantically-tagged data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117345930415703162
* A new study of global warming from the European Science Foundation - Marine Board recommended international cooperation on an OA database.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117294454448961278
* Open Context, the OA data repository for archaeology, is nearing its demo phase and started looking fieldwork datasets.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117500939140028320
* Archaeoinformatics.org announced a project to build an OA infrastructure for data, texts, and images in archaeology.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117392800215714475
* The Alexandria Archive Institute announced an Open Archaeology Prize for OA datasets.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117302974112043087
* The Cultural Studies Open Access Archive (CSeARCH) issued a call for contributions.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117294533438768449
* Thomson Scientific bought Unleashed Informatics (UI), including UI's BIND (Biomolecular Interaction Network Database), a database with TA and OA editions originally created with substantial funding from Canadian taxpayers. Thomson will continue the OA edition, at least for current registrants.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117442092043479221
* The American Philological Association launched a $4 million fund-raising campaign, and plans to spend $2 million on a portal for digital (and apparently OA) "primary source materials".
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117287440618620960
* ScientificCommons, the OA repository harvester, started citation tracking.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117484806555173604
* Eigenfactor, the free tool for citation analysis, increased the size of its index from 1,800 journals, all in social science, to all the 7,000+ journals listed in Thompson's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), including those in the natural sciences. It also indexes 110,000+ reference sources not listed in JCR, including reference books, newspapers, trade magazines, and software packages.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117465776401648722
* The Center for Journal Ranking offered another free citation tracking service and journal quality measurement.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117476853157692109
* OpenDOAR opened up its API for experiments, mash-ups, and creative new services.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117451421549681157
* The two leading directories of OA repositories, ROAR and OpenDOAR, both took part in mash-ups with mapping services (ROAR with Google Earth, OpenDOAR with Google Maps) showing the worldwide locations of the listed repositories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117431278697144048
* Knowledge Exchange issued its recommendations on institutional repositories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117491909312518807
* dLIST, the OA repository for information science and technology, added a tell-a-colleague button.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117511602053504106
* Index Data launched an Open Content service to integrate OA content with library catalogs, information portals, and metasearch systems.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117406575037808742
* The AIRway project and OCLC Openly Informatics described a way to add IRs to linking services and allow institutions use link resolvers to point their users to OA copies of articles published in journals to which the institutions do not subscribe.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117387542713580320
* Dorothea Salo launched an IR-Managers web site, where IR managers can talk shop; it includes a group blog, forum, and mailing list.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117328282797244404
* SHERPA launched the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR) as a way for repository managers to share experiences and help one another.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117392255185129982
* The EU-funded OLCOS (Open eLearning Content Observatory Services) released a report identifying the drivers and inhibitors of OA repositories for courseware and research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117442867644434804
* France added the content of Gallica to the OA European Digital Library.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117501598344417608
* Co-Action Publishing is a new OA publisher and consultant with "real and virtual offices in Norway, Sweden and Denmark."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117517124938793355
* The University of California Press launched FlashPoints, a new monograph series in literary studies in which each book will have an OA edition and a priced/printed edition.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117327687566819468
* Springer announced that more than 29,000 of its books had been indexed by Google Book Search and Google visibility increases sales.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117287715734791930
* The Bavarian State Library joined the Google Library project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117321928830063807
* Google is helping researchers exchange huge datasets (up to 120 terabytes) at no charge.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117337490741523702
* Citizendium moved out of alpha into beta.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117495322620409391
* A new study of author attitudes toward OA showed the continuing prevalence of long-answered fears and reservations.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117332381302253715
* The Publishing Research Consortium released a condensed version of its November 2006 study, Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117432031362987632
* The University of California at Berkeley received a Mellon grant of more than $400,000 to study the changing nature of scholarly communication, including open access.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117318961540173882
* Heather Morrison is offering a course on Open Access at the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_04_fosblogarchive.html#117346462471075170
* Heather Morrison made an OA Google spreadsheet containing baseline data and periodic updates on the size of various OA directories and resources.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_04_01_fosblogarchive.html#117545532801983366
* The State of Utah gave $200,000 to Utah State University for OpenCourseWare in 2007-2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117295022208499581
* Creative Commons is launching a new division called CC Learn, devoted to open educational resources.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117422255273491183
* A non-profit with public funding launched CultureSource, an OA portal for Canadian courseware and teaching materials.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117535509561091222
* Novell launched Novell Open Courseware, apparently the first open courseware from a for-profit company for its corporate training courses.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117448339447447238
* The Metropolitan Museum of Art and ARTstor announced a deal permitting scholars to use Met images in ARTstor free of charge for scholarly purposes.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_11_fosblogarchive.html#117397871941833272
* Antonella De Robbio translated the SPARC Author Addendum into Italian.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117508588735505343
* Students at Emory University are submitting a resolution in support of FRPAA to the Student Government Association for approval.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117425105655876843
* France became the first country to provide OA to its UFO investigations.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117475801317460796
* Faced with a lawsuit from Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project, James Joyce's grandson and literary executor backed off his aggressive position on copyright and agreed that a Joyce scholar had the right to quote from Joyce's published and unpublished writings in print and online.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_18_fosblogarchive.html#117477146439993758
----------
Coming this month
Here are some important OA-related events coming up in April.
* April 14. Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) launches its institutional repository, the IDRC Digital Library.
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/03/coming-april-24-idrc-digital-library.html
* April 18, 2007. SPARC Europe will announce the winner of the Second Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications, at the OAI5 conference at CERN.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3601.html
* Sometime in April 2007. PhysMath Central will launch its first three OA journals.
http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/pmcblog/entry/20070220
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_02_25_fosblogarchive.html#117251454082611360
--The first will launch at the American Physical Society meeting in Jacksonville, April 14-17, 2007.
http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/pmcblog/entry/20070330
* Notable conferences this month
Federal Research Public Access Act (a teleconference with Heather Joseph) (sponsored by Chemists Without Borders)
http://oalibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/03/chemists-without-borders-open-access.html
April 5, 2007 (a teleconference)
Workshop on Digital Libraries (OA is among the topics)
http://www.teriin.org/events_inside.php?id=17896
New Delhi, April 10-13, 2007
All Together Now: Scholarly Communication and the Power of Online Communities
http://timssnet.allenpress.com/ECOMAPSEMINAR2007/timssnet/common/tnt_frontpage.cfm
Washington, D.C., April 12, 2007
The transformation of research communication (sponsored by ALPSP)
http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?pfs=2&aid=79
London, April 13, 2007
Open Educational Resources for lifelong learning (EduMedia Conference 2007) (OA is among the topics)
http://edumedia.salzburgresearch.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112&Itemid=93?=en
Salzburg, April 16-17, 2007
30th UKSG Annual Conference (OA is among the topics)
http://www.uksg.org/events/annualconf07.asp
Warwick, April 16-18, 2007
International Scholarly Communications Conference: The transformation of research communication (sponsored by ALPSP) (OA is among the topics)
http://www.alpsp.org/events/2007/ISCC/default.htm
London, April 17, 2007
CERN workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI5)
http://oai5.web.cern.ch/oai5/
Geneva, April 18-20, 2007
Beyond Limits: Building Open Access Collections (sponsored by the British Columbia Library Association)
[no web site yet]
Vancouver, April 19, 2007
Sharing of information and resources: cooperation of museums, archives and libraries in field of standardization
http://www.lnb.lv/eng/aktualitate.php?id=237
Riga, Latvia, April 20, 2007
Drexel University Libraries 2007 Scholarly Communication Symposium: Intellectual Property Rights
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3702.html
Philadelphia, April 20, 2007
Konferanse om Open Access og e-publisering (sponsored by Nordbib)
http://www.nordbib.net/Initiatives---Reports/Workshop.aspx
Elsinore, April 23-24, 2007
eInformation for eScience (hosted by UKeiG)
http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2007/april/escience.html
Birmingham, April 24, 2007
Sharing the Challenge of Managing Institutional Repositories
http://www.eprints.org/events/challenges/
Southampton, April 24, 2007
Institutional repositories and Open Access for scholarly communication: a sensitization workshop
http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-oa/oa_calendar/event/20070306T160720-storage-48@openxchange
Maseru, Lesotho, April 24-26, 2007
Second Conference on Access to Knowledge (A2K2) (sponsored by the Yale Law School's Information Society Project)
http://research.yale.edu/isp/a2k/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
New Haven, April 27-29, 2007
* Other OA-related conferences
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm
----------
Housekeeping
* I've added 33 new conferences to my conference page since the last issue. In the next few days I'll delete the second asterisk marking them and the new entries will blend into the rest of the collection.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm
==========
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Peter Suber
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peter.suber@earlham.edu
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