* The Open Access Directory (OAD) list of publisher policies on NIH-funded authors now includes a statement summarizing three years of work. "To the best of our knowledge, no publishers anywhere refuse to publish NIH-funded authors on the grounds of the NIH's public-access policy...."Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #156
April 2, 2011
by Peter SuberRead this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-11.htm
Contents
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SOAN is published and sponsored by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
http://www.arl.org/sparc/Open access as humanitarian aid
On March 11, Japan suffered the largest known earthquake in its history and one of the five largest ever recorded. The resulting tsunami caused immense damage over 500 square kilometers (193 square miles). More than 11,800 people are confirmed dead and more than 15,500 still missing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/26_05.html
First things first: If you're looking for practical information on how to help, or how to cope, see Google's crisis response page and the OLIVE wiki for quake survivors.
http://www.google.co.jp/intl/en/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html
https://sites.google.com/site/oliveinenglish/
Beyond those survival basics, several forms humanitarian assistance take the form of free online access to research:
* Three US organizations created the Emergency Access Initiative (EAI) to provide temporary free online access to toll access (TA) research literature. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) and National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) both support OA. But the third partner is the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP/PSP), which lobbies against OA policies in the US. The EAI will provide free online access to "to full-text articles from over 230 biomedical serial titles and over 65 reference books and online databases to healthcare professionals and libraries affected by disasters." Because the free access is temporary, and limited to those affected by the earthquake and tsunami, it's not OA and the EMI isn't calling it OA. Nevertheless it lifts access barriers to research. The free access began on March 14, three days after the earthquake struck, is currently scheduled to end on April 8, 2011.
http://nnlm.gov/mcr/bhic/2011/03/15/eai-japa/
http://eai.nlm.nih.gov/docs/captcha/test.pl
* Thomson Reuters launched an OA portal of research on the diagnosis and treatment of radiation exposure.
http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/radiation
http://thomsonreuters.com/content/press_room/healthcare/Radiation-Exposure-Information
* Elsevier began giving all Japanese IP addresses temporary free online access to the company's "primary online clinical reference tools", MD Consult and First Consult.
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01895
* Nature News released an OA special collection of news and opinion on the Japanese earthquake and nuclear crisis.
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/japanquake/index.html
* ReliefWeb, the UN's OA repository for humanitarian relief, has a section on the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Among other content, ReliefWeb harvests from OA journals. See for example the articles it has harvested from BMC.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108?OpenForm&emid=EQ-2011-000028-JPN&rc=3
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/doc207?OpenForm&query=2&cat=BioMed%20Central
* OpenStreetMap is building OA maps of the disaster area to aid rescue and recovery efforts.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami
http://www.sinsai.info/ushahidi/
* Several initiatives around the world are crowdsourcing OA maps of radiation levels in different parts of the world as a result of the reactor leaks in Japan.
http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/24/japans-nuclear-woes-give-rise-to-crowd-sourced-radiation-maps-in-asia-and-us/
* RDTN.org is a new site crowdsourcing the collection of "reliable data" about radiation levels in Japan. "Although primarily built to gather data from citizens taking readings on the ground, the site also takes readings from official sources including Pachube.com, an infrastructure platform that gathers community-based environmental data, and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology."
http://rdtn.org/
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/herdict/2011/03/26/crowdsourcing-japans-nuclear-crisis/
http://scienceblogs.com/deanscorner/2011/03/japans_radiation_levels_real-t.php
* Architecture for Humanity uses CC-licensed architectural plans to assist with disaster reconstruction.
http://architectureforhumanity.org/programs/2011-sendai-earthquake-and-tsunami
I posted a call on SPARC Open Access Forum (SOAF) for other examples of free online access to research or data --not normally OA-- as humanitarian assistance to Japan. As I go to press, these are the only examples I know. If others appear later, please post them to SOAF.
https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5778.html
http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/blog/call-for-oa-research-and-data-as-humanitarian-assi.shtml
Here's a sad example of an impediment to OA-related humanitarian aid. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has sensors around the world as part of its mission to detect nuclear tests. In particular, it has sensors in Japan and throughout the Pacific. The sensors are picking up radiation leaking from Japan's six damaged nuclear reactors. The data would be extremely valuable to rescue workers and physicians in Japan, and to policy-makers everywhere thinking about nuclear power. They would even help calm some exaggerated fears on the west coast of North America. But according to Nature, "the CTBTO has no mandate for making radionuclide data publicly available for the purposes of monitoring nuclear accidents, because its member states have not yet agreed for it to have this role...."
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/03/exclusive_governments_withhold.html
This is a fixable problem. Thomson Reuters, Elsevier, and the publishers participating in the Emergency Access Initiative didn't have standing policies to free up articles for humanitarian purposes until they saw the need to do so (often well before the Japanese earthquake), got their acts together, and changed course in time to do some good. Let's hope it's not too late for the CTBTO to do the same. Every government participating in CTBTO --nearly every country on Earth-- should help CTBTO reach this decision.
http://www.ctbto.org/member-states/country-profiles/
.....
In the face of a disaster like the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, OA research is less urgent than food, clothing, and shelter. But access to research can be an essential part of rescue and recovery. To show that, here's a brief history of OA as humanitarian assistance, organized by disaster, starting with the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Because standing OA journals and repositories are available to every disaster-damaged region with internet connectivity, this list focuses on resources that would not otherwise have been OA or not otherwise created at all. (I maintain an offline list of these resources and would appreciate learning about any that I've missed.)
(1) The earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, December 26, 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_tsunami
The Dutch Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies created Aceh Books, an OA collection of more than 600 books about Aceh, Indonesia. The books are digital replacements for 400 years' worth of print books about Aceh destroyed by the tsunami.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/oa-collection-of-books-about-aceh.html
(2) Hurricane Katrina, August 29, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_katrina
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released a collection of 8,000+ OA photographs of Hurricane Katrina and other storms from 1998 to 2008.
http://blogs.archives.gov/online-public-access/?p=4400
OA data from Google Earth aided rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina. (The same article shows how Google Earth data also helped with rescue efforts after the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7078/full/439787a.html
(3) The earthquake in Haiti, January 12, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
The Emergency Access Initiative (noted above in connection with the Japanese earthquake) originally launched to offer assistance after the Haitian earthquake.
http://nnlm.gov/pnr/dragonfly/2010/01/25/emergency-access/
The Open Street Map community provided OA data and tools to assist rescue workers in Haiti.
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/01/15/open-street-map-community-responds-to-haiti-crisis/
A new, free iPhone app offered rescue workers the most up-to-date maps and geodata of Haiti, including maps and data from the Open Street Map project.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/haiti-osm-and-sat-imagery-for.html
Cameron Parkins described two Haitian relief projects using CC licenses to share information with all who might need it.
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20216
(4) The earthquake in Chile, February 27, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake
Chilean seismologists shared data on the earthquake which hit central Chile on February 27, 2010
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/chile-to-open-up-quake-data-to-global-community.html
The UK Geological Society released a collection of OA research on Chilean tectonics.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/publications/lyellcollection/page7188.html
Students at Columbia University's School of Public Administration (SIPA) organized "crisis information" gathered from text messages, emails, and Twitter feeds, to assist with humanitarian aid to victims of the Chilean earthquake.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/student-volunteers-map-cr_n_502957.html
(5) The Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, April 20, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_horizon
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Deepwater Horizon Library, an OA collection of "maps, wildlife reports, scientific reports and other previously released public information used by emergency responders, fishermen, mariners and local officials during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20101229_dwh_library.html
http://www.noaa.gov/deepwaterhorizon
The US Environmental Law Institute launched the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Litigation Database to track ongoing legal cases related to oil spill. http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/deepwater_horizon_oil_spill_litigation_database.cfm
The US National Library of Medicine added data on crude oil and dispersants to its OA Hazardous Substances Data Bank.
http://goo.gl/58Ni
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology provided OA information on 22 bird species "at risk from the BP oil spill".
http://birdsredesign.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/update-now-23-birds-of-north-america-accounts-are-open-access/
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched a website of OA, near-real-time information on the response to the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. The site gathered data from all US federal agencies working on the disaster.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100614_erma.html
Thirteen scientific societies wrote a joint open letter to the US Senate calling for public funds for research on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, on the ground that private funds from BP come with unacceptable copyright restrictions which limit public access to the research.
http://www.aibs.org/position-statements/20100915_september_2010.html
(6) The earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, February 22, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (DMPHP) published four OA articles on the Haitian earthquake of January 2010 to assist with disaster relief for the New Zealand earthquake. DMPHP is a TA journal published by the American Medical Association (AMA).
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1102/S00083/how-long-to-search-a-review.htm http://www.dmphp.org/
* To round out this skeleton history, here are some examples of OA-related relief for what could be called generalized emergency rather than particular disasters.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science formerly had a project called Science & Intellectual Property in the Public Interest (SIPPI), laid down in March 2007, and SIPPI had a Humanitarian Licensing Working Group which issued a July 2004 report, Exploring a Humanitarian Use Exemption to Intellectual Property Protections.
http://sippi.aaas.org/hue.shtml
http://sippi.aaas.org/SIPPI%20Humanitarian%20Use%20Report%20-%20July%202004.doc
Amanda L. Brewster, Audrey R. Chapman, Stephen A. Hansen, Facilitating Humanitarian Access to Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Innovation, Innovation Strategy Today, 1, 3 (2005).
http://www.biodevelopments.org/innovation/ist3.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006/02/licenses-for-humanitarian-access.html
Edward Mills, Sharing evidence on humanitarian relief, BMJ, December 22, 2005. An editorial arguing that an OA database of humanitarian efforts would itself make those efforts more effective and efficient.
http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1485.full
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005/12/oa-helps-respond-to-disasters.html
In 2007, the Japanese government called for public comments on a proposed humanitarian exception to Japanese copyright law. The new exception would allow free copying and distribution of medical journal articles in cases of medical emergency. Most TA publishers submitting comments opposed the idea, including some who participate in the Emergency Access Initiative (see Japan and Haiti, above). If anyone knows what happened to this proposal, I'd love to hear the details. For example, if it passed, is it being used in the present disaster? If it didn't pass, is it being reconsidered now?
http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/bunka/gijiroku/013/08011801/003/005.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/11/does-medical-emergency-justify.html
In 2008, Elisa Mason found that about half the journals in the field of forced migration were OA to some degree or another.
http://researching-refugees.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-access.html
http://researching-refugees.blogspot.com/2008/11/update-to-open-access-post.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/09/oa-to-refugee-research.html
A May 2009 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) argued that the US "humanitarian obligation" to global health should include green OA mandates for medical research. The report was co-sponsored by the Gates Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Google Foundation, Merck Company Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, US Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Homeland Security, and US Department of State.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12642
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/us-commitment-to-global-health-should.html
In February 2011, the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) agreed on a global standard for publishing aid data. The idea is that data released under the standard will allow "donors and recipients [to] coordinate their plans and complement the activities of others, reducing duplication and waste...."
http://blog.okfn.org/2011/03/25/the-aid-revolution-begins-with-xml-the-aid-revolution-begins-here/
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines has been working on humanitarian licensing for years. Its document archive on the topic has docs from just last month.
http://essentialmedicine.org/archive/taxonomy/humanitarian-licensing
Also see the many items in the Open Access News archive on efforts to provide OA to research and data on avian flu, in anticipation of a global pandemic.
http://goo.gl/XOrRc
.....
I'm not going to argue that TA publishers who make temporary sacrifices to provide OA during emergencies should make permanent sacrifices to provide OA all the time. I understand the distinction between emergencies and routine circumstances. You probably give more to the Red Cross after a disaster than you could afford to give every month. I do, and I have an answer ready for anyone who wants me to give the same amount every month.
But but but but. There's more to say on this subject. Here are four buts.
* But #1: Some publishers do provide OA all the time, rain or shine. More than 6,300 peer-reviewed journals, about one-quarter of today's total, provide OA to all their articles. At least two different business models for OA journals are making profits or surpluses for the publishers using them. Converting to OA is not impossible. For publishers making double-digit profit margins, the shift would mean accepting less. For publishers with more modest margins, it would mean changing business models, a non-trivial undertaking. However, publishers in this category should look at companies that have made the move. Hindawi is a profitable OA publisher which finished the job of converting all its peer-reviewed journals to OA in 2007. Looking back on several years of rapidly growing submissions, its co-founder and CEO said in 2010, "It is clear now more than ever that our open access conversion...was the best management decision we have taken...."
https://arl.org/lists/sparc-oaforum/Message/5326.html
When Springer bought BioMed Central, Derk Haank, Springer CEO, said that OA is "a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade."
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/4605.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/10/springer-buys-biomed-central.html
Publishers contemplating the shift should also consider the evidence that it increases submissions and citations to the journal, even apart from increasing the productivity of researchers. If you were *thinking* about giving more to the Red Cross every month, at least you'd want the plus column to include the benefits to yourself as well as the benefits to others. With all respect to the Red Cross, the narrow self-interest of donating to the Red Cross is less than the narrow self-interest of shifting to OA, especially for smaller publishers excluded from big deals and facing a losing battle for shrinking library budgets under the subscription model. Reread Ahmed Hindawi's statement from 2010 that converting to OA was the best management decision his company ever made. That's not the way CEOs talk about upping their charitable donations.
* But #2: Most publishers allow author-initiated green OA. The percentage of surveyed publishers who do has declined as SHERPA/RoMEO surveys more publishers. But today SHERPA has surveyed more than 940 publishers, and reports that 55% allow postprint archiving, and 63% allow either preprint or postprint archiving.
http://romeo.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/01/21/sherparomeo-announces-its-900th-publisher/
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php
Just as some gold OA publishers are making profits, some green TA publishers (TA publishers allowing green OA) are making very large profits. Elsevier falls into this category, for example, and it places no embargo on green OA. Permitting green OA is not impossible and it's not even a drag on revenue or profits. Publishers not ready to convert to gold OA should at least permit green OA. It doesn't require a financial hit and it doesn't require an emergency. And it would serve research (more in But #4 below), a major factor for non-profit society publishers committed to serving research more than serving stockholders.
The Nature Publishing Group puts a six month embargo on green OA, but has "actively encourag[ed] self-archiving since 2005" and reports that "to date, [it has] found author self-archiving compatible with subscription business models."
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/statement.html
* But #3: The publishers already permitting green OA include the largest ones and most of the smaller ones. We still need to move the percentage of green TA publishers from 63% to something closer to 100%. But at the same time, we need to move the percentage of authors who take advantage of existing permissions from 15% to something closer to 100%. I'm looking at you, researchers. More often than not, you already have permission from your TA publishers to self-archive your work, and more often than not you don't take advantage of it. In that sense, the bulk of the OA shortfall can be traced to author inertia (preoccupation, unfamiliarity, misunderstanding) rather than publisher opposition.
There are three solutions to this problem. First, make green OA as familiar as gold OA to publishing researchers. This is a long slow process. I believe the curve is moving up, but the slope is shallow. Most researchers still don't understand their green OA options, and don't realize that publishing in a TA journal is usually compatible with depositing the peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. The second and third solutions are funder and university OA mandates. The growth of OA depends on author decisions, but funders and universities are in an unmatched position to influence author decisions. If you regret the slow growth of OA, in routine circumstances as well as emergencies, then here's a simple strategy: make your own work OA; educate your colleagues about their OA options, especially their green OA options; and work for a strong OA policy at your institution.
(For what counts as a strong OA policy at funders and universities, see my article from February 2009.)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-09.htm#choicepoints
* But #4: Lifting access barriers in an emergency is a public acknowledgment that research is more useful when OA than when TA. It confirms what I've called the OA principle: the more knowledge matters, the more OA to that knowledge matters.
This proposition doesn't compare one set of OA articles with a control group of TA articles that might or might not be relevantly similar. We're talking about one and the same set of articles and data, without any "self-selection bias" or any of the other alleged confounders complicating the analysis of the citation impact advantage. Research is more useful after we lift access barriers than it was before, and publishers who lift access barriers in emergencies are admitting that.
This is the heart of the case for OA. It makes research more useful. When research is gratis OA, it reaches more people who can make use of it. Users needn't go without, and needn't rely on slow, unscalable methods like interlibrary loan and emails to authors. When research is libre OA, it can be used and reused in ways that exceed fair use. Users needn't slow down to ask for permission, risk proceeding without it, or err on the side of non-use.
Publishers may have financial reasons not to provide OA themselves. But reasons to stop short of gold OA aren't reasons to stop short of green OA. In any case, arguments against permitting or mandating green OA must be weighed against the fundamental background acknowledgement that OA research is more useful than TA research. My hope is that every publisher will remember this acknowledgement when considering or reconsidering its access policies. We need research to be as useful as possible every day, in routine circumstances, and not just in times of disaster. The "we" here are not just researchers but everyone who depends on research. The stakes are not always elevated by earthquake and tsunami, but they are elevated by illness, climate change, environmental degradation, species extinction, unsafe technologies, unsolved problems, and uninformed policies.
In a different context in 2009, I put the question this way: "Do we only want to solve the [access problem] in matters of life and death, or might we also want solve it in matters of scholarship, research, art, culture, and education?"
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-09.htm#digitization
The question isn't whether we could give as much to the Red Cross every month as we manage to give in the aftermath of a humanitarian disaster. The question is whether we could make what we already do just as useful as emergency-level donations to the Red Cross.
When I give to the Red Cross in an emergency, I don't feel committed to do it every month. But I do feel blocked from arguing that donations to the Red Cross don't really help. Making that claim would be factually incorrect and personally inconsistent. Likewise publishers who provide free online access in an emergency are blocked from arguing that increased access isn't necessary or doesn't help, or that everyone who needs access already has access. Premise 1: There is an access problem. Working on solutions to this problem is not incendiary, but humanitarian in the broadest sense.
* Postscript. To keep this article a manageable size, I've tried to distinguish humanitarian relief in the wake of disasters from humanitarian relief to developing countries in the face of more chronic conditions, although I admit that the border between them is fuzzy. Hence, I haven't even tried to list the very many OA initiatives at work in the global south, day in and day out. But for lists of those initiatives, see:
EBSCO and Hasselt University's Open Science Directory
http://www.opensciencedirectory.net/
Ann Okerson's list of Developing Nations Initiatives (not updated since 2007)
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/develop.shtml
The "oa.south" tag library from the OA Tracking Project (active since April 2009)
http://www.connotea.org/tag/oa.south
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Five years ago in SOAN
See SOAN for April 2, 2006
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm
* One essay in that issue: "Germany's DFG adopts an open access policy"
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#dfg
Excerpt: "The DFG is the largest research funder in Germany. While it's independent, like the RCUK in England, it disburses public funds. Hence, a DFG policy is a national policy, making Germany the second country after US the to adopt a policy encouraging or mandating OA to publicly-funded research....Is the DFG making a request, like the NIH, or imposing a requirement, like the Wellcome Trust? Neither, really. It says that authors *should* provide OA to their work (the German verb is sollen, not mussen), which is stronger than a request and weaker than a requirement....It remains to be seen whether this middle ground will be as effective as the Wellcome's mandate, as ineffective as the NIH's request, or something in between...."
* From the other top stories in that issue:
Scientists call for OA to avian flu data
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#flu
Excerpt: "Most flu researchers deposit their data in a closed (non-OA) database run by WHO, which limits access to researchers in just 15 labs around the world. If the data were OA, it would be available to all who could use it or build on it for sequencing the virus genome, monitoring mutations, tracking outbreaks, and developing vaccines. WHO would like to share the data more widely, but protectionist countries threaten to stop depositing their data if WHO took that step, limiting the circulation of data even further than today. It says its hands are tied since it doesn't own the data and needs the permission of the data producers in order to share it. The first leak in the dam came when Italian flu researcher Ilaria Capua refused to deposit her flu data in the WHO database. Instead, she put it in GenBank, the OA database from NIH, and called on other flu researchers to do the same...."
Momentum builds for OA to geodata in the UK and EU
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#geodata
Excerpt: "On March 9 [2006], the Guardian newspaper in England launched a campaign for OA to publicly-funded geodata in the UK. Called Free Our Data, the campaign is the brainchild of Charles Arthur and Michael Cross, two Guardian journalists. Since the March 9 article, Arthur and Cross set up a campaign web site, launched a blog, wrote a second Guardian article on the topic, and persuaded Tim Berners-Lee to add his voice to the call. The Guardian campaign complements the Public Geodata campaign for OA to publicly-funded geodata throughout the EU. Unlike the US, the UK and EU generally do not provide OA to publicly-funded geodata. In the UK, the government agency collecting most of the data, the Ordnance Survey, is obliged by law to generate revenue to cover its costs. So part of the strategy behind Free Our Data is to show that OA to geodata would bring more revenue to the treasury, say, through taxes on mapping startups, than charging access fees...."
Universities launch OA presses
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#oapresses
Excerpt: "The [university presses at the] University of Tennessee and Georgetown University launched OA imprints last month, in both cases using their libraries as critical partners...."
University of Minho uses financial incentives to implement its OA mandate
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#minho
Excerpt: "Currently, five universities or departments worldwide mandate OA to their research output. All have good compliance records, but none achieves compliance by cracking the whip. They use a wide range of kinder and gentler methods, among which the financial incentives at Minho are unique. What I like about them is that they are directed to departments and research centers, not individual faculty. Because they're indirect, they create incentives for departments to create their own faculty-level incentives or to facilitate deposits through education and assistance...."
The ALPSP finds that journal prices are far more threatening than OA archiving
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#alpsp
Excerpt: "The ALPSP published a report on factors considered by librarians in deciding whether to cancel journals. The [top] three factors were faculty demand, usage, and price. Availability through OA archives or non-OA aggregators were tied for fourth place "but some way behind" the first three. Bottom line: journals have much more to fear from their own price increases than from OA archiving...."
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Ten years ago in SOAN
Ten years ago, SOAN was called FOSN (Free Online Scholarship Newsletter) and came out several times a month. Here are excerpts from three different issues 10 years ago this month.
* See FOSN for March 28, 2001
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-28-01.htm
Excerpt: "This week's _Chronicle of Higher Education_ contains a summary of a promising movement in the natural sciences to boycott scholarly journals that do not put their contents online, free of charge, within six months of publication....The movement was started with a letter to the editor of _Science Magazine_, published in the March 23 [2001] issue....To accompany the letter, the authors have created a web site [called the Public Library of Science] to collect signatures supporting their idea. I urge you to visit the site and read the open letter there (not the same as the letter published in _Science_) and their FAQ...."
* See FOSN for April 6, 2001
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-06-01.htm
Excerpt: "_Nature_ is sponsoring an online debate on the advantages and feasibility of free online scholarship in the sciences. The debate site contains an editorial, a series of articles directly discussing the main issues, and a forum for reader comments...."
Excerpt: "Instead of sending out a raft of personal emails whenever there is a new development in this area, I've decided to get organized and create a mailing list...." [This marked the transition of FOSN/SOAN from hand-addressed emails to a sign-up newsletter.]
* See FOSN for April 12, 2001
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-12-01.htm
Excerpt: "I know I'm late to this, but I just discovered that the National Academy Press (NAP)...publishes all 1,800 of its books both in print and on the web. The web editions are unabridged and free of charge....NAP claims that its free web editions stimulate sales of its for-profit print editions...."
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Correction
Last month I said that I didn't know of any full OA journals (as opposed to hybrid OA journals) published by Taylor & Francis. Here at least one: Acta Orthopaedica (previously Acta Orthopaedica Scandinavica).
http://www.actaorthop.org/
If T&F has a list of all its full-OA journals, I haven't been able to find it.
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Roundup
Here's what happened, or what I noticed, since the last issue of the newsletter, 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. I thank Katharine Dunn for her assistance in restating some of these developments for Roundup.
For a more comprehensive picture of recent OA developments, see --and help build-- the project feed of the OA Tracking Project.
http://www.connotea.org/tag/oa.new
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OATP_FAQ
Starting with this issue, the Roundup section will contain more quotations and fewer restatements. When I can find clear and concise quotations that tell the gist of the story, I'll use them. This will save time and minimize inaccuracy at the same time.
+ Policies
** The University of North Texas adopted an OA mandate.
http://roarmap.eprints.org/351/
** The University of Johannesburg Senate adopted an OA mandate in 2010 (and apparently didn't make it public until last month).
http://www.eifl.net/news/university-johannesburg-open-access-mandate
** The Emory University Faculty Council voted unanimously to launch an OA repository and recommend a university-wide OA policy.
https://blogs.emory.edu/emoryfacultycouncil/2011/03/22/council-supports-open-access/
** Argentina's National University of La Plata adopted an OA mandate for theses and dissertations.
http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/ http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/resolucion/resolucion_tesis98.pdf
** The Universidad Nacional de Colombia adopted an OA mandate for theses and dissertations. http://roarmap.eprints.org/403/
** The William Mitchell College of Law (St. Paul, Minnesota) launched an OA repository. I can't tell whether it also adopted an OA policy to fill it. The press release suggests either a policy or a serious effort to collect and deposit faculty publications: "William Mitchell College of Law recently made the scholarly writings of...[its] faculty available for free...." http://web.wmitchell.edu/news/2011/03/mitchell-open-access-offers-complete-collections-of-faculty-writing-at-no-cost/
** The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW) announced an OA mandate in February. "In principle all publications by KNAW researchers will become freely accessible, preferably immediately after publication, but not later than a period of eighteen months. Research data will become freely accessible and will be stored sustainably, unless urgent reasons - such as privacy, statutory regulations - dictate otherwise. To support this policy two stimulation funds have been set up for the use of KNAW-researchers: one for publications and one for data....As a logical result of its policy the KNAW will take part in OAPEN, a collaborative project in which the feasibility of an economic model for open access book publishing is being investigated...."
http://goo.gl/6FB5g
** Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) introduced a bill in parliament amending Germany's Copyright Act to allow author-initiated green OA for publications when at least half the funding for the underlying research came from taxpayers. Authors would have this right notwithstanding any provisions in their publishing contract. Authors would have to respect a six month embargo journal articles and a 12 month embargo for some other publications.
http://goo.gl/vb5lB
http://www.fifoost.org/wordpress/?p=3113
http://www.burkhard-lischka.de/2011/03/spd-will-mit-zweitverwertungsrecht-open-access-ermoeglichen/
http://wisspub.net/2011/03/18/spd-will-zweitveroffentlichungsrecht-gesetzlich-verankern/
http://open-access.net/de/austausch/news/news/anzeige/spd_will_mit_zweitverwert/
http://www.golem.de/1103/82292.html
http://www.urheberrechtsbuendnis.de/pressemitteilung0311.html.de
http://www.urheberrecht.org/news/p/1/i/4224/
* In February Helio Kuramoto launched a petition to the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, asking it to support a pro-OA bill before the Brazilian parliament. (I can't tell what the bill would provide and welcome information about that.) The petition remains open for new signatures.
http://www.peticaopublica.com/PeticaoVer.aspx?pi=11202007 http://bcufrgs.blogspot.com/2011/03/open-access-no-brasil-o-pl-11202007.html
* Copyright reforms in Moldova that took effect on at the beginning of 2011 allow libraries "to make digital copies for preservation and replacement, the ability to create student course packs for short periods for education and classroom teaching, [and] reproduction for research or private purposes...."
http://www.eifl.net/news/new-copyright-law-moldova
* Denmark is moving closer to an OA mandate for publicly-funded research. From Google's English: "If science minister does not define a policy on free and open access to research articles, Danish National Research Foundation set its own rules...."
http://ing.dk/artikel/116939-danmarks-grundforskningsfond-vil-stille-krav-om-open-access
* The US Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) announced the programs it would support with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The funding agreement contains an OA preference: "[Each grantee will] publish and otherwise disseminate these research findings, preferably in open source journals that maximize the accessibility of this knowledge to the entire health IT community...."
https://www.cfda.gov/index?s=program&mode=form&tab=step1&id=360df6d13d7b262cdbbe29f05b105305
http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1806&mode=2
* The Arcadia Fund issued a call for strengthening the OA mandates for publicly-funded research in the UK, and and began collecting signatures.
http://goo.gl/sf2U1
http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/sites/default/files/arcadia_open_access_academic_knowledge_and_democracy_with_signatories_16_march_2011.pdf
* David Willetts, the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, convened a roundtable discussion on OA, which included the heads of most of the Research Councils, JISC, RIN, the head of HEFCE, several publishers, learned societies, research charities, academics and consultants (disclosure: including myself). The government later issued a summary statement: "The Coalition [UK government] has a commitment to Open Access....The Roundtable appeared to recognise that OA has the potential to bring significant benefits to the academic community and through its effective translation, the wider economy and society. What is also clear is that whilst a trend towards OA is developing, how we move from “here to there” remains a major challenge....‘Green’ and ‘gold’ are clearly different and whilst ‘gold’ may be more appealing, it is not clear, from an OA perspective, that it provides the best solution or is sustainable. We need to consider where costs should fall....We will want to consider how we can best use the means to bring about change (including the REF, negotiations on improving the relevant EU directive and policy developments and proposals for the forthcoming White Paper on Higher Education) to push the issue forward in a collaborative way...."
https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5788.html
* The UK Open Access Implementation Group called on authors to retain the rights to make their work green OA, so that the needn't obtain permission from publishers.
"Recently, some publishers have sought to negotiate directly with universities and research institutes on the terms and conditions under which the authors can deposit manuscripts of their own papers into repositories....The OAIG therefore wish to state our concern with publishers who seek to limit access by imposing unacceptable embargo periods on the deposit of authors' manuscripts in local, institutional or subject-based repositories. Authors should retain their right to deposit their own manuscripts, and this right should not be dependent on the later agreements to publish agreed with publishers. In particular, publishers should not seek to supersede any agreement between authors and their funders or institutions. These funders and institutions wish to see wide dissemination, with no artificial delays or embargoes. Furthermore, where collective arrangements for licensing exist that can already cover these issues (such as in the UK with clauses in the JISC Collections Model Licence), then such direct negotiation with individual universities is doubly unhelpful and risks undermining those collective arrangements. The UK Open Access Implementation Group calls on universities not to enter into one-to-one negotiations with publishers on self-archiving rights for their staff, and instead to rely on publicly declared rights as shown on the Sherpa-RoMEO website."
http://213.133.67.199/open-access/?page_id=258
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/03/oaig.aspx
* A new report from the Royal Society recommends gold OA in order to promote South-North and North-South access to research. "[W]hat steps can the world take to enable omnipresent science? The report suggests concrete measures such as more open-access journals to allow poorer institutions to have access....Scientific capacity building must involve financial support for authors in developing countries to publish in open access journals. Open access publishing has made a wealth of scientific literature available to the developing world, but conversely has made it harder for their scientists to publish under the 'author pays' model...." (The report shows no awareness that most OA journals charge no publication fees, or that green OA is a low-cost alternative to gold OA.)
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/royal-society-report-documents.html
http://royalsociety.org/policy/reports/knowledge-networks-nations/
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/Influencing_Policy/Reports/2011-03-28-Knowledge-networks-nations.pdf
* The Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen adopted an OA resolution and a fund to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals. From Google's English: "The Justus-Liebig-University supports its authors when publishing in open access journals....The scientific authors in the future JLU will also fund financially supported by a publication with a publication in Open Access journals. Thus, the JLU specifically promote the strategy of the Golden Way to Open Access....Also on the institutional publications server Giessen Electronic Library (CER), the scientists their articles using the open access publication are the world online...."
http://www.uni-giessen.de/cms/ueber-uns/pressestelle/aktuelles/open-access-resolution
http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/213685/
http://dbs.ub.uni-giessen.de/faqs/aktuell_lang.php?id=464
http://www.ub.uni-giessen.de/oa-resolution.pdf
http://www.ub.uni-giessen.de/faqs/faqs.php?id=15
* The Harvard and MIT libraries announced plans to increase their levels of collaboration, including efforts to improve the storage and preservation of faculty papers deposited under their respective OA mandates.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/harvard-mit-libraries.html
* EIFL and SPARC Europe responded to public consultation on Slovenia's Research Infrastructure Development Plan 2011-2020. They "expressed our support for the establishment of a national open data and open publication infrastructure and mandatory deposition of publicly funded data and publications. We provided evidence for the benefit of open access policies and guidelines for how to best structure them...."
http://www.eifl.net/news/eifl-and-sparc-europe-responded-slovenia-publ
* The Netherlands National Commission for UNESCO finds grounds for supporting OA in the UNESCO constitution. "UNESCO supports Open Access for the benefit of the global flow of knowledge, innovation and equitable socio-economic development. Its Constitution, written long before the advent of digital publishing, gives the Organisation a clear mandate in this field: UNESCO should 'maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge, by assuring the conservation and protection of the world's inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science' (Constitution, art, 1.2 c). Open Access is one of the three pillars of UNESCO's approach to increase access to scientific knowledge, together with the promotion of Free and Open Software (FOSS) and of Open Educational Resources (OERs)...."
http://www.unesco.nl/documents/documenten-natcom/A%20Global%20Perspective%20on%20Open%20Access%20-%20conclusions.pdf
* SPARC and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access called on Americans to recognize the third anniversary of the NIH OA mandate (April 7, 2011) by writing letters to three federal offices before April 14, 2011: "[1] Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Kathleen Sebelius, calling for the expansion of the policy to other agencies within HHS. [2] Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), John Holdren, for the expansion of the policy to federal agencies with extramural research budgets of $100 million or more. [3] Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, celebrating the success of the policy and encouraging a shorter embargo period...."
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-0325.shtml
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