Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #135
July 2, 2009
by Peter Suber

Read this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-09.htm


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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.asp

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The OA policies of June

By my count, June 2009 was the richest month ever for OA policies.  We saw new OA mandates adopted at the University of Bergen, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and University College London.  The University of Kansas and the nation of Lithuania adopted near-mandates.  Older mandates were revealed at the University of Geneva, Roehampton University, and the US Institute of Education Sciences.  An older mandate took effect at the National Cancer Institute of Canada, an older non-mandate was strengthened to a mandate at the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance, and implementation began for an older mandate in Ukraine.  The largest proposed mandate ever, the Federal Research Public Access Act, was re-introduced in the US Senate.  Not counting calls for mandates and other policy recommendations, that comes to 12 developments in six countries (Canada, Lithuania, Norway, Switzerland, UK, Ukraine, and the US) --in one month alone.

For comparison, the second richest month was October 2006, when we saw six adopted OA mandates, two proposed mandates, two adopted near-mandates, and one adopted mandate limited to data, or altogether 11 actions in five countries (Austria, Canada, China, the UK, and the US).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-06.htm#mandates

Coming in third was January 2008, when we saw three new mandates, two start dates for previous mandates, one public disclosure of an older mandate, one tightening of an older mandate, and three near-mandates, or altogether 10 developments in eight countries (Australia, Canada, EU, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and the US).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-08.htm#mandates

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Open access for digitization projects

This is an expanded version of a talk I gave last week at that "Going Digital" symposium at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm.  I plan to revise it for the published proceedings and welcome your comments, especially if you can send them by August 1. 
http://www.center.kva.se/svenska/forskning/NS_147_Program.html

.....

When should digitization projects commit to open access (OA)?  I want to focus this question on public policy, not law or utility.  If it were a question about law, the answer would be easy.  As far as I know, there is no legal obligation in any country to make the results of any kind of digitization project OA.  If it were a question about utility, the answer would also be easy, though the reverse.  The results of a digitization project would always be more useful if they were OA.

Yet there may be good policy reasons to make some digitization projects OA even when not legally required, and there may be good reasons to change the law.  Likewise, there may be good policy reasons to allow some access decisions to be made by stakeholders who will not choose OA.

Worldwide, more than 30 public funding agencies now operate on the principle that the results of publicly-funded research should be OA. 
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

I started this essay to see how far I could defend the analogous principle that the results of publicly-funded digitization projects should be OA.  The presence of public funding supports an OA argument in both domains.  But digitization projects differ in OA-relevant respects much more often than public funding agencies do, and even when they seem to be similar in all relevant respects, they frequently differ in their access policies.  There's very little discernible pattern, and no matter what perspective we take, some of the policy divergence will be justified and some will not.  This is a good reason to step back and think about the principles that ought to guide access policies for digitization projects.

Let me start with two relatively simple cases.

Case 1.  When a digitization project uses public funds, and digitizes works in the public domain (PD), then the results should be OA. 

For example, when Ontario digitizes the print editions of its historical statutes, it should provide OA to the digital editions. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/oa-to-historic-ontario-legislation.html

Case 2.  When a project uses private funds, and digitizes works under copyright, then it should follow the wishes of the copyright holder.  The results needn't be OA. 

For example, when a private journal uses its own money to digitize recent back issues, still under copyright, it needn't make them OA.  It may put them online behind a paywall and sell access to them.  Or it may keep them offline for its own private research purposes. 

When The Atlantic digitized all 151 years of its backfile at its own expense, chose to provide OA only to the most recent 15 years' worth, and toll access (TA) to the rest, then both the OA and TA parts of its project were entirely within its prerogatives.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/free-online-access-to-12-years-of.html

I'm sure you already see the supporting arguments for these two outcomes, but let me sketch them anyway.  The principles behind them will help us navigate the issues in the more complicated cases.

The first case depends on the principle that public funds should be spent in the public interest.  OA provides public access, and anything less than OA, or any access and usage restrictions, would compromise the public interest.  The use of public funds obliges us to serve the public interest, and when we're digitizing PD works we encounter no barrier in the form of a copyright holder demanding access or usage restrictions.  Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay again for access to the digital editions.  They shouldn't pay to create an asset for the private enrichment of one citizen, one group, or one corporation, especially at the expense of the general public.  Nor should they pay to create a digital asset which can only be accessed offline by the lucky few who are able to travel to a certain physical library or archive. 

The second case depends on copyright law.  Copyright holders have enforceable rights in their works, even if those rights are limited and temporary.  Whatever the limits happen to be at a particular place and time, copyright holders should be free to exercise their rights up to the edge of those limits.  They may waive or transfer their rights, of course, and it will be important that they might be asked to do so in order to enter a certain contract or use someone else's funds, especially to use public funds.  But when copyright holders are using their own funds or the funds of a willing partner to digitize their own works, they should be free to offer the digital editions on any terms they please.  The copyrighted backfiles of a journal might be *more useful* if they were OA.  But I don't want to defend the idea that everything useful should be free, which would entail the abolition of copyright.

The principle of the first case leads us to applaud Ontario for providing OA to its digitized statutes, which are all in the public domain. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/04/oa-to-historic-ontario-legislation.html

Likewise, it leads us to criticize Oregon for falsely claiming copyright in the digital edition of its statutes and threatening to sue anyone who copied them.  (This was Oregon's position until challenged by Carl Malamud in June 2008.)
http://public.resource.org/oregon.gov/

It leads us to criticize Pakistan for making the digital edition of its statutes freely accessible only to the country's lawyers rather than OA to all users.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\12\09\story_9-12-2006_pg11_4
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006/12/free-access-to-pakistani-law-for.html

The British Library Digitisation Strategy 2008-2011 tells us that the BL plans to use public funds to digitize a mixed collection of PD and copyrighted works.  Some of the digital editions will be OA and some will not.  We can praise the library if the plan is to provide OA to the PD works.  In Case 3 we'll ask whether the use of public funds is enough to require OA even for works under copyright.
http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/digi/digitisation/digistrategy/index.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/british-library-digitization-plans-some.html

JISC used public funds to digitize the backfiles of Oxford journals, which had already been supported by Oxford's own public funds.  Whether JISC and Oxford should provide OA to issues still under copyright will be explored in Case 3.  But under the principle of our first case, they should at least provide OA to any issues old enough to have passed into the PD.  However, Oxford provides OA to none of the digitized backfiles --as opposed to more recent back issues which may have been OA from birth.  (More below.)
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/archives.html

The principle of our second case leads us to conclude that The Atlantic didn't have to provide OA to any of its backfile, not even the oldest part which had passed into the PD.  Its decision to provide OA to the most recent 15 years' worth is beyond the call, even if based on self-interest.  Its decision to provide TA to the rest, especially to the PD issues, may prove difficult to enforce.  (At least in the US, users may lawfully treat any copies which escape the paywall as works in the PD.)  But as long as the journal avoids copyfraud, or the false claim of copyright, it should be free to try.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/free-online-access-to-12-years-of.html

The Dutch medical journal, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, is like The Atlantic except that it chose to provide OA to the oldest issues rather than the newest, using a five-year moving wall.  Like The Atlantic, it paid for the digitization of its 150+ year backfile with its own funds (as far as I can tell).  Like The Atlantic, it didn't have to provide OA to any of it.  Unlike The Atlantic, it doesn't have to try to restrict access to PD digital editions of PD back issues, which once online, may be copied and redistributed at will.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/11/dutch-medical-journal-opens-backfile.html

Someone might object that some publicly-funded agencies should follow a cost-recovery model.  The agencies have a mission to serve the public (the objection would continue), but they can best serve the public by charging for access, recovering their costs, and making their budgets go further.  For example, this is the model of the Ordnance Survey, the UK mapping agency.
http://ur1.ca/5yms

In reply we can point out that several independent empirical studies conclude that OA stimulates significant economic activity, and that governments can generate much more revenue through taxes on that economic activity than through access fees on public data.  In the case of research, this has been well-documented in several studies by John Houghton.
http://www.cfses.com/EI-ASPM/

For example, Houghton's first major study concluded that "With the United Kingdom's GERD [Gross Expenditure on Research and Development] at USD 33.7 billion and assuming social returns to R&D of 50%, a 5% increase in access and efficiency [Houghton's conservative estimate] would have been worth USD 1.7 billion; and...With the United State's GERD at USD 312.5 billion and assuming social returns to R&D of 50%, a 5% increase in access and efficiency would have been worth USD 16 billion." 
http://www.cfses.com/documents/wp23.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006/08/oa-increases-return-on-investment-in.html

In the case of public data of the sort collected and sold back to the public by the Ordnance Survey, the UK Office of Fair Trading concluded that the cost-recovery model "cost the UK economy £500 million [per year] in lost opportunities". 
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=86

Even if Cases 1 and 2 are not themselves very simple or non-controversial, I want to use them to mark the two poles of a spectrum of cases which are even less simple.  Here are three of those less simple cases. 

.....

Case 3.  All the funds are public, but all the works to be digitized are under copyright. 

In this case, the use of public funds pulls in favor of OA.  But the copyright pulls in favor of the copyright holder.  Should one side have its way at the expense of the other?  If not, what compromise should we seek?

This cases arises, for example, when a public agency like the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) or the UK Joint Informations System Committee (JISC) funds the digitization of a journal's backfile, including many issues still under copyright.  When the NLM funded the digitization of the BMJ backfile, BMJ was willing to make the backfile OA without delay.  The entire BMJ backfile to 1840 has been OA since May 2009.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b1744
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/169-years-of-bmj-now-oa.html

When JISC funded the digitization of the Oxford journal backfiles, Oxford was not willing to make them OA, apparently even with a delay, although JISC did buy a license to the Oxford backfile for UK citizens.  (The license will expire in July 2011.  I can't tell whether UK taxpayers, through JISC, paid once for the digitizaton and then paid again for the national license.  Of course if the license is renewed in 2011, taxpayers will pay yet again; and if it's not renewed, they will lose their access.)
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/archives.html

For now let's focus on the case of a journal seeking a grant from a public funder, hoping to use the grant to digitize its copyrighted backfile and hoping to sell access to the online digital edition.  It's the Oxford case, but artificially tidied up to eliminate the national license (close to OA for UK residents), TA for those outside the UK (one way in which the license falls short of OA), the limited duration of the license (another way in which it falls short of OA), and the possibility of multiple payments from the public funder.

We can imagine many kinds of compromise between the public and the rightsholding publisher.  For example, we could make the works free of charge but not free for any sorts of use or reuse beyond fair use (or fair dealing etc.).  We could make the OA copies low-res and the TA copies high-res.  We could put ads on the OA copies.  I mention these in order to stimulate the imagination.  Over time the stakeholders may find many acceptable ways to strike the compromise, even if they also find many unacceptable ways to do it.

Here I want to focus on a compromise suggested by the analogy to publicly-funded research.

In the case of publicly-funded research, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) pioneered a compromise later followed by all other funding agencies with OA policies:  a period of temporary exclusivity for the publisher followed by OA for the public.  When NIH grantees publish articles based on NIH funding, they must deposit the peer-reviewed manuscripts in the NIH's OA repository (PubMed Central) as soon as they are accepted for publication.  But the manuscripts are not made OA until after an embargo period of up to 12 months. 

The delay is a compromise with the public interest, just as it's a compromise with the publisher's private interest.  Because the embargo exists, publishers have a period in which to sell access to their priced editions without competition from OA editions.  Because it's temporary, the public eventually gets public access to publicly-funded research.

Publishers who believe the NIH policy is not a fair compromise should seek a different compromise, for example by tweaking the embargo period, rather than by demanding a no-compromise position which could deprive the public of OA for the full duration of copyright.  While publishers have their reasons to lengthen the embargo, many other groups have reason to shorten it, among them researchers, practicing physicians, patients, non-profit organizations, and for-profit manufacturers.  If both sides acknowledge the need for compromise, then their engagement on the length of the embargo, or on the precise terms of the compromise, is much more likely to be fruitful and constructive.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-07.htm#embargo

The analogy of publicly-funded research and publicly-funded digitization should not leave the impression that the embargo compromise works the same way in both domains.  We must note an often-overlooked aspect of the NIH policy.  The NIH requires grantees to retain the right to authorize OA through PubMed Central.  Hence, grantees are not in a position to transfer the full bundle of copyright to publishers.  Publishers never acquire the right to deny permission for OA or claim infringement, and therefore cannot be called "the copyright holders" without qualification.  Publishers who oppose the NIH policy understand the incompleteness of the transferred bundle of rights very well, and protest it.  Nevetheless, in their lobbying rhetoric they call themselves "the copyright holders" without qualification, misleading many observers and policy-makers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-08.htm#nih

By contrast, in a digitization project we are often dealing with the full copyright holders.  Nevertheless, the embargo compromise can be extended naturally to publicly-funded digitization projects. 

Suppose a private journal applies to a public funder for funds to digitize its back run, and suppose that the entire back run is still under copyright.  The funder would be justified in awarding the grant.  At least the fact that the journal is private and under copyright needn't stop it.  The funder would also be justified in putting an OA condition on the grant.  The grant needn't require immediate OA and could allow the publisher a temporary period in which it could charge for access to the digital edition without competition from an OA edition.

More importantly, the public funder would *not* be justified in awarding the grant *without* the OA condition, or in using public funds to create a privately-owned asset which would exclude the public.  Similarly, Oxford may use public funds to digitize the backfiles of Oxford journals, and it may sell access to the copyrighted issues for a temporary period.  But after that the backfile must become OA.

How long should the embargo be?  That should be decided by public debate and negotiation.  But I have two rough criteria:  First, the deal should give us OA sooner than we'd otherwise have it.  The publicly-funded digitization and OA condition will accelerate OA, while the embargo period will delay it.  These should net out in favor of the public.  If we could get OA faster some other way, then there's no reason to spend public money on the project. 

Second, the longer the proposed embargo, the lower the project falls on the priority list for public funds.  If the funder had to choose between two projects, one requesting a one-year embargo and another requesting a two-year embargo, then (other things being equal) it should pick the one with the shortest embargo.  It might even tell the applicant proposing the shortest embargo that it would have to cut the embargo even further in order to receive public funds.  The US National Endowment for the Humanities follows the rule that, other things being equal, it will favor funding applications that promise (immediate) OA over those that don't promise OA at all. 
http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/editions.html

If the funder thinks a journal's proposed embargo period is too long, the journal might argue that it will still provide OA sooner than otherwise.  For example, if the oldest articles it wanted to digitize would remain under copyright for another 50 years, and then it might argue that publicly-funded digitization with a 49 year embargo would give the public OA sooner than otherwise.  As the copyright holder, it's in a position to insist that in the absence of public funding it will not allow OA until the expiration of copyright.  The public funder needn't deny the publisher's prediction or its good faith.  It need only reply that it has better uses for its limited public funds than to create a 49 year monopoly for a private interest at the expense of the public.

The journal might object:  "You can't require OA to our copyrighted articles!"  The public funder would have several responses.  "We can put conditions on our grant.  You needn't apply for publicly-funded grant.  You can call this is an 'OA requirement' if you like, but it's really just a condition on a voluntary contract.  Moreover, of course, we are a public agency and must spend our money to benefit the public."

A government would not be justified in making an *unconditional* requirement that journals provide OA to their backfiles, or at least not until it was ready to abolish copyright law.  But it's fully justified in telling those who seek public funds for digitization projects, "If you take public money for this project, then you must provide OA to the results.  If you don't like that, then don't take public money."

A member of the public might object:  "You can't allow toll access to a publicly-funded work of digitization!"  Again, the public funder would have several responses.  "It's temporary.  Moreover, we only funded the digitization, not the original work, and the original work is still under copyright.  But above all, in our best judgment, the public investment will make the work OA sooner than otherwise."

Someone might object that under this rule many journals will not seek public money to digitize their copyrighted backfiles.  Yes, that might happen.  But it's no calamity, especially when the unpursued projects would have used public funds while excluding the public from access to the results.  There's no reason why public funds should be spent on private interests unwilling to provide even delayed OA.

On the other side, for what it's worth, the prediction that many journals would rather reject both the compromise and public funds than accept both seems less likely than the opposite prediction.  Allowing the private grantee a temporary period of exclusivity will invite many journals to seek public funds when an uncompromising OA principle would have scared them off. 

Someone might object that I haven't been consistent.  I've said that copyright holders should be free to exercise their rights up to their limits (Case 2).  But here I'm recommending that copyright holders waive one of their rights in order to benefit from public funds.

The two positions are entirely consistent.  I'm not arguing that copyright holders don't have the right to insist on TA, or that they couldn't exercise the right if they wanted to.  I'm saying that they might choose to waive that right in exchange for the benefit of public funds.  If they don't think it's a good deal, they don't have to take it.  The deal doesn't limit their freedom; it merely offers something of value which they might or might not find worth the price of waiving their right to block delayed OA.  Publishers themselves should understand this situation very well.  It's exactly the kind of deal they offer to authors:  give up some set of your rights in exchange for the benefit of publishing in our journal.

To obtain this kind of waiver, the public funder must deal directly with the rightsholder.  The case gets more complicated when the rightsholder isn't the one desiring digitization or applying for funds .  For example, consider the microfiche digitization project of the publicly-funded US Education Resources Information Center (ERIC).  ERIC wanted to digitize and provide OA to about 340,000 microfiche documents, some of them up to 40 years old.  The documents were written by hundreds of thousands of different authors and might have hundreds of thousands of different rightsholders.  Some of the documents might, after diligent inquiry, turn out to be orphans, and some might not.  ERIC undertook the enormous job of trying to hunt down each copyright holder.  In the end it was able to clear permissions for about 55% or 192,000 of the documents.  The rest may never be OA, despite the willingness of the US Department of Education to spend public funds on their digitization.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Digitization
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/eric-microfiche-digitization-project.html

Even if we adopt OA-friendly rules for orphan works, we must first go to the trouble of trying to locate the copyright holders.  Otherwise we won't know whether or not the works are orphans.  For more, see Case 10 in the appendix.

.....

Case 4.  The funds are provided by a public-private partnership, and all the targeted works are in the public domain. 

First consider a much easier related case.  If Penguin Books digitizes an early PD edition of "Pride and Prejudice" with its own funds, it should be free to sell it.  It needn't give it away just because original was PD.  If you agree, then it seems that public funding is a more critical variable than PD status.

The difficult case here is when we pay for the digitization of a PD work with a mix of public and private funds, a common practice.  Many public funders are unable to pay for a certain project on their own, or try to stretch their budgets by recruiting private partners.  The use of public funds pulls the project toward OA, and the use of private funds pulls the project toward the wishes of the private funders, which may be TA. 

Consider the Digitizing American Imprints program, which is using public funds from the Library of Congress and private funds from the Sloan Foundation to digitize 100,000 PD books.
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-10.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/01/loc-digitization-program-crosses-25000.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/03/oa-book-scanning-program-from-library.html

Another example is the Medical Journals Backfiles Digitization Project, co-sponsored by the Wellcome Library (private), JISC (public), and the US National Library of Medicine (public).  (The project includes some copyrighted but orphan works, which it promises to remove if the copyright holder steps forward and asks it to; more in Case 10.)
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD037630.html
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtx043243.html
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtdv025956.html

A third is the World Digital Library, with public partners like 13 national libraries and UNESCO, and private partners like the Brown University Library, Yale University Library, and the Wellcome Trust Library.
http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/index.html
http://project.wdl.org/project/english/partners/

The private partners in these three projects want OA as much as the public partners.  That's good for the public and good for the working harmony of the partnership. 

But what if the private partners oppose OA, and want to sell access to the digital editions without competition from OA editions?  In that case, we can use the embargo compromise that we used in the previous case.  The private funder could erect a temporary toll gate on access to the digital editions. 

If members of the public object that the digital editions are temporarily TA, we answer as we did in the previous case.  A private funder made an essential contribution to the project and without its contribution OA would be delayed even further.

If the private funder objects that its period of exclusivity is only temporary, our replies are variations on the theme of our replies in the previous case.  First, the public made an essential contribution to the project and must benefit as well.  Second, the partnership is voluntary and the private partner did not have to join. 

But beyond these, we have two additional replies we couldn't have used in the previous case.  First, the private partner has no rights in these works, which we've stipulated are PD.  Second, if the embargo period never expired, then for a fraction of the cost of digitization we would allow a private company to buy permanent exclusive rights to works in the PD (not the PD originals but the PD copies produced by the project).

If the private partner objects that the embargo period isn't long enough to recoup its investment, and that it can't afford to take the risk of not recouping its investment, then it needn't participate.  If it has enough money to do the digitization by itself, without public partners, then it can proceed on its own and follow its own rules, turning this into the related, simpler "Pride and Prejudice" case.  If it doesn't, then it should understand the need to allow all the investment partners to get something out of the deal.

In setting the length of the embargo, we must remember that it's a compromise with the public interest.  The purpose is to give the private partners something, not everything, just as the public partners are only getting something, not everything.  The compromise gives the private partners a chance to recoup their investment, not a guarantee.  To give them all the time they need to recoup their investment could require a permanent embargo and eviscerate the very idea of compromise. 

Someone might object that under this policy we could lose the contributions of profit-seeking private companies willing to invest in digitization projects.  Yes, we could.  But as before, it's no calamity to lose the chance to spend public funds on a project which excludes the public, or to lose the chance to spend public funds collaborating with those unwilling to provide even delayed OA.

Nevertheless, if governments wanted to do more to encourage the participation of private partners, without giving up on timely OA for the public, they could combine a fixed deadline on the embargo with a tax deduction for any part of the private partner's investment not recouped during the embargo period.

(This could part of a larger plan to use tax deductions to get private companies to open up access to their research and data.)
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/12.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006/06/tax-breaks-to-support-oa.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#nih

Public institutions taking on private partners for digitization projects should advertise their needs openly.  If they accept a secret, no-bid, or unsolicited offer from a private company, they might end up agreeing to a longer embargo than necessary.  Before accepting any private partners, or at least any private partners who will resist OA and require a compromise, public agencies should undertake a transparent process of public consultation and competitive bidding.  The rationale is simply that it's bad public policy to compromise the public interest more than necessary. 

All three of the projects mentioned earlier, the Digitizing American Imprints program, Medical Journals Backfiles Digitization Project, and the World Digital Library, provide OA without any embargo at all.  The private partners in all three cases came to the projects with the same purposes as the public partners, making compromise unnecessary.  This is worth noting for two reasons.  First, it shows that the principle here is that embargoes are permissible, not mandatory.  The embargo is a compromise and is only necessary when a compromise is necessary.  Second, it reminds us that the private partners in public-private partnerships don't always oppose OA. 

(Conversely, public funders don't always support OA, as we've already seen in Case 1, on cost recovery, and will see again in Case 5, on the database right and sweat-of-the-brow doctrine.)

But some private partners do oppose OA.  In January 2007 the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced a partnership with Footnote.com.  Under the deal, Footnote would digitize millions of pages of PD documents from the National Archives, including the papers of the Continental Congress and Matthew Brady's Civil War photographs.  The deal gave Footnote non-exclusive rights to sell access to the digital editions for five years.  During that time, the digital editions could be viewed without charge from terminals in NARA reading rooms in 16 states.  After five years, the digital copies would be OA at the NARA web site. 
http://archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-41.html

During the five-year embargo period, Footnote's online access fees are $1.99 per page or $100 per year. 
http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/national_archives_footnote_agreement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/01/digitized-public-domain-docs-from-us.html

The non-exclusivity of the deal meant that other companies could sell access to their own digital editions, if they could make their own digital editions.  But NARA is only willing to deal with Footnote.  Moreover, the Footnote deal wasn't publicly announced until the contract was already signed and Footnote had already digitized 4.5 million PD documents. 

There are several problems here.  One is the length of the embargo period.  Five years is very long.  Footnote might argue that the combination of its money and embargo will speed up OA more than slow it down.  But that seems unlikely in light of NARA's February 2006 deal with Google.  Under that deal, Google funded the digitization of 101 PD films from NARA and provided immediate free online access to all of them.
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2006/nr06-64.html
http://www.archives.gov/digitization/google-agreement.pdf

In any case, the long-embargo problem is inseparable from the secret, no-bid contract problem.  We'll never know whether other private partners would have done the work with a shorter embargo period, lower access fees, or both.

In July 2007, NARA made an even worse deal with CustomFlix, a division of Amazon.  The deal allowed CustomFlix to digitize films from the National Archives and sell DVD editions through Amazon.  Members of the public who visit the NARA facility in College Park, Maryland, could copy the films without charge.  In contrast to the Footnote deal, nothing in the CustomFlix contract or press release mentions an embargo period, suggesting an effectively permanent embargo. 
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-122.html

The NARA-CustomFlix contract was secret until Rick Prelinger forced its disclosure with an FOIA request in August 2007.  The contract gave Amazon a perpetual non-exclusive license to sell the digital editions and gave NARA its own copies of the digital files and the right to use them in any lawful manner.  Hence, it allowed NARA to provide OA at any point.  But in striking contrast to the Footnote deal, NARA never promised to provide OA, on any timetable.
http://blackoystercatcher.blogspot.com/2007/08/national-archivesamazon-agreement.html
http://www.panix.com/~footage/NARA_Amazon.pdf

In May 2008, NARA released a set of principles to guide its future digitization projects.  Interestingly, it requires public comments on proposed private partnerships and highlights the importance of minimizing embargo periods.  It seems that NARA heard the public criticism of the Footnote and CustomFlix deals and resolved to fix at least some of the problems.
http://www.archives.gov/digitization/strategy.html

.....

Case 5.  All the funds are public and all the works PD.  So far, this is Case 1.  But suppose that the host or funder wants to restrict use of the digital editions. 

Let's say that a work is gratis OA when it's digital, online, and free of charge, but not necessarily free of any copyright or licensing restrictions.  A work is libre OA when it is gratis OA and also free of at least some copyright and licensing restrictions.  Libre OA allows at least some uses beyond fair use (or fair dealing, etc.).  Gratis OA removes only price barriers, but libre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm#gratis-libre

Using these terms, we can restate Case 5 more succinctly:  All the funds are public, all the works are PD, but the funder wants to make the digital editions gratis OA, not libre OA.  The Oregon statutes from Case 1 fall under this description, and the issues raised by Oregon-type cases deserve a closer look.

Legally, the least complicated way for a digitizer to restrict use of a digital work is to keep it offline.  Fair use and the public domain give you the right to use certain works in certain ways, but they don't give you the right to enter buildings where copies may be under lock and key. 

But if the digitizer puts the digital edition online and still wishes to restrict usage, then its requested restrictions might have any of these four grounds:

1.  Copyright.  The work might be under copyright; but if so, we've dealt with the major issues in Case 3.

2.  Sui generis or database right.  The work might be protected by the sui generis or database right, thanks to the "sweat of the brow" doctrine recognized in Europe but not in the US.  This doctrine creates a kind of legal protection, outside copyright law, for works that require substantial investment but lack the originality required for copyright protect.  Ordinary digitization certainly lacks the originality required for copyright, but it might nonetheless qualify for the sui generis right.  If so, however, then we've dealt with the major issues in Case 3.  If we put an OA condition on public funds for holders of strong copyright, then we can do the same for holders the weaker sui generis right. 

3.  Unenforceable request.  The online host might acknowledge that it has no legally enforceable right to restrict usage.  But it might make an admittedly unenforceable request, appealing to courtesy or respect rather than law.  For example, in the downloaded copies (but not the online copies) of Google-scanned PD books, Google asks users to retain attribution and avoid commercial use and automatic querying.
http://books.google.com.ph/books/download/Pride_and_Prejudice.pdf?id=2_S8xAws2G4C&hl=en&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U36yL_-URJJlcMilNPjhX7LOkUgfA

4.  Copyfraud.  The host might falsely claim copyright and attempt to ground its requested restrictions in copyright law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud

Consider The European Library (TEL).  This is an online collection of exhibits digitized from the national libraries of Europe.  TEL didn't do the digitizing or set the copyright and licensing terms for the individual exhibits.  It coordinates the separate efforts of the separate contributing libraries.  In most cases, it doesn't even host the exhibits but links to digital editions hosted by the separate libraries. 
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/

It appears that all of the works on display through TEL were digitized with public funds, and that some of the digital editions are under copyright, some under the sui generis right, and some fully PD. 

TEL provides no item-level rights or licensing information.  See for example this image-scan of a handwritten letter from Napoleon I to Joachim Murat, King of Naples, from October 7, 1813,
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/Napoleonic_wars/images/texts/_large/ennw22_l.jpg

Or this image-scan of the Heiberg translation of the Marseillaise into German, published in Copenhagen in 1793,
http://img.kb.dk/ma/nybrev/12-05/spalvor-mars.pdf

TEL does provide item-level metadata, even if they don't include rights or licensing information.  But the deep links to individual exhibits (which I used above) don't include the metadata.  To find the metadata for the Napoleon letter or Heiberg translation, you have to locate the exhibits within this larger exhibition, click on them, and read the metadata off an unlinkable pop-up window.
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/Napoleonic_wars/

But since that method doesn't tell us about rights or licensing, we can only learn the status of the Napoleon letter or Heiberg translation by consulting the TEL "terms of service", which tell us that
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/organisation/footer/termsofservice_en.html

The Conference of European National Librarians and its licensors hold the copyright for all material and all content in this site, including site layout, design, images, programs, text and other information (collectively, the "Content") held in The European Library. No material may be resold or published elsewhere without the Conference of European National Librarians written consent, unless authorised by a licence with the Conference of European National Librarians or to the extent required by the applicable law.

Even on the most charitable reading, this statement is false for many or most exhibits in the TEL.  For the PD exhibits, it's entirely false.  For the exhibits under the sui generis right, it falsely states the rights are based on copyright instead.  (This matters, among other reasons, because copyright lasts more than five times longer than the sui generis right.)  The attempted restriction on the sale and publication of the exhibits is groundless for the PD content, even if lawful for the other two categories.  But TEL says that all the contents are under copyright, and none merely under the sui generis right and none in the PD.  If it's true for some exhibits, it's copyfraud for others.

TEL might have intended the copyright statement to apply to the web site's apparatus, not to the exhibits themselves.   But nothing in the statement suggests that distinction, and the clear language of the statement ("all content in this site...") suggests the opposite.  Moreover, the absence of item-level rights and licensing information on individual exhibits forces us to turn to the general terms of service for that information.  The statement might apply only to TEL-hosted content, rather than to content at the separate national libraries to which TEL merely links.  But even the TEL-hosted content seems to fall into all three categories, not just the category of copyright, and in any case TEL points to the same terms of service for TEL-hosted exhibits and for library-hosted exhibits.

TEL might have intended the statement to be part of a clickwrap license, under which visitors agree to waive their rights to use and reuse any of the contents which happen to be PD.  But the site does not ask users to click their assent to any licensing terms before viewing exhibits, and the terms of service claim to base the reuse restrictions on copyright, not contract.  In any case, even if TEL used a clickwrap license to create a contract with the user, and even if the contract was enforceable, users who redistributed files that are actually PD would be making them available to people who were not bound by the contract.

The copyfraud creates several problems.  First, for the PD content, the claimed restrictions are unenforceable.  Anyone selling or publishing the digital edition of a PD work would be exercising protected rights under copyright law.  Second, for content under the sui generis right, the copyright claim implies rights for the full term of copyright rather than the much shorter (15 year) term of the sui generis right. 

Third and most important, the false claim of copyright might deceive or intimidate some users into giving up rights they are entitled to exercise.  It inhibits the lawful and legitimate use of this valuable historical content. 

Even the onerous NARA-CustomFlix contract acknowledged that "Content obtained by researchers through public access [via a NARA reading room] is in the public domain" and its uses could not be restricted.
http://blackoystercatcher.blogspot.com/2007/08/national-archivesamazon-agreement.html
http://www.panix.com/~footage/NARA_Amazon.pdf

TEL should drop the false claim of copyright.  It should acknowledge that much of its content is PD, and that users may use and reuse the PD content without restriction.  If any of the exhibits are under the weaker sui generis right, rather than copyright, it should acknowledge that as well.

I don't want to underestimate the difficulty of adding item-level rights information to each exhibit in a large collection.  It can be one of the larger costs in a large digitization project.  But if TEL can't add accurate item-level rights information, it must at least stop using inaccurate site-level information in its place. 

(Disclosure:  I'm on the advisory board for TEL and have made my objections known.  I'm still hoping to resolve the problem.) 

The TEL can't do much more than that, since it didn't digitize the works in the collection.  But the national libraries of Europe who participate in TEL can do more.  They are using public funds to digitize PD works.  Even if the EC Database Directive allows them to claim a sui generis right in the digital editions, they needn't take advantage of the option.  On the contrary, there are good policy reasons why they should not.  It's hard to imagine how their purpose in trying to restrict usage could outweigh their mission to serve the public, promote access to the historical materials in their collections, and foster research, scholarship, art, education, and cultural development.  (We know that the purpose is not cost-recovery, since they are already consenting to gratis OA.)

Finally, they should understand that libre OA facilitates preservation, among other forms of use and reuse.  Long-term preservation requires making copies and migrating them to new media and formats to keep them readable as technology changes.  Copyright and the sui generis right both raise the barrier to those useful copies, either by blocking them altogether or by requiring the expense or delay of seeking permission.
http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=464
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub135/sec6.html
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml?newsId=3566

Until recently, Cornell University took a position roughly similar to TEL's for the PD books digitized from its library.  It posted the works online, without a clickthrough license, but required users to seek permission for any commercial use.  In May 2009, however, it reversed course.  It acknowledged that the books are PD, stopped trying to restrict usage, and explained why in an exemplary public statement.  In the statement, Cornell said it did not wish to "limit the good uses" of these works.  On the contrary, it "decided it was more important to encourage the use of the public domain materials in our holdings than to impose roadblocks."  Moreover, Cornell recognized that claiming the right to restrict usage was copyfraud, and that the criticism of copyfraud was justified. 
http://ur1.ca/6lew
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/cornell-allows-unrestricted-use-of-its.html

Cornell would have been within its rights to put the digital editions behind a password, require users to assent to a clickthrough license, and then charge for access or impose usage restrictions.  Likewise, it could have put the works online without a clickthrough license and made an admittedly unenforceable request to restrict usage.  But in May it chose not to do either of these things, and not to rest on copyfraud either.  The Cornell solution is especially commendable because Cornell is a private university.  Either it used its own, private funds for the digitization or it used Google's.  (Cornell has been a partner in the Google Library Project since August 2007.)

The US doesn't recognize the sui generis database right and Cornell could not have relied on it.  But even institutions in countries which do recognize the right can use the Cornell solution.  They simply have to decline to use the right available to them, and (in Cornell's words) decide to put "good uses" ahead of "roadblocks". 

Cornell is a private university, but it's solution is compelling even for public institutions.  Indeed, if a private institution can drop copyfraud and support the full use and reuse of PD works, then public institutions using public funds should be able to do so as well.

.....

Appendix

Here's a quick summary of the five cases I've discussed:

Case 1.  All the funds are public, and all the works to be digitized are PD.

Case 2.  All the funds are private, and all the works to be digitized are under copyright.

Case 3.  All the funds are public, and all the works to be digitized are under copyright.

Case 4.  The funds are provided by a public-private partnership, and all the works to be digitized are PD.

Case 5.  All the funds are public, all the works PD, but the funder only wants to allow gratis OA, not libre OA.

Here are five more hard cases that will have to wait for another day:

Case 6.  All the funds are private and all the works to be digitized are PD.  So far this is the easy "Pride and Prejudice" case.  But now add that the targeted works are rare, unique, or fragile.

The "Pride and Prejudice" case is easy in part because it's easy to get a copy of the print book for digitizing.  If one digitization project offers the digital edition on onerous terms, then others can digitize the same book and offer their editions on more liberal terms.  But the realistic odds of re-digitization plummet when the original is rare, unique, or fragile. 

Consider the Codex Leicester, a volume of Leonardo da Vinci's handwritten journal which Bill Gates bought from Armand Hammer in 1994 for $30.8 million.  It's the only original da Vinci now in private hands. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester

Gates has been generous with its display:  the original is on loan to a different museum every year; high-res photos of every page have been published in a book (a priced, printed book, not an OA book); and OA thumbnails are available online at Corbis.  But he has not, as far as I know, allowed OA to high-res images.
http://www.amazon.com/Leonardo-Da-Vinci-Leicester-Notebook-Genius/dp/1863170812/ref=sr_1_2
http://pro.corbis.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?q=%20"Codex%20Leicester%20by%20Leonardo%20da%20Vinci"

Is there a strong policy argument for asking a private individual like Gates to provide OA to this kind of unique PD work?  If not, does the argument become stronger if the owner is a private university like Cornell?

What if the digitization of the Dead Sea Scrolls is funded by private donors? 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/11/digitizing-dead-sea-scrolls.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Digital_copies

Case 7.  All the funds are private and all the targeted works are PD.  So far this is either the easy "Pride and Prejudice" case or the hard "Codex Leicester" case.  Now add that all the targeted works will be provided to the project by a public institution, which acquired and curated them with public funds for public benefit.

A typical example is Google's project to digitize PD books from public university libraries, such as the University of Michigan library.  Should Michigan put an OA condition on its collaboration with Google? 

Case 8.  All the funds are private, all the targeted works are PD, and all the works will be provided by an institution which has acquired and curated them at some expense.  So far this is Google-Michigan case.  But instead of a public institution using public funds, let it be a private institution acting for non-commercial purposes and with public subsidies through untaxed property and tax deductible contributions.

A typical example is Google's project to digitize the PD books from private university libraries, such as the Harvard and Cornell libraries.  Should Harvard and Cornell put OA conditions on their collaboration with Google? 

Similar issues arise when a PD digitization project is funded by private philanthropy, such as the Mellon Foundation, with no public partner.

Do the policy arguments for OA that apply to public funders also apply to all institutions with non-commercial purposes and tax breaks, even if private?

Case 9.  The funds are from a public-private partnership, and the works to be digitized are PD.  So far, this is Case 4.  But instead of mere digitization, the project extends to editorial work and copyrighted commentary.  The plan is to integrate the PD texts and the copyrighted commentary.  The private partners and copyright holders want to publish the results in print books or TA web sites and oppose any attempt to make them OA, even after an embargo period.

See the NARA plan for a digital edition of papers of US Founding Fathers. 
--The case for OA.
http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2008/06/free-the-foundi.html
--The case for TA.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0902/msg00079.html

 Case 10.  Take any of the variations above in which the works to be digitized are still under copyright (for example, Cases 2 and 3).  Now add the variable that they are orphan works. 

Should the digitizer follow the Wellcome Library and make the digital editions OA, promising to take them down if the copyright holder steps forward and objects?
http://wellcomelibrary.blogspot.com/2009/06/orphan-works.html

Should it follow the Google book settlement and sell access?
http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/

For a middle position, see Peter Eckersley's argument that all Google-digitized books, and especially the orphan works, whether based on originals from public or private institutions, should become OA after an embargo period.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/should-google-have-s
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/another-idea-for-building-oa-into.html

If we diligently look for the copyright holders, fail to find them, and responsibly conclude that we are dealing with orphan works, then should we assume the lack of permission for OA until we have explicit consent from the copyright holders or national legislature?  Or should we assume permission for OA until we have explicit dissent?  Even after responsibly concluding that we're dealing with orphan works, should we adopt a compromise like an embargo period?

Or should we start to rethink the very idea of "permission" in cases like this?  Normally, medical care without consent is battery, just as full-text copying without permission is normally infringement.  But when an unconscious person is wheeled into an emergency room, and we're unable to get an explicit consent or dissent, then we start to talk about "implied consent" to receive care and "privilege" to render care.  When diligent effort fails to turn up a copyright holder, and we're equally unable to get an explicit consent or dissent, then should we also start talking about implied consent and privilege? The stakes are not the same, but the consent quandary is the same. Do we only want to solve the consent quandary in matters of life and death, or might we also want solve it in matters of scholarship, research, art, culture, and education?

----------

Round-up

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.  Most of the time I link to blog posts at Open Access News (where I am now assisted by Gavin Baker), not to the sources themselves, because I only want to use one link per item and the blog posts usually bring many relevant links together.

+ Policies

** The University of Bergen adopted an OA policy.  The policy says that faculty "should" deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts in the IR, starting January 2010.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-policy-for-u-of-bergen.html

** Faculty in the Harvard Graduate School of Education voted overwhelmingly to adopt an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-mandate-for-harvard-graduate-school.html

** The academic board of the University College London voted unanimously to adopt an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-mandate-for-university-college.html

** Roehampton University adopted an OA mandate (apparently in November 2008).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-mandate-at-roehampton-u.html

** The University of Geneva adopted an OA policy.  The policy applies to journal articles, books, and dissertations, and supports author opt-outs.  It was adopted in May and took effect in June.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-mandate-at-u-geneve.html

** The University of Kansas became the first public university in the US to adopt a university-wide OA policy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/u-kansas-adopts-oa-policy.html

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-on-u-kansas-oa-policy.html
** The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance strengthened its OA policy from a request to a
requirement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-mandate-at-canadian-breast-cancer.html

** The OA mandate at the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) took effect yesterday.
http://www.ncic.cancer.ca/ncic/internet/standard/0,3621,84658243_85827972_303466622_langId-en,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/10/ncic-adopts-oa-mandate.html

** The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), within in the US Department of Education, has an OA mandate for IES-funded research.  The rules are very similar to the NIH policy, although deposits go to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) rather than PubMed Central.  It's not clear how long IES has had the policy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/does-us-dept-of-education-have-oa.html

** Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman re-introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) in the US Senate.  The bill, last introduced in 2006, would mandate OA at all the major US federal funding agencies.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/frpaa-public-access-mandate-re.html

** The Lithuanian parliament adopted a new law requiring that publicly-funded research be "made public" online.  It remains to be seen whether it will be interpreted to require it to be free online.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/mandatory-online-access-for-publicly.html

** Ukraine is starting to implement the national OA mandate it adopted in 2007.  The Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine launched an OA repository, which already conains 2,453 full text records.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/ukraine-is-implementing-its-2007-oa.html

* The Swedish Pirate Party won one seat in European Parliament.  The party platform supports OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/swedish-pirates-win-1-seat-in-european.html

* Germany's Pirate Party now has a member in the German Parliament.  The German party supports OA as well.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/germany-gains-its-first-pirate-mp.html

* Three French associations issued a joint call for mandating green OA to publicly-funded research, encouraging gold OA, and starting talks between the government and French publishers on their OA policies. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/coalition-calls-for-oa-in-france.html

* The Internet Rights and Principles Coalition of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is organizing the wiki-based revision of the Internet Rights Charter, originally drafted by the Association for Progressive Communications. The charter supports OA for publicly-funded research as a right.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/updating-rights-based-approach-to-oa.html

* A parliamentary committee in Victoria recommended that the government encourage green and gold OA.  It stopped short of recommending a mandate because of publisher objections.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/victoria-committee-recommends.html

* Australia appointed a Government 2.0 Taskforce, charged with opening access to public sector information.  Among the appointees were Brian Fitzgerald, head of the Queensland University of Technology Open Access to Knowledge Law Project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/australia-forms-government-20-taskforce.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/friend-of-oa-to-help-open-up-government.html

* Sir Tim Berners-Lee will help the UK government open up access to government data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/berners-lee-to-help-open-uk-government.html

* Tom Watson, the UK Minister for Digital Engagement, plans to overhaul Crown Copyright rules in order to facilitate re-use of PSI.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/recent-news-on-psi.html

* The compliance rate with the Wellcome Trust OA mandate grew from 70% in 2006 to 87% in 2009.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/wellcome-authors-increasingly.html

* The Wellcome Library reiterated its policy on online access to orphan works.  If it cannot locate the copyright holders after a diligent effort, it will make the works OA and offer to take them down if the copyright holders step forward and request it.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/wellcome-policy-on-oa-for-orphan-works.html

* Michael Geist called (again) for OA to publicly-funded research in Canada.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-should-be-part-of-canadian-digital.html

* A report from the Concordia University Office of Research recommended an OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/report-recommends-oa-policy-at.html

* The directors of 10 US and Canadian university presses released a joint statement supporting OA, especially for publicly-funded research.  It also opposed legislation to weaken OA, an implicit reference to the Conyers bill.  The group welcomes signatures from other presses.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/10-university-presses-endorse-oa.html

* The state of New York launched Open NYSenate, offering open data about the Senate and open APIs to support use and reuse.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/open-data-from-new-york-state-senate.html

* A coalition of six American student associations issued a joint statement calling on universities, research funders, and researchers to support OA to research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/coalition-of-student-organizations.html

* The Obama administration named Miriam Nisbet, a friend of OA, the nation's first Freedom of Information Act ombudsman.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/friend-of-oa-and-open-govt-joins-us.html

* The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called for public comments on how to improve OMB Circular A-130, a major federal regulation on public access to government information, including (Section 7.k) scientific research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/white-house-office-asks-for-input-on.html

 + Journals

* The Bulletin of Mathematical Analysis and Applications is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the University of Prishtina and the Kosovar Mathematical Society.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-math-journal.html

* The Journal of Young Pharmacists is a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by the InPharm Association and Medknow.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-no-fee-oa-pharmacy-journal.html

* Digital Defoe is a new peer-reviewed OA journal of scholarship on Daniel Defoe.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-journal-on-defoe.html

* Viruses is a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by MDPI.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-journal-on-virology.html

* Future Internet a new peer-reviewed OA journal published by MDPI.  (Disclosure:  I'm on the editorial board.)
http://www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet/index

* Water is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal from MDPI.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/forthcoming-oa-journal-on-water.html

* Stem Cell Research & Therapy is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal from BioMed Central.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/forthcoming-libre-oa-journal-on-stem.html

* Autism Insights is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal published by Libertas Academica.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/forthcoming-oa-journal-on-autism.html

* The Journal of Participatory Medicine is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal, to be published by the Society of Participatory Medicine.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/forthcoming-oa-journal-of-participatory.html

* Pharmacy Education converted to OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/pharmacy-education-journal-converts-to.html

* The four journals from Germany's GIGA (German Institute of Global and Area Studies) converted to OA:  Africa Spectrum, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Journal of Politics in Latin America, and Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/four-german-journals-have-converted-to.html

* The three OA journals from the Dutch PalArch Foundation converted their backfiles to OA:  Journal of Archaeology of Egypt (from 2003), Journal of Archaeology of Northwest Europe (from 2006), and Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology (from 2003).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/palarch-oa-journals-convert-their.html

* Haematologica converted from no-fee OA to fee-based OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-journal-introduces-publication-fees.html

* The journal, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, said that it is converting to OA, but seems to be OA already.  At least it's dropping its print edition.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-journal-drops-paper-edition.html

* The backfiles to the journal Études, 1856-2000, are now online via Gallica.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-to-backfiles-of-etudes.html

* Three more journals joined Revues.org for delayed OA, with some backfiles already available:  Études balkaniques (2 year delay; backfiles 1994-2005), Histoire de l’éducation (4 year delay; backfiles 2000-2004; backfiles before 2000 OA from the publisher's site), and Civilisations (3 year delay; backfiles 2002-2005).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/3-new-delayed-oa-journals-at-revuesorg.html

* Seven more journals joined Revues.org, bringing the total to over 200.  All Revues.org journals are OA or delayed OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/revuesorg-now-hosts-more-than-200.html

* The OA Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) is now ranked #1 for impact in the field of medical informatics. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-journal-ranks-1-in-its-field-for.html

* The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (OA after a six-month embargo) is now ranked #1 for impact in the field of medical imaging.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155768.php

* BioMed Central now has 59 OA journals with impact factors.  12 have IFs for the first time this year, and 29 improved their IFs since last year.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/most-bmc-journal-impact-factors.html

* Hindawi journals saw their impact factors rises by an average of 27% since last year.  The IFs of two Hindawi journals rose by 45 and 70%.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/impact-factors-of-hindawi-journals-rise.html

* Mir@bel (Mutualisation d'Informations sur les Revues et leurs Accès dans les Bases En Ligne) is a new OA index of online journals, especially Francophone journals in humanities and social sciences
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-french-oa-index-of-online-journals.html

* Arnaud Dhermy compiled a list of French journals scheduled for digitization and OA through Gallica.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-to-digitized-journals-in-gallica.html

* The Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) is a new OA series of conference proceedings in computer science.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-series-for-computer-science.html

* Finland's National Electronic Library (FinELib) joined the CERN SCOAP3 project.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/finland-joins-scoap3.html

* American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene announced a new policy for authors who select its OA option.  The articles will be deposited in PubMed Central at the time of publication and will be published under CC-BY-NC licenses.  The new policy conforms to the rules for Wellcome-Trust-funded authors.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/tropical-medicine-journal-clarifies.html

* The Nature Publishing Group granted limited permission for text-mining green OA manuscripts.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/npg-permits-text-mining-on-green-oa.html

* When researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust publish in Blood, the journal from the American Society of Hematology, the articles are now deposited in PMC with open licenses (as required to comply with the Wellcome OA mandate).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/another-society-adds-wellcome-compliant.html

* Matt Cockerill pointed out that Wikipedia's conversion from the GNU Free Documentation License to a CC-BY-SA makes it easier than ever for derivative works to combine elements from Wikipedia and OA journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/combining-content-from-oa-journals-and.html

* In its first Progress Report, PLoS reports that it expects to be financially self-sufficient by 2010.  Three of its journals --PLoS One, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens-- have already broken even.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/report-on-plos-progress-to-date.html

* More non-OA journals provided OA to their articles on H1N1 flu.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-oa-resources-on-h1n1-flu.html

* The Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education Journal changed its name to The International Journal of The Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5001.html

* Open Medicine now publishes selected articles in three formats:  HTML, PDF, and wiki. It encourages readers to modify the wiki versions.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/publishing-wikified-and-non-wikified.html

* Oxford's decision to discontinue "Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention" (BTCI) triggered the journals OA availability through CLOCKSS.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-via-clockss.html

* American Institute of Physics agreed to archive its backfile with CLOCKSS.  If it ever happens that AIP is no longer able to provide access to the files, then CLOCKSS will provide OA to them.
http://www.aip.org/press_release/CLOCKSS.html

* The Open Access Directory (OAD) launched a list of university OA journal funds. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oad-list-of-oa-journal-funds.html

* Erich Weichselgartner described plans for an OA European Psychology Publication Platform.
http://www.pabst-publishers.de/aktuelles/20090702.htm

* Open Access Publications (OAP) is a new OA journal publisher based in the UK.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/another-new-oa-publisher.html

* PAGEPress is an apparently new publisher of OA journals in biomedicine based in Italy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-publisher.html

* The tally of fake Elsevier journals climbed to nine. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/elsevier-fake-journal-tally-now-9.html

* An OA journal from Bentham Science, the Open Information Science Journal (TOISCIJ), accepted a paper of computer-generated nonsense submitted by Philip Davis and Kent Anderson. 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/hoax-exposes-incompetence-or-worse-at.html

* The editor of Bentham's Open Information Science Journal (TOISCIJ) resigned after learning that his journal had accepted the computer-generated nonsense submitted by Davis and Anderson.  He claimed that it was published without his knowledge or approval.  An editor of an unrelated Bentham journal also resigned, to dissociate himself from the company.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/bentham-editors-resign.html

 + Repositories and databases

* The Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alapprogramok, OTKA) launched an OA repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-repository-for-hungarian-funding.html

* The College of the Canyons launched EQUELLA, an institutional repository for OERs.
http://www.pr.com/press-release/162387

* Ukraine's Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS), launched the Central and Eastern European Marine Repository (CEEMaR).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/ukraine-is-implementing-its-2007-oa.html

* Wilfrid Laurier University launched an institutional repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/wilfrid-laurier-university-starts-ir.html

* JISC launched Kultur, an OA repository for the arts.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-on-kultur-project.html

* Japan's Institutional Repository Database (IRDB) upgraded its Contents Analysis System.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/update-to-database-of-irs-in-japan.html

* Jacopo Annese announced plans for an OA library of neuroanatomy, starting with an atlas of the brain of Henry Molaison, "the most studied human being in the history of psychology".
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/324/5935/1634

* European History Primary Sources is a new OA index of "scholarly websites that offer on-line access to primary sources on the history of Europe", sponsored by the European University Institute.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-index-on-european-history.html

* Tim Armstrong made a case for using Wikisource as an OA repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/wikisource-as-repository.html

* JISC will fund BiblioSight, a project to integrate citation information into an OA repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-project-to-harvest-bibliographic.html

* Elsevier confirmed that it is lobbying UK universities, trying to persuade them to link to articles at the Elsevier site rather than deposit copies in locally-hosted institutional repositories.  Elsevier still gives blanket permission to its authors for postprint archiving.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/elsevier-lobbying-uk-universities-to.html

 + Data

* The Open Data Commons released version 1.0 of the Open Database License (ODbL).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/version-10-of-open-database-license.html

* Sweden became the first country to pledge funding to ELIXIR, an ambitious European project to preserve and provide OA to biological data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/first-funding-pledge-for-elixir.html

* The final report of OCLC's Review Board on Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship recommended that OCLC scrap its proposed policy restricting access to WorldCat records and draft a new one.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/oclc-scraps-worldcat-data-policy-will.html

* The Spectrum Health family of hospitals now provides OA to its pricing data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-to-hospital-price-data-changing.html

* The UK plans to launch an open data web site comparable to the US data.gov.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/uk-plan-for-oa-to-government-data.html

* SkyMapper, the new telescope at the Australian National University's, will make all its data OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-australian-telescope-to-produce-oa.html

* The OECD launched the Factbook eXplorer, a beautifully interactive front end to the data in the OECD Factbook 2009.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/interactive-front-end-to-oecd-data.html

 + Books

* Alma Swan and Leslie Chan officially launched OASIS (Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-sourcebook-launches.html

* UNESCO became an OA book publisher by releasing its first openly licensed publication, a book on OERs.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/unesco-releases-its-first-openly.html

* Firenze University Press launched a series of 60+ OA books in all fields.  When possible, the titles are published under CC-BY-NC-ND licenses.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-book-series-from-firenze-university.html

* The Spanish publisher, Editorial Flamboyant, is publishing OA children's books with public-domain illustrations from public-domain editions of the stories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/publisher-reprints-public-domain-books.html

* Germany's Coalition for Action: Copyright for Education and Research asked German scholars not to grant VG Wort, the licensing and collecting society, the right to remove them from the Google Book Settlement.  Instead, it called on scholars to support a (forthcoming) plan for OA through Google.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/call-on-german-scholars-to-support-oa.html

* Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation proposed that Google's scans of orphan works be deposited in escrow for 14 years and then made OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/another-idea-for-building-oa-into.html

* McGill University now offers a digitize-on-demand service with Kirtas Technologies.  If the Kirtas-McGill contract is like the Kirtas-Penn contract, then McGill has the right to offer OA to the digital editions but so far has not done so.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/mcgill-launches-digitize-on-demand.html

* The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago released OA editions of about 50 documents from its backlist, many out of print.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-oa-documents-from-oriental.html

* Filosofia.fi released an OA collection of the works of Georg Henrik von Wright.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-philosophy-collection.html

* Brian O'Leary reported his latest evidence that OA editions can stimulate sales of TA books.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-data-on-impact-of-unauthorized.html

* California's turn to OA textbooks is driven in part by the recession and state budget crisis.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/financial-pressures-nudge-california.html

* PaperC is a new platform for digital books that are OA for reading.  Users have to pay only if they want to print excerpts or annotate pages.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/another-try-at-free-to-read-pay-to.html

* The Public Knowledge Project announced plans to launch its Open Monograph Press at the second PKP Conference (this month).
http://pkp.sfu.ca/omp

* Bookboon is a new publisher of OA, ad-supported textbooks.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-publisher-of-oa-ad-supported.html

 + Studies and surveys

* A new study by John Houghton and colleagues concludes that OA would save the Netherlands 133 million Euros/year.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-would-save-netherlands-133-million.html

* Another new study by John Houghton shows that the economic benefits of OA outweigh the costs in the Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK.
http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=316

* The DINI working group on electronic publishing released version 1.0 of a position paper on research data.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/dini-position-paper-on-research-data.html

* Tom Singarella and Paul Schoening compared the results of four institutional repository surveys.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/comparing-results-of-four-ir-surveys.html

* NISO is running a survey of repository managers on the need for institutional identifiers.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5006.html

* The British Library is conducting a survey on the kinds of images researchers would like to see on deposit in UK PubMed Central.
http://ukpmc.blogspot.com/2009/06/five-minutes-of-your-time-to-help-us.html

* A survey by Dan Cull found that 82% of art conservators have read OA conservation literature.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/spread-of-oa-in-field-of-art.html

* The UK Strategic Content Alliance and the Collections Trust released a major report on orphan works.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/uk-report-on-orphan-works-and.html

* The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project released its guidelines for the deposit and archiving of work to be monitored by the PEER study.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/procedures-for-participation-in-peer.html

* Stuart Shieber wrote a Python script to count the number of no-fee journals in the DOAJ.  As of May 26, 2889 (70.29%) were no-fee.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/careful-confirmation-that-70-of-oa.html

* Bill Hooker redid a 2004 Cornell study on what it would costs universities if all peer-reviewed journals converted to OA, correcting its false assumptions, and reversing its conclusion.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/realistic-futures-in-which-universities.html

* Bill Hooker calculated the average author-side fee at fee-based OA journal and the average fee at TA journals.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/comparing-author-side-fees-at-oa-and-ta.html

 + Awards and milestones

* The Directory of Open Access Journals received the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications, 2009.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5029.html

* Mike Rossner, Executive Director of the Rockefeller University Press, was named the SPARC Innovator for 2009.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5031.html

* Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his 16 years at JISC, including his leadership on OA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/honor-for-malcolm-read.html

* RePEc now covers about 3/4 million research documents. Its CitEc project has extracted references from 200,000 items.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/may-update-from-repec.html

* There are now nearly 300,000 works in the Open Knowledge Foundation's Public Domain Works database.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-additions-to-database-of-public.html

* The IR at the University of Liège now has 12,000 deposits offers OA to the full texts of nearly 9,000 publications.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/milestone-for-ir-at-u-liege.html

* JURN is now indexes more than 3,000 OA journals in the humanities.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/jurn-is-now-indexing-3000-journals.html

* PhilPapers has about 5,000 registered users.  About 70 editors are classifying its 2,200 deposited articles into 3,000 categories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/update-on-philpapers.html

* The Library of Congress' Chronicling America program passed the milestone of one million OA pages of historic American newspapers.
http://www.loc.gov/blog/2009/06/read-all-about-it-magnificent-milestone/

* Thirty national banks have opened RePEc archives and four participate through an aggregator.
http://blog.repec.org/2009/06/29/repec-coverage-outside-of-academia/

* Open Knowledge Foundation turned five years old, and launched a fund-raising campaign.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/open-knowledge-foundation-turns-5.html

* Heather Morrison reported that in the last three months alone, the DOAJ added 253 journals, and OpenDOAR and OAIster added 43 new repositories each.
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/06/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-june-30.html

 + Software and tools

* Deep Web Tech relaunched ScienceResearch.com, its deep-web search engine for scientific research.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/re-released-oa-search-tool.html

* The CAUL Australian Institutional Repository Support Service launched an Open Access Policies Search, which searches journal copyright policies across SHERPA/RoMEO, OAKList and AcqWeb.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-tool-for-searching-journal-policies.html

* WorldWideScience improved its search engine and added some social networking features.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/worldwidescience-adds-new-discovery.html

* The JISC SNEEP Project released version 0.3.2 of SNEEP (Social Networking Extensions for EPrints).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-version-of-social-networking.html

* Google launched Google Squared, a tool to capture structured open data and present it tabular form.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/launch-of-google-squared.html

* ROARMAP, which catalogs funder and university mandates, now covers ETD mandates as well.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/roarmap-now-covers-etd-mandates-too.html

* CiteSeerX is now OAI-compliant, allowing harvesters to download CiteSeerX metadata.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/citeseerx-adds-oai-pmh-support.html

* The latest CiteSeerX upgrade searches within tables.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/citeseerx-now-searches-within-tables.html

* JumpBox, which develops tools to streamline the testing and installation of open-source software, released JumpBox for DSpace.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5004.html

* The Enteropathogen Resource Integration Center (ERIC) launched a text-mining tool for PubMed.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-tool-for-text-mining-pubmed.html

* Pubget is a new tool for downloading OA or TA papers in the life sciences with one click.  For the TA papers, it downloads the ones prepaid by the user's institution.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-tool-for-finding-full-text-papers.html

* An international team is calling for public comments in its draft Citation Services project for sharing citation data on OA research papers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/feedback-sought-on-citation-sharing.html

* Lista Latinoamericana sobre Acceso Abierto y Repositorios is a new mailing list on OA and repositories in Latin America.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-discussion-list-on-oa-in-latin.html

* SHERPA released Version 2.4 of the RoMEO Application Programmers' Interface.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-api-for-sherpa-romeo.html

* The Public Knowledge Project released version 2.1.2 of Open Conference Systems.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-version-of-open-conference-systems.html

* PuMa, the Italian repository software, launched a YouTube channel.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/youtube-channel-for-italian-repository.html

* BioMed Central added a "Post to Twitter" option in the sidebar to each of its OA articles.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/bmc-adds-post-to-twitter-button.html

* RePEc launched a Facebook group.
http://blog.repec.org/2009/06/13/repec-on-facebook/

* The George Mason University Center for History and New Media released Omeka 1.0, an OAI-compliant publishing tool for scholarship and cultural heritage exhibits.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-tool-for-publishing-online.html

* The Open Knowledge Foundation launched a new mailing list on open knowledge in development.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-discussion-list-on-oa-for.html

* Stuart Shieber launched a blog.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/stuart-shieber-enters-blogosphere.html

* Subbiah Arunachalam launched a blog.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/subbiah-arunachalam-enters-blogosphere.html

* The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) launched a blog.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oaspa-launches-blog-comments-on-bentham.html

* The Obama White House launched an Open Government Blog.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/recent-news-on-psi.html

* Dorothea Salo ceased blogging at Caveat Lector.
http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/

* Peter Suber stepped back from systematic daily blogging at Open Access News.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/07/housekeeping.html

 + Other

* The University of Nottingham announced plans to launch an OA-focused Centre for Research Communications.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/oa-oriented-research-center-for-u-of.html

* Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) announced the launch of its web site.  EOS is the successor to EurOpenScholar (also EOS), which launched in October 2007.  The first EOS was European, while the second is
global.  The Chair of EOS is Bernard Rentier, the rector of the University of Liege, and the Convenor is Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/launch-of-eos-web-site.html

* SPARC and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services released a list of Campus-Based Publishing Partnerships, collaborations between libraries and university presses.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-index-of-library-up-publishing.html

* The AAP/PSP endorsed the May 20 IFLA/IPA statement calling for evidence and civility in the OA debate.
http://www.pspcentral.org/PublishersEndorseIFLAIPAStatement.cfm

* Northwestern University launched an OA collection of rare photographs of the European colonozation of East Africa.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2009/06/winterton.html

* Michael Shaughnessy and Jason Parkhill enlarged and relaunched their Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, an OA collection of images to assist language learning.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/new-oa-suite-of-images-for-language.html

* The National Library of Wales and the Getty Research Institute joined Flickr Commons.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/2-new-members-of-flickr-commons.html

* The Open Knowledge Definition has been translated into French.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/okd-in-french.html

* In 10 of the 12 surveyed eIFL countries, digitization projects don't charge for access to the resulting digital editions.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/low-cost-digitization-projects-in-eifl.html

* The Open Knowledge Definition was translated into French.
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/06/19/french-translation-of-the-open-knowledge-definition-okd/

* The Texas legislature declared that memorandum judicial opinions have the force of precedent, even though they are are only available in TA editions from Westlaw or Lexis.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/putting-price-on-legal-precedents.html

* 70% of AAHSL (Association of Academic and Health Science Libraries) libraries face budget cuts.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/more-on-access-crisis-70-of-aahsl.html

 ----------

Coming this month

Here are some important OA-related events coming up in July.

* OA-related conferences in July 2009.
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/2009#July

* Other OA-related conferences
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Events

 ==========

This is the SPARC Open Access Newsletter (ISSN 1546-7821), written by Peter Suber and published by SPARC.  The views I express in this newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of SPARC or other sponsors.

To unsubscribe, send any message from the subscribed address to <SPARC-OANews-off@arl.org>.

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SPARC home page for the Open Access Newsletter and Open Access Forum
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Newsletter, archived back issues
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm

Forum, archived postings
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Open Access Overview
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Open Access News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
peter.suber@earlham.edu

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