Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #100
August 2, 2006Read this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-06.htm
Contents
Ten lessons from the funding agency open access policies
Now that we've seen the final version of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) OA policy, it's a good time to look back over the major policies and proposals and draw a few lessons. In this article I'll focus on the policies of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Wellcome Trust, the RCUK, and the proposed policies in the CURES Act and Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) now before Congress. In future articles I may look at more funder policies and more lessons.
First, here's where to the find the policies themselves:
The NIH policy (took effect May 2, 2005)
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
My most recent SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#nih
The Wellcome Trust policy (took effect October 1, 2005)
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/node3302.html
My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-05.htm#wellcome
The RCUK policy (announced June 2006)
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/2006statement.pdf
My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#rcuk
The RCUK draft policy (released for comment June 2005)
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/2005statement.pdf
My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-05.htm#rcuk
The CURES Act (introduced in the US Senate December 2005)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.02104:
My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-06.htm#cures
The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) (introduced in the US Senate May 2006)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.02695:
My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-06.htm#frpaa
* Lesson 1. The policy should require OA, not merely request it.
The Welcome Trust has proved that funder mandates work and the NIH has proved that mere requests, encouragements, and exhortations do not work. Requests are not enough to bring about deposit (as opposed to non-deposit) and not enough to bring about early deposit (as opposed to late deposit). There's no point in setting OA as a goal and then getting only 3.8% compliance from grantees, which is what the NIH has been getting. Funding agencies that want OA enough to set it as a goal now have empirical evidence to show that only a mandate is likely to help them reach their goal.
Authors are ready: 94% of them would comply with a mandate from their funder or employer (Swan and Brown, May 2005, p. 63). The NIH compliance rate could improve *ten-fold* without reaching *half* that rate.
http://cogprints.org/4385/
The Wellcome Trust has a mandate and the CURES and FRPAA bills now before Congress would impose mandates. The NIH started with a request and is now moving toward a mandate. The Public Access Working Group and National Library of Medicine Board of Regents have recommended an NIH mandate and the House Appropriations Committee has decided to require one. In light of the NIH's documented failure to generate participation with a mere request and encouragement, it's hard to believe that any other funder would follow the NIH's false step and settle for a request. But one of the UK Research Councils (CCLRC) has done just that. Three other Research Councils have chosen mandates (BBSRC, ESRC, MRC) and the rest are still deliberating.
* Lesson 2. The mandate should apply to the final version of the author's manuscript, incorporating all changes introduced by the peer review process.
Funders can't mandate OA to the published edition unless they or their grantees hold copyright to the published edition, which is seldom the case. But they should give publishers the option to replace the author's version with the published version in the OA repository. For this purpose, the "published version" could be the very file used in the online edition of the journal or merely the final form of the text and pagination without the published look and feel.
The published version of the text is preferable for citing and quoting, but the version approved by peer review is all that scientists really need to learn about new results and start to apply, replicate, challenge, or build upon them.
Publishers who worry that mandating OA for the author's manuscript will aggravate the version control problem (the problem of having more than one version of an article in circulation) should take advantage of the funder's option to replace the author's version with the published version.
All the policies under review here except the RCUK policy apply to the author's final version of the manuscript and offer publishers the option to replace the author's version with the published version. The RCUK is silent on these questions, apparently leaving them up to the individual RCs. FRPAA lets publishers substitute the published edition for the author's edition but with an interesting qualification: agencies need only allow the substitution when the published edition advances the agency's "goals...for functionality and interoperability". In principle, an agency could decide that a raw or enhanced submission from authors is more useful than the published edition.
* Lesson 3. Without compromising their own interests, funders should help publishers.
Funders should not retreat from an OA mandate or accept longer embargoes than they want; that would compromise their interests. But there are other ways in which they can help publishers.
For example, funders should share traffic and download data with publishers, when they can. Sometimes they can't, for example, when they give authors a choice of repositories (which I also recommend below, Lesson 6). But in that case funders can at least recommend data sharing to repository maintainers.
Data sharing will help all who care to have accurate traffic data for an article --mostly publishers and authors. It will reduce publisher opposition to funder mandates and increase benefits for authors. The benefit will be even more critical for publishers who choose to replace the author's final manuscript with the published edition.
Likewise, when publishers do not replace the author's final manuscript with the published edition, funders should do what they can to ensure that the OA copies include citations and links to the published versions. This helps authors and readers by showing that the article was peer-reviewed and where it was peer-reviewed. It helps publishers preserve and spread their brand.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-05.htm#brand
The purpose of OA is to provide access for those who don't have it or can't afford it. If it serves its purpose, and a reader wants to move from the OA edition to the published non-OA edition, we have no reason to make that difficult and many reasons to make it easy (for example, on the principle that nearly anything that helps readers helps authors). The claim that OA is a superior form of access and distribution does not entail the claim that the OA edition of an article is superior to some other edition.
The new RCUK policy requires a link to the published edition "whenever possible". The NIH provides such links in practice, though the NIH policy doesn't require it. The other policies are silent on the question.
* Lesson 4. The policy should apply primarily to work published in peer-reviewed journals.
It should focus on work voluntarily disseminated by authors to the public and approved by independent peer review. It might also apply to work presented at conferences, but should not apply to work that authors choose not to publish at all (lab notes, phone records, preliminary data and analyses, drafts), work that by law may not be disseminated (classified research), work that is rejected by journals, or work that is only published in royalty-producing forms like books.
Authors who make patentable discoveries will not want to publish until they have the protection of a patent or patent application. But accommodation is built in to this rule: the OA policy only kicks in when authors decide to publish.
The focus on peer-reviewed journals sends two messages: that the funder supports peer review and that the funder will not conduct the peer review itself. This answers two publisher fears --perhaps superfluously, since both fears are groundless. One fear is that authors might want to bypass peer review, and the other is that funders (especially public funders) might become publishers. Funder policies can bring about OA without diminishing peer review or increasing government control of science.
The point of this provision is to protect certain work from forced OA, not to entrench the journal as the primary vehicle of dissemination. If journals undergo fundamental change or displacement, funders should review their wording of this provision.
The only research products not published by authors to which the policy might apply are data files. I support an OA mandate for data files, but because OA data issues differ substantially from OA literature issues, it should probably be the subject of a separate policy. The NIH, for example, separates its article-access policy from its data-access policy.
The RCUK policy applies to conference presentations as well as peer-reviewed articles. The NIH, FRPAA, and Wellcome Trust policies only apply to peer-reviewed articles. CURES applies to peer-reviewed articles but also to some kinds of data files.
* Lesson 5. The policy should allow grantees to use grant funds, or to apply for supplementary funds, to pay the publication fees at OA or OA-hybrid journals that charge fees.
The reason to provide these fees is to support fee-based OA journals, not just OA repositories. The reason to provide supplementary funding for the fees is to prevent article processing fees from competing with equipment, assistants, and supplies for precious and limited grant funds. That would be a disincentive to publish in OA journals, the opposite of what's intended.
This provision is one of several responses to publishers who object that OA archiving will kill subscriptions. Through this policy, funders are saying that they will support journals that shift to an alternative business model, which could be hybrid OA (author-choice OA) or full OA. Of course this does not presuppose that OA archiving really will kill subscriptions. More broadly, this policy supports a new generation of OA peer-review providers, which will be necessary if high-volume OA archiving does undercut subscriptions and which is desirable even if subscription-based journals thrive alongside OA archiving, as they now do in physics.
The policy should not require grantees to submit their work to OA journals. There aren't enough OA journals to meet the demand and, even at a future time when there might be enough, this would limit authors' freedom to publish in the journals of their choice.
I have no opinion on whether funder policies should allow grantees use grant funds to pay page charges and other fees at non-OA journals. But if funders end up paying any publication costs at non-OA journals, they have a right to put an OA condition on their largesse.
I like this variation on the theme: the policy might offer to pay OA publication fees, but only at journals that allow OA archiving within six months of publication. In practice this would only apply to hybrid journals, since full OA journals don't put embargoes on OA archiving. The Medical Research Council comes close to this position but doesn't quite put it this way.
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/open_access
The NIH is willing to pay article processing fees for its grantees, but this is separate from its public-access policy. It also pays about $30 million/year in page charges at subscription journals, about 10 times the entire cost of implementing its public-access policy. The Wellcome Trust makes supplementary funding for publication fees available to grantees. CURES and FRPAA do not let grantees use grant funds for publication fees. The RCUK generally declines to do so, leaving this decision to "authors' institutions", but one RC (the MRC) has offered to pay these fees. (The RCUK still uses false and misleading term "author pays" for journals that charge fees.)
* Lesson 6. The policy should let authors choose which OA repository to use, provided it meets certain conditions of OA, interoperability, and long-term preservation.
Distributed archiving has several advantages over central archiving: it helps local institutions, adds local incentives to funder mandates to increase author participation, adds robustness to preservation, and in the age of OAI interoperability doesn't detract from searching.
If the funder has reasons to require deposit in a certain repository (say, one controlled by the funder the way NIH controls PubMed Central), then that requirement should not be exclusive. Authors should be free to deposit in other repositories as well.
Funders with central repositories will naturally have a procedure to process submissions. But they should also have a procedure to harvest eprints deposited in other repositories. It may turn out that harvesting an already-submitted eprint is even less expensive than processing a raw submission.
The draft RCUK policy preferred institutional over central repositories, but the final policy leaves this decision to the separate RCs, just as FRPAA leaves this decision to the separate federal funding agencies. Of the three RCs that have already chosen to mandate OA, two (MRC and ESRC) require deposit in central repositories and one (BBSRC) requires deposit "in an appropriate e-print repository". The NIH and Wellcome Trust use central repositories (PubMed Central and the UK PubMed Central).
* Lesson 7. The policy should apply to articles that result from research funded in whole or in part by the funder's grant.
This rule makes it unnecessary to decide whether the funder funded a "sufficiently large" portion of the underlying research. The decision is clean: by accepting the funds, the author agrees to provide OA to all articles that arise from the research.
It follows that the policy applies to co-authored articles even if only one author was funded by this funder. This also makes the decision clean: we don't have to decide what quorum of authors is large enough to make the compliance decision and we don't have to let the funder's interest in OA be held hostage by unfunded or differently-funded co-authors.
Finally, in the case of public funding agencies, this rule makes clear that the policy applies equally to agency employees and agency grantees, two groups who in other respects might be subject to different rules. (For example, in the US research by agency employees is uncopyrightable while research by agency grantees is copyrightable.)
The June 2003 Sabo bill in the US (Public Access to Science Act) would have applied to works "substantially funded" by public money, leaving the precise threshold to be decided by individual funding agencies. The bill was not adopted and no other OA policy has followed this model.
The NIH policy, the Wellcome Trust policy, CURES, and FRPAA all apply to work funded in whole or in part by the relevant agency. The RCUK is silent on the question, in effect leaving it to the separate RCs.
* Lesson 8. The policy should adopt the dual deposit/release strategy.
This strategy rests on two critical distinctions: (1) the distinction between the metadata and full-text of an article, and (2) the distinction between the time of deposit in a repository and the time of OA release.
The strategy calls for immediate deposit of both full-text and metadata, and immediate OA release of the metadata. "Immediate" here means at the time the article is accepted for publication. But the full-text needn't be released to OA until after the author-requested embargo or the funder's deadline (e.g. six months), whichever comes first.
Immediate release of OA metadata makes the article searchable and does not threaten publishers who worry about the effects of early release of OA full-text. (In fact, most publishers provide immediate OA metadata themselves, and for the same reason.) When the time comes to release the deposited text to OA, someone only needs to flip a switch; the text is already in the repository and needn't be hunted down, deposited, scanned, rekeyed, or left out. Flipping the switch might even be done by the repository software, programmed at the time of deposit to create an embargo of a certain length.
This strategy is entirely independent of length of the embargo. When embargoes exist, they only apply to the OA release of full-text, not to the deposit of full-text or to the deposit or release of the metadata.
Immediate deposit gives the funders or repositories time to process submissions so that they can really be released at the end of the embargo period. (The NIH, for example, does extensive processing of submissions to put them in a common format and add links to NIH-supported OA databases.) If the processing doesn't start until the embargo period ends, because the text isn't on deposit until then, then the OA release is delayed even further.
In general, publisher insistence on embargoes and funder deference to publishers have blurred both of the critical distinctions in play here. An x-month embargo is needlessly interpreted to apply to both deposit and release, and to apply to both full-text and metadata.
It would be easier to live with fairly long embargoes if we had a mandate for immediate deposit of the full-text and metadata, immediate release of the metadata, and eventual assured release of the full-text. But my preference would be to put an upper limit of six months on embargoes and gradually, over a year or two, and with full notice to authors and publishers, and perhaps with some exceptions, reduce the upper limit.
The dual deposit/release strategy only works for repositories that can accept "dark" deposits --that is, deposits that are not OA. But as far as I know, all the major OAI-compliant archiving packages can do this. The strategy works best for repositories that give users a simple online button for requesting an email copy of a "dark" full-text eprint, and gives authors a simple button for complying with the request. So far, Eprints and DSpace, the two most-used archiving programs, offer this feature, and I believe that other packages are considering it. When users discover an article through its OA metadata, the email button enables easy distribution prior to the release of OA full-text.
So far no funder implements the dual deposit/release strategy in full. The new RCUK policy requires deposit of both metadata and full-text, and for metadata requires it "[w]herever possible...at or around the time of publication." But unfortunately it says nothing about the timing of the deposit or release of full-text. The Wellcome Trust distinguishes the timing of deposit and release for the full-text (deposit immediately upon acceptance, release six months after) but doesn't apparently release metadata before full-text; the NIH does the same but has a longer period of permissible delay before full-text release. CURES, and FRPAA put a deadline on the timing of release but say nothing about the timing of deposit or the deposit/release of metadata.
* Lesson 9. With or without sanctions, the mandate should be enforceable.
There are six *universities* with OA mandates and none of them uses sanctions to enforce the policy. On the contrary, all use some combination of mandatory language, encouragement, education, assistance, and incentives. These suffice for universities and might suffice for funding agencies. There are still too few funder policies in effect to see the results of different approaches.
The CURES Act is one of the only funder policies to specify a sanction. It says that grantees who do not comply with the policy, including the six month limit on embargoes, risk the loss of future funding. (The policy says that non-compliance "shall" be considered during grant compliance review and "may" result in "the loss of public funding".) There are at least three forms of this sanction. The mildest is to prefer compliant to non-compliant applicants in case of a tie. For example, if the funding agency has to choose between funding two researchers, A and B, when their projects are of equal scientific merit, when both have received grants in the past, when A complied with the OA policy on the previous grant and B didn't, then the funder will choose A over B. Indeed, funders who don't prefer A to B under these circumstances make their policies meaningless, whether they use requests or requirements. A stronger form of the same sanction is to deny B a new grant, period, even if not tied with an applicant like A. The strongest form of this sanction is to ask non-compliant grantees to repay all or part of their grant.
FRPAA and RCUK are silent on sanctions. The NIH policy, to emphasize that it is not a mandate, explicitly says that the agency "does not penalize" non-compliance with its request and that non-compliance "will not be a factor" in reviewing a grantee's work. These provisions deliberately retreat from enforceability and must explain part of the NIH's very low compliance rate.
* Lesson 10. The legal basis of the funder's dissemination of these texts should either be a government license (for public funders) or the funding contract with the grantee (for public or private funders) . The policy should not rely, directly or indirectly, on publisher consent.
There's a fundamental distinction between (1) rights that publishers might possess under copyright law and (2) the right of publishers to refuse to publish anything for any reason, or more broadly, to put conditions on what they will publish. Let's call the first publisher's copyright and the second publisher's discretion. Publisher's discretion does not derive from copyright law. But when publishers make demands, e.g. for an embargo of a certain length, it's not always clear whether they are speaking from their rights as copyright holders or their right of discretion. But it's very important for funders to become clear about this.
Funders have to live with publisher's discretion. It's not only a reality beyond their control. It's also a good thing that none of us should want to restrict. But it doesn't follow that funders have to defer to publisher decisions as if this deference were required by copyright law.
Publishers who dislike a funder OA policy can use their discretion to resist, but if the OA policy is well-written, they cannot use copyright to resist. They can use discretion to resist by refusing to publish work by authors bound by a funder's OA mandate. It's significant that so far, no publishers have taken this stance with regard to any funder OA policy.
Funders may have mission-related reasons to defer to publishers, for example because they believe, correctly or incorrectly, that some OA policies might harm publishers and that harm to publishers would harm science. Funders may have political reasons to defer to publishers because publishers are a significant lobbying force. Or funders may want to protect their grantees from adverse publisher decisions under the power of publisher discretion. But these reasons to defer to publishers should never be confused with a copyright-based legal requirement to defer to publishers.
Grantees sign funding contracts before they sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers. Funders are upstream from publishers and have the right to insist that their contracts be enforced, with the consequence that a grantee's subsequent publishing contract is subject to the terms of the prior funding contract. The Wellcome Trust OA policy is the clearest and strongest of all of the funder mandates to date because it is the only one to recognize this simple truth. (The Wellcome Trust considers its grants to be closer to gifts than contracts, but that doesn't affect this analysis because the WT regards the terms of its grant to be enforceable.)
If a funder lets authors decide the length of the embargo, then in practice most publishers will take the decision from authors, using their power of discretion. So even funders who don't think they are deferring to publishers, but only to authors, are deferring to publishers.
If funders let the length of the embargo depend on author or publisher decisions, then most publishers will not only take the decision from authors but press for the maximum embargo. I've documented this in the case of the NIH policy.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-05.htm#nih (June 2005)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-05.htm#nih (July 2005)
A funder's OA policy must acknowledge publisher discretion, but must allow no *other* kind of publisher resistance to interfere with the OA policy. After funders decide what they want, taking their mission-related and political relations with publishers into account, they should require it. If they make the requirement depend on the consent of third parties, they simply invite third-party interference. Funders who make this mistake actually *give* publishers the power to resist the policy as a matter of right, not just as a matter of discretion. But even then, the right is created by the funder policy, not by copyright law.
The US has enacted a "government-purpose license" allowing federal agencies to disseminate the results of agency-funded research. The NIH acknowledged its existence but deliberately decided not to use it, relying instead on publisher consent. Both CURES and FRPAA fix this mistake, expressly rely on the government-purpose license, and make publisher dissent irrelevant. The Wellcome Trust bypasses publisher consent with the simple but sufficient device of holding grantees to their funding agreement.
If any major policy is worse than the NIH's on this score, it's the new RCUK policy. The 2005 RCUK draft mandated OA "subject to copyright or licensing arrangements". The final version of the policy restates this vague deference to publishers at least as vaguely and even more deferentially: "Full implementation of these requirements must be undertaken such that current copyright and licensing policies, for example embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors." Both formulations subordinate the funder's interests to the publisher's interests. Both suggest that funders are required by copyright law to roll over for publishers in this way, which is incorrect and harmful. If funders are really worried only about running afoul of copyright law, and not publisher's discretion, then they never would subordinate their own funding contract to *subsequently* signed publishing contracts. I say more about the RCUK's position on this in last month's newsletter.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#rcuk
In countries that lack a government-purpose license, activists or agencies should work with the legislature to create one. The gist of it is that government funding agencies should have a right to disseminate the results of agency-funded research, in print and online, without permission from any other party. This is a clean and easy way to make publisher consent unnecessary. Note, however, that the Wellcome Trust's contractual approach works just as well without any legislative action.
Finally, legislatures laying down OA policies for public funding agencies should understand that they can mandate OA without amending copyright law. There are many excellent reasons to amend copyright law (don't get me started), but it's not necessary for the limited goal of OA. Moreover, copyright reform --of the right kind-- has more opponents than OA, and turning to it simply to achieve OA is politically perverse and fatal. Copyright reform is still very desirable, but it is without doubt the most difficult and least propitious way to achieve OA. And fortunately for OA, we don't have to wait for it. We don't have to fight its well-funded opponents, live with its compromises, or endure its delays.
The NIH uses publisher consent instead of a government-purpose license, even though it has such a license at its disposal. CURES and FRPAA use government-purpose licenses rather than funding contracts or publisher consent. CURES and FRPAA also make clear that they do not modify US copyright law. These provisions are lessons learned from the Sabo bill, which would have amended copyright law to put publicly-funded research into the public domain. The Sabo will was defeated in part because it aroused a well-funded opposition and in part because most friends of OA were not willing to support it in that form. The NIH and RCUK policies are the products of agencies, not legislatures, and lack the power to amend copyright law, although they needlessly defer to publisher decisions as if copyright law required it. The Wellcome Trust is a private funder and also lacks the power to amend copyright law; but instead of deferring to publishers under a mistaken interpretation of copyright law, the Wellcome Trust understands that a clear and enforceable funding contract can bypass all copyright problems.
* Postscript. In addition to the five policies covered above, here's my snapshot of other OA policies for public funding agencies, organized by nation.
Canada: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
--Developing a policy, will be a mandate
--April 2006 solicitation of comments
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/30818.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_02_fosblogarchive.html#114419549031169818
--June 2006 progress report
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/31399.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_06_18_fosblogarchive.html#115077452541424649
Canada: Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA)
--Not a mandate yet but may become one; see below in the Top Stories section
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_02_fosblogarchive.html#115231219745255122
Canada: International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
--At least encouragement; not clear whether it's also a mandate
--December 2005 statement
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-92447-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_01_15_fosblogarchive.html#113750345288971165
Canada: Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
--Encouragement, not a mandate
--October 2004 statement
http://www.sshrc.ca/web/about/council_reports/2005march_e.asp#3
--April 2006 statement
http://www.sshrc.ca/web/about/council_reports/news_e.asp#4
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_30_fosblogarchive.html#114683602886476983
European Union
--Report with OA policy recommendations (dated January 2006 but not apparently released until March 2006)
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/414&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_02_fosblogarchive.html#114407521001187068
--My SOAN article on it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-06.htm#ecreport
Finland: Finnish Ministry of Education
--Encouragement, not a mandate
--March 18, 2005 statement (English-language version)
http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2005/liitteet/opm_250_tr16.pdf?lang=fi
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_20_fosblogarchive.html#a111151466688823747
France: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
--Encouragement, not a mandate
--June 21, 2006 letter asking CNRS unit heads to invite their researchers to self-archive
http://ccsd.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/DGauxDU_060621.pdf
http://openaccess.inist.fr/article.php3?id_article=127
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_06_18_fosblogarchive.html#115109009390932453
France: Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)
--Mandate (all department research "is to be self-archived")
--April 3, 2004 statement
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S1A62108D
France: Institut national de recherche en informatique ete en automatique (INRIA)
--Encouragement, not a mandate
--May 30, 2005 statement
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S3562208D
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_27_fosblogarchive.html#a111227586987274069
Germany: Bundesrat or Parliament
--A bill to allow author self-archiving of publicly-funded research six months after publication regardless of any agreement the author might have signed with the publisher, introduced May 2006
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_05_21_fosblogarchive.html#114835301839388865
--My SOAN article about it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-06.htm#germanbill
Germany: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
--In between a request and requirement; grantees "should" (not "must") deposit work in an OA repository
--January 2006 policy
http://www.dfg.de/en/news/information_science_research/other_news/info_wissenschaft_04_06.html
--My SOAN story on it
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-06.htm#dfg
South Africa: Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSA)
--March 2006 report recommending both green and gold OA, but not a mandate
http://blues.sabinet.co.za/images/ejour/assaf/assaf_strategic_research_publishing.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_05_07_fosblogarchive.html#114720037252548059
Sweden: the National Co-ordination and Development program (BIBSAM) of the National Library of Sweden
--BIBSAM coordinates a national OA initiative to promote both green and gold OA in Sweden (not a mandate), launched May 2006
http://www.kb.se/openaccess/english/english_intro.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_05_14_fosblogarchive.html#114805874097695220
Ukraine: Parliament
--Parliament recommended an OA condition to publicly-funded research, December 2005
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2650.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_12_18_fosblogarchive.html#113526981970037682
To supplement this list of policies and proposals at public funding agencies, see the list of funder policies from JULIET
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/
...and the OA policies at universities and research centers from ROARMAP.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
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Top stories from July 2006
This is my selection of the most important OA developments since the issue of the newsletter, not counting any developments covered in the lead essays above. When items have two URLs, the first is usually for the item itself and the second for my blog posting about it on Open Access News. For other developments that didn't make the cut, see Open Access news, which I update daily, and which has a browseable and searchable archive.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
Here are the top stories from July:
* The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA) provides OA to the research it funds.
* Two groups launch OA book projects.
* The Gates Foundation requires data sharing.
* University provosts support FRPAA.
* The RCUK policy inspires more news and comment.
The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA) provides OA to the research it funds.
The CBCRA is another funder that gets open access. From its web site:
We have created a unique [open-access] repository of peer-reviewed literature on breast cancer research, research supported by CBCRA. We believe it is the first of its kind, initiated by us because we believe that the public should have free access to research results funded by public agencies....CBCRA is the primary granting agency for breast cancer research in Canada....To date, CBCRA has allocated $138 million to top-quality breast cancer research in Canada.The CBCRA doesn't mandate OA to its research, although it's thinking about a mandate for the future. It simply tries to provide OA to all the CBCRA-funded research that it can. Instead of doing this by contract, at the time of funding, it does it by painstaking requests for permission sent to grantee-authors and their publishers after they have published research based on CBCRA funding. First it tracks down authors and asks them to sign a license. Then it contacts their publisher and asks for permission to post an OA copy of the article to the CBCRA repository. It doesn't send its queries until at least 12 months after publication, when publishers are more likely to agree. When it gets no replies, it sends out its letters again.
Using this arduous method since February of this year, CBCRA has been able to provide OA to about 25% of its research. About 62% of authors and 70% of publishers have agreed to the OA proposition. It's considering a mandate in part to enlarge its OA coverage to 100% and in part to reduce or eliminate the large administrative burden of permission-seeking.
Kudos to the CBCRA for the steps it has already taken and for considering a mandate for the future. Unlike the Wellcome Trust, which is private, and the Research Councils UK, which are public, the CBCRA is an alliance with members on each side of the line. Its motto is: "Canada's unique collaboration of public, private and non-profit organizations."
Thanks to Janet Patterson, Communications Manager at the CBCRA, for answering my many questions about its policy and practice.
The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA)
http://www.breast.cancer.ca/
The CBRCA's OA repository, hosted by the University of Toronto
https://researchspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807.1/1
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_02_fosblogarchive.html#115231219745255122
.....
Two groups launch OA book projects.
Rice University revived its dormant university press as an all-digital operation focusing on OA books that offer multi-media content and print on demand. The digital books will use Creative Commons licenses and reside in Connextions, Rice's excellent, venerable collection of OA scholarship and free software. The Institute for the Future of the Book announced MediaCommons, a new project for OA books in the humanities that incorporate open and innovative forms of peer review and community interactivity. In its own description, it will be more a scholarly ecosystem than a press.
The two projects have something important in common even though Rice promises traditional peer review and MediaCommons promises untraditional peer review. Both projects offer an exciting model in which scholarly books are digital first, OA by default, and print on demand. From a narrow OA point of view, what's most interesting about these projects is the way they take OA for granted and move on to other frontiers, such as turn-around time, multimedia, peer review, and interactivity. To me, this is the future: OA will be the boring foundation and creative energy will focus on how to build on it to take full advantage of the networked environment for the purposes of scholarship.
On a different front, the University of California may join the Google Library project, adding its 34 million volumes to Google's growing collection. It's significant that UC is not waiting for the lawsuits against the Google Library project to be resolved, that its lawyers think Google may lawfully scan copyrighted books, not just public-domain books, that it will be the first institution to participate in both Google Library and the Open Content Alliance, and that it may negotiate for a cut of Google's revenues from the program.
This is a good place to mention the important new report on cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences released by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The report recommends that scholarly societies and university presses join the Open Content Alliance (which digitizes books for OA), that we increase public and private investment in digitization and OA, and that funders mandate OA. At the same time it offers informed and detailed analysis of the economics of OA publishing, intellectual property, scholarly control, interoperability, sustainability and preservation, collaboration and community, and institutional policy-making.
Larry Gordon, UC May Join Google's Library Project, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2006.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-ucgoogle2aug02,0,5218814.story?coll=la-story-footer
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_30_fosblogarchive.html#115452696257880056
Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Avi Santo, MediaCommons 3: continuing the discussion, if:book, July 31, 2006.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/07/mediacommons_3_continuing_the.html
Jeffrey Young, Book 2.0: Scholars turn monographs into digital conversations, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2006.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i47/47a02001.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115374574223973438
Eric Kansa, Cyberinfrastructure report for Humanities and Social Sciences, Digging Digitally, July 27, 2006.
http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/?p=23
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115409581091431585
Scott Carlson, Humanities, Social Sciences Should Focus on Improving Digital Resources, Report Says, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2006.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/07/2006072701t.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115402428342235705
On July 27, the American Council of Learned Societies released Our Cultural Commonwealth: The report of the American Council of Learned Societies' Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences.
http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115402428342235705
On July 26, the Chronicle of Higher Education held a live online chat with Robert Stein, director of the Institute for the Future of the Book.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1435/turning-scholarly-books-into-wikis-and-more
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115384758142476720
Anon., Rice University Press Goes Digital, Library Journal, July 26, 2006.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6356257.html
Avi Santo, MediaCommons 2: renewed publics, revised pedagogies, if:book, July 26, 2006.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/07/mediacommons_2_renewed_publics.html
Christopher Kelty, Rice U. Press: Scholarly monographs go digital, Savage Minds, July 24, 2006.
http://savageminds.org/2006/07/24/rice-u-press-scholarly-monographs-go-digital/
Michael Roy, Scholarly Communications in the 21st. Century: Two Important Announcements, July 24, 2006. On Rice University Press and MediaCommons.
http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/announcement/scholarly-communications-in-the-21st-century-two-important-announcements
Ben Vershbow, Initial Responses to MediaCommons, if:book, July 19, 2006.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/07/initial_responses_to_mediacomm.html
Jay Lyman, Connexions Takes Open Source Approach to Education Content, Linux Insider, July 19, 2006.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/pKKHE1CxcFuER4/Connexions-Takes-Open-Source-Approach-to-Education-Content.xhtml
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Introducing MediaCommons, if:book, July 17, 2006.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/07/introducing_mediacommons_or_ti.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115313742984373554
Tommy, Creative Commons License Enables Low Cost Textbook Deal, LinuxElectrons, July 16, 2006.
http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20060716111509989
Jeffrey R. Young, Rice U. Will Start First All-Digital University Press, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2006.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/07/2006071402t.htm
Rice University press reborn as nation's first fully digital academic press, a press release, July 13, 2006.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/ru-rup071306.php
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115287867875285626
.....
The Gates Foundation requires data sharing.
In its new funding program for an HIV/AIDS vaccine, the Gates Foundation is requiring all grantees to share their data. It has the best of reasons: to accelerate research and make available to all who can use it. The foundation doesn't hide its frustration with the current pace of vaccine research and hopes the data-sharing program will make the difference.
I have some questions about the program, but I expect that answers will emerge shortly. It's pretty clear that the Gates Foundation will host its own OA repository and require grantees to deposit their data in it. It appears that the requirement will apply only to data, not to articles published in peer-reviewed journals, though I'd welcome clarification on that. I can't tell what steps the foundation will take, if any, to insure data interoperability. I can't tell whether the free online access will be universal, limited to developing countries, or some of each for different kinds of information. I'll blog more as I learn more. But I don't have to learn more to congratulate the Gates foundation on this enlightened policy. Gates is setting an example that other foundations should emulate. It's applying the principle that the more knowledge matters, the more OA to that knowledge matters. And it's greatly increasing the chance that its grantees will make headway toward a vaccine.
David Bollier, Is Hell Freezing Over? Bill Gates Embraces the Knowledge Commons, On the Commons, July 21, 2006.
http://onthecommons.org/node/941
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115349848509092587
Glyn Moody, Bill Gates Wants to Share "Openly", Open..., July 20, 2006.
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2006/07/bill-gates-wants-to-share-openly.html
Marilyn Chase, Gates Won't Fund AIDS Researchers Unless They Pool Data, Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2006.
http://online.wsj.com/google_login.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB115335816005811923.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115342087260351949
On July 19, the Gates Foundation issued a press release announcing its new funding program for an HIV/AIDS vaccine and its data-sharing policy.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalHealth/Pri_Diseases/HIVAIDS/Announcements/Announce-060719.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115342087260351949
Larry Sanger, An open letter to the Gates Foundation: collaborative content as an opportunity, Sanger's blog, July 6th, 2006.
http://www.dufoundation.org/blog/?p=63
.....
University provosts support FRPAA.
The big FRPAA news from July was the open letter of support from 25 university provosts. It shows that the research interests of research universities support OA, which is worth clarifying after the attempts by some publishers to suggest that OA threatens science and scholarship themselves, not just some kinds of publishing. For the same reason it suggests that the research interests of scientific societies would support OA as well if they were not overruled by the publishing interests. Universities have their own publishing arms, like many scholarly societies, but journals have more clout within societies than university presses have within universities. (Moreover, of course, many university presses are adapting quickly to OA and some, like the new Rice University press, embody it.) Hence, I expect that presidents will soon follow provosts, even though presidents speak for the whole institution, including the press.
Provost support for OA should lead to strong OA policies at many more universities. It should exert pressure on the Association of American Universities (AAU) to endorse OA or be left behind by its own members. (The AAU is a major voice in Washington on policies affecting research and education.) And finally, of course, it's decisive new support for FRPAA that is bound to be persuasive to members of Congress representing districts where these 25 universities are located.
Here's all the FRPAA news and comment from July.
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access issued a press release on eight consumer groups that have joined the ATA and pledged their support for FRPAA, July 31, 2006.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3231.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_30_fosblogarchive.html#115438003011914850
Stevan Harnad, Putting Principled Support Into Practice: What Provosts Need to Mandate, Open Access Archivangelism, July 29, 2006.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/117-Putting-Principled-Support-Into-Practice-What-Provosts-Need-to-Mandate.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_30_fosblogarchive.html#115426246882855155
Mike Carroll, The Publishers' "Private Market" Canard, Carrollogos, July 28, 2006.
http://carrollogos.blogspot.com/2006/07/publishers-private-market-canard.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115419459951437727
Dorothea Salo, The Behemoth Stirs, Caveat Lector, July 28, 2006.
http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2006/07/28/the-behemoth-stirs/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115418488501637267
Scott Jaschik, Rallying Behind Open Access, Inside Higher Ed, July 28, 2006.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/28/provosts
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115410553065836511
Twenty-five provosts of US universities released An Open Letter to the Higher Education Community in support of FRPAA and OA (undated but released on July 28, 2006).
http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/groups/CICMembers/archive/documents/FRPAAletterFinal7-24-06.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_23_fosblogarchive.html#115410553065836511
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access continues to recruit new members. Among those joining in July were the Christopher Reeve Foundation, Essential Action, IP Justice,
and Consumer Union.
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/member.html
Progressive Secretary has composed a letter in support of FRPAA and an OA mandate at NIH. US citizens can have the letter mailed to their Congressional delegation with just a click.
http://www.progsec.org/DynMenu/DynMenu.php?Table=lettercontrol&Page=TaxpayerResearch1___
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115342433189015630
Bipartisan Effort Emerges to Make Federally-Funded Research Publicly Accessible, Science & Intellectual Property in the Public Interest, July 14, 2006.
http://sippi.aaas.org/ipissues/updates/?res_id=691
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115296940401024580
Ray, English, Open Access to Federally Funded Research--The Time is Now, Portal, July 2006. A guest editorial.
http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v006/6.3english.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115288592674349922
Peter Suber, Open Access in the United States, a chapter in Neil Jacobs (ed.), Open Access: Key strategic, technical and economic aspects, Chandos Publishing, 2006. Self-archived July 12, 2006.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006671/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115271544606367534
Eight major North American library associations have released their July 12 letter to Sen. Susan Collins in support of FRPAA.
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/washingtonwatch/FRPAA_Collins.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115353364533565929
Hemai Parthasarathy, Bipartisan Bill for Public Access to Research—Time for Action, PLoS Biology, July 11, 2006.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040257
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115263243501269985
At the American Library Association Annual Conference 2006 (New Orleans, June 24-27, 2006), the ALA adopted a resolution in support of FRPAA.
http://freegovinfo.info/node/541#FEDPUB
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_02_fosblogarchive.html#115210324227272131
.....
The RCUK policy inspires more news and comment.
There are no new announcements from the Research Councils but the new OA policy, announced June 28, continues to draw comment.
On July 20, the ALPSP issued a press release on the new RCUK OA policy. My blog post includes a six-point response and rebuttal.
http://www.alpsp.org/news/RCUK-ALPSPpress.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_16_fosblogarchive.html#115357237271562658
Michael Kenward, Debate widens on open access, Science Business, July 17, 2006.
http://bulletin.sciencebusiness.net/ebulletins/showissue.php3?page=/548/art/5876/
The day the RCUK announced its new OA policy (June 28), David Prosser of SPARC Europe sent a spreadsheet to a number of discussion lists showing what positions each of the eight Research Councils took on OA. On July 15, David has posted a copy of the spreadsheet at SPARC Europe itself. The new copy can be kept up to date as the Research Councils announce and revise their policies.
http://www.sparceurope.org/press_release/rc%20OA%20policies%20v1.1.xls
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115298917891347090
Susan Mayor, Publicly funded research in the UK must be freely accessible, BMJ, July 15, 2006.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.333.7559.112-a
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115288690707999413
SPARC issued a press release supporting the new RCUK OA policy, July 14, 2006.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/announce/060714.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115296987212728338
Mark Chillingworth, RCUK fails to time stamp open access, Information World Review, July 13, 2006.
http://www.iwr.co.uk/2160288
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115279116681466497
Majied Robinson, RCUK Statement On Open Access - Cheers Or Jeers? EPS Insights, July 12, 2006.
http://www.epsltd.com/clients/viewUpdateNotes.asp?updateNoteID=2011
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115279514622713148
SPARC Europe issued a press release in support of the new RCUK OA policy, July 11, 2006.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3174.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115264697825451712
Steve Hitchcock, Forward with the mandates? EPrints Insiders, July 11, 2006.
http://www.eprints.org/community/blog/index.php
Tim Poulus, RCUK proposal dilutes the case for OA publishing, Communications Breakdown, July 11, 2006.
http://telcommunicator.blogspot.com/2006/07/stmrcuk-proposal-dilutes-case-for-oa.html
Bob Campbell, The UK Research Councils Break Ranks, Blackwell Publishing Journal News, July 2006.
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journalnews/newsitem.asp?release=808
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115257795888524760
Robin Peek, RCUK Releases Long-Awaited OA Policy, Information Today Newsbreak, July 10, 2006.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060710-1.shtml
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115248994556944483
Eliot Marshall, A Mixed Bag of U.K. Open-Access Plans, Science, July 7, 2006.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5783/29a
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_07_09_fosblogarchive.html#115273897097529095
Research Councils UK policy on open access to publicly funded research, College Library News, July 5, 2006.
http://homlib.blogsome.com/2006/07/05/rcuk-policy-on-open-access-to-publicly-funded-research/
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Coming up later this month
Here are some important OA-related events coming up in August.
* August 12, 2006. It's been one year since Elsevier launched its one-year experiment with free online access for _Information & Computation_. Will it renew the experiment? Announce the results?
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-02-05.htm#elsevier
* Notable conferences this month
National Conference on Information Management in Digital Libraries
http://www.library.iitkgp.ernet.in/NCIMDiL/ncimdil.htm
Kharagpur, India, August 2-4, 2006
Fiesole Collection Development Retreat
http://digital.casalini.it/retreat/retreat_2006.html
Lund, August 3-5, 2006
Wikimania: The 2nd International Wikimania Conference
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4-6, 2006
Communicating Mathematics in the Digital Era (OA is among the topics)
http://www.cmde2006.org/
Aveiro, Portugal, August 15-18, 2006
Libraries: Dynamic Engines for the Knowledge and Information Society (sponsored by IFLA)
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/
Seoul, August 20-24, 2006
--LIS journals: electronic journals, open access – and print as well? A session sponsored by the IFLA Standing Committee on Library and Information Science Journals [time/place TBA]
--Promoting the Implementation of Open Access. A session on Thursday, August 24, 10:45 - 12:45.
Wiki-based Knowledge Engineering
http://wiki.ontoworld.org/index.php/WibKE2006_CFP
Odense, Denmark, August 21-23, 2006
Libraries Supporting Research and Open Access (Module 4 within Digital Libraries a la Carte: New Choices for the Future, TICER Summer School, Tilburg University)
http://www.ticer.nl/06carte/program/4.htm
Tilburg, August 24, 2006
* Other OA-related conferences
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm
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Errata
In my essay on open access for ETDs in the last issue, I mentioned Gail McMillan five times. Unfortunately, two of the times I called her Gail McWilliams. I have no excuses: the cheese fell off my cracker and I'm very sorry. I corrected the online edition as soon as learned about my mistake, about four hours after mailing.
I also said that the UK EThOS project funds expired in June. I've since learned that because the project started late the funds won't expire until September.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/07-02-06.htm#etds
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Housekeeping
* I've added 14 new conferences to my conference page since the last issue. In the next few days I'll delete the second asterisk marking them and the new entries will blend into the rest of the collection.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm
* This is my 100th issue since March 2001 and the 38th since the newsletter changed names, became a monthly, and was published by SPARC. Thanks for sticking with me and spreading the word.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm
==========
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