Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #66
October 2, 2003Read this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-03.htm
Contents
Wellcome Trust commits to open accessThe Wellcome Trust strongly endorsed open access in an October 1 public position statement. It will allow WT grant recipients to use WT contingency funds to pay the processing fees charged by open-access journals. This is important: the WT is the world's largest private funder of medical research. Apart from WT research grants, the public statement urges authors "where possible" to retain copyright and make their work freely available online. WT will also "encourage and support" the launch of new open-access journals and repositories. The WT definition of "open access" is heavily based on the Bethesda definition (June 2003).
On the same day that WT released its public statement, it released a report on the economics of scientific research publishing, which helped it decide to endorse open access. The report is an important contribution to the research supporting the viability of the open-access business model.
The WT is in a key position to change the way medical research is funded and published. Its decision to support open access should carry weight with holdouts who are intrigued by the promise of open access but undecided about its economics. Of course it also means that a lot of important medical research in the near future will be openly accessible, which is very good news for the acceleration of progress, growth of knowledge, sharing of results, and treatment of patients.
The WT decision is important for one more reason as well. When a foundation awards a research grant, it is showing its belief that the results of that research will be useful to the wider world. With its commitment to open access, WT is showing its belief that open access to those research results will make them even more useful.
Publishers invest in publications they can sell. Either open access will diminish sales or publishers fear that it will (see the Napster story below). But foundations invest in producing knowledge and making it useful. For them, open access improves their return on investment. That is why foundations are ahead of publishers in building a consensus for open access.
Wellcome Trust
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Position statement
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispolpub.htmlBethesda statement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htmEconomic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/scipub/index.htmStephen Pincock quoted some of this language in his 10/1/03 article in _The Scientist_
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031001/03/----------
Not Napster for Science
If the past is any guide, it will be hard to argue for open access in a month when P2P music swapping is a hot story in the news. Academics and journalists who haven't encountered the idea of open access to peer-reviewed journal articles and their preprints --just the people who need to hear the argument-- find it too easy to assimilate this unfamiliar idea to the more familiar one. "Napster for science" is the inevitable, false, and damaging result.
This is such a month. The Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) sued 261 music swappers on September 8, hoping to scare and deter tens of millions of co-swappers. The lawsuits have greatly intensified the public debate on file sharing and copyright. In fact, the discussion is now broader and deeper, touching on what universities should do, what parents should do, what music lovers should do, what musicians should do, what music companies should do, what courts should do, and what legislators should do.
So this is a good time to say, once more, in public, with emphasis, that open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints is fundamentally different from free online access to music files, despite one obvious similarity.
What makes music swapping interesting is that most musicians don't consent to it and most file swappers don't seem to care. But I don't want to talk about that, really, except as a contrast to the situation with journal articles. Scientists and scholars *do* consent to publish their journal articles without payment. This has been the rule in science and scholarship since 1665 when the first science journals were launched in London and Paris. Scholarly monographs and textbooks are different, because authors can hope for royalties. For the same reason, most music, film, and software are different. But journal articles are special. Music companies and music lovers would call them peculiar.
The fact that scholars eagerly submit articles to journals that don't pay for them, even journals that demand that authors sign away their copyright, is probably the best-kept secret about academic publishing among non-academics. It's the fact that simultaneously explains the beauty of open access and the mistake of "Napster for science".
This peculiarity of journal articles should draw some of the public attention generated by music swapping. Defenders and critics of music swapping should both hear this intelligence and say, "Really? Scholars do all that work researching and writing, and then give it away to some journal? Either you're lying or free online access to journal articles is completely different from free online access to music." But instead, we tend to hear the opposite. Most people disregard this difference as trifling or technical and equate consensual open access with unconsensual Napsterism.
If "Napster for science" communicates the basic free-of-price idea to a larger public, then isn't it a useful phrase? The answer is No! It's true that music swapping is about free online access to content. That's the important similarity. But it's equally about an army of content creators who resist free online access. It may be about freedom, but it's also about copyright infringement. Careful writers, with careful readers, could successfully compare open access with the first feature of Napsterism and contrast it with the second. But why bother? It's much more effective to define open access in its own right than to yoke it to the better-known but different concept and then try to undo the confusion that results.
Copyrighted scholarship does not face the same mass infringement that copyrighted music does. And yet, like copyrighted music, most copyrighted scholarship is locked away behind economic, legal, and technical barriers. You might think it's ripe for a real Napster attack. But nobody advocates this, least of all the open-access movement. Open access proponents know that the peculiar legal standing of journal articles makes free online access possible without infringement. The simple, sufficient reason is consent. When authors and copyright holders consent to open access, there is no infringement.
With sex, we have no trouble seeing that consent is critical. Sex with the consenting is one of life's great goods. Sex with the unconsenting is a crime. If the public could see this fundamental distinction behind forms of online access and file swapping, then open-access proponents could welcome the comparison to Napster. It would show open access in the best light. "You know that kind of free online access to music that makes most musicians and all studios hopping mad? How cool would it be if they consented to it? Imagine that. That's open access."
Open access is free access by and for the willing. There is no vigilante open access, no infringing, expropriating, or piratical open access.
Of course I'm not saying that all journals consent to open access. Most don't. I'm saying that academic authors consent to write and publish their research articles without payment. The consent to relinquish payment is directly connected to the consent to open access. Musicians would either lose revenue from open access or fear that they would. That's why most don't consent to it. But because scholars have already relinquished income from articles, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from open access.
We can go further. Scholars don't just consent to relinquish payment and copyright. They are eager to publish --at least journal articles-- even on these harsh terms. Nothing shows more clearly that they write journal articles for impact or influence, not revenue. Their interest lies in making a contribution to knowledge, partly for its own sake and partly because advancing knowledge will advance their careers. This explains why open access serves their interests, and why limiting access to paying customers (the traditional model in scholarly publishing and the RIAA model for music) would violate their interests.
Music swapping was practiced in the age of vinyl, but it took digital music and the internet to make it widespread. It's widespread now because something unexpectedly good happened, not because some creeping criminal malice overtook tens of millions of people. We graduated from the age of vinyl in two stages, first by recording music in bits, and then by creating a worldwide network of bit-swapping machines. This was revolutionary progress from every point of view. Now that we can make perfect copies and distribute them at virtually no cost to a worldwide audience, we should find ways to seize this beautiful opportunity, make it lawful, and enjoy the new access to information that it makes possible.
The RIAA and commercial journal publishers both have reason to fear that the internet will make them unnecessary. They both respond to this fear by making their products harder to use, less accessible, and more expensive, which is surely perverse. The RIAA has now gone even further, trying to intimidate users and make them afraid to take advantage of the power of the internet. If it wins, then digital technology will be like sex in the Victorian age. Virtue will be construed as resistance to all the beautiful temptations. This will chill advances even to the consenting.
I know that some fraction of music swapping carries the artist's consent and encouragement. These artists consent to free downloads because for them (as Tim O'Reilly put it in another context) invisibility is worse than infringement. So while most musicians fear losing revenue from open access, some don't. While most don't consent to it, some do. This fact upsets the digital Puritanism of the RIAA and blurs the moral lines it has tried to draw for music swapping.
It may be that open access to music will increase net sales, and that most musicians below the top ranks of superstardom will profit from it. I'm in no position to say. But it is clear that the RIAA is engaged in self-serving oversimplifications about both the economic interests of musicians and the truth about copyright. The comparison to open access helps us draw at least one lesson: copying digital files is *not* theft. It's only unlawful when the files are copyrighted and when the copyright holder refuses consent. But many files are in the public domain, and many carry the copyright holder's consent to free or open access. This is true for growing bodies of both music and scholarship. This is more than lawful; it's wonderful.
News coverage of the RIAA's 261 lawsuits
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=riaa+261* Postscript. In my view, Phase One of the open-access movement is to secure open access to journal articles and their preprints. They're the easiest case or low-hanging fruit because their authors already consent to write and publish them without payment.
However, we should imagine a Phase Two in which we persuade authors and artists who do not currently consent to reconsider. Ripe for persuasion are authors of scholarly monographs, who rarely earn royalties and, even when they do, would benefit far more from the wide audience than the meager checks. Also in this category are programmers who might shift from priced to open source code. Novelists might be persuaded by the experience of the Baen Free Library that the free online availability of the full-text stimulates more sales than it kills. Finally, it might include musicians who decide, with Janis Ian, that free access, wide recognition, and good will generate more sales than high-priced invisibility.
We can also imagine a Phase Three in which we enlarge and protect the public domain by rolling back copyright extensions, establishing the first-sale doctrine for digital content, restoring fair-use rights denied by DRM, and letting federal copyright law preempt state contract or licensing law. While all these steps would be advances for the free flow of information, copyright reform is unnecessary for open access. All we need is consent. All we need for the bulk of science and scholarship is Phase One. All we need for music is Phase Two.
If all we need is consent, and our idea is a worthy one, then all we need is a chance to spread the word about it. We should be able to bootstrap this good idea into reality by explaining, educating, and persuading. Spread the word. (How cool is that?)
* PPS. Does anyone know an online directory of *open-access music* --MP3 files that are lawful to download and share because the copyright holder has consented? Note that services like Apple iTunes that offer lawful downloads, for pay, don't count.
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The new ERIC
This month marks the beginning of the end of ERIC's 16 topical clearinghouses. In mid-October, the Department of Education will hire the company or organization that will replace the clearinghouses and offer fewer services, though perhaps with greater efficiency. After the contract is signed, the clearinghouses will be phased out. By the end of the year, they will either be gone or no longer supported by ERIC.
ERIC is the world's largest educational database. Launched in 1966, it ties with Medline as the oldest open-access resource. It gets about 70 million hits a month from more than 10 million distinct users. It's managed by the Resource Sharing and Cooperation Division of the National Library of Education, but ultimately sponsored by the Department of Education. The 16 clearinghouses are hosted by 16 distinct universities, research centers, and professional associations. With the help of the topical clearinghouses, ERIC indexes 962 journals, and hosts 1.2 million records. Staff members from the clearinghouses personally answer 150,000 phone calls and emails every year.
I talked to Kate Corby about ERIC on September 18. Kate is the Education and Psychology Reference Librarian at the Michigan State University Libraries and a leader in the campaign to save ERIC from evisceration.
PS: Has the "mid-October" contract been awarded yet? If not, do we know anything about the contenders?
KC: I do not believe it has been awarded yet. There is no way to know who the contenders are, but informally I have heard of several possibilities. The folks at EDRS (Eric Document Reproduction Service) were considering putting in a bid, and so was Aspen Systems, another current ERIC support contractor. There was also a rumor that a few of the current clearinghouses were banding together to put in a bid, but they weren't saying who. That's all I've heard.PS: Even if we don't know the identity of the new contractor, do we know roughly what kind of entity it will be and what it will do?
KC: That's a question I've asked too. One of the Clearinghouse directors told me it was unlikely to be a major commercial database supplier. It's more apt to be a current government contractor. Seems working with the government is a real hassle, forms to fill out, stacks of paper to read, minute detailed instructions to follow. Any major service provider with a large number of customers to handle wouldn't want to be bothered. A real learning curve if you're not already doing it.PS: In a nutshell, what did the clearinghouses do?
KC: They gathered together experts in one area of education and then shared their knowledge. Part of it was indexing journal articles and finding and indexing ERIC Documents. But they also had an outreach function. They published booklets and ERIC Digests to help people wade through the huge amounts of information. They set up 800 numbers and email referral services and Web pages to help people find the information they wanted. What they didn't do, which is now considered imperative, is tell people what was "right" or "true." With the "What Works Clearinghouse" the government is going to evaluate research reports and publicly say whether they used good methodology, whether the findings are reliable, whether other studies support the conclusions, etc.PS: How well will the new centralized service do the work formerly done by the separate clearinghouses?
KC: That's a loaded question. No one can say how well a new unknown contractor will perform. What is clear is that the Statement of Work does not demand the same services from the new contractor that current contracts demand from the Clearinghouses. There will be a Steering Committee and a group of Content Experts who will guide the contractor in choosing items for the database. They cannot possibly provide the level of expert input that the Clearinghouse network provided. They will have input only at the big picture level, not day to day operations. But then there will be no attempt to help people use the database or find information. I expect that folks needing research help will be referred to "What Works" where they can be led to the "right" resources. (Forgive me but the librarian in me really dislikes this part.)
In some of the things I've read, it's almost a duplication of the IRS tax forms program. The IRS just decided one year that libraries would hand out the tax forms. Didn't ask first, just decided. It does sound like a good idea, and mostly we've risen to the challenge. But now libraries have these annual paper nightmares and angry patrons who don't understand why we can help them find other types of information, can even give them access to many tax guides, but can't just help them do their taxes. This is similar. Dr. Whitehurst has said that folks having research problems should go to their library and ask the librarian for help. I'm flattered, I've seen some of the literature that says that if librarians want respect then they ought to be willing to step up to the plate and take responsibility for providing expert access to information. I think Dr. Whitehurst's confidence in us is good, I'm glad to see it. But where do I go if the question is above my head? In the past I went to the clearinghouses, now there will be nowhere (except "What Works"). Is it scary on an absolute scale, or just because it's change?PS: Will any services free under ERIC become priced or for-fee under the new ERIC?
KC: No just the opposite. The sole silver lining in this ERIC cloud. The ERIC documents currently delivered for a fee will be freely accessible on the Web. Whether that means there will be fewer documents, or access problems due to disappearing files remains to be seen. But we will no longer have to pay for access.PS: What services will be dropped in the new ERIC?
KC: There is nothing in the Statement of Work that requires the contractor to distribute documents other than through links on the web page. They have to house the existing archive (but not distribute anything from it) and maintain an ongoing one. Also see discussion of Clearinghouses above for other changes.PS: Apart from saving taxpayers some money, are there any advantages to the new ERIC over the old?
KC: If you know that this will save money then you are already more knowledgeable about the changes than I. My understanding was that is was a zero sum game. Flat money, used differently. Money that would have paid for the clearinghouses will instead go into corporate coffers to pay for access to items chosen for posting on the web.PS: Did any private-sector organizations lobby for these changes?
KC: I haven't researched that question enough to feel comfortable giving a strong answer. Not that I've come across, but I haven't looked too deeply. This is the result of a change in culture at the Dept of Ed. See http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/reformers.htm#scientificPS: As you see it, what is the significance of this change?
KC: I had heard that these reformers were real true believers who had not really been all that highly respected in the field until they got Mr. Bush's ear. There are all kinds of discussions out their about this "scientific" research initiative and how unworkable it is in some areas of research. I think now that they are in power their focus is changing a bit as they hear all the objections to their proposals. If they want to stay in control they will have to meet the needs of the entire education community, not just their rather limited research focus. (I believe this is coming from a reading research background, but I'm getting rather far out on a limb here.)
There were several changes between the Draft and the final statement of work that suggested that in some respects librarian concerns were heard. There will be better indexing and more oversight, though not as good as the current database. Time will tell.PS: Thanks very much, Kate.
AskERIC
http://www.askeric.org/ERIC FAQ
http://www.eric.edu.gov/faq/faq.htmlThe ERIC reorganization plan (April 10, 2003)
http://www.eps.gov/spg/ED/OCFO/CPO/Reference-Number-ERIC2003/listing.htmlTimeline for ERIC reauthorization
http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/timeline.htmALA and ACRL comments on the reorganization plan (May 6, 2003)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H24915DE5What the ERIC clearinghouses have been
http://www.eric.ed.gov/sites/barak.html#1Fates of some of the individual clearinghouses
http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/clearinghouseplans.htmThe best pages for staying abreast of ERIC changes
http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/ebss/accesseric.htm (from EBSS)
http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/doe.htm (from Kate Corby)----------
Coming up later this month
Here are some important OA-related events coming up in October.
* On October 13, the Public Library of Science will publish the long-awaited and much-previewed first issue of its first journal, _PLoS Biology_. Expect a wave of publicity and conversation. Help the cause by pointing out the launch to colleagues. If you run an organization, consider writing a press release on why open access will help your organization, its members, and its mission. Be prepared to answer questions about open access and correct the usual misunderstandings.
PLoS
http://www.plos.org/index.html_PLoS Biology_
http://biology.plosjournals.org/* By mid-month, the US Department of Education will hire the organization to take the place of the 16 ERIC Clearinghouses. More on the ERIC transformation below, this issue.
* On October 22, the Berlin Declaration on open access will be released at the same conference that put the finishing touches on the draft.
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/program_prelim.html* Sometime this month PubMed will start to offer open commentary on its abstracts. Every abstract will link to a database of comments or annotations contributed by users. The Public Library of Science will host the commentary server.
PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/Proposal by David Eagleman and Alex Holcombe in _Nature_, 423 (May 1, 2003) p. 15
http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~eagleman/postit/* David Shulenburger will have an article in _Change_ magazine (not free online) arguing that federal law should require open access to all publications based on federally funded research. He previewed his argument on a SPARC/ACRL panel at the ACRL national conference April 12, 2003.
_Change_ Magazine
http://www.aahe.org/change/The April 12 SPARC/ACRL panel
http://www.arl.org/arl/acrl03.html* Notable conferences in October
Open Access to the Data and Results of the Sciences and Humanities
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/index.html
Berlin, October 20-22, 2003The Shifting Landscape of Public Data (sponsored by the Association of Public Data Users)
http://www.apdu.org/conf2003/Home.htm
Alexandria, Virginia, October 20-22, 2003Developing Countries Access to Scientific Knowledge
http://www.ejds.org/meeting2003/
Trieste, October 23-24, 2003The Next Generation of Access: OpenURL and Metasearch (two separate one-day conferences sponsored by NISO)
http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/MS-2003_workshop.html
Washington, D.C., October 29-30, 2003* Other OA-related conferences
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm* Postscript. I'd like to make this forward peek a regular feature of the newsletter. Unfortunately, while I have items for December '03 and January '04, and many of the months beyond, I have nothing but conferences for November '03. If you know of upcoming OA developments, preferably with approximate dates, please drop me a line. Before sending me conference information, check my conference page to see whether I already have it.
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News highlights and bibliography since the last issue
Most of these news items and literature citations are from the Open Access News blog, which I write with other contributors and update daily. I give both the item URL and blog entry URL so that you can read the original story as well as what I or another blog contributor had to say about it. I select only the most relevant and important items to include here.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html.....
New developments
* More on the WIPO meeting
Five major library groups wrote an open letter to WIPO protesting its cancellation of the meeting.
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/libraries2WIPO090403.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106279654977839491The same library groups wrote an open letter to the USPTO protesting its lame and inappropriate objections to the meeting.
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/libraries2PTO090403.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106279654977839491EFF created a web form allowing ordinary citizens to send a similar letter of protest to James Rogan, Director of the USPTO, and his boss, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans.
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2776
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106311043284434145The Consumer Project on Technology has now launched a web page on the WIPO meeting and the controversy about whether objections from the USPTO and Microsoft will sink it
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/openwipo.htmlDrew Clark reported on the controversy for _Technology Daily PM Edition_.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/133.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106286576716286509Frances Williams wrote a September 30 update for _Financial Times_, showing that there is still hope for the meeting.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P2BB21416* More on the database bill
On September 23, the House Judiciary Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee held joint hearings on this year's version of the perennial loser. It's now called the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriations Act.
Before the hearing, Andy Sullivan reported the background for Reuters.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=581&u=/nm/20030905/tc_nm/tech_database_dc&printer=1
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106289747808890621After the hearing, several reporters described how the bill was greeted with skepticism and sharp questions.
Andrea Foster for the _Chronicle of Higher Education_.
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2003/09/2003092401t.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106450134420371354Grant Gross for _Network World Fusion_.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0924congrquest.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106450134420371354Four major library groups sent an open letter opposing the bill to James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and Billy Tauzin (R-LA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/aallwash/lt09042003.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106315840322392964William Wulf's Congressional testimony against the bill is now online. Wulf is the president of the National Academy of Engineering and testified on behalf of all the National Academies as well as the AAU, the ALA, and the ARL.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R2F261B06
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106467670619786555Also see the ALA page on the bill.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?A27A224E5* On October 1, the NIH announced a doubling of its budget and an ambitious new "NIH Roadmap" for spending the new money. Part of the plan is a public collection of chemical compounds for testing and use by scientists, and an open-access database of the results of those tests.
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/sep2003/od-30.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106502009211883454* On September 30, after one year of operation, the MIT OpenCourseWare project had provided open access to all the course materials from 500 MIT courses.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5083840.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106492506406073354* On September 29, the Open Archives Initiative and Project RoMEO launched OAI-Rights, a project whose mission is to develop an extensible, OAI-compliant, machine-readable method of expressing rights about metadata and online content.
http://www.openarchives.org/news/oairightspress030929.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106488876931670297Also see the project white paper, describing its task and some technical issues.
http://www.openarchives.org/documents/OAIRightsWhitePaper.html* The Company of Biologists announced on September 29 that all three of its journals will offer a year-long experiment with open access starting in January 2004.
http://www.biologists.com/web/openaccess.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106483956619924199* Dan Gillmor's column for September 28 recognized the Open Access News blog as one of the "good guys" or "builders and problem solvers" on the web.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6881523.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106475302600434364* The open-access _Journal of Medical Internet Research_ announced an "Institutional Affiliates" program analogous to the BMC institutional memberships. The program allows institutions to buy processing fee waivers at a discount for their faculty.
http://www.jmir.org/support.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106501124169483987* Charles W. Bailey, Jr. now offers email subscriptions to his indispensable Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.
http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=sepw&A=1
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106452699407751761* The NSF has given a grant to Rutgers, the University of Washington, and Georgia Institute of Technology to develop Moving Image Collections, an open-access database of science-related moving images.
http://gondolin.rutgers.edu/MIC/text/general_info/mic_press.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106444718233781003* The Calicut Medical College Alumni Association launched _The Calicut Medical Journal_, India's second open-access medical journal.
http://www.calicutmedicaljournal.org/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106442401795962099* _Nature_ launched NatureEvents, a multidisciplinary, open-access database of scientific conferences, their programs, registration details, and presentations.
http://www.nature.com/nature-events/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106436607034609169* Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen donated $100 million to create the open-access Allen Brain Atlas.
http://www.brainatlas.org/content/press/news/09_16_03_PressRelease.asp
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106427211006627200* On September 25, the deadline passed for the EU solicitation of bids to research and write a report to be entitled, The Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe.
http://ted.publications.eu.int/static/doccur/en/en/128556-2003.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106417307192305711* The Lund Directory of Open Access Journals has added a counter to the front page. When I visited just now, it listed 540 journals in the directory.
http://www.doaj.org/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106414612556895116* The U.S. Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA) contains interactive, machine-readable data sets on the arts and cultural policy.
http://www.cpanda.org/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106407221597259828* India launched the Digital Library of India on September 8, an open-access archive starting with 27,000 ebooks.
http://www.dli.gov.in/home.htm
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2003/103091603.asp
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106381723123854742The library is part of the Universal Digital Library project, which seeks to provide open access to one million books by 2005.
http://www.iiita.ac.in/research/udl.html* On September 17, the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) announced today that it would "secure the long-term digital archiving of all research published by BioMed Central".
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-09/bc-nlo091503.php
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106382044036473661* The New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) and The Berkeley Electronic Press (Bepress) have launched the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository, an open-access, OAI-compliant eprint archive serving the 25 law schools in the NELLCO consortium.
http://lsr.nellco.org/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106365367390620566* On September 15, arXiv added a new archive on quantitative biology.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030930/03/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106497640376766508* PubMed is adding 1.5 million links to OLDMEDLINE.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so03/so03_oldmedline.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106364318794947128* The open-access archive, Computer Access to Research on Dietary Supplements (CARDS), now links to PubMed.
http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/23436-1.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106356644013958445* Harvard Law School is seeking funds to complete its open-access archive on the Nuremberg Trials.
http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?DI=1&text=overview
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106347186225372445* A Dutch court ruled that it is lawful to link to copyrighted content online without the copyright holder's consent.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5072581.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106310931120945063* The Internet Archive added a search engine.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030908-1.shtml
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106304236522827051* The Public Knowledge Project released version 1.1.5 of Open Journal Systems, its open-source software for journal management.
http://pkp.ubc.ca/ojs/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106294117158842748* DSpace released a list of the features it plans to add to version 1.2.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/127.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106279746264508284* The university libraries of Cornell, Göttingen, and Michigan launched a distributed, open-access digital library of important historical monographs in mathematics.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/mathbooks/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106276549608255200For more background, see Allyn Jackson's detailed account in the _Notices of the AMS_, 50, 8 (September 2003) pp. 918-923.
http://www.ams.org/notices/200308/comm-jackson.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106397322047233029* On September 9 the European Parliament released a report examining the EU's first year under the policy of public access to government documents.
http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe/1?204&OIDN=1506174
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106417884141925161* Elsevier posted some business data online that allowed us to calculate that articles in ScienceDirect were downloaded an average of 28 times each during the past year. Jan Velterop of BioMed Central reports that the average for BMC article was downloaded 2,500 times during the same period, 89 times the Elsevier number.
http://www.investis.com/reedelsevierplc/data/interims2003b.ppt
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106276332667919229Also see this discussion thread on the American Scientist forum on this comparison, which is admittedly crude.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2997.html* On July 3, the entire editorial board of _Labor History_ (published by Taylor & Francis) resigned in protest over the journal's high subscription price and lack of editorial independence. The same editors then launched _Labor_ with non-profit Duke University Press.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/140.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a10632869177830865SPARC assisted in the launch.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/SPARC press release
http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=f75Also see my list of similar declarations of independence.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#declarations.....
New bibliography
* Anon., "The Digital Repository Comes of Age", _NLII Annual Review: The New Academy_, 2003, pp. 21-23. More on repositories of learning objects than repositories of research articles.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/NLI0364.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106397465425333783* Declan Butler, "Open-access row leads paper to shed authors", _Nature_, 425, 334 (25 September 2003) p. 334. On a dispute between PLoS co-founder Pat Brown and the _New England Journal of Medicine_.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/157.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106459507147292208* Alex Byrne, "Digital libraries: barriers or gateways to scholarly information?" _The Electronic Library_, 21, 5 (2003) pp. 141-421.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y3B3216E5
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106347501888532881* T. A. Callister, Jr. and Nicholas C. Burbules, "Just Give It To Me Straight: A Case Against Filtering the Internet", an undated eprint, probably a preprint.
http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/ncb/papers/straight.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106381852214238610*Cathy Davidson, "Understanding the Economic Burden of Scholarly Publishing", _Chronicle of Higher Education_, October 3, 2003. On the publishing crisis in the humanities, which differs in interesting ways from that in the STM fields.
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i06/06b00701.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106458333634317857On October 2, The _Chronicle_ hosted an online colloquy on the issues raised by Davidson's article.
http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2003/10/publishing/chat.php3
(A transcript of the colloquy will be available at the same URL.)Also see the comments on Davidson's article from several scholar-bloggers.
http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000580.html
http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/archives/000280.html
http://chun.typepad.com/chun/2003/09/scholarly_publi.html
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002312.html* Elizabeth Gadd, Charles Oppenheim, and Steve Probets, "The Intellectual Property Rights Issues Facing Self-archiving: Key Findings of the RoMEO Project", _D-Lib Magazine_, September 2003.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/gadd/09gadd.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106381047472445341* Daniel Gardner et al., "Towards Effective and Rewarding Data Sharing", _Neuroinformatics_, 1, 3, (2003). (Free registration required.)
http://www.humanapress.com/DownloadFreeArticle.asp?acode=NI:1:3:289&fn=1-3-289-296.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106415420687225598* Stevan Harnad, "On the Need To Take Both Roads to Open Access", essay posted to the AmSci Forum, September 5, 2003.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2995.html* Bernadine Healy, M.D., "Power to the People!" _US News and World Report_, September 8, 2003.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030908/opinion/8healy.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106269911684290936Also see this critical response to Healy by David Rothman.
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2003_08_31_archive.html#106266778349045262
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106272588777688872* National Institute of Mental Health, "Data Sharing Publications and Reports", a bibliography with links from _Neuroinformatics_. Last updated September 22, 2003.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/neuroinformatics/selectedpub.cfm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106415420687225598* Felicia Lee, "The Academic Industrial Complex", _New York Times_, September 6, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/arts/06UNIV.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106286512413514481* Katja Mruck, "Four Years of Publishing FQS as an Example for Social Science Open Access Journals", FQS, 4, 3 (September 2003). An editorial in FQS.
http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-03/3-03mruck-e.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106510049349381377* Stephen Pinfield and Hamish James, "The Digital Preservation of e-Prints", _D-Lib Magazine_, September 2003.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/pinfield/09pinfield.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_14_fosblogarchive.html#a106381090382834732* Privacy International and the GreenNet Education Trust, "Silenced: an international report on censorship and control of the Internet", September 19, 2003.
http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/censorship/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106417750552861427* Roy Rosenzweig, "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era", _American Historical Review_, June 2003.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/scarcity.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106272815244507855* Douglas Steinberg, "Anatomy Goes Digital", _The Scientist_, September 22, 2003.
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2003/sep/research2_030922.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106415420687225598* The Wellcome Trust, "Economic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing". The cover date is January 2003, but the report was released October 1, 2003.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/scipub/index.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106487043074013454* The proceedings from the 2rd ECDL Workshop on Web Archives (Trondheim, Norway, August 21, 2003) are now online.
http://bibnum.bnf.fr/ecdl/2003/index.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_08_31_fosblogarchive.html#a106286503174435978* The presentations from the Oxford retreat, Authors to Readers: Who Are We Serving? How? and How Well? (July 24-26, 2003) are now online.
http://digital.casalini.it/retreat/retreat_2003.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106467621220570090* The presentations from a meeting at the Bibliothèque nationale de France on digitization and sharing (Marseilles, July 3, 2003) are now online.
http://www.bnf.fr/pages/infopro/cooperation/po_2003.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_28_fosblogarchive.html#a106509971738997861* _Open Access Now_ published an issue on September 8
http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_07_fosblogarchive.html#a106315627378895622...and another on September 22.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2003_09_21_fosblogarchive.html#a106424749265105689----------
Housekeeping
* I've added 18 new conferences to my conference page since the last issue. Tomorrow 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.htmI've also adopted new policy on the conference page. When I add a new conference, the two asterisks that mark it will stay put until one day after the next issue of the newsletter. My old policy was to delete the second asterisk after 1-3 weeks with regard to the next issue of the newsletter.
* I've added titles to the individual entries on the Open Access News blog. Thanks to Mark Pilgrim, the titles (plus dates and bylines) are now reflected in the RSS feed.
==========
This is the SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN), 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.
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http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.htmlPeter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
peters@earlham.eduSOAN is an open-access publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Users may freely copy, distribute, and display its contents, but must give credit to the author. To read the full license, visit
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