Open Access News

Five Yale students have launched a web site on OA at Yale.  The site includes a proposed OA mandate modeled on the policies at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT.  It also includes the results of 17 faculty interviews about OA.  (The results show that many of the usual fears and misconceptions have not yet been answered for these 17.)  From the sub-page on Open Access at Yale:

...Nabiha Syed, a student at Yale Law School, began working on implementing an Open Access program at YLS. However, complications arose. One of the major problems is consciousness of OA, of which there seems to be none. Another problem was that a new law school dean needs to be found before any progress or actions could be made. When the new dean is chosen, Syed plans to bring the plan back to the table and hold a faculty vote. She also plans on getting the opinion of the editors-in-chief of various law school journals.

Jason Eiseman, the Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School, pointed to a few technologies that Yale is toying with, but admitted that there was no real effort towards Open Access. One example is CONTENTdm, a digital collection management software. Yale Library has started putting up certain texts, images, and archives of the Yale Daily News....

Yet, however much actions like CONTENTdm are opening up Yale's resources, they are not Open Access when it comes to the stuff coming out of our departments every day. Much of scholarly research done by people at Yale is held under permission-and-fee. Only the scientists whose research is funded by the National Institutes of Health have an incentive (in the form of NIH requirements) to make their research free and open to any and all.

Yale has instituted the Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure, headed by Meg Bellinger of the Yale University Library. One of the office's goals is: "Ensuring faculty and researchers get needed institutional support for the deposit, retrieval and preservation of their publications and research." This office, which has a committee under the Provost's Office, is in charge of the future of Yale's open programs, including open educational resources and Open Yale Courses. They must be at the front of any efforts for serious Open Access programs at Yale.

Update (5/12/09).  This is the five students' final project for IP in the Digital Age, a course taught by Elizabeth Stark.  But the project will continue when the course ends.