Open Access News

I just mailed the November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at a few threads in the argument that knowledge is and ought to be a public good.  The roundup section briefly notes 223 OA developments from October.

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The Association of American Universities yesterday posted a series of documents relating to a previously-unpublicized effort by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology. From the proposal, Roundtable on Public Access to Federal Research and Data:

... The House Science and Technology Committee, which has oversight of the federal civilian R&D enterprise, has a strong interest in [the question of public access]. The Committee seeks to convene a Roundtable of the key stakeholders to explore and develop an appropriate consensus regarding access to and preservation of federally funded research information that addresses the needs of all interested parties.

The progress of science and technology is very dependent on:

1. The wide dissemination of research results and data from which new science is born;
2. A peer review system that ensures the quality and integrity of scientific research results and analyses; and
3. Preservation and access to the archive of historic and current research results.

The federal government is an important funder of basic and applied research in the United States. As a result of this stewardship, the government should provide resources and establish policies where appropriate to facilitate access to scientific data and publications and preserve an accessible record to both entities. In doing so, the government must take into account the important role of the private sector in this enterprise. ...

To this end, a Roundtable forum is proposed to discuss these issues. ... Participants will be asked to contribute their expertise and proposed solutions on the respective role of the federal government, libraries, institutional repositories and the scholarly publishers on the topics of access and preservation of the results of federally funded research. ...

The total number of participants will be limited (to approximately 10) in order to facilitate the scheduling and productivity of the meetings. The initial roundtable meeting will be chaired by representatives of the House Science and Technology Committee with appropriate support and advice from staff in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Roundtable participants will be selected by the S&T Committee based on their interest and expertise on the issue. ...

To promote an open dialogue and exchange and to foster working toward a fair and balanced solution, participants will be at the table as knowledgeable individuals, but not as official representatives of their parent organizations. ... Participants will be asked to refrain from public disclosure of Roundtable deliberations until a consensus report has been completed. ...

The proposal is undated, but the status report states the roundtable was convened in "early summer 2009".

The AAU documents also include a list of participants and biographies of the roundtable members.

From the status report, dated October 29, 2009:

... In-person meetings and conference calls have taken place over the summer and early fall, with the goal of producing a consensus report containing views and recommendations before the end of the year. The Roundtable report will be submitted to the HSTC and OSTP and subsequently will be made widely available to all stakeholders as well as the broader public. Members of the Roundtable will be available for comment regarding the report after its public release. ...

Comment. Observers of American politics will know the central role of Congressional committees in policymaking. To date, two committees have given significant consideration to OA: the House Appropriations Committee, which passed the NIH mandate (and the earlier voluntary policy), and the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman introduced the anti-public access Fair Copyright in Research Works Act and which held a hearing on the bill. (FRPAA was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, but that committee has not held a hearing on that bill in either its current or previous form. In addition, questions about OA have occasionally been asked of executive branch officials and nominees in their oversight committees.) Noticeably absent from that list, as I've previously noted, are committees with jurisdiction over science or education -- arguably the committees best suited to consider policies issues facing the research community and higher education. This effort changes that.

In addition, the involvement of the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first significant public engagement of the Obama White House with OA. (The Bush White House expressed mild concern about the NIH mandate, but ultimately signed a bill containing the measure.)

Accordingly, this process has the opportunity to shape discourse about public access in a major way. Unfortunately, since it's secret, we don't have much to go on until the recommendations are released and the participants' vow of silence is lifted.

At first glance, the proposal itself is fairly even-handed. The biggest criticism I can level so far is that, while presuming increased access to be beneficial, it fails to ask the crucial question of what exactly are the benefits of access and the costs of lack of access. Nevertheless, the proposal counters two claims sometimes heard from (or implied by) opponents of OA: that greater access is not necessary (e.g. that benefits from OA would be negligible) and that government has no proper role in access and preservation.

There's also the question of focus. This roundtable was tasked with considering access and preservation to publications and data from federally-funded research, rather than a narrower focus only on peer-reviewed article manuscripts. While other types of documents should be considered, that shouldn't distract from a swift recommendation for a FRPAA-style mandate.

In tagging the documents for the OATP, Peter remarks, "Is the membership list balanced? Read it and decide for yourselves." Of course, the theory behind this arrangement is that members will check their agendas at the door and work together as unbiased experts, so "balance" wouldn't matter. We'll only learn later (if ever) if practice followed theory in this case.

Update. Post title revised to more accurately reflect the essence of the matter.

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... [T]he University [of Virginia] Faculty Senate is considering a resolution that would require all faculty members to retain the rights to enter their academic articles into a publicly accessible University repository. The proposed policy — which will be voted on at the Senate’s Nov. 20 meeting — brings with it larger debates and concerns about open access and preservation issues. ...

The resolution applies only to scholarly articles and does not extend to books or works of art, [education professor Brian Pusser] said.

The proposed policy also includes a waiver process, which allows faculty to opt out if they cannot complete an addendum with the publisher, Pusser said. ...

Members of the task force are currently gathering information from faculty about the resolution, conducting dialogues with faculty and making presentations to various departments and schools around Grounds, Pusser said. ...

[Faculty Senate Chair Ann] Hamric said faculty members also may find out about the policy through the Faculty Senate Web site, which has posts of the resolution, a section of frequently asked questions and a letter from Madelyn Wessel, University associate general counsel and Senate Task Force member. ...

Some faculty members, however, have raised questions about the Senate’s copyright resolution because of the waiver process and whether the policy will create obstacles for faculty, Pusser said. ...

English Prof. David Vander Meulen, editor of the journal Studies in Bibliography, supports the resolution’s aims of “[disseminating] scholarship more widely, and [giving] authors greater rights to their own writing,” but he believes that “the current proposal ignores some key components in scholarly publishing,” according to an e-mail.

The exorbitant subscription fees for scientific, medical and technological journals were an important impetus for the proposal, Vander Meulen said, but different circumstances apply to other disciplines. ...

“If the University of Virginia fails to do this, it’s going to be a huge embarrassment to our faculty,” [media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan] said. “Faculties at every major research university in the country are considering this and almost all of them are going to pass it, and Harvard and MIT have led the way. We would be holding ourselves out as champions of the 18th century, if we hold back from this.” ...

Hamric ... was unwilling to speculate about the outcome of the vote, though she said she hopes the resolution passes.

“A number of our colleagues have given a great deal of time to understanding this issue,” she said, “and those are the people that are the most convinced that we need to do this and I take that seriously.” ...

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... At Madurai Kamaraj University, an Open Access Repository using E-prints has been initiated at a School level and will be expanded to the whole University as part of its open access initiatives.

As indicated by the Vice-Chancellor of MKU, the University plans to go for a green open access policy. This will mandate its faculty to deposit their publicly funded research publications including student thesis, dissertations, faculty seminar presentations, journal publications into the open access repository.

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Trinity University’s faculty members today endorsed a measure to allow them to bypass some publication restrictions while sharing their scholarly research with the broader academic community.

Trinity becomes the first small, primarily undergraduate liberal arts institution to pass such a measure, known as Open Access. ...

The new Open Access policy also would enable Trinity professors to post the author’s version of the article in a freely-accessible digital repository. Such a repository already exists as part of the Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository, a collaboration among Trinity and other private liberal arts colleges, including Carleton College, Bucknell University, Grinnell College, University of Richmond, St. Lawrence University, and Whitman College. ...

The vote sends a message from Trinity to other primarily undergraduate institutions to act regarding the future of the publishing world, [economics professor Jorge G. Gonzalez] said. ...

Trinity’s Faculty Senate approved the proposal in late September. The vote by the full faculty on Friday, Oct. 23 was taken at an assembly during International Open Access Week. ...

... Each Faculty member grants to the President and Board of Trustees of Trinity University limited use of his or her scholarly articles. An article is defined here as a scholarly work published in a journal or as an independent chapter of a multi-authored book. ... [T]he policy applies only to works for which the author does not retain full copyright. Faculty members are allowed to opt out of this policy for any reason. ...

While faculty members are encouraged to publish their scholarly work in the most prestigious journals, when Open Access journals of equal quality are available, faculty members should give strong consideration to them. Faculty members are also encouraged to explore opportunities to retain copyright of their works regardless of the ultimate publication venue.

Each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the final version of the article, through a website established for this purpose, at no charge to the Open Access Faculty Committee. ... Each article will be embargoed until it has appeared either in print or on-line at the publisher’s web site, whichever comes first.

The Open Access Faculty Committee will be a standing university committee, appointed by the President with the assistance of the Faculty Senate. The Open Access Faculty Committee will be responsible for implementing and interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to time. The policy will be reviewed after three years and a report presented to the Faculty. ...

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The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya recently adopted its Política institucional d’accés obert. The document was approved by the university's Consell de Govern on October 7. Because I don't speak Catalan, I can't tell whether the policy is an exhortation or a mandate (Google translates the relevant phrase as "calls upon") to deposit in the university's IR.

If you know more, please contact me.

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UK Department for International Development, This is Open Access Week, press release, October 19, 2009.

... DFID-funded research is publicly funded and essentially constitutes a global public good. DFID supports Open Access as a core component of its research commitment to ensure that research knowledge can be accessed, built upon and used in support of the objectives of the DFID Research Strategy. Research for Development (R4D) is an Open Access digital portal for DFID-funded research and DFID expects the research programmes it funds to make full use of the R4D repository. For more information, see the Research Programme Consortia: Guidance Note on Open Access.

A recent scoping study has looked at how DFID Research can develop an open access policy that will lead to greater public access to the research outputs it finances. Read the report 'Towards a DFID Research Policy on Open Access' and see the presentation based upon this report.

From the Guidance Note on Open Access, dated June 2009:

... DFID recognises the immense benefits that scientific and social science knowledge can have in addressing poverty, and expects the research it funds to benefit researchers, policy makers and others globally, but in particular in developing countries. DFID recognises that Southern researchers, governments and civil society need better access to global public goods research to enable them to build upon and use this knowledge. ...

DFID will develop an Open Access policy with which DFID funded research programmes will be expected to comply in due course. ...

Ideally, all DFID funded research outputs should be Open Access, meaning that that the full text of any articles and technical reports resulting from DFID funding that are published in journals, conference proceedings or as working papers, whether during or after the funding period, should be deposited, at the earliest opportunity, in an appropriate Open Access repository, and also with DFID’s R4D, subject to compliance with publisher's copyright and licensing policies. Wherever possible, the article deposited should be the published version.

DFID will also encourage its research programmes to archive quantitative and qualitative primary data sets, resulting from the research it funds, with appropriate data archiving repositories. ...

The DFID Research Strategy Monitoring and Evaluation Framework includes indicators and scoring criteria against type of publications, which will include scores for Open Access publishing. ...

Peter Ballantyne, Towards a DFID Research Policy on Open Access, report, September 2009. Summary of recommendations:

1. Take a broad ‘open knowledge’ perspective. It is about more than journal articles.
2. In general:
   • Require systematic deposit of outputs and metadata in open archiving systems and repositories, including in a ‘UKPubDev Central.’ ...
   • Encourage use of ‘open licenses’ that recognize authorship and enable reuse. ...
3. For different categories of outputs:
   • Encourage publication in open access journals (or hybrid journals).
   • Provide funds for any open access charges. ...
   • Require that projects develop a data curation and accessibility plan. ...
4. In addition:
   • Adapt DFID research contracts to mandate these provisions.
   • Require each funding proposal to present an ‘accessibility plan’ or framework.
   • Include funds for open access in proposed budgets. ...
   • Support preferential access initiatives for developing countries.
   • Support open access journal publishing initiatives in developing countries.
   • Contribute to awareness raising efforts that explain open access and how it helps DFID and its partners achieve their scientific and developmental goals.
   • Engage other research funders. ...

Also see OpenR4DFID, a wiki with more information on the study.

See also our past post on R4D and DFID.

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In September, five American universities signed the Compact for Open-Access Publication Equity, pledging to support OA journals by paying author-side fees on behalf of their researchers. Of the signatories, Berkeley previously had an OA author fund; Harvard and Cornell announced new funds, leaving Dartmouth and MIT. Although we didn't cover it (and although the COPE site doesn't list it), it seems Dartmouth also announced an OA author fund at the same time; see this September 14 announcement:

... We have encouraged faculty to consider open access publishing. Now, the Provost’s Office and the Library have designated funds to support participation, on an exploratory basis. ...

A description of qualifying works and how to take advantage of this support will be forthcoming.

Another (undated) page provides information on Dartmouth's fund. The details are mostly the same as the Cornell and Harvard funds (the Dartmouth fund is slightly more restrictive in who is eligible for funding: only faculty and graduate students). Up to $3,000 per year is available per researcher, on a first-come first-served basis. A separate fact sheet indicates that the funding is provided by the Provost's Office and the Library, with initial funding of $20,000.

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The University has become the 100th university in the world to issue an Open Access mandate - to coincide with the first international Open Access Week.

Salford has now formally announced its intention to implement plans that will make free, easily accessible research knowledge available to a worldwide audience via the University of Salford Institutional Repository (USIR) portal. ...

For the last two years the University has been implementing systems to enable its research active staff to deposit their findings and research into the repository.

The University of Salford is pleased to now declare that from the 1 January 2010, it will be implementing a mandatory policy for all research active staff to deposit research information into the repository. This means that as of January 2010, the University of Salford will officially be an Open Access University.

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The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has adopted an OA mandate.  From today's announcement:

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has passed an Open Access policy that requires that all peer-reviewed research published by its scientists and staff in scientific journals be made publicly available online through its institutional repository. The new policy has been put in place by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the governing body that manages NCAR. A national lab, NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It has conducted research into the atmospheric sciences since 1960.

UCAR last month formalized the new policy and is developing an institutional repository known as OpenSky, which will include all published studies by NCAR and UCAR researchers in scientific journals. The repository will be free and available to the public, but access to the works it contains will depend upon the policies of their publishers. In support of copyright law and the health of the publishers that support NCAR and UCAR science, all publishing agreements will be honored. OpenSky will be managed by the NCAR Library and is expected to go live in 2010.

"This updated policy will support broader access to the cutting-edge research conducted at NCAR, covering climate, weather, air quality, and other areas vital to society and the environment," says Mary Marlino, the Director of the NCAR Library. "It is especially timely because it comes at a critical time for atmospheric science research. I can think of no better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of NCAR than to formalize our longstanding commitment to open science, open access, and open data." Marlino adds, "The policy that we have developed respects the policies that publishers self-set, and it is our intention to continue to honor publisher policy, while at the same time, to monitor developments in this fast evolving arena."

UCAR is a nonprofit corporation formed in 1959 by research institutions with doctoral programs in the atmospheric and related sciences. UCAR was formed to enhance the computing and observational capabilities of the universities and to focus on scientific problems that are beyond the scale of a single university. NCAR supports the UCAR mission by providing the university science and teaching community with the tools, facilities, and support required to perform innovative research....

Comments

• This policy is important because NCAR research is important.  More than 30 NCAR researchers participated in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. 
• The policy is also important for breaking the ice at the National Science Foundation (NSF).  NCAR is the first of the NSF's Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) to adopt an OA mandate.  Among the other FFRDCs are the Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.  The NSF itself doesn't yet have an OA policy, but in December 2008 it adopted a statement asserting that "the adoption of [an] open access policy for data, publications and software" is a "critical component" of the NSF vision for advanced cyberinfrastructure.  In September 2007, the final report from an NSF-JISC workshop asserted that "We strongly support the movement in both Europe and the United States to require open access to all papers that describe research supported by grants from the taxpayers."
• The announcement points to a UCAR page containing the policy itself, but the page isn't up yet.  It should be up early next week.

Update (10/19/09).  The NCAR policy is now online.

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SPARC, Student coalition for Open Access solidifies, now represents over 5 million students internationally, press release, October 15, 2009.

The student Right to Research Coalition, a group of national, international, and local student associations that advocate for governments, universities, and researchers to adopt Open Access practices, has now grown to include some of the most prominent student organizations from the United States and across the world. The recent addition of 8 new organizations brings the number of students represented by the coalition to over 5 million, demonstrating the broad, passionate support Open Access enjoys from the student community.

Additions to the coalition since its launch this summer include: the United States Student Association (USSA), the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS), the National Graduate Council of the Canadian Federation of Students, the International Association of Political Science Students, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council, the University of Minnesota Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, the University of Nebraska - Lincoln Graduate Student Association, and the Student Government Association of St. Olaf College.

“Our core mission is to protect and enhance students’ access to education,” said Angela Peoples, USSA’s Legislative Director, noting her organization’s motivation for joining the coalition. “We believe Open Access plays a crucial role in ensuring that all students have access to the academic research on which their education depends.”

The United States Student Association, the largest American student organization, is already taking steps to tap its vast network of student activists for this important cause. Likewise, the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, the premier American graduate student advocacy organization, has made Open Access a top legislative priority and recently lobbied over two-dozen Congressional offices in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act. ...

Also see NAGPS' resources on FRPAA:

• White paper for legislators
• Background information on FRPAA and OA

See also our past posts on the Right to Research campaign.

Disclosure: I have been a paid consultant on the Right to Research campaign.

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On October 1, 2009 librarians and archivists at York University Libraries voted unanimously to adopt the following policy: ...

Policy Statement: Academic librarians and archivists at York University commit to making the best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works. They will endeavour to secure the right to self-archive their published materials, and will deposit these works in YorkSpace [the university's IR].

The York University academic librarian and archivist complement grant York University Libraries the non-exclusive right to make their scholarly publications accessible through self-archiving in the YorkSpace institutional repository subject to copyright restrictions.

Guidelines: This policy applies to all scholarly and professional work produced as a member of York University academic staff produced as of the date of the adoption of this policy. Retrospective deposit is encouraged. Co-authored works should be included with the permission of the other author(s). Examples of works include:

• Scholarly and professional articles
• Substantive presentations, including slides and text
• Books/book chapters
• Reports
• Substantive pedagogical materials such as online tutorials
• Works should be deposited in YorkSpace as soon as is possible, recognizing that some publishers may impose an embargo period.

This policy is effective as of 01/10/2009 and will be assessed a year after implementation. ...

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The Swedish Research Council announced today that it has adopted an OA mandate for its grantees. From a translation of the press release by Ingegerd Rabow:

The Swedish Research Council requires free access to research results

In order to receive research grants the Research council requires now that researchers publish their material freely accessible to all. The general public and other researchers shall have free access to all material financed by public funding. ...

Researchers are required to guarantee that everything published shall be freely available according to to Open Access not later than six months after publication.

The Council's decision regarding Open Access has been taken in close cooperation with SUHF, the Association of Swedish Higher Education. ...

The Open Access-mandate covers so far only refereed journal articles and conference reports, not monographs and book chapters. The mandate will be included in the new grant conditions from 2010.

A page with more information (Google translation) notes that the Research Council signed the Berlin Declaration in 2005.

The Swedish Research Council is an arm of the Swedish Department of Education and Culture which funds research in humanities and social sciences, medicine, and natural sciences and engineering.

See also our past posts on the Swedish Research Council.

Update. An official English translation is now available.

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The Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries have been awarded $20 million from the [U.S.] National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a data research infrastructure for the management of the ever-increasing amounts of digital information created for teaching and research. The five-year award, announced this week, was one of two for what is being called “data curation.”

The project, known as the Data Conservancy, involves individuals from several institutions, with Johns Hopkins University serving as the lead and Sayeed Choudhury, Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center and associate dean of university libraries, as the principal investigator. ... The Hopkins-led project is part of a larger $100 million NSF effort to ensure preservation and curation of engineering and science data.

Beginning with the life, earth, and social sciences, project members will develop a framework to more fully understand data practices currently in use and arrive at a model for curation that allows ease of access both within and across disciplines. ...

In addition to the $20 million grant announced today, the Libraries received a $300,000 grant from NSF to study the feasibility of developing, operating and sustaining an open access repository of articles from NSF-sponsored research. Libraries staff will work with colleagues from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and the University of Michigan Libraries to explore the potential for the development of a repository (or set of repositories) similar to PubMedCentral, the open-access repository that features articles from NIH-sponsored research. This grant for the feasibility study will allow Choudhury’s group to evaluate how to integrate activities under the framework of the Data Conservancy and will result in a set of recommendations for NSF regarding an open access repository. ...

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I just mailed the October issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at ten challenges facing OA journals.  The roundup section briefly notes 177 OA developments from September. 

Update.  Correction:  I tried and failed to mail the October issue.  I'm having trouble with my ISP and can't send any email at all.  I'm sure it's temporary, and my ISP simply found the perfect time to let the gremlins out.  In the meantime you can read the online edition of the newsletter, which is identical to the email edition.

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Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) last week introduced the Open College Textbook Act (S. 1714). (Thanks to TechLaw.) The bill has two main parts:

• Authorizes $15 million for grants to develop open textbooks for college courses. The grants would be managed by the Department of Education, with a peer review process involving the National Science Foundation. Funding would be available to create new open textbooks, update existing open textbooks, or adapt traditional textbooks. The resulting works would have to be available OA: free online and under an open license.
• Requires that "educational materials such as curricula and textbooks created through grants distributed by Federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, for use in elementary, secondary, or postsecondary courses shall be licensed under an open license" and "made available free of charge".

Also see Durbin's press release on the bill.

Comment. Is this the first federal legislation to define "open license"?

See also our past posts on Sen. Durbin, or our past post on a similar piece of legislation in the House, the LOW COST Act.

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The University of Virginia Faculty Senate discussed how to make scholarly articles more accessible when it met Wednesday in the Rotunda Dome Room.

Edmund Kitch, a law professor, and Brian Pusser, a professor at the Curry School of Education and chairman of the senate's Task Force on Scholarly Publication and Authors' Rights, presented a draft resolution on open access to scholarship with the intention that senators vote on it at their November meeting.

Under the proposed resolution, U.Va. faculty members would assign to the rector and Board of Visitors "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, non-commercial global license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of her or his scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided the articles are not sold for profit."

The policy would apply to all scholarly articles written by faculty members while at U.Va., except pieces that were written before the policy is adopted and remain under "incompatible" licensing agreements. All other articles would be turned over to the provost's office in electronic form and made generally available no sooner than 12 months after their journal publication. ...

Madelyn Wessel, special adviser to the University librarian and a member of the task force, said the current resolution is based on a similar policy at Harvard University. ...

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Warna Oosterbaan, ‘Maak wetenschappelijke publicaties openbaar’, NRC Handelsblad, August 1, 2009. SPARC Europe today posted an English translation:

Scientists who receive subsidies from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) must make their scientific publications available on the internet. That is the view of prominent library directors and scientists. Minister Plasterk (Science, [Dutch Labor Party]) agrees with them on "the principle that all research funded by public money should be accessible to everyone."

Each year NWO distributes 550 million Euros of public money, being the main funder of scientific research in the Netherlands. ...

Bas Savenije, director general of the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, and former director of Utrecht University says "if health centres and GPs asked me 'can you give us access to recent scientific literature’ I must tell them that the scientific publishers do not allow us to. It would be wonderful if we were able to grant access to patient associations, college programmes, training centres and SMEs”. Savenije wants NWO to grant their subsidies on the condition that scientific publications are accessible. ...

NWO does not set the condition of public access. In other countries important research financiers do so ... NWO has made it known “in principle to be in favour of open access".

Plasterk is Minister for Education, Culture and Science in the current Dutch government.

Also see:

• Open Wetenschap, NRC Handelsblad blog, August 1, 2009. A pro-OA editorial on the newspaper's blog. (Google translation)
• Bernard Vandeginste, Open Access to Scientific Literature: Who takes the bill?, From Chemometrics to Genealogy, August 6, 2009.
• Letter from the International Association of STM Publishers to NRC Handelsblad, criticizing the newspaper's coverage and editorial

See also our past posts on Plasterk and NWO.

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... As of September 8, 2009, approximately 400 objections, briefs of amici curiae, and statements, both in support of and in opposition to the Settlement Agreement, have been filed with the Court. ...

In addition, as the Court is aware, the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has been investigating the proposed Settlement and other federal government agencies, including the U.S. Copyright Office in a hearing before the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, have publicly expressed views on the Settlement.

Last Thursday, September 17, 2009, plaintiffs and Google met with senior DOJ officials. In that meeting, the parties expressed their commitment to work with the DOJ regarding several concerns with the Settlement Agreement.

The next day, on September 18, 2009, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in response to this Court’s Order of July 2, 2009, filed a Statement of Interest of the United States of America Regarding Proposed Class Settlement (“U.S. Statement of Interest”). Of key importance is that the U.S. Statement of Interest confirmed the DOJ’s reciprocal desire to work with the parties to address concerns raised by the United States. ...

It is because the parties wish to work with the DOJ to the fullest extent possible that they have engaged, and plan to continue to engage, in negotiations in an effort to address and resolve the concerns expressed in the U.S. Statement of Interest. ...

Plaintiffs ... are uncertain, at this stage, whether any additional form of notice, however limited, might be required [for the amended settlement]. ...

Accordingly, because the parties intend to amend the Settlement Agreement and need adequate time to negotiate amendments among themselves and with the DOJ, plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court adjourn the Fairness Hearing scheduled for October 7, 2009.

Plaintiffs also respectfully request that the Court schedule a status conference, for the purpose of discussing the parties’ progress, on November 6, 2009, or at a date and time of the Court’s convenience. At that time, the parties expect that they will be prepared to present to the Court a schedule for further proceedings, including a Fairness Hearing, in this case.

Google has agreed that plaintiffs may represent that it does not oppose this motion.

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Canadians will soon have access to the latest health research findings with the launch of PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada). Building on the successful PubMed Central archive developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, PMC Canada will help accelerate the creation of knowledge and facilitate its use by providing a freely accessible, Canada-based archive of peer-reviewed health science literature.

PMC Canada is the result of a three-way partnership between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It will be part of the larger PubMed Central International network, which currently includes the U.S. PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central. ...

PMC Canada will support CIHR's Policy on Access to Research Outputs, which requires that all peer-reviewed publications resulting from CIHR funding be freely accessible online within six months of publication. This archive will provide CIHR researchers an outlet to deposit their peer-reviewed publications and allow them to reach a much broader audience, which has the potential to increase the value and impact of their research.

The first phase of PMC Canada will be launched during Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009. It will include a manuscript submission system to enable CIHR researchers to deposit articles that are accepted for publication by peer-reviewed journals. ...

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Following on the compact to support OA journals (which Cornell signed) and on Harvard's OA fund to implement it, Cornell is launching an OA fund.

George Lowery, New funds help faculty publish in open-access journals, Cornell Chronicle, September 15, 2009.

Cornell University Library and the Office of the Provost are contributing $25,000 each for a pilot program to pay publication fees in open-access journals for Cornell faculty, researchers, staff and students. ...

The Cornell Open-Access Publication (COAP) Fund will underwrite processing fees for scholarly peer-reviewed articles in open-access journals for which funds are not otherwise available. Cornell faculty, postdoctoral researchers, staff or student authors can apply for COAP funding of up to $3,000. ...

• The Cornell fund starts with a fixed amount ($50,000) and states that funding will be "first-come, first-served". (Harvard hasn't announced how much money it's committing.)
• The Cornell fund specifically calls itself as a "pilot project" with the possibility to be continued.
• Cornell encourages, but doesn't require, that the funded publication be deposited in a Cornell repository. (Harvard requires it.)

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On the heels of the Harvard-led compact to support OA journals:

Stuart Shieber, Harvard’s new open-access fund, The Occasional Pamphlet, September 15, 2009.

Harvard’s participation in the open-access compact is being managed by the Office for Scholarly Communication, which has set up an open-access fund—the Harvard Open-Access Publishing Equity (HOPE) fund—consistent with the compact. Through HOPE, Harvard will reimburse eligible authors for open-access processing fees. Initially, members of the four Harvard faculties—Arts and Sciences, Education, Government, and Law—that have formally adopted open-access policies will be eligible to make use of the fund, with other faculties becoming eligible as they develop open-access policies. More information about Harvard’s fund can be found at the OSC web site.

From the HOPE fund site:

Faculty, researchers, staff, and students may request reimbursement for articles connected with their research activities at [the eligible] schools. ...

Eligible fees must be based on a publication's standard fee schedule that is independent of the author's institution.

The venue of publication must be an established open-access journal, that is, a journal that does not charge readers or their institutions for unfettered access to the peer-reviewed articles that it publishes. Journals with a hybrid open-access model or delayed open-access model are not eligible. To be eligible, a journal must meet these additional requirements:

• Be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals,
• Be a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association or adhere to its Code of Conduct,
• Have publicly available a standard article fee schedule, and
• Have a policy to substantially waive fees in case of economic hardship.

We trust requesters to make appropriate decisions about the quality of the publication venue and the value of its services in relation to the fees it charges. ...

Articles for which alternative funding is available are not eligible for reimbursement. This includes articles funded by a gift or a grant from a granting agency, foundation, or other institution (including Harvard itself) that allows granted funds to be used for article processing fees ...

There is a nominal limit on the total reimbursement per article of $3,000, ...

[A]uthors may receive reimbursement for up to a total of $3,000 per academic year for all article processing fees. ...

[S]hould demand for funds exceed expectations, we may limit access to funds on a first-come-first-served basis. ...

You'll also need to make sure that you have deposited a copy of the article in the DASH repository before the reimbursement can be made. ...

See also this interview with Shieber from Harvard University Library Notes.

Comments. Kudos to Harvard for (again) putting its money where its mouth is.

• Tying eligibility for funding to the school's adoption of an OA policy, and to the individual's actual self-archiving of the funded article, are strong moves.
• The fund's requirements for journals are right-headed and reasonable.
• Including staff and students -- not just faculty -- in eligibility is laudable and forward-looking.

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A Compact for Open-Access Publication, press release, September 14, 2009.

Five of the nation's premier institutions of higher learning—Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley—today announced their joint commitment to a compact for open-access publication. ...

Since open-access journals do not charge subscription or other access fees, they must cover their operating expenses through other sources, including subventions, in-kind support, or, in a sizable minority of cases, processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal. While academic research institutions support traditional journals by paying their subscription fees, no analogous means of support has existed to underwrite the growing roster of fee-based open-access journals.

Stuart Shieber, Harvard's James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University's Office for Scholarly Communication, is the author of the five-member compact. According to Shieber, "Universities and funding agencies ought to provide equitable support for open-access publishing by subsidizing the processing fees that faculty incur when contributing to open-access publications. Right now, these fees are relatively rare. But if the research community supports open-access publishing and it gains in importance as we believe that it will, those fees could aggregate substantially over time. The compact ensures that support is available to eliminate these processing fees as a disincentive to open-access publishing."

The compact supports equity of the business models by committing each university to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open-access journal articles written by its faculty for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.

Additional universities are encouraged to visit the compact web site and sign on. ...

See also coverage by Library Journal, The Wired Campus, and Inside Higher Ed. More information:

• Of the initial compact signatories, only Berkeley previously had an OA fund. Berkeley's existing fund, though, was established as a pilot; at least three-quarters of the initial funding already have been obligated. The compact FAQ says that "the mechanisms developed by compact institutions would not be short-term, experimental deployments but programs with an expectation of continuity for multiple years."
• Of the initial compact signatories, only Harvard and MIT have mandatory self-archiving policies; only MIT's is university-wide. Stevan Harnad criticizes this as putting the cart before the horse. The compact FAQ notes that signatories may choose to place conditions on implementing the compact, such as "prior establishment of an open-access policy at the institution".
• According to the compact FAQ, the goal is to support journals that provide OA to all of their research: "hybrid open access journals ... would not be expected to be eligible". (Update. Note that the Berkeley fund currently includes hybrid journals.)
• In addition, the compact FAQ establishes a loophole for grant-funded research: "a compact institution may reasonably expect that ... the funding agency should be responsible for payment of the publication charge, and the article would not be eligible for underwriting by the institution whether or not the funding agency actually covers the particular charge."

See also our past post on this proposal.

Update. Harvard has launched an OA fund to implement its commitments under the compact.

Update. See also my comments:

... I don’t see why the compact couldn’t have been a commitment to fund OA journals in general rather than to fund publication charges at OA journals.

Update. Cornell launched an OA fund.

Update. See also further comments by Stevan Harnad (1, 2).

Update. Also see comments by Jason Baird Jackson and Philip Davis.

Update. Also see comments on Law Librarian Blog.

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26 rectors of Ukrainian universities endorsed the Olvia declaration of the Universities: Academic Freedom, University Autonomy, Science and Education for Sustainable Development at Olvia Forum 2009 (Livadia palace, Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine, June 12, 2009). Open access to research information is described in the Article 2.6:

Academic freedom includes open access to information (except reasonable exceptions specified by the law of Ukraine), including open access to research information through the development of open repositories and open access journals in the Universities, and ability to communicate freely with the peers in any part of the world.

Open access to information is a significant part of the research in today's globalised world, a key to further development of science, education and society, and Ukraine's integration into the global academic community.

From the Article 2.11 of the Action Plan on implementing the Olvia declaration of the Universities:

To practice open access to knowledge Universities and research organizations should:

• develop institutional polices and strategies on open access (free and unrestricted access to full text peer reviewed research results), provide access to, search and usage of the above mentioned works by the faculty to every internet user to increase scientific, social and economic impact of the research;
• launch and develop open institutional repositories and open access journals;
• encourage open use of this information for research and education. ...

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The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn't need "radical change," but may see some subtle shifts in emphasis, according to James A. Leach, the new chairman, who discussed his plans with Inside Higher Ed in this podcast interview. ...

Leach served in Congress for 30 years, representing an Iowa district as a Republican.

Among other topics he discussed:

• The importance of promoting public access to government records. He said that declassification systems shouldn't be used to delay the work of scholars, and that fewer documents should be classified in the first place. ...
• In discussions of digitization of scholarship and the push to require free online access to such work that receives federal support, Leach said he understands the importance of copyright, but that he leans "toward open access" and wants "maximum availability" of scholarship. ...

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I just mailed the September issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at the BMJ model of selling access to abridgments or summaries in order support full-text OA.

The roundup section briefly notes 154 OA developments from August.

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On 17 November 2008 the Rector set up a work group to prepare for the parallel depositing of research publications, the aim being to improve the open access to research publications at the University of Tampere. Led by Vice-Rector Arja Ropo, the work group completed its proposal on 30 March 2009 and on 31 March 2009 submitted its proposal to the Rector. ...

According to the proposal of the work group the Rector would

• request researchers working at the University as of 1 January 2011 to deposit copies of their research articles accepted for publication in scientific journals in the institutional repository provided by the University of Tampere and
• encourage researchers to deposit copies of their publications in the University’s repository before the Decision comes into force.

Research articles refers in this Decision to single articles to be published in scientific refereed journals, in the University’s own publication series, in conference publications or other compilations as covered by the KOTA [national research assessment] data collection obligation. The final publisher’s version of the article should be deposited in the repository or then the author’s last version of the article revised in response to referees’ comments. ...

The University of Tampere hereby undertakes to provide researchers with the support services required for parallel depositing (see Annex 1 of the Decision). The University of Tampere will endeavour to improve publication information systems and to design the process of depositing in a researcher-centred manner. ...

In addition to the research articles referred to in the Decision, other kinds of publications which may be stored in the open depository provided by the University of Tampere include popular articles, other published written texts, serial publications of University departments, teaching material and, if the publication agreements allow, also monographs.

People within the sphere of University of Tampere research not covered by the KOTA data collection obligation may also store their publications in the University repository. ...

Update: Harnad is no longer calling the policy a mandate.

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Librarians, legal scholars, authors, publishers, and technology companies today announced the formation of a coalition – the Open Book Alliance – that will counter the proposed Google Book Settlement in its current form. ...

“Just as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press more than 700 years ago ushered in a new era of knowledge sharing, the mass digitization of books promises to once again revolutionize how we read and discover books,” said Open Book Alliance co-chairs Peter Brantley and Gary Reback in a blog post. “But a digital library controlled by a single company and small group of colluding publishers would inevitably lead to higher prices and subpar service for consumers, libraries, scholars, and students.”

“The public interest demands that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be undertaken in the open, grounded in sound public policy, and mindful of the need to promote long-term benefits for consumers rather than those of a few commercial interests,” continued Brantley and Reback.

Brantley is a director of the non-profit Internet Archive and Reback is a noted antitrust attorney who serves of counsel at the firm Carr & Ferrell, LLP.

The Open Book Alliance will work to inform policymakers and the public about the serious legal, competitive, and policy issues in the settlement proposal. Members of the Alliance include:

• Amazon
• American Society of Journalists and Authors
• Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
• Internet Archive
• Microsoft
• New York Library Association
• Small Press Distribution
• Special Libraries Association
• Yahoo! ...

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... CBS and the faculty at CBS are committed to disseminating the results of its research and scholarship as widely as possible.

To fulfill that commitment CBS is adopting an Open access policy that provide[s] open access to full-text versions of all scholarly papers and articles written by its faculty. ...

As a consequence of this policy CBS faculty shall routinely grant to CBS a [limited, non-exclusive] license to place in a non-commercial open-access online repository (OpenArchive@CBS) the faculty member's scholarly work published in a scholarly journal or conference proceedings. ...

In the event a faculty member is required to assign all or a part of his or her copyright rights in such scholarly work to a publisher as part of a publication agreement, the faculty member shall retain in the publication agreement the right to grant the foregoing license to CBS.

Faculty may opt out of this policy for any specific work or invoke a specified delay before such work appears in an open-access repository in accordance with the opt-out mechanism set forth below. ...

CBS is committed to providing the necessary technical, organizational and non-material support that will help the open access policy to be implemented in the best way. ...

The [actual] archiving of the individual document is done by the library as part of the process of research registration, where the library will contact the researchers to get a full text version of the articles. ...

The faculty is encouraged to choose the best possible publication channel for their research results in terms of readership, but they are required to demand that publishers grant them the right to further use of their own work in teaching, collaboration with fellow scholars and open access depositing. ...

If an embargo is required by the publishing house an embargo period of up to one year may be respected. ...

The articles not archived [via the opt-out] must be registered in OpenArchive@CBS with bibliographical information, a short [abstract] and information about publication channel. ...

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On July 6, 2009, the Board of Directors of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), adopted an Open Access to Research Outputs Policy. The MSFHR is the provincial support agency for health research in British Columbia (BC, Canada) and is funded by the Government of BC. A pivotal paragraph of the policy statement is also available at Managing Your Award (from the MSFHR):

All MSFHR Award Recipients who receive an award or an award renewal after July 7, 2009 must ensure that all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from research supported by that award (in whole or in part) are made freely accessible through either the Publisher’s website or an online repository within six months of publication.

Other excerpts from the policy statement:

Additionally, Award Recipients are now required to deposit bioinformatics, atomic, and molecular coordinate data, as already required by most journals, into the appropriate public database immediately upon publication of research results. ...

Compliance will be monitored through annual reporting requirements. Non-compliance to this policy may result in the termination of the award. ...

Costs related to the publication of research outputs are considered eligible expenses as defined in the Eligible Expenses section under each Program area on the MSFHR website. ... In the event that Award Recipients encounter additional publications costs than the amount budgeted in the original application, they may approach MSFHR for supplemental funding to cover publication costs. ...

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Markham Erickson, Executive Director and General Counsel of NetCoalition, has released NetCoalition's August 12 letter in support of FRPAA.  If you're not familiar with NetCoalition,

NetCoalition's members include Amazon.com, Ask.com, Bloomberg, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and Wikipedia, as well as state and local ISPs....

From the rest of the letter:

...It is the mission of NetCoalition companies to help their users locate and access the information they need. FRPAA furthers this mission by placing valuable publicly funded research in an online location where search engines operated by NetCoalition members can index and link to it. FRPAA thus simultaneously assists the broad dissemination of important scientific information and promotes the growth of the Internet.

Some have argued that a public access policy such as FRPAA is inconsistent with copyright law because it requires the involuntary transfer of copyright. This argument threatens to disrupt the fundamental relationship between authors and the entities that pay them for the creation of content. A wide variety of entities, including Internet companies, book and magazine publishers, and marketing departments, pay authors in advance to create works such as articles, novels, and photographs. In exchange for the advance, the author agrees to transfer the copyright to the entity, or to grant the entity a license to use the work.

This system is beneficial to both the author and the entity. The entity receives the content it needs, and the author receives payment while she is creating the content. Because creation of high quality content can take months or even years, this system is particularly important to individual artists or small production companies.

Once the author receives the advance, she must live up to her end of the bargain. She must create the content, and she must transfer the rights she agreed to transfer....If FRPAA constitutes an unlawful involuntary transfer, so does the system of advances relied upon by authors and businesses....

PS:  Also see NetCoalition's September 2007 letter in support of the NIH policy.

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The European Science Foundation and EUROHORCs (European Heads of Research Councils) in July released their EUROHORCs and ESF Vision on a Globally Competitive ERA and their Road Map for Actions.

Visions: A globally competitive European Research Area (ERA) of excellence, to facilitate the advancement of science and help create a knowledge-based society in Europe, requires: ...

8. Open access to the output of publicly funded research and permanent access to primary quality-assured research data ...

EUROHORCs and ESF and their Member Organisations will take their responsibility in contributing to the construction of the ERA and will initiate the following actions, involving others as appropriate: ...

9. Implement a common policy on Open Access to research results and Permanent Access to research data by:

• Developing a joint policy and a statement on Open Access and putting it into action;
• Supporting the necessary infrastructures for Open Access;
• Promoting awareness of the importance of Open Access amongst researchers and administrators;
• Initiating a dialogue with other national and European associations and possibly other non-European research organisations and with publishers to redefine the responsibilities and cost distribution of the publishing system;
• Ensuring that permanent preservation and Open Access will be the rule for data repositories.

More details are available in the document, including joining the Berlin Declaration, mandating OA as a grant requirement, and a long-term transition to "an author- or institution-paid system".

See also our past posts on the European Research Area.

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The U.S. Senate today confirmed Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health. The Scientist notes that

... Collins's confirmation proceeded via unanimous consent, without the need for a hearing in the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions or a roll-call vote on the Senate floor. ...

Comment. As I noted in our post on the nomination:

... Collins has been a public advocate for OA to data, most notably in the Human Genome Project, which he lead. Even if that wasn't the case, simply having a permanent director at NIH will enable the agency to better explain its public access policy -- such as defending against the Conyers bill and supporting FRPAA. ...

We can be thankful that the Senate confirmed the nomination, and quickly. If there's any drawback, it's that the lack of a hearing means a missed chance for Collins to explain his views on OA to Congress and the public in a high-profile forum. But once he takes office, there should be many more such chances.

See also our past posts on Collins.

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I just mailed the August issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman reintroduced in the US Senate in June.

The round-up section briefly notes 140 OA developments from July.

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The White House, President Obama Announces Intent to Nominate Francis Collins as NIH Director, press release, July 8, 2009. (Thanks to Heather Joseph.)

Today, [U.S.] President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Francis S. Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Comment. This is good news for OA supporters in two ways. First, Collins has been a public advocate for OA to data, most notably in the Human Genome Project, which he lead. Even if that wasn't the case, simply having a permanent director at NIH will enable the agency to better explain its public access policy -- such as defending against the Conyers bill and supporting FRPAA.

See also our past posts on Collins, including past rumors of the appointment.

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I just mailed the July issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at OA and the variety of digitization projects.  How far can we defend the principle that the results of publicly-funded digitization projects should be OA?  What if the public funds are supplemented by private funds?  What if the works to be digitized are under copyright?  What if the project wants to provide gratis rather than libre OA?

The round-up section briefly notes 166 OA developments from June.

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The Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia on June 24 released the final report of its Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data. (Thanks to Dave Bath.)

See especially Recommendation 8:

That the Victorian Government encourage as part of its funding agreements with research agencies and higher education institutions that research results be deposited in open access journals or repositories. The Government should consider providing additional funds to these agencies to allow them to publish in open access journals that charge a fee for publication.

From the report:

In its report Public sector support for science and innovation, the [Australian Government] Productivity Commission argued that mandatory requirements would better meet the aim of free and public access to publicly-funded research results. This is despite claims that requiring publicly funded research to be made available via open access could have a detrimental impact on the journal publishing industry. According to the Australian Publishers Association, the increasing availability of peer-reviewed manuscripts in repositories “will lead to cancellations and the eventual demise of the journal upon which their peer-reviewed process depends.” A possible solution, as noted by the Productivity Commission, is the ”author pays” approach whereby authors are responsible for paying publishers or repositories a fee on the basis that the publication is publicly and freely accessible. ...

While it would be difficult for the Victorian Government to require research agencies and higher education institutions to completely comply with an open access policy, it does have a role in encouraging this practice. The Government should encourage, as part of its funding agreements with these organisations, that research results be deposited in open access journals or repositories. The Committee believes this is an important step to maximise the value of the Government’s research and development investment, and further contribute to scientific research and innovation.

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The Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance has strengthened its OA policy from a request to a requirement.  (Thanks to Jim Till.)

From the old policy (adopted April 2007):

CBCRA requests that grant holders supply an electronic copy of final, accepted manuscripts funded in whole or in part by CBCRA grants.  CBCRA requests that grant holders supply an electronic copy of final, accepted manuscripts funded in whole or in part by CBCRA grants. These articles will be posted on the CBCRA Open Access Archive as soon as possible after publication. A publisher’s embargo period of up to six months will be permitted....

From the new policy (revised April 2009):

CBCRA requires that grant holders supply an electronic copy of final, accepted manuscripts funded in whole or in part by CBCRA grants, to be posted in the CBCRA Open Access Archive, as soon as possible after publication. A publisher’s embargo period of up to six months will be permitted....

Comments

• In addition to the new language mandating deposit in the OA repository, the new policy encourages grantees to retain the right to authorize OA through the repository.  Kudos to all involved.
• Also see my post from October 2007 calling for precisely this change, and my other past posts on the CBCRA.

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The University of Kansas has become the nation’s first public university to adopt an “open access” policy that makes its faculty’s scholarly journal articles available for free online. ...

Under the new faculty-initiated policy approved by Chancellor Robert Hemenway, digital copies of all articles produced by the university’s professors will be housed in KU ScholarWorks, an existing digital repository for scholarly work created by KU faculty and staff in 2005. ...

Professors will be allowed to seek a waiver but otherwise will be asked to provide electronic forms of all articles to the repository. KU’s Faculty Senate overwhelmingly endorsed the policy at a meeting earlier this year, but additional policy details, including the waiver process, will be developed by a senate task force in the coming academic year, said Faculty Senate President Lisa Wolf-Wendel, professor of education leadership and policy studies. The task force will be led by Ada Emmett, associate librarian for scholarly communications. ...

Via email: The policy was approved by the Faculty Senate on April 30, 2009; by the Provost on May 19; and by the Chancellor on May 22. From the text of the policy:

... Each faculty member grants to KU permission to make scholarly articles to which he or she made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available in the KU open access institutional repository, and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. This license in no way interferes with the rights of the KU faculty author as the copyright holder of the work. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while a faculty member of KU. Faculty will be afforded an opt out opportunity. Faculty governance in consultation with the Provost's office will develop the details of the policy which will be submitted for approval by the Faculty Senate.

Comment. The university's press release is a bit misleading. Both the University of Oregon and Oregon State University, which are public universities, have departmental mandates. But KU is the first university-wide institutional mandate of any American public university, and only the second of any American university, after MIT.

I haven't found a final version of the policy text online. But an earlier draft of the policy contains several features missing from the version I received by email, most notably a deposit mandate. The version I received authorizes the university to provide OA to faculty articles (with an opt-out), but doesn't state that faculty will be required to deposit a copy. (The press release says that authors will be "asked" to deposit.)

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Senator John Cornyn, Sens. Cornyn & Lieberman Team Up To Increase Public Access To Taxpayer Funded Research, press release, June 25, 2009.

U.S. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Joe Lieberman, I-CT, introduced legislation today to expand the public's access to the research they help fund by shedding additional light on federal research projects. Their legislation, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), would require every federal department and agency with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make their research available to the public within six months of publication.

"Our legislation would give the American people greater access to the important scientific research they help fund, which will accelerate scientific discovery and innovation, while also making sure that funding is being spent appropriately to ensure taxpayers are receiving a return on their research investments and they are not having to pay twice for the same research - once to conduct it, and a second time to read it. I will continue to advocate for greater transparency measures across all of our governmental departments and agencies, and I urge our Senate colleagues to support this legislation," said Sen. Cornyn.

"The United States has some of the best and brightest researchers," said Lieberman. "I continue to be impressed by their ideas and feel strongly that the American public should have access to what they discover. The internet makes it possible to provide public access to federally funded research and I am pleased to lead the effort to make this information more accessible." ...

Sens. Cornyn and Lieberman first introduced this legislation in the 109^th Congress [Note: 2006]. ...

Specifically, the FRPAA would:

• Require every researcher with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more, whether funded totally or partially by a government department or agency, to submit an electronic copy of the final manuscript that has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
• Ensure that the manuscript is preserved in a stable digital repository maintained by that agency or in another suitable repository that permits free public access, interoperability, and long-term preservation.
• Require that each taxpayer-funded manuscript be made available to the public online and without cost, no later than six months after the article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

... The proposed bill is welcomed by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a coalition of research institutions, consumers, patients, and others formed to support open public access to publicly funded research. ...

The bill gives individual agencies flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for interoperability and public accessibility, and have provisions for long-term archiving. ...

The bill covers unclassified research funded by agencies including: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. ...

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access calls on organizations and individuals to write in support of the bill ...

Comment. This is big. FRPAA would open a massive amount of research, expanding the NIH policy to most agencies across the government. The six-month embargo is shorter than the NIH policy and closer to most other funder policies.

I can't find the bill number or text online yet, but we'll post it here on OAN when it's available.

The environment for FRPAA should be even more positive than during its first iteration. In addition to the growth of OA generally:

• The U.S. now has the NIH mandate as an example policy; the success of its implementation should count in FRPAA's favor.
• In 2006, FRPAA was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Lieberman was then the committee's ranking member, but he now chairs the committee, increasing his influence on the bill's fate.
• The first FRPAA was introduced toward the end of the Congress, decreasing the likelihood that it could clear all the legislative hurdles required to become law before it died with the Congress. This time, it's a year earlier in the process, giving it a more meaningful chance of becoming law.
• We can hope that President Obama's professed interests in advancing science and transparency will lead to his support for FRPAA. (Remember too that Obama was himself an academic.)

Importantly, the first iteration of FRPAA inspired a wave of support that drew many into the OA movement for the first (including myself). Look for renewed interest in OA around the U.S.

See also our past posts on FRPAA.

Update. For more coverage, see the items tagged oa.frpaa in the OA Tracking Project.

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The Université de Genève adopted an OA policy, which took effect on June 1, 2009. A directive (in French) detailing the policy was approved on May 18, 2009 by the university's Rectorat. The university's IR also has a page on its policies, including in English. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)

Comment. My French isn't great and I haven't found an English translation of the directive. To my (potentially incorrect) understanding, the policy applies to articles as well as books, book chapters, and doctoral dissertations. Deposit is required, but the author can choose to restrict access to the full text to the university Intranet or completely; temporary embargoes are also an option. The directive refers to these options as a "choice" which is the "author's responsibility", rather than as a waiver or exception from OA.

If you have more information in English, please let me know.

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I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere, but it seems that the Institute of Education Sciences in the [U.S.] Department of Education is now requiring its funded research be made openly available through the ERIC repository. The policy looks analogous to that of the NIH. The pertinent clause from the current IES Request for Applications is:

Recipients of awards are expected to publish or otherwise make publicly available the results of the work supported through this program. Institute-funded investigators should submit final, peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from research supported in whole or in part by the Institute to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) upon acceptance for publication. An author’s final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, and includes all graphics and supplemental materials that are associated with the article. The Institute will make the manuscript available to the public through ERIC no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Institutions and investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this requirement. ...

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Roehampton University has adopted an OA mandate. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)

Deposits are hosted in the Roehampton University Research Repository. See also the policy and accompanying Further Guidance document, both dated November 4, 2008. From the policy:

The University intends that research outputs accepted for publication and all MPhil and Doctoral students’ theses will be placed in the Roehampton University Research Repository and thereby made freely accessible to the public.

Where the publisher prohibits use of the output in its actual published form, the author’s final version should be used. Where publishers’ copyright agreements prohibit even this, full bibliographical details should be provided and, where possible, a link to the website where the published version can be accessed. ...

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Harvard Graduate School of Education Votes Open Access Policy, a press release from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, June 16, 2009.  (Thanks to Ray English.)  Excerpt:

The faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) voted overwhelmingly at its last faculty meeting to allow the university to make all faculty members' scholarly articles publicly available online. The resolution makes HGSE the fourth of Harvard's 10 schools to endorse open access to faculty research publications. The Faculties of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Kennedy School all passed similar policies in recent months.

"The field of education and the mission of libraries have always been aligned in efforts to bring knowledge to as many people as possible. With the open access resolution, the work of the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will now be available to all -- especially those who seek to improve the quality of education worldwide," said John Collins, librarian of Gutman Library at HGSE.

As a result of the resolution, HGSE faculty will now provide their scholarly articles to the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication for deposit in an open access digital repository that is currently under development. When the repository launches later this year, the contents will be freely available to the public, unless an author chooses to embargo or block access. The policy makes rights sharing with publishers and self-archiving the default, while allowing faculty to waive Harvard's license on a case-by-case basis, at the author's discretion.

Professor Kurt Fischer said, "Educational researchers and leaders seek to share their knowledge and findings with educators, researchers, and anyone who is interested. Unfortunately, the current situation in publishing severely restricts access. The Open Access policy moves toward making writings available to anyone who can benefit from them."

Comment.  The momentum continues to grow, and you can see where it's going.  The new mandate follows the pattern set by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (analyzed here), the Law School, and the Kennedy School of Government.  Kudos to all.  More later, including the text of the policy.

Update.  The text of the policy is now online.  It is virtually identical to the three previously adopted Harvard policies.

Labels: Hot

Bernard Rentier has announced the launch of the web site for Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS).  Read his announcement in French or Google's English.  EOS is the successor to EurOpenScholar (also EOS), which was launched in October 2007.  The first EOS was European, while the second is global.  Rentier is the rector of the University of Liege and the Chair of the new EOS.

The official launch of the organization itself, as opposed to the web site, should follow shortly.  The EOS advisory board is meeting in Brussels today to make the final arrangements.

From the new EOS web site:

EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) is a membership organisation for universities and research institutions. The organisation is a forum for raising and discussing issues around the mission of modern universities, particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and preservation of research findings.

The context for the establishment of the EOS forum has been:

• the findings of the ‘Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of Scientific Publications Markets in Europe’ (European  Commission, DG Research, project report, January 2006)
• the subsequent major conference in Brussels in February 2007 held jointly by the European Commission’s DG Research and DG Information and Media, ‘Scientific Publishing in the Digital Age’
• the outstanding success of the research community’s petitionon Open Access to Scientific Information to the European Commissioner for Research (summary of petition and its presentation)
• the recommendations on Open Access of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB)
• the mandatory policy on Open Access to research it funds under the Seventh Framework Programme from the European Research Council
• the European University Association recommendations on Open Access adopted by the EUA Council in March 2008 ...

Anyone who is interested in enrolling their institution as a member, or in attending an EOS meeting or briefing session, is invited to email the convenor of the group, Dr Alma Swan (contact details) .

PS:  One of the top priorities for EOS will be to help universities adopt effective OA policies.  With that in view, note the very strong optimal institutional Open Access policy and FAQ at the EOS web site.  Also see our past posts on the new and old EOS.

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Alma Swan and Leslie Chan officially launched OASIS (Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook) at ELPUB 2009 (Milan, June 10-12, 2009).  The OASIS subtitle or motto is:

Practical steps for implementing Open Access

From today's announcement:

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative ‘sourcebook’ on Open Access, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with links to diverse additional resources and case studies. As such, it is a community-building as much as a resource-building exercise. Users are encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use....

A brief [video] introduction to OASIS is available here.

Comments

• OASIS should help every kind of OA outreach and educational effort find the most effective material and avoid reinventing the wheel.  Use it as is, improve it, help it grow, and spread the word.  Kudos to Alma and Leslie for bringing this useful idea from drawing board to launch.  (Disclosure:  I'm on the OASIS steering committee and co-founder with Robin Peek of one of the OASIS partner resources, the Open Access Directory.) 
• Also see our past posts on OASIS (1, 2, 3). 

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A new Lithuanian law on science requires online access for publicly-funded research.  It was adopted by parliament on April 30 and took effect on May 12.  Read the new law in Lithuanian or Google's English.

Thanks to Emilija Banionyte and Rima Kupryte for hand-translating the section on research access:

Article 45. Publicity of the results of scientific activity

1. In order to guarantee the quality, transparency of the scientific research and to stimulate scientific advancement carried out utilising state budget funds, all the results of the scientific activity carried out in the state science and study institutions must be made public (via the internet and by other means) if this is in agreement with laws regulating intellectual property and protection of the commercial, state or work related secrets.

2. Results of scientific activity carried out at non-governmental institutions of science and studies using state budget funds must be made public (via the internet and by other means) if this is in agreement with laws regulating intellectual property and protection of the commercial or state secret.

Comments

• The new law only requires that publicly-funded research be online, not that it be free online.  It's not all that Lithuanian OA advocates hope to get, but it's a large and hard-won step forward.  For print journals without online editions, the easiest way to comply with the new law may be through green OA.  The law may inspire Lithuanian universities to launch institutional repositories to offer one easy way to comply with the new requirement.  Moreover, the principle behind the new law is to guarantee access and transparency to publicly-funded research.  With parliamentary support for this principle, OA advocates may be able to strengthen the law over time, much as the NIH request of 2005 became the NIH mandate of 2008. 
• Also see our past posts on OA activity in Lithuania.

Update (6/12/09).  Emilija Banionyte tells me that in Lithuanian "to make public" suggests "free of charge" more often than not.  However, the term doesn't always carry that implication and it's still too early to tell how lawyers and judges will interpret it.

Labels: Hot

SPARC, National student organizations call for Open Access to research, press release, June 10, 2009.

A coalition of national and regional college student associations today issued a “Student Statement on the Right to Research,” calling on universities, research funders, and researchers to take action in support of Open Access to research. The American Medical Student Association, the Student PIRGs, Students for Free Culture, and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, as well as the Trinity University Association of Student Representatives and the California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council have signed the statement.

Students rely on access to academic journal literature for their research and education. However, even before the recent economic crisis many colleges have struggled with the high costs of journal subscriptions, restricting access for students and scientists alike. The statement reads, in part:

Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers’ work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them.

At the same time, digital technologies have opened new opportunities for research. New tools facilitate faster discoveries, speed the development of new technologies, and accelerate the progress of science. Patients could have access to the latest medical research, citizens could evaluate scientific information on environmental impacts, and developing countries could apply the most recent scholarship to public health and development efforts. But access barriers leave these opportunities under-explored. ...

“As both taxpayers and students, we deserve access to the research that our tuition and tax dollars have financed,” said Nick Shockey, recent graduate and Student Senator at Trinity University in San Antonio. “Our education should not be limited by the number of journal subscriptions our library can afford – a number that is drastically shrinking with recession-induced budget cuts at universities across the country.”

Laura Janneck of the American Medical Student Association added, “As medical students, we need full access to the best and latest research to have the most accurate and up-to-date education. As future doctors, we know patients deserve access to the same research. Open Access ensures that students, scientists, and the public can all access the best information, to improve health, education, and scholarship.”

“The student voice is growing louder, more clear, and more compelling in the discussion on access to research,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). “Financial pressures are driving libraries, universities and colleges, as well as students to more closely examine the return on their investment in resources. Our young colleagues, whose education relies on access to quality scholarship, are absolutely right to make research access a focal cause.” SPARC helped to coordinate discussions that led to the launch of this statement and sponsors the statement Web site.

The “Student Statement on the Right to Research” closes with a call to action – urging universities, governments and other research funders, researchers, and additional student organizations to support Open Access – and a commitment to back Open Access in their activities.

Student organizations are invited to sign the statement ...

From the statement's call to action:

... We hereby:

Call upon universities to support Open Access

• We believe universities should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to their faculty’s research, such as the policies adopted at Harvard University and Stanford University.

Call upon governments and research funders to support Open Access

• We believe research agencies should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to publicly funded research, such as that of the National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
• We believe charitable funders likewise should adopt policies that ensure Open Access to their funded research, such as that of Autism Speaks and the Canadian Cancer Society.

Call upon researchers to support Open Access

• We believe researchers should publish in Open Access journals, and/or deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts in Open Access repositories.

Commit to support Open Access in our activities

• We will undertake activities, in our membership and on our campuses, to educate students about Open Access and to engage them in efforts supporting Open Access.

Disclosure. I have been a paid consultant for my work supporting this project.

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John Houghton, Jos de Jonge, Marcia van Oploo, Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation, May 29, 2009.  A major new report sponsored by the Dutch SURFfoundation.  From the summary:

This study examines the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scientific and scholarly publishing in the Netherlands. It is a follow-up of the Australian study ‘Research Communication Costs, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits’ (Houghton et al. 2006) and the UK/JISC study ‘Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models’....

This study focused on comparing three alternative models for scholarly publishing, namely:  subscription publishing, open access publishing (Gold Open Access) and self-archiving (Green Open Access)....

As many of the potential cost savings cannot be fully realised unless there is worldwide adoption of open access alternatives, Houghton’s model estimates the impact of a worldwide open access system although it also models the impact of unilateral adoption of alternative open access models by the Netherlands. Furthermore, a distinction is made between impact on the whole of the Netherlands and specifically for the Dutch universities....

Adding up the costs of production, publishing and dissemination in electronic-only format, the average subscription publishing system costs would amount to around € 17,046 per article (excluding Value-Added Tax), average open access publishing costs would amount to € 15,857 per article and average open access self-archiving costs would be € 15,331 per article (including overlay review and production services with commercial margins). At these costs, open access publishing would be around € 1,190 per article cheaper than subscription publishing, and open access self-archiving with overlay services around € 1,715 per article cheaper.

For the universities, the difference in journal article publishing costs would have amounted to savings of around € 30 million per annum in the case of a shift from subscription access to open access publishing, and even € 43 million based on a shift to open access self-archiving with overlay services. While alternative publishing models for scholarly books are much less developed and costing is more speculative as a result, similar savings would appear to be available from shifting to open access book publishing....

The estimated savings

• ‘Gold OA’ open access publishing for journal articles might bring net system savings of around € 133 million per annum nationally in the Netherlands in a worldwide open access system, or € 37 million if the Netherlands adopted open access unilaterally (based on 2007 prices and levels of publishing activity), of which around € 107 million and € 32 million, respectively, would accrue in the universities.
• Open access self-archiving without subscription cancellations (i.e. ‘Green OA’) would save around € 50 million per annum nationally in a worldwide Green OA system, of which around € 30 million would accrue in the universities. In a unilateral situation, an additional cost of € 11 million would result in a benefit of € 68 million.
• The open access self-archiving with overlay services model explored is necessarily more speculative, but a repositories and overlay services model may well produce similar cost savings to open access publishing....

Conclusions...

It seems likely that more open access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they are likely to be positive for both open access publishing and self-archiving alternatives (i.e. Gold OA) and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (i.e. Green OA). Both open access publishing and self-archiving with overlay services appear to be more cost-effective systems for scholarly publishing, with cost savings available throughout the scholarly communication process (i.e. in funding, performing, publishing, disseminating and preserving research). Nevertheless, a shift from a user-side to producer-side system for funding scholarly publishing implies a greater concentration of costs and diffusion of benefits, with costs concentrated among the most intensive producers of scholarly content and benefits diffused across many users....

Also see today's press release:

If every scientific and scholarly article were publicly available, it would save the Netherlands EUR 133 million a year....

Even if the Netherlands were the only country to adopt this publication model and continued to pay for licences to access periodicals, there would still be a saving of EUR 37 million....

The director of SURFfoundation, Wim Liebrand, welcomed the results of Prof. Houghton’s study: “The study makes clear that Open Access offers a realistic alternative to the traditional publisher’s model based on licences....”

The study was commissioned by SURFfoundation and forms part of a series of similar studies carried out in Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom. A survey will soon be published of the advantages that Open Access publication offers in those countries....

Also see our past posts on Houghton's research on the economic impact of OA, including criticism from TA publishers and Houghton's responses. 

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The University of Bergen has adopted an OA policy.  (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)  From the ROARMAP version of the policy:

Results from publishing at the University of Bergen should be made publicly accessible in electronic archives for peer-reviewed journal articles

All employees at the University of Bergen are asked to deposit peer-reviewed versions of articles to the institution from the 1.1.2010

Peer-reviewed articles are made available in the institutional repository after consent by author and publisher. The version that is made available should be the same as the published version....

Comments

• Congratulations to all involved.  The word "should" (rather than "must") needn't reduce compliance.  But unfortunately the loophole for dissenting publishers will reduce compliance.  And it's not necessary.  Institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT close the loophole and use rights retention to assure that OA through the institutional repository is authorized by the copyright holder regardless of the journals where the faculty publish their articles.  The no-loophole policies still allow opt-outs, but for authors rather than publishers.  At the next policy review, and perhaps before next January when the policy takes effect, I hope Bergen will consider following the Harvard model and closing the loophole.
• If you saw the June SOAN, you know I'm collecting OA policies adopted by faculty votes, especially policies adopted by unanimous votes.  Does anyone know how the Bergen policy was adopted?
• Also see our past posts on OA activity at the U of Bergen.

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Stuart Shieber, What percentage of open-access journals charge publication fees?  The Occasional Pamphlet, May 29, 2009.  Excerpt:

In the popular conception, open-access journals generate revenue by charging publication fees. The popular conception turns out to be false....You can verify this yourself using some software I provide in this post.

The first study of what we’ll call the “publication-fee percentage”, by Kaufman and Wills, showed that fewer than half of the OA journals they looked at charge publication fees. The figure for publication-fee percentage they report is about 47%. (For convenience, we put all publication-fee percentages in boldface in this post.) Following on from this, Suber and Sutton provided a figure of 16.7% for scholarly society journals charging publication fees.

Bill Hooker came up with a clever way of calculating a figure for publication fee percentage, by taking advantage of the publication fee metadata hidden in the “for authors” journal listings at the Directory of Open Access Journals to calculate the figure as of December 2007....Depending on the disposition of the “information missing” cases, Hooker’s study indicates that 18-33% of OA journals charge fees.

Hooker performed his study using a combination of automated and manual methods. In particular, he apparently used manual effort to eliminate the hybrid journal listings. But it isn’t difficult to write software to perform the entire analysis automatically, which allows anyone to replicate the results him- or herself. Unfortunately, the OAI-PMH feed that DOAJ kindly provides doesn’t include the crucial information of whether journals charge fees and whether they are pure or hybrid OA journals, so I, like Hooker, resorted to screen-scraping. The method is effective, if inelegant.

Here are the results computed by my software, as of May 26, 2009:

Charges
951
(23.14%)

No charges
2889
(70.29%)

Information missing
270
(6.57%)

Hybrid
1519
(26.99%)

Total
5629

The numbers are consistent with those of Hooker’s study some 16 months earlier. You’ll see that the total number of full OA journals is up from 2967 to 4110, and the number with missing information has been halved from 15% to about 7%. The reduction in those with missing information seems to have gone more to those with fees than those without, so that the percentage charging fees is up some 5% and those not charging fees only up 3%. Again, depending on the “information missing” cases, the range of fee-charging journals is 23-30%. Assuming that the missing information cases are similar in distribution to those that were resolved over the last year, the figure would be about 27%. That leaves 73% of OA journals, the overwhelming bulk, charging no fees.

Anyone interested in replicating the results should feel free to use the simple Python script below, provided without warranty....

Comment.  This is important for two reasons.  First, it's new confirmation that most OA journals charge no publication fees.  Like Hooker's earlier study, it covers all the OA journals listed in the DOAJ.  Second, it provides a Python script (omitted here) to repeat the census at any time, allowing us to watch how the number changes over time.  Thanks to Stuart for writing the script and for opening the source.

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The directors of 10 US and Canadian university presses released this statement today:

Position Statement From University Press Directors on Free Access to Scholarly Journal Articles:

1. The undersigned university press directors support the dissemination of scholarly research as broadly as possible.
2. We support the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication.  We understand that the length of time before free release of journal articles will by necessity vary for other disciplines.
3. We support the principle that scholarly research fully funded by governmental entities is a public good and should be treated as such.  We support legislation that strengthens this principle and oppose legislation designed to weaken it.
4. We support the archiving and free release of the final, published version of scholarly journal articles to ensure accuracy and citation reliability.
5. We will work directly with academic libraries, governmental entities, scholarly societies, and faculty to determine appropriate strategies concerning dissemination options, including institutional repositories and national scholarly archives.

The statement is signed by the directors of the University Press of Florida, University of Akron Press, University Press of New England, Athabasca University Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Calgary Press, University of Michigan Press, Rockefeller University Press, Penn State University Press, and University of Massachusetts Press. 

The organizers welcome signatures from additional university presses.  Those interested should contact Mike Rossner, Executive Director of the Rockefeller University Press.

Comment.  This is significant.  It's the first statement in support of OA from a group of mostly-TA publishers and the first from a group of mostly-book publishers.  It's also an important reproach to the American Association of University Presses, which publicly supported the Conyers bill last September without consulting its members.  (See all our past posts on the AAUP and the Conyers bill.)

Update (6/4/09).  Also see Scott Jaschik's article in today's Inside Higher Ed.  Excerpt:

...Rossner of Rockefeller University said that the press directors issued the statement as they wanted "to align ourselves with the stances taken by many universities -- by faculties and administrators -- on scholarly communication."

He said that many academics feel "excitement" about the open access movement, seeing it as advancing the mission of scholarly communication and helping to keep research available at a time when many libraries and scholars don't have enough money.

Policy positions from the AAUP opposing open access -- such as this statement backing the legislation (commonly called the "Conyers bill" after its sponsor, Rep. John Conyers) that would revoke the current NIH requirements -- generally express support for the concept of open access, but fears about its financial impact.

"The members of AAUP strongly support open access to scholarly literature by whatever means, so long as those means include a funding or business model that will maintain the investment required to keep older work available and continue to publish new work," said the statement. "However, trying to expand access by diminishing copyright protection in works arising from federally-funded research is going entirely in the wrong direction, and will badly erode the capacity of AAUP members to publish such work in their books and journals."

The problem with that argument, Rossner said, is that there is nothing inconsistent with backing open access and having a business plan that works for university presses. He noted that Rockefeller University Press went open access in 2001 for material that has been published at least six months. Revenue from journal subscriptions has gone up during that time, with funds shifting from print to online, but flowing in nonetheless....

Peter Givler, executive director of the AAUP, said that while members of the association had the right to express their views, "we took this position [supporting the Conyers bill] believing that it reflected the views of a strong majority of our membership."

Givler said he was frustrated that "there's a lot of misunderstanding about the real issues here." He said that presses are very much in the business of "dissemination of knowledge -- the issue is how to pay for it." While there is "a lot of experimentation going on," he said it was not clear that models broadly exist to help university presses in an open access system...."

To those who think university presses should be able to endorse open access now, he said, "look at what's going on right now. Look at the enormous financial pressure universities and university presses are under." Even if the government is paying for the research covered by the current requirements, "the publishing process is not paid for by the taxpayers."

Update (6/4/09). Also see Jennifer Howard's article on the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog.

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University College London has adopted an OA mandate.  From today's announcement:

UCL (University College London) has today announced the establishment of a UCL Publications Board that will implement the university’s Open Access policy and be responsible for ensuring that, subject to copyright permissions, all UCL research is placed online in the university’s institutional repository, freely accessible to all. This move places UCL at the forefront of academic institutions who are pioneering the move to Open Access, as the first European university ranked in the global top ten in the THE – QS world university rankings to do so.

UCL has already given all of its PhD students the option of making their theses available in its online repository, open access, giving these far greater visibility than they would enjoy as paper copy on library shelves. In academic departments across UCL there is already a broad take-up of Open Access, and the records of the whole of UCL’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) return have been loaded into the repository, with links added to the relevant version of the full text where copyright permissions allow. The creation of the UCL Publications Board extends this situation to the whole of UCL’s published research output. The Publications Board will oversee the rollout of UCL’s Open Access mandate, and promote Open Access both within UCL and beyond as an important scholarly medium for the dissemination of research.

Open Access is a new form of dissemination for published books, articles, conference proceedings and digital outputs. Its principles are based on the Berlin Declaration, which urges authors to retain the rights in the materials they produce and to place a copy in an Open Access medium – in UCL’s case the university’s electronic repository – so that they are available free at point of use to anyone, anywhere in the world, with an Internet connection.

“In the competitive environment of a global higher education market, Open Access repositories provide a platform on which a university can showcase its research,” says Dr Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services. “Open Access helps prospective students make a judgement on which University to choose, shares blue-skies research with the widest possible audience, and supports outreach activity to open up higher education to new communities....

Comment

• I applaud UCL for this move and look forward to the policy details.  From this announcement, UCL seems to have left a loophole for publishers (ensuring OA "subject to copyright permissions") rather than closing the loophole, Harvard-style, by blocking opt-outs for publishers and opening opt-outs for authors.  More later.
• As you can see from yesterday's SOAN, I'm collecting university OA policies adopted by faculty votes, especially unanimous faculty votes.  Does anyone know whether the UCL policy was adopted by a faculty vote and, if so, what was the final tally?

Update.  Also see David Turner's article in the Financial Times, quoting this irrelevant objection:

...[S]ome experts say using journals boosts efficiency by signalling to readers whether research is good or not.

Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “If you read something in the American Economic Review, there’s a presumption that its quality has been examined with great care, and the article isn’t rubbish. But if you have open access, people who are looking for things ... will find it very difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff.”

Weale seems to believe that the purpose of OA is to bypass peer review, that UCL will only provide OA to unrefereed preprints, or even that UCL will promote repository deposits as an alternative to journal publication.  Turner is the journalist here but failed to report that Weale was misinformed.

Update.  Also see Richard Van Noorden's article in Nature News.  He reports that "UCL's decision [was] approved by a unanimous vote of its academic board in October 2008."  Added to those I listed in SOAN yesterday, that makes 20 faculty-adopted OA policies and 13 unanimous faculty votes:  65% of all faculty-adopted policies have been adopted unanimously.

More from Van Noorden:

..."Open-access mandates [from institutions, departments and funding bodies] have almost doubled globally in the year that has elapsed since Harvard's mandate in [February] 2008," says Stevan Harnad, an advocate of open access at the University of Southampton, UK.

UCL's move is unlikely to improve public access to scientific research papers, as national bodies that support research already demand that. Thirty-six of them — including the US National Institutes of Health, all seven UK research councils, and the European Research Council — require work they have financed to be made publicly available (usually through deposition in open-access repositories such as PubMed Central, six months after publication).

But Alma Swan, a consultant for Key Perspectives, which analyses scholarly communications, says the recent flurry of institutional activity has come because university officials are realizing the importance of increasing their institution's visibility on the internet, and of creating a complete record that can be analysed and compared against other institutions' outputs or easily entered in national funding competitions. The UK and Australia, which both allocate funding depending on the quality of published research, lead the world in open-access repository policies, Swan notes.

"A lot of other UK universities are also considering their policies. We're going to start to see the dominoes fall," she says....

The UCL policy is unlikely to immediately affect publishers, thinks Peter Suber, director of the Open Access project at the Washington DC–based non-profit lobby group Public Knowledge. "Publishers who don't want to allow open access on UCL's terms won't have to," he says, as it seems UCL will defer to publishers' copyright policies....

Update.  Also see the U of Southampton press release:

With the announcement today (Wednesday 3 June) that University College London has just adopted the UK's 22nd (and the world's 84th) mandate to make all of its research output Open Access..., it is clear that the United Kingdom continues to lead the world in Open Access.

With its 13 funder mandates and 9 institutional/departmental mandates so far, the UK still has the planet's highest proportion of Open Access Mandates. But the rest of the world is catching up (see Figure).

Dr Alma Swan of Key Perspectives and University of Southampton, has just documented how mandates to provide Open Access to research output have almost doubled globally in the year that has elapsed since Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted the world’s 44th Open Access mandate in May 2008....

Professor Stevan Harnad, leader and archivangelist for the world-wide Open Access movement, and a Professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, comments: 'Alma Swan's analysis shows that the UK is at last going to lose its lead, as the global growth spurt of mandates we had all been awaiting appears to have begun.

'The globalization of Open Access mandates is of course something that all UK universities heartily welcome as a win/win outcome, optimal and inevitable for research and researchers worldwide.

'Open access is essentially reciprocal. The only way every university on the planet can gain open access to the research output of every other university on the planet is by each providing open access to its own research output.’

Update (6/4/09). Also see Zoë Corbyn's article in THES.

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I just mailed the June issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at the University of Maryland faculty vote rejecting a proposed OA policy.  The round-up section briefly notes 165 OA developments from May. 

Update (2:00 pm EST).  There seems to be a problem with the list software today.  For the time being, the email version is stuck in one of those internet tubes, and you'll have to make do with the web version.

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On May 8, Elizabeth Pisani released the first draft of the Bamako data sharing code of conduct.

The code arose from last year's Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health (Bamako, Mali, November 17-19, 2008), where participants formulated the Bamako Call to Action on Research for Health, which included a call for "open and equitable access to research data, tools, and information...."  For more background, see Pisani's slide presentation at the November 2008 meeting on the need for a data sharing code of conduct, and a report on the the discussion following Pisani's presentation. 

From the May draft code:

...What is driving the exponential growth in knowledge in areas such as genetics, astrophysics, information technology? Data sharing....

Epidemiology and public health have been left behind in this data sharing revolution, mired in a culture that restricts access to data and information. This is in part because of a perceived need to protect the privacy of individuals involved in research. But public health is a public good; in public health research there’s an ethical imperative to use information gathered from individuals to benefit the greatest possible number of people. Public health deserves to advance at the same speed as genetics, where data sharing has led to an explosion of progress. The World Health Organisation and several funders of public health research, led by the Wellcome Trust, are thus supporting the development of a code of conduct to encourage greater sharing of public health data. The code seeks to provide guidance for funders of data collection and for institutions that collect and analyse data, including those who perform secondary analysis on data collected by other people. The principles espoused by the code are universal....

The draft code presented here is the product of initial discussions between epidemiologists and data managers from all continents. They gathered with a number of representatives from governments, international organisations and major funders of public health research in London on October 6th, 2008 to agree on the core principles in the code. The discussions of this Working Group were informed by a background paper which reviewed the major challenges to more open exchange of public health data, challenges that can be categorised broadly as incentive-related, capacity-related, ethical and technical. The draft code is structured around these four areas. The background paper has been updated to reflect the outcome of the meeting, and is appended here....

A code of conduct on data sharing is an important first step in striking the balance between the advancement of science and the rights and needs of individuals and communities....

To the extent possible, the code promotes the sharing of micro-level data -- that is, individual level records. There may occasionally be reason to restrict access to individual level data. There is rarely any reason at all to restrict access to aggregated data....

We support the maximum public access to data of public health importance compatible with the following principles:

• The protection of privacy of individuals from whom data are gathered
• Fair reward for the work of data collectors and primary investigators
• Maximum public health benefit delivered in a reasonable time frame....

Limited-time exclusive access for primary researchers

Data are available to the research team involved in data collection and their institutional partners for a fixed period (between six and 18 months) before they are shared. This allows the research team a head start on data analysis and publication....

Following a period of exclusive access for primary researchers where necessary, the most common levels for access to data of public health importance will be:

Fully open access

Data (anonymised where necessary) are made available in machine-readable formats on publicly-accessible websites. This is most desirable and should be encouraged where feasible and compatible with privacy....

Controlled public access

Data are made available to authorised users after a screening process. This is likely to be the most common form of access for data of public health importance....

Collaborative access among scientists

Data are made available to other scientists in a collaborative network. Collaborative access may be necessary for complex datasets that include sensitive information where anonymisation is difficult (e.g. longitudinal data sets including HIV status)....

Exclusive access for primary researchers

Data are only available to the research team involved in data collection and their institutional partners. This is currently the norm in public health data collection, but it is precisely this norm that the current code seeks to change. There are few cases in which this degree of exclusivity is necessary in the long term....

Increasing the incentives to share data

Under the Code of Conduct on Data Sharing we agree to:

Put past data sharing performance on a par with publication as a criterion for evaluating the performance and job suitability of scientists, as well as evaluating grant proposals.

Reward concrete plans for data sharing when evaluating funding proposals for research and routine health systems functions such as surveillance.

Develop citation standards and indices for shared data sets; commit to using them when publishing secondary analysis.

Require registration of public-health related research and data collection in open access data-bases to facilitate data discovery and create demand for shared data.

Encourage submission of micro-data to public repositories as a condition for journal publication of research results.

Promote a “creative commons” approach, in which derived datasets and secondary analysis files based on shared data are in turn made publicly available.

Support an ombudsman system to oversee the fair use and proper acknowledgement by secondary users of shared data....

Using technology to increase data sharing

Under the Code of Conduct on Data Sharing we agree to:

Commit to a single metadata standard for datasets of public health interest....

Ensure that metadata are open access and machine-readable, even for data that are shared under the controlled or collaborative access standards.

Support the development of “open source” software for management, documentation and analysis of public health data....

Taking the code forward...

In trying to meet the needs of [a] huge and varied constituency, the current draft code is vague: phrases such as “promote x” and “encourage y” predominate. As the code develops, we hope that it will become more concrete: “Funding institutions commit to investing in x”, “Secondary analysts agree to provide y”....

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The U.S. Commitment to Global Health:  Recommendations for the Public and Private Sectors, National Academies Press, May 20, 2009.  Prepublication edition of a major report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Also see the IOM splash page on the report and its press release from May 20, 2009.  From the report itself, see especially

• Summary
• Chapter 3:  Generate and Share Knowledge to Address Health Problems Endemic to the Global Poor
• Appendix F:  Sharing Knowledge for Global Health

From the press release:

To fulfill America's humanitarian obligations as a member of the international community and to invest in the nation's long-term health, economic interests, and national security, the United States should reaffirm and increase its commitment to improving the health of developing nations....

The study was sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Google.org, Merck Company Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Department of State.

From Chapter 3:

Recommendation:

3-3. The U.S. research community should promote global knowledge networks and the open exchange of information and tools that enable local problem solvers to conduct research to improve the health of their own populations.

1. Funders of global health research should require that all work supported by them will appear in public digital libraries, preferably at the time of publication and without constraints of copyright (through open access publishing), but no later than six months after publication in traditional subscription-based journals. Universities and other research institutions should foster compliance with such policies from funding agencies and supplement those policies with institution-based repositories of publications and databases....

From Appendix F (by Anthony So and Evan Stewart):

...To ensure greater access to scientific publications, several strategies have been deployed. One has involved tiered pricing, and the other, the pooling of published research in open access journals or repositories....

Across disciplines ranging from electrical engineering to mathematics, the free, on-line access of journal articles corresponded to higher mean citation rates.  Several studies suggest that open access articles have a higher citation rate than closed-access articles.  This held true even when comparing open-access articles compared to non-open-access articles in the same journal. Importantly, the impact of open access publication on citations in journal publications was twice as strong in the developing world....

Several prominent medical research funders have made open access a condition of grant support....

The sharing of research data and materials enables the scientific community to confirm study findings and also to build upon the work of others. Access to these building blocks of research, however, may also be encumbered for reasons similar to those encountered over scientific publications. The difference is that access to data and materials enriches immensely the pursuit of new hypotheses that derive or go substantially beyond its original research use....

As with publications, open access may also multiply the impact of research data. For example, in a 2007 study of 85 cancer microarray clinical trial publications, the public sharing of available data contributed to a 69% increase in citations.  While half the trials in the study made their data publicly available, they comprised 85% of the total citations....

[T]he willingness of some funders and even some universities to support upfront fees for publication in open access journals is a promising step in this direction, perhaps one that might be emulated when patenting to protect public access is at stake [by paying the transaction costs of patent pooling]....

Yet arguably if publicly funded research were not freely available, the taxpayers would have paid for the results several times over—grants for the academic research, salaries for those academics giving their time for peer review, and subscriptions for such journals....

This calculus of “pay now or pay more later” might guide where the public ought to direct its investments to maximize the returns to the health care system. For example, in the value chain of scientific journal publication, paying the publication fees for open access journals is one way of supporting a business model that encourages the sharing of knowledge. Going further, the U.S. government could develop a system of supporting open access journals that publish peer-reviewed, publicly funded research. For those open access journals that charge publication fees, it could build support into the direct or indirect cost structure of grants. For those open access journals that do not charge fees, it could provide direct or indirect subsidies. Either way, it could support journals that provide open access rather than impose subscription fees on patients, providers and universities....

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The University of Pretoria senate voted unanimously to adopt an OA mandate, to take effect immediately. Here's the key language:

1. To assist the University of Pretoria in providing open access to scholarly articles resulting from research done at the University, supported by public funding, staff and students are required to
   • submit peer-reviewed postprints + the metadata of their articles to UPSpace, the University’s institutional repository, AND
   • give the University permission to make the content freely available and to take necessary steps to preserve files in perpetuity.
2. Postprints are to be submitted immediately upon acceptance for publication.
3. The University of Pretoria requires its researchers to comply with the policies of research funders such as the Wellcome Trust with regard to open access archiving. Postprints of these articles are not excluded from the UP mandate and should first be submitted as described in (1). Information on funders' policies is available at [Juliet].
4. Access to the full text of articles will be subject to publisher permissions. Access will not be provided if permission is in doubt or not available. In such cases, an abstract will be made available for external internet searches to achieve maximum research visibility. Access to the full text will be suppressed for a period if such an embargo is prescribed by the publisher or funder.
5. The Open Scholarship Office will take responsibility for
   • Adhering to archiving policies of publishers and research funders, and
   • managing the system's embargo facility to delay public visibility to meet their requirements.
6. The University of Pretoria strongly recommends that transfer of copyright be avoided. Researchers are encouraged to negotiate copyright terms with publishers when the publisher does not allow archiving, reuse and sharing. This can be done by adding the official UP author addendum to a publishing contract.
7. The University of Pretoria encourages its authors to publish their research articles in open access journals that are accredited.

Comment.  This policy breaks important new ground.  It's the first OA mandate for South Africa, and the first for Africa at large, either from a university or a funder.  And it's another unanimous vote!  I applaud the mandatory language, the requirements for both deposit and permission, and the timing (deposit immediately upon acceptance).  Kudos to all involved.

Update (5/25/09).  Also see Eve Gray's comments.

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Aneesh Chopra, U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee to be the country's first Chief Technology Officer, was confirmed by the Senate yesterday.

For background, see also our post on Chopra's nomination.

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Results from publically funded research should be easy to find on the web and free to read, Knowledge Exchange, May 19, 2009.  Excerpt:

A new project group will now plan how Denmark can adhere to the EU policy of open access to research results from projects partly or fully sponsored with public funds.

The group’s plan will be ready late 2010. The group will organisationally be placed within the framework of Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF)....

“I find the EU initiatives towards free access to publicly financed research results extremely relevant in today’s knowledge society. In a time where research and innovation are important prerequisites for a positive development of society, as many obstacles impeding the access to knowledge as possible must be removed. I look forward to working to promote Open Access under the auspices of DEFF,” says Mai Buch, chair of DEFF’s steering committee.

Denmark’s Electronic Research Library, DEFF, is the result of a collaboration between Danish Ministry of Culture, Danish Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The new project group is comprised of select members of DEFF’s steering committee as well as representatives from Danish University and Property Agency, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, and The Council for Protection of Intellectual Property.

The project group will strengthen the national strategies and structures for access as well as promotion and long-term conservation of scientific information and data. The group will investigate how publicly funded research can be made freely available and what economic consequences open access to research may have.

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India's International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has adopted an OA mandate.  (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)  Excerpt:

Every ICRISAT researcher/author in all locations, laboratories and offices will send a PDF copy of the author’s final version of a paper immediately upon receipt of communication from the publisher about its acceptance.

This policy is effective retroactively to 1 January 2009, in order to capture the publication outputs for the entire calendar year. The policy will remain in effect until further notice.

All PDFs should be sent electronically to the Library and Information Services. Complete citation details need to be provided once the article is actually published. The Library and Information Services will make the PDF available via ICRISAT’s Open Access platform....

Comment.  As Stevan points out, this is the third OA mandate in India, after Bharathidasan University and the National Institute of Technology Rourkela.  It's also the first anywhere from a research institution focusing on agriculture.  I applaud the immediate-deposit provision and the universality across ICRISAT labs and offices.  (I just wish that the policy didn't require PDFs, a reuse-unfriendly format that we should leave behind.)  Congratulations to all involved.  Also see our past posts on ICRISAT and its OA work.

Update (5/28/09).  Also see the ICRISAT press release (reprinted in the Business Standard), and the short article in Feedstuffs.

Update (5/31/09). Also see the article in Afrique en ligne.

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The library faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College adopted an Open Access Pledge on May 14, 2009.  (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)  Here's the pledge in its entirety:

The Gustavus library faculty believes that open access to scholarship is critical for scholarly communication and for the future of libraries. For that reason we pledge to make our own research freely available whenever possible by seeking publishers that have either adopted open access policies, publish contents online without restriction, and/or allow authors to self-archive their publications on the web. We pledge to link to and/or self-archive our publications to make them freely accessible.

Librarians may submit their work to a publication that does not follow open access principles and will not allow self archiving only if it is clearly the best or only option for publication; however, librarians will actively seek out publishers that allow them to make their research available freely online and, when necessary, will negotiate with publishers to improve publication agreements.

Comments 

• This is the fourth library faculty to adopt an OA policy, after Oregon State (March 6, 2009), Calgary University (May 1, 2009), and the University of Oregon (May 7, 2009).  Note that three of the four were adopted this month.  That's momentum.  Also note that the the fourth one puts library faculties or departments ahead of computer science departments (and hence, all other departments) in adopting OA policies in advance of their institutions.  It's also the first departmental OA policy at a liberal arts college. 
• If we interpret a mandate self-imposed by faculty vote as pledge, then we can interpret this pledge as a mandate.  If we do, then it has the equivalent of a Harvard-style opt-out, but not the equivalent of the Harvard-style license for the institution.  The Harvard-style OA mandates are stronger than this policy primarily in securing permission for OA even when authors publish in journals that do not permit it on their own.
• I'm collecting policies adopted by unanimous faculty votes.  Does anyone know the vote tally for this one?

Update (5/18/09).  Barbara Fister, Chair of the Gustavus Adolphus Library Department, tells me that the vote for the pledge was unanimous.  Congratulations to all. 

Also see Barbara's blog post about the pledge:

...[A]t our last librarian’s meeting we adopted our own Open Access Pledge. It’s not as sophisticated as the ones that have been making news. We are a small library, with only six librarians, and we haven’t had the time or money to start up an institutional repository. We also, quite frankly, don’t have a terribly sophisticated grasp of all the OA arguments, the copyright issues, and the color choices. (Green? Gold? What about mauve?) We’ve also very, very busy trying to wrap up a big project, working with departments to make enough cuts that we can balance our budget next year - without scuttling our commitment to undergraduate research.

And that is precisely why it seemed time to take a stand, even if it’s not a sophisticated one. Our pledge is simply to make every effort to ensure that our scholarship is freely available online, either because the publisher posts its content online [without charge]..., it’s a truly OA journal, or because the publication agreement allows self-archiving, which most credible library publications do. We also pledge to do the work of self-archiving, which really isn’t a lot of trouble for librarians who are tweaking the web daily. It mystifies me that so few librarians can be bothered.

This wasn’t a simple decision. Half of the department is on the tenure track. Their continuing employment depends on establishing professional credibility through publication. But we feel strongly that this is the right thing to do, and that taking these simple steps won’t damage the ability of our emerging scholars to thrive.

We’ve submitted a sobering report about the library’s finances for our next faculty meeting. In the last paragraph we wanted to show one way that our choices, our individual actions, can honor the spirit of open inquiry. It’s the least we can do.

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... The first session provided an overview of three key elements of open science: open access to scientific content, open education and new models of scientific communication described as “Science 2.0”. Presentations were given by Ahrash Bissell (Creative Commons ccLearn), Ignasi Labastida i Juan (University of Barcelona, Creative Commons Catalunya) and Paweł Szczęsny (Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Department of Biology, University of Warsaw).

The second part of the conference concerned open science in the Polish context. Marek Niezgódka, director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw gave an overview of the open projects currently undertaken in Poland, and of the challenges they face. Jan Kozłowski from the Center for Science Policy and Higher Education Studies at University of Warsaw spoke about alternatives to classical peer review. Alek Tarkowski from Creative Commons Poland spoke about legal issues related to open science, and in particular about open licensing methods.

The conference ended with a panel debate among conference speakers, chaired by Edwin Bendyk from the “Polityka” weekly and attended as well by Krzysztof Gulda, Director of the Department of Strategy and Development of Science at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Mr Gulda declared the interest of the Ministry in introducing open science models in Poland, as part of the current reform of the scientific system. In particular, he declared that the Ministry is considering introducing an open mandate for publicly funded scientific content. ...

The conference presented an opportunity to present the project Open the Book, which will become public on the 20th of May. “Open the Book” is a collection of scientific books made available under Creative Commons licenses by their authors and made available online. The project serves to highlight the importance of open access to scientific content and to promote open scientific models among Polish scientists. ...

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The University of Oregon Department of Romance Languages adopted an OA mandate today.  From the announcement:

On Wednesday, May 14th, by unanimous vote, the faculty of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon adopted an Open Access mandate (text below). This mandate is the first (according to ROAR) such mandate in the world by any Department in the Humanities and the 3rd in Oregon (after OSU Library faculty and UO Library faculty). It is distinguished by the stipulation that URLs of self-archived postprints are to be included in all materials submitted to the Department for purposes of review and promotion....

Resolved, that the UO Romance Languages Faculty adopts the following policy in support of deposit of scholarly works in Scholars' Bank [the UO IR]: ...

Every Romance Language tenure-track faculty member is required to self-archive in UO Scholars’ Bank a postprint version of every peer-reviewed article or book chapter published while the person is a member of the Romance Languages faculty. The URLs of these postprints will be included in all materials submitted internally to the Romance Languages Department for purposes of review and promotion.

Self-archiving in UO Scholars’ Bank means that each Romance Languages faculty member gives to the University of Oregon nonexclusive permission to use and make available that author's scholarly articles for the purpose of open dissemination. Specifically, each Romance Languages faculty member grants to the UO a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" license to each of his or her scholarly articles. The license will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Romance Languages Faculty except for any articles accepted for publication before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy.

The Department of Romance Languages will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author, who informs the Department of the reason.

It is strongly recommended that faculty...self-archive postprints of articles and book chapters published prior to the adoption of this policy.

To facilitate distribution of the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article and full citation at no charge to a designated representative of the UO Libraries in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Libraries.  After publication, the University of Oregon Libraries will make the scholarly article available to the public in the UO's institutional repository.

Comments

• This is one of the strongest policies anywhere.  It starts with a Harvard-style mandate-plus-waiver policy and then adds a libre OA license (CC-BY-NC-ND).  It seems to say that promotion review of journal articles will be limited to those on deposit in the repository (a desirable feature pioneered by Napier Edinburgh and Liege).  Moreover, it does not allow embargoes beyond the date of publication unless the author seeks a waiver.  All this in another unanimous vote.  Kudos to the whole department.
• As the announcement notes, this is the first OA mandate anywhere by a humanities department.  I believe it makes the U of Oregon the first university anywhere with two departmental mandates.  The UO library faculty adopted an OA mandate one week ago today --also by a unanimous vote.  (Harvard has three schools with mandates but they are not departments.)  This is the start of what Arthur Sale called a patchwork mandate and suggests that we'll soon see mandates from other Oregon departments.

Update (5/15/09).  Also see Stevan Harnad's comment:

University of Oregon (UO) has just registered (in ROARMAP) UO's second Green Open Access (OA) self-archiving mandate in a week -- the world's 80th Green OA mandate overall.
UO's first mandate was for the UO Library Faculty. UO's latest one is for the UO Department of Romance Languages. It's also the first departmental mandate in the humanities (confirming, along with the several humanities funder mandates already adopted, that OA isn't, and never was, just for the sciences!).

This is also the world's 9th departmental mandate, again confirming Arthur Sale's sage advice about the "patchwork mandate" strategy:

If your institution has not yet managed to reach consensus on adopting a university-wide OA mandate, don't wait! Go ahead and adopt departmental mandates, for which consensus can be reached more quickly and easily....

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The Open Knowledge Foundation has launched an Open Data Grid.  From today's announcement:

In the last couple of months we’ve had several threads on the okfn-discuss list about distributed storage for open data (see here and here).

Last month we started a distributed storage project, aiming to provide distributed storage infrastructure for OKF and other open knowledge projects.

After researching various technical options, we’ve launched an Open Data Grid based on Allmydata’s open-source “Tahoe” system....

Anyone can store open data on the grid, or start running a storage node. For more details see the readme. If you’d like to comment on the service feel free to post on the okfn-discuss list!

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The Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation are merging to form DuraSpace.  From yesterday's announcement:

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, have announced today that they will join their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

The joined organization, named "DuraSpace," will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission....

"This is a great development," said Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). "It will focus resources and talent in a way that should really accelerate progress in areas critical to the research, education, and cultural memory communities. The new emphasis on distributed reliable storage infrastructure services and their integration with repositories is particularly timely." ...

"The joining of DSpace and Fedora Commons is a watershed event for libraries, specifically, and higher education, more generally," said James Hilton, CIO of the University of Virginia. "Separately, these two organizations operated with similar missions and a shared commitment to developing and supporting open technologies. By bringing together the technical, financial, and community-based resources of the two organizations, their communities gain a robust organization focused on solving the many challenges involved in storing, curating, and preserving digital data and scholarship," he said.

New Products

DuraSpace will continue to support its existing software platforms, DSpace and Fedora, as well as expand its offerings to support the needs of global information communities. The first new technology to emerge will be a Web-based service named "DuraCloud." DuraCloud is a hosted service that takes advantage of the cost efficiencies of cloud storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure longevity and re-use of digital content. The DuraSpace organization is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer both storage and computing capabilities.

The DuraCloud service will be run by the DuraSpace organization. Its target audiences are organizations responsible for digital preservation and groups creating shared spaces for access and re-use of digital content. DuraCloud will be accessible directly as a Web service and also via plug-ins to digital repositories including Fedora and DSpace. The software developed to support the DuraCloud service will be made available as open source. An early release of DuraCloud will be available for selected pilot partners in Fall 2009.

Key Benefits of the DuraSpace Organization

DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and when possible, develop synergistic technologies, services, and programs that increase interoperability of the two platforms. DuraSpace will also support other open source software projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.

From the DuraSpace FAQ:

3. What is the mission of the DuraSpace organization?
The DuraSpace organization inherits the shared aspects of missions of both Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation. The purpose of DuraSpace is to provide sustainable open technologies and services to help individuals and organizations create, manage, publish, share, and preserve digital resources upon which we form our intellectual, scientific, and cultural heritage.

4. How will the Fedora and DSpace open source software be affected?
Both the Fedora and DSpace repository platforms will have their home in the DuraSpace organization. The DuraSpace organization will support both platforms by providing leadership in the areas of technology, community outreach, communication, and marketing. Each project will continue to innovate and evolve within their existing communities, but with better opportunities for sharing across communities. Over time, we expect synergies to emerge between the projects....

8. When will DSpace and Fedora platforms interoperate?
For many years, our communities have been very active in discussions about repository interoperability. Both platforms have moved toward adopting common deposit APIs (e.g., SWORD) and improved fit with emerging Web standards. There is also active discussion about a common storage abstraction layer that would provide APIs to enable back-end storage interoperability. Our communities will continue to set priorities on which forms of interoperability are most desirable for the platforms as they evolve. We predict new opportunities for common components and API's, especially with the emergence of the DSpace 2.0 community of users.

10. When will the DuraSpace organization be effectively operating?
DuraSpace will be operating on July 1, 2009....

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Cornell University Library Removes All Restrictions on Use of Public Domain Reproductions, a press release from Cornell (today).  Excerpt:

In a dramatic change of practice, Cornell University Library has announced it will no longer require its users to seek permission to publish public domain items duplicated from its collections. Instead, users may now use reproductions of public domain works made for them by the Library or available via Web sites, without seeking any further permission.

The Library, as the producer of digital reproductions made from its collections, has in the past licensed the use of those reproductions. Individuals and corporations that failed to secure permission to repurpose these reproductions violated their agreement with the Library. "The threat of legal action, however," noted Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, "does little to stop bad actors while at the same time limits the good uses that can be made of digital surrogates. We decided it was more important to encourage the use of the public domain materials in our holdings than to impose roadblocks."

The immediate impetus for the new policy is Cornell’s donation of more than 70,000 digitized public domain books to the Internet Archive (details [here]).

"Imposing legally binding restrictions on these digital files would have been very difficult and in a way contrary to our broad support of open access principles," said Oya Y. Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies....

Institutional restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labeled "copyfraud," have been the subject of much scholarly criticism. The Cornell initiative goes further than many other recent attempts to open access to public domain material by removing restrictions on both commercial and non-commercial use. Users of the public domain works are still expected to determine on their own that works are in the public domain where they live. They also must respect non-copyright rights, such as the rights of privacy, publicity, and trademark. The Library will continue to charge service fees associated with the reproduction of analog material or the provision of versions of files different than what is freely available on the Web. All library Web sites will be updated to reflect this new policy during 2009.

Comment.  This is an exemplary policy.  The original books are in the public domain and the digitizers do not acquire new copyrights in the digital editions (at least under US law).  Hence, these digital editions are also in the public domain.  Privately-funded digitization projects, like Cornell's, may still want to be reimbursed for the costs of digitization.  But Cornell is right that restricting reuse of the public-domain texts will limit valuable uses, violate the university's background commitment to OA, and (as usually implemented) constitute copyfraud.  Nor would it do much to stop determined reusers --who should not be called bad actors when they are exercising their rights to use and reuse works in the public domain. 

Update (5/14/09). Also see Josh Hadro's article in Library Journal.

Update (5/31/09). Also see Dawn Lim's article in the Cornell Daily Sun.

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The University of Calgary division of Library and Cultural Resources has adopted an OA mandate.  (Thanks to Andrew Waller.)  From the May 5 announcement:

The Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary has adopted a mandate to deposit their scholarly output in Dspace, the University’s open access scholarly repository. The repository has been in place since March 2003 and currently provides access to a broad range of scholarly output, including a growing collection of full text university theses.

Members of the Council, comprised of archivists, curators, and librarians, have long supported open access through promotions on campus such as Open Access Day, membership in SPARC and Canadian Association of Research Libraries, support for online open access journals published through the University of Calgary Press, and an active program of introducing the repository to faculty and graduate students. Libraries and Cultural Resources also funds the $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund to assist researchers to publish in open access journals.

The text of the mandate is:

"As an active member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary endorses the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and the Berlin Declaration.

LCR academic staff members believe that the output of our scholarly activities should be as widely disseminated and openly available as possible. Our scholarly output includes but is not limited to journal articles, books and book chapters, presentations if substantial, conference papers and proceedings, and datasets.

Effective April 17, 2009, LCR academic staff commit to

• Deposit their scholarly output in the University of Calgary’s open access scholarly repository
• Promote Open Access on campus and assist scholars in making their research openly available
• Where possible, publish their research in an open-access journal"

Comment.  This is the third OA mandate for the LIS division of a university, after the Oregon State U policy in March and the U of Oregon policy earlier last week.  Or more precisely, it's the third to be announced here on OAN.  It was adopted and publicly announced before the U of Oregon policy.  Note that the Calgary policy applies to books and datasets (and a few other categories), not just journal articles, and apparently offers no opt-out.  It includes encouragement to publish in OA journals and to promote OA elsewhere on campus.  Kudos to all at Calgary LCR.

Update (5/13/09).  Also see the accompanying guidelines, especially the sections on open licenses (hence libre OA), permissions, and opt-outs.  Excerpt:

...Each publication added to the repository is covered by a copyright license. Submitters can choose to use the standard University of Calgary DSpace license or they can create their own Creative Commons license. The license is added at the time of submission.

We encourage staff to negotiate permissions with publishers for journal articles, conference presentations, proceedings, etc. You can also check the Sherpa site to review the archiving policy of your journal publisher.

Where publishers do not allow self-archiving or retain copyright over an individual’s publication, authors are requested to submit a metadata record for their publication and to indicate that copyright permission for publishing in the repository has not been obtained. Publishers who use a “moving wall” are acceptable under these guidelines; however, the author must provide this information prior to submitting....

Comment.  When a given publisher won't allow OA on Calgary's terms, it would be better to deposit the full-text article and keep it non-OA (a "dark deposit") than to deposit only metadata.

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The University of Oregon Library Faculty adopted an OA mandate.  From today's announcement:

The University of Oregon Library Faculty this morning (May 7) unanimously adopted a resolution mandating deposit of scholarly works produced by library faculty members in our institutional repository. The text of the resolution is:

The Library Faculty of the University of Oregon are committed to disseminating the fruits of their research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy:

Each Library faculty member gives to the University of Oregon nonexclusive permission to use and make available that author's scholarly articles for the purpose of open dissemination. Specifically, each Library faculty member grants a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" license to each of his or her scholarly articles. The license will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Library Faculty except for any articles accepted for publication before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Dean of the Libraries will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author, who informs the UO of the reason.

To facilitate distribution of the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of the author's final version of the article and full citation at no charge to a designated representative of the Libraries in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Libraries. After publication, the University of Oregon Libraries will make the scholarly article available to the public in the UO's institutional repository.

We largely followed the leads of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and most recently Oregon State (our friends and rivals).  One area where we differ is in explicitly mandating a CC-BY-NC-ND license.  Choosing that license was very conscious.  We believe that it is vital that the community standardize on a small number of licenses to move beyond the present mess where every publisher and practically every author has their own unique terms.  The license we chose is a good candidate for standardization.  It grants sufficient rights for most scholarly purposes, but is also minimalist....Authors who wish to can of course also license their works under a more liberal license such as CC-BY-SA.  Similarly, if a publisher does not object we'd of course rather get the publisher's version for deposit instead of or in addition to the author's final version.

Our expectation is that we will develop an implementation of this policy that includes a blanket license signed by each faculty member as part of their regular contract renewal (to meet the "in writing" requirements of 17 USC 205(d)), plus suggestions for how to negotiate with publishers.  We believe that in most cases no addendum to publishing contracts is needed, but in cases where such an addendum is needed the resolution puts the author in a stronger bargaining position.

The policy doesn't yet have an official web site, but Johnson has created a temporary web page with the text of the policy and an FAQ.

Comments

• First note that this is another unanimous faculty vote.  Even though we've seen unanimous faculty votes for OA mandates at Harvard, Stanford, Macquarie, Boston U, Oregon State, and MIT, it's not getting old.  I still find it hard to imagine any faculty anywhere reaching unanimous agreement even on a toothless proposition like knowledge is good.  But these OA mandates have teeth.  Kudos to the library faculty at the U of Oregon for a strong policy and fresh evidence that faculty support is wide and deep.
• This is the second OA mandate adopted by library faculty, after the Oregon State U policy in March.
• I believe it's also the second OA mandate to use a libre OA license, after the U of Leige policy in January.  In February I argued that OA mandates should settle for gratis OA, for the time being, but might add strength "when a libre OA mandate would elicit journal accommodation more often than refusals to publish".  Are we approaching that point?  Testing the waters?  Taking early steps toward a critical mass that will facilitate its own success?  In the same February article I argued that "if a publisher can refuse to publish work subject a strong OA policy, and still find enough other good work to publish, then it might do so.  But this will change as more institutions adopt OA policies and more new work is subject to them."

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African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is moving beyond OA TOCs to OA full-texts.  (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)  From today's announcement:

On the 1st of May 2009, African Journals OnLine (AJOL) launched the latest version of its online service to provide access to peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals....

At 346 journals from 26 countries, AJOL is the world’s largest online collection of African journals, but until now, has included only tables of content, abstracts, and journal information on the website. As of the beginning of May, 60% of the 40,000 plus articles on AJOL will be available for immediate download. By the end of 2009, AJOL aims to have 100% of its growing collection fully full-text online.

The updated site and the new functionality are possible due to a close collaboration between AJOL and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), developers of Open Journal Systems (OJS) – the open source software which powers the AJOL service. AJOL is also supported by its donor partners, INASP and the Ford Foundation.

AJOL receives an average of 60,000 visits per month, 30% of which are from the African continent and over 15% from other parts of the developing world.  The global researcher community and the authors and institutions whose work is published in the portal benefit from this increased access and visibility of African knowledge provided by AJOL.  The new portal helps AJOL achieve its greater goal of shifting global flows of scholarly information, so that the importance of research published from the global south is more equitably represented.

AJOL allows for both Subscription-based and Open Access journals to be hosted for free on the site, with article downloads to toll journals being processed by AJOL and income sent on to the originating journals, less AJOL cost-recovery.  In the future, AJOL will begin providing access to journal management functions of OJS to its partner Open Access journals, as a way to improve editorial quality and lower production costs....

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I just mailed the May issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at open access tracking project (OATP), a collaborative tagging effort to capture new OA developments comprehensively and in real time.  The round-up section briefly notes 151 OA developments from April. 

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The Research Councils UK has released a new report, Open Access to Research Outputs (plus annexes).  The report is dated September 2008, but was only released yesterday.  From the announcement:

RCUK published today an independent study commissioned by the Research Councils into open access to research outputs. The purpose of the study was to identify the effects and impacts of open access on publishing models and institutional repositories in light of national and international trends. This included the impact of open access on the quality and efficiency of scholarly outputs, specifically journal articles. The report presents options for the Research Councils to consider, such as maintaining the current variation in Research Councils’ mandates, or moving towards increased open access, eventually leading to Gold Standard.

Welcoming the study, Professor Ian Diamond, Chair of the RCUK Executive Group said: "This excellent study sets out a way forward for the UK Research Councils in relation to open access, building on the extensive activities already supported through repositories such as UK PubMed Central and ESRC Society Today. The Research Councils look forward to working with their partners across the research community to consider the options."

In response to the study, the Chief Executives of the Research Councils have agreed that over time the UK Research Councils will support increased open access, by:

• building on their mandates on grant-holders to deposit research papers in suitable repositories within an agreed time period, and;
• extending their support for publishing in open access journals, including through the pay-to-publish model....

I'd include an excerpt from the report itself, but it's a locked PDF which has disabled cut/pasting.  (Why?  This is a report on OA from publicly-funded agencies committed to OA.)  I don't have time to rekey many of the results, but here are a few:

• One key finding (#20) is that "In general, Open Access has had non impact on library subscriptions to date." 
• Another (#23) is that 45% of authors publishing in fee-based OA journals had their fees paid by their funding agency.  Only 17% of authors paid a fee out of pocket.
• Another (#36) is that authors who provided OA to their own work (apparently green or gold OA)ranked speed of dissemination as the most important factor in their decision.  OA for users came in second.  Funder and university mandates came in last; 66% said that mandates were not at all important in their decision.
• Another (#46) is that "there is no inherent reason why [a move to OA] should jeopardise the position of existing publishers..., especially under a funded system of Gold [OA] publications.  the main caveat is that learned societies may find it difficult to adapt to a new business model and their general contribution to scholarly communication could be threatened."
• Section 3 discusses three scenarios (#6.1):  (1) "A majority of world-wide funders move to a mandate similar to that taken by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC, and as a result the other research councils adopt a similar position", (2) "Business as Usual -- this scenario would see all RC's with mandates of one form or another -- some fairly tough and some more flexible and less monitored", and (3) "A majority of world-wide funders start to remove mandates because of pressure from various sectors e.g. publishers, academics, HEI's, Governments."
• The findings are based on a review of the literature, consultations with stakeholders, and two online surveys, one of UK academic libraries and one of UK researchers funded by the RCUK. 

Comments

• All 7 of the RCUK currently have green OA mandates in place.  The report does not recommend weakening or removing them.  Some of the RCUK are willing to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals and some are not; the report does not recommend scaling this practice up or down.
• The report incorrectly assumes (in #13) that most OA journals charge publication fees, when in fact most do not.  That's a very inauspicious sign about the thoroughness of its review of the literature and understanding of gold OA. 
• As noted, the report finds that green OA mandates have not triggered TA journal cancellations (#20) and that "there is no inherent reason" why they should (#46).  It adds (#46) the "caveat...that learned societies may find it difficult to adapt to a new business model and their general contribution to scholarly communication could be threatened."  However, it does not cite the November 2007 study by Caroline Sutton and myself, which identified 425 societies publishing 450 full OA journals, and 21 societies publishing 73 hybrid OA journals.  (Caroline and I will soon release an update with even higher numbers.)  This too is an inauspicious sign of the study's thoroughness and depth.
• The announcement --but not the report-- says that the leaders of the 7 individual Research Councils have agreed to "support increased open access, by extending their support for publishing in open access journals, including through the pay-to-publish model."  As long as they maintain their green OA mandates, and don't pay fees at journals with a double-charge business model, then I welcome this move.  Indeed, I hope the Research Councils will also find ways to support the majority of OA journals which charge no publication fees. 

Update (4/24/09).  Also see Stevan Harnad's comments:

Contrary to the suggestion of this RCUK report, there is no "Gold Standard" for OA except universal OA, and the way to universalize OA is to universalize Green OA self-archiving mandates to all institutions and funders globally, not to divert scarce research money -- pre-emptively and needlessly -- toward paying Gold OA publication fees at a time when subscription fees are still paying for publication worldwide and only 77 out of 10,000 institutions and funders have yet mandated Green OA. Green OA mandates are not failing to achieve compliance, as this RCUK report suggests: They have not yet been adopted by 99.23% of the world's institutions and funders!

Unlike "peer-to-peer" consumer "sharing" of creators' non-give-away commercial output, creators giving away their own peer-reviewed and public funded research output to maximize its uptake, usage and impact is not piracy but the sharing of a public good for public benefit. In contrast, publisher embargoes on research access are the hostage-taking of a public good -- and the way to counter that is immediate-deposit (IDOA) mandates coupled with the "Email EPrint Request" Button, not the payment of a gold ransom....

Update (4/29/09).  Also see Zoë Corbyn's article in THES on the RCUK report.  Excerpt:

...The study also reports that more than three quarters of 2,100 council-funded researchers surveyed were unaware of the councils' current mandates.

Paul Gemmill, chair of the research outputs group at Research Councils UK, said the next stage was to decide whether a specific model should be adopted. He said the process would involve learned societies, publishers and academics.

Open-access advocate Stevan Harnad, professor of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton, said scarce research money should not be used to pay open-access journal fees, where the costs normally borne by the publisher are picked up by funders.

"If good sense were to prevail, funders and universities would just mandate repositories," he said....

Update (5/1/09). Also see Stevan Harnad's comments on Corbyn's article.

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London Book Fair panel calls JISC e-textbook study ‘myth-shattering’, a press release from JISC, April 23, 2009.  Excerpt:

The sales’ growth and the development of e-books have been hotly debated at this year’s London Book Fair, with the e-books for academia market acknowledged as being further developed than other areas....

A panel at the London Book Fair believe that a key myth has been shattered by early results from JISC Collections’ recently concluded e-books observatory project. (During this two-year project, JISC provided UK university students with free access to 36 core e-textbooks in science, technology and medicine to all UK university students, to monitor their usage patterns.)

The presumption that increased e-book usage will negatively affect sales is overturned by the report. Its findings reveal that, in reality, e-book usage actually has ‘no impact’ on print sales....

Caren Milloy manages the e-books observatory project on behalf of JISC Collections. Milloy said that the two-year effort is the largest e-book study ever conducted, with around 48,000 survey responses and using information gathered from 127 UK universities....

The results from the e-books observatory project will be published in June.

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The University of Maryland University Senate just voted down a mixed green/gold OA policy. 

From the defeated resolution:

...[B]e it resolved that...

1. The University Senate urges the President to work collectively with other universities, research institutions, and other appropriate entities to establish and advocate for nationwide open access policies, such as those recently adopted by the National Institutes of Health, that would apply to all disciplines.
2. The University Senate urges the Libraries to continue to inform the faculty about the pricing and open access policies of the journals in its collection and, where possible, to assist faculty in negotiating reasonable copyright and open access arrangements.
3. The University Senate encourages faculty, students, and other researchers, where practical and not detrimental to their careers, to (a) publish in open access journals or journals that make their contents openly accessible shortly after publication, (b) negotiate with the journals in which they publish for the right to deposit articles in an open access repository, and (c) consider the price of the journal as one factor in the decision on where to publish.
4. The University Senate encourages faculty, students, and other researchers to deposit all preprints and reprints of articles, when permitted, in an open access repository such as the DRUM archive or, where appropriate, in discipline-specific repositories such as PubMed Central.

From Tizra Austin's story in today's Diamondback Online on the debate in the Senate:

An unforeseen debate erupted at the University Senate meeting yesterday about where faculty members should be encouraged to publish their research.

After more than half an hour of debate, the senate voted against a resolution that called for faculty members to publish their work in free online databases. Despite the potential savings open-access journals could bring to the university, the senate voted the resolution down in a 37-24 decision, due to perceived impositions on academic freedom.

"[The cost of scholarly journals] has to be one of the most challenging issues we have at this university," Senate Chair Ken Holum said.

The defeated resolution, proposed by the senate's faculty affairs committee, laid out four specific suggestions: for university President Dan Mote to advocate for open-access journals on a national level, to urge the libraries to educate faculty on the cost of journals and to encourage faculty to publish their research in open-access journals and deposit findings in open-access databases whenever possible.

Because so many faculty members are published in research journals that require subscriptions, the university has to pay for access to numerous journals every year. Dan Falvey, the chairman of the committee that authored the resolution, emphasized the proposal was not a university policy and didn't mandate any changes, but was rather intended to spark discussion about other options for journal access. But, Holum said, the discussion it sparked was largely "gloom and doom."

"Open access will kill the journals you need during your career," women's studies professor and university senator Claire Moses said. "It's as simple as that."

While everyone acknowledged that the high cost of scholarly journals and slimming library budgets needed to be addressed, many felt it was too soon to instate anything resembling university policy....

Senators criticized the proposal for its language, which they said did not accurately characterize the variations that exist between departments. Throughout the debate, science professors faced off against humanities professors - a rift caused by the vast differences between scientific journals and humanities journals....

Both Moses and [history professor Gay Gullickson] argued the resolution's language was too strong to count as a mere suggestion and would eventually lead to university policy.  "This does not call for discussion - it urges the president to take action," Gullickson said....

Comments 

• The resolution didn't focus more on gold OA (OA through journals) than green OA (OA through repositories), but the controversy focused more on gold OA than green OA.  It's a pity, because it didn't have to be that way.  The policy could and should have made the green OA recommendation (#4) primary.  It could and should even have made #4 even stronger.  The Harvard policy, for example, goes beyond encouraging green OA to requiring it, and offers an opt-out on request, decisively answering the fear that faculty would not be able to submit work to the journals of their choice. We've known for several years now that, with good drafting and good campus education, strong green OA policies, even green OA mandates, can win wide faculty support.  In the past year and half they have been adopted by unanimous faculty votes at Harvard, Stanford, Macquarie, Boston U, Oregon State, and MIT. 
• To supplement a green OA policy, it makes sense to encourage gold OA but not to require it.  The Maryland resolution wouldn't have required gold OA (#3), but I can see why some faculty wondered whether it was stronger than mere encouragement.  A strong green OA policy is compatible with the freedom of faculty to submit their work to the journals of their choice but a strong gold OA policy is not.  The freedom of faculty to submit their work where they like is important, but needn't stand in the way of a well-crafted OA policy.

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The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation has adopted an OA mandate.  (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)  Excerpt:

...Since its inception, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation has required that the results of Foundation-funded research be made openly and freely accessible on its web site.  In October 2008, the Foundation formalized its Policy on Open Access to Research Outputs. The objective of the policy is to remove barriers to accessing Foundation-funded research that is subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals....

Individuals and teams who receive funding from the Foundation for research and related activities are required to make every effort to ensure that the results of their research are published in open access journals (freely available online) or in an online repository of published papers, within six months after initial publication.

Research funded by the Foundation after October 1, 2008, should be limited to online publication on/in:

• Websites of the Foundation, co-sponsors, and administering organizations
• Open access journals
• Journals where the publisher may not make its content immediately openly accessible, but where the publisher agrees to archive the paper in an open access repository (for example, institutional repository or PubMed Central) within six months after initial publication.

Expenses related to disseminating research are eligible to be included as part of Foundation grant proposals. Expenses that researchers may incur related to having their submissions evaluated or published by open access or hybrid journals can be included as eligible expenses as of October 2008.  The Foundation also encourages (but does not require or finance) archiving of research papers published by researchers who received grants before October 1, 2008.

The Foundation reserves the right to review individual award agreements, should the Foundation determine that a breach of this policy by the award recipient or the researcher’s administering agency has occurred.

Reasonable exception

If a research team considers that the best dissemination vehicle for particular findings is a journal that does not have open access or that does not permit access via a repository, the Foundation requests that program lead submit a publishing addendum to the publisher that reads:

“Journal acknowledges that the researcher will be entitled to deposit an electronic copy of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC), and for this manuscript to be mirrored to all PMC International sites. Manuscripts deposited with PMC (and PMC International sites) may be made freely available to the public, via the internet, within six months of the official date of final publication in the journal.”

Also see the CHSRF FAQ on the policy.

Comments

• I like the policy's equal embrace of green and gold OA.  On the green side, however, the policy needlessly restricts itself by requiring grantees who do not publish in OA journals to publish in journals "where the publisher agrees to archive the paper in an open access repository".  It would be enough to look for journals where the publisher agrees to allow the author or author's agent to archive the paper in an OA repository. 
• Also on the green side, it allows delayed deposit, as opposed to immediate deposit and delayed OA release.  As a result, it may complicate compliance and enforcement by having to chase down manuscripts six months after their publication, when it would otherwise only have to flip the access switch on deposited manuscripts from closed to open.
• The exception is unique and interesting.  When a grantee wants to publish in a journal unwilling to allow OA on CHSRF's terms, the foundation doesn't offer a blanket opt-out for the publisher (like the loophole policies), it doesn't offer an opt-out for the author (like the Harvard policy), and it doesn't require the grantee to use an addendum or find a new publisher (like the NIH policy).  Instead it requests the use of an addendum.  This is a new shade of gray in the spectrum of OA policies, showing yet again that we have a limited vocabulary ("mandate", "voluntary policy") for describing the range of regulatory nudging. 
• Along the same lines, note that the policy doesn't flatly require green or gold OA, but merely requires grantees "to make every effort" to provide green or gold OA to their funded research.
• I can't tell when CHSRF adopted its OA mandate.  Today, the CHSRF home page says that "The Foundation introduces its Policy on Open Access to Research Outputs", suggesting that the policy is recent.  But the policy itself says that CHSRF has mandated OA "since its inception" and that it "formalized" the policy in October 2008.  (The CHSRF's inception was in 1997.)  If anyone can clear up this discrepancy, please drop me a line.

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A group of European and Latin American organizations have launched Project NECOBELAC.  From the site:

NECOBELAC is a European project to improve the production and dissemination of scientific information in public health, coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Rome, and funded under the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. NECOBELAC stands for a Network of Collaboration Between Europe and Latin American-Caribbean Countries and the project lasts three years, starting from 1st February 2009.

Project aim - to spread knowledge in scientific writing and open access publishing

The NECOBELAC project aims to establish a network of collaboration between European countries (EU) and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), to spread knowledge on the methods of scientific writing and publishing and on appropriate tools for the open access dissemination of information for the protection of public health. In this context, the project aims to implement a cultural change and not just establish an infrastructure for two-way exchange (EU-LAC / LAC-EU) of health information for both researchers and stakeholders....

NECOBELAC partners include Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) from Italy, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) from Spain, the University of Nottingham (SHERPA) from the UK, BIREME from Brazil, the Instituto de Salud Publica(ISP) from Colombia, and the Universidade do Minho (UMINHO) from Portugal.

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The University of Virginia Faculty Senate considered an OA resolution on April 8.  (Thanks to iNODE via Charles Bailey.)   From the resolution:

...Factors specifically driving faculty consideration of authors? rights and open-access include:

• The routine loss of control over the intellectual property produced by faculty as researchers and scholars in a copyright regime controlled by publishers.
• The sorry fate of many scholarly imprints and university presses which have played such a central role in promotion and tenure processes through their peer review and publication of academic scholarship.
• The enormous price paid by research libraries to buy back scholarship that is produced in great part within the academy itself.
• The preservation and dissemination requirements of born-digital scholarship and the general opportunities posed by new technologies.
• A changing philosophy of intellectual property ownership, especially where public agencies and private philanthropies have provided core research funding.
• Growth of new open-access and open-source licensing mechanisms....

Individual faculty can work today with author's addenda and other tools to obtain greater control over their scholarly works and ensure that uses now possible with technology are not given away, but few appear aware of this potential. The benefits of asserting such control can be immediate and important - whether enabling electronic distribution of articles to students and colleagues without fearing violation of a publication agreement, submittal of such works to a departmental or scholarly repository, or maintaining control over a revised edition of a scholarly monograph. The potential impact of any single individual attempting to negotiate alone is dwarfed, however, by the possibilities inherent in coherent and collective action by the country?s important institutions of higher education. It is that leverage which has been endorsed by the UVa Faculty Senate Task Force on Scholarly Publications and Author?s Rights through its submittal of the Resolution attached as Exhibit A....

Conclusion

Adoption of a strong open-access resolution by the Faculty Senate would place the University in a leadership position on scholarly communications without having to reinvent the wheel on every point of implementation. It would make a significant difference both locally and nationally to have a faculty of the University?s caliber adopt a strong statement on author?s rights. If implemented by the Provost, the University would host and preserve a significant amount of scholarly work for non-commercial research, teaching, and learning activities. Obtaining greater control over their copyrights as a matter of formal policy would enable all UVa faculty members to put their scholarly articles up on personal or departmental websites, to maintain other forms of control over the scholarship they produce, and to know that their work would be preserved and made accessible to future generations of students and scholars.

Draft Resolution on Open Access and Scholarship 3.24.09

Adapted from the resolution passed on February 12, 2008, by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University....

NOW THEREFORE the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia hereby adopts and endorses the following policy to govern copyrights in scholarly articles authored by the faculty and respectfully asks the Provost to implement this grant of copyrights and to develop an Open Access Program for the University of Virginia as provided below:

Each Faculty member at the University of Virginia will grant to the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia a nonexclusive, irrevocable, non-commercial, global license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of her or his scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. This policy will be applied to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or the Provost?s designee will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member.

To assist the University in making the articles widely available, each faculty member will provide an electronic version of the final peer-reviewed manuscript version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost?s Office. The Provost's Office or the Provost?s designee shall make the article available to the public in an open-access electronic repository no sooner than twelve months (12 months), from the date of publication of the article, such public access to be accomplished as soon as reasonably possible thereafter.

The Office of the Provost of the University of Virginia will be responsible for implementing this policy and for resolving - in consultation with the Faculty Senate or its designee, disputes concerning its interpretation and implementation. The policy will be reviewed after two years and a report prepared by the Faculty Senate for distribution to the University Faculty and the Office of the Provost.

Comments

• Kudos to the UVa Task Force on Scholarly Publication and Authors' Rights for bringing this forward.
• The Faculty Senate minutes are not yet online.  Does anyone know whether the resolution was approved?
• The story in UVa's newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, says that the resolution was "introduced" and "presented" but says nothing about the outcome.  It doesn't even say that the outcome is secret.  However, FWIW, it uses the indicative rather than the subjunctive to talk about the resolution's effects:  "the resolution will only affect scholarly articles" (as opposed to books) and "the policy will be reviewed after two years".  So does that mean it passed?  (Why should we have to guess?)

Update (4/24/09). Gavin Baker learned from a contact at UVa that the Faculty Senate took no action on the resolution. The Senate may return to it later but probably not until the fall.

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U.S. President Barack Obama has named Aneesh Chopra his Chief Technology Officer. (Thanks to techPresident.)

Chopra previously served as Secretary of Technology for the state of Virginia. In that role, he supported Virginia's "flexbook" program to develop open textbooks. Chopra was also a member of the Obama transition's Technology, Innovation and Government Reform working group, which discussed topics such as OA to public sector information and open data.

Response from industry and advocates is very positive so far. Micah Sifry says the appointment "looks like very good news for the transparency movement". Art Brodsky and Tim O'Reilly point to his work to make K-12 educational content from Virginia freely available on iTunes.

See also our past posts on OA-related recommendations for Obama's CTO.

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I've started to tag new OA developments at Connotea.  Over time I'd like to recruit others to do the same.  If we work together, we'll notice many more new developments than any individual or smaller group could notice on its own.  Everything we notice could be OA through a group feed.  I call it the open access tracking project (OATP).  Consider this the launch of the project beta.

The project feed is available in three forms:

• a web page (at Connotea)
• an RSS feed (generated by Connotea)
• an email feed (generated by Feedburner from Connotea's RSS feed)

The feed already exists.  In fact, you can see the 10 most recent feed items in the sidebar of this blog --and soon, I hope, in many other blogs.

More important, the feed is already more comprehensive than Open Access News.  I know that it's more comprehensive because Gavin and I tag everything we blog.  We also tag a good number of things we don't blog. 

You can participate as a reader, a tagger, or both, starting immediately.  To participate as a reader, just follow or subscribe to some version of the project feed. 

To participate as a tagger, you'll need to create a Connotea account, if you don't already have one.  I recommending putting the "Add to Connotea" bookmarklet on your browser.  When you see a new OA development, tag it with oa.new.  If you have time, write a brief description in the "description" box of the tagging dialog. 

My rule of rule of thumb here at OAN is to limit new posts to developments from the past six months or so.  I'm using the oa.new tag with the same understanding of what counts as new.

Long-term, the tracking project will go beyond an alert system for new developments to a classification system for older developments.  For example, you could mark an article about the NIH policy with oa.article, oa.nih, oa.mandate, oa.medicine, oa.legislation, and oa.usa.  You could tag items by field (oa.anthropology), country (oa.brazil), language (oa.chinese), date (oa.2009, oa.apr.2009), and genre (oa.article, oa.comment, oa.dissertation, oa.presentation).  If an item is not new, then just remember not to use the oa.new tag.

At this stage in the project, I don't want to propose a systematic set of subtopic tags (an ontology for OA) or a procedure for developing one.  The project has no official tags except oa.new, and is open to any subtopic tags you care to create.  For example, all my examples are in English, but there's no reason why subtopic tags couldn't be other languages as well.  However, for several reasons, it would help if the subtopic tags followed a common format (oa.something).

The Connotea guide includes instructions on how to build an RSS feed for multiple users and tags --for example, for all items tagged by you OR me, or all items tagged oa.new AND oa.german.

I'll have more to say about the project in the May issue of SOAN.  In the meantime here are a few quick notes:

• Connotea feeds only deliver the 10 most recently tagged items, and the project is already tagging more than 10 items per day.  Hence, use a feed reader which refreshes several times a day and stores past items until you've read or deleted them.  Bloglines stores the most recent 200 items, and Google Reader appears to store all past items until you're ready to delete them.  There may be many other readers with this feature as well; I just haven't had time to check.  Note that for now the email feed is stuck with the 10 item limitation.
• If two or more users tag the same item with the same tag (like oa.new), then the item will appear in the feed two or more times.  This doesn't prevent the feed from becoming comprehensive, but it makes an already-large feed larger than necessary.  I welcome suggestions and work-arounds, including other tagging services that don't create this problem.
• If you're also a blogger, here's what I recommend.  Tag the OA-related items you blog (with Connotea project tags, not just your local blog tags).  That will alert project readers to the item even if they don't read your blog.  If your blog post is an original contribution, or adds a comment to an article or development elsewhere, then tag your blog post as well.  That will alert project readers to your blog and post.
• Connotea users already use at least four different tags for OA-related sites:  open access, open_access, open-access, and openaccess.  The variant forms make it hard for users to find all the relevant feeds; they also prevent any single feed from taking full advantage of the collective tagging effort.  More to the point for this project, they are not limited to new developments and are often used to tag older developments.  Fortunately, OATP is fully compatible with existing tags.  I'm not asking anyone to stop using existing tags, but merely to start using oa.new for developments that are new within the last six months.
• If you can't wait for the May SOAN for the code to display the project feed on your blog or other web site, just drop me a line.
• If you're uncertain about any of this, don't feel any pressure to jump in.  I'd be happy for the project to start slow and small, so that we can debug it before it gets too large.  After my SOAN article comes out in May, I'll open a discussion forum for those who really want to dive in.

In my review of OA in 2008, I foreshadowed two crowdsourcing projects.  One was moving my timeline of the OA movement to the OAD wiki.  This is the other one.

Update (4/17/09).  I'm happy to report that I was wrong that Connotea RSS feeds are limited to the 10 most recent items.  Ten is the default, but it's easy to build feeds which contain the most recent 25, 50, 100, or even 1000 items.  For the same reason, I was wrong that the email feeds are limited to 10 items.  If you build an email feed from a longer RSS feed, then the email feed is longer as well.  But you don't have to build any of these feeds yourself.  I've posted a new array of feed links to the OAD page on the tracking project.

Update (4/18/09).  As I mentioned, Connotea feeds include duplicates ("If two or more users tag the same item with the same tag, like oa.new, then the item will appear in the feed two or more times").  But like any other RSS feeds, they are beautifully susceptible to mashups.  You can use Yahoo Pipes to create a new feed which filters out the duplicates (thanks to Hilary Spencer).  Here's an RSS feed, for example, which starts with Connotea feed of the most recent 100 items and then removes any duplicates.  It defines "duplicate" items as those with the same URL, regardless of how they are titled or described.  And here's an email feed built from the filtered RSS feed.

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Iryna Kuchma reports that there are three institutional OA mandates in Russia:

(1) The first, at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is not new.  Its mandate was adopted in 2007. 

But the other two are new, at least for OAN:

(2) Vologda scientific-coordination center of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences.  This center is a regional branch of the Institute above, but administratively independent.  It was not covered by the 2007 OA policy and saw the need to adopt its own.

(3) Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, within the Russian Academy of Sciences.

All three institutions use Socionet as their institutional repository.  All three are affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

PS:  I don't yet have dates of adoption, English translations, or links to the texts.  But I hope to be able to post them soon.

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President Obama has nominated Martha Kanter, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in Santa Clara County, as undersecretary of education.

If confirmed, Kanter would oversee the nation's postsecondary education policy, as well as federal student aid, adult education and vocational education. ...

She would also like to see colleges share noncopyrighted books and course materials on the Internet, similar to the "community college open textbook project" signed into California law last September. ...

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Ukraine's Ternopil State Ivan Puluj Technical University has adopted an OA mandate.  From the text in ROARMAP:

The open access policy adopted by Ternopil State Ivan Pul'uj Technical University (TSTU) mandates that all published journal articles and conference papers be deposited in Electronic Archive of TSTU (ELARTU) if there are no legal objections by publishers.

ELARTU also encourages and fully supports self-archiving of other research output produced by scientists and students of the university as well as other members of the scientific community.

Comment

• This is the first university-level OA mandate in the Ukraine.  Kudos to all involved.  I can't tell from this short summary whether the policy requires deposit at the time of acceptance or some later date.  It needn't allow faculty waivers, since (unfortunately) it has a built-in loophole for dissenting publishers.  At the next review, I hope the university can shift the opt-out from publishers to authors, as Harvard, Stanford, and MIT have done.
• Also see our past posts on national-level OA mandate for publicly-funded research in the Ukraine.

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Co-Action Publishing and two partners have launched Open Access Solutions, a new service to support OA publishers.  From yesterday's announcement:

Co-Action Publishing, Datapage and T Marketing are pleased to announce the launch today of OpenAccessSolutions.com, a website dedicated to offering small-scale Open Access scholarly publishers a full range of affordable services from multiple vendors along the publishing chain through a single virtual location.

OpenAccessSolutions.com addresses the needs of a growing segment within Open Access scholarly publishing. The Open Access journals market is growing quickly, and currently represents approximately 9% of the refereed journals listed in Ulrich's Periodical Directory. A number of these journals are operated by single editorial teams, societies or university presses. OpenAccessSolutions.com allows these publishers to combine independence with behind-the-scenes professional support on virtually any aspect of journal development and the publishing process.

"We recognize that many scholars and societies wish to remain independent of a publishing house as they transition a current subscription journal to Open Access or launch a new journal," stated Caroline Sutton from Co-Action Publishing, adding "By teaming up with Datapage and T Marketing, we are able to offer these publishers access to the same professional skill and know-how that large publishers take advantage of everyday in a format that is scalable to their needs."

Nisha Rahul, Operations Manager for Datapage, further commented "Datapage has been providing typesetting and pre-press services to publishers worldwide since 1987. Our ultimate aim is to make ourselves "easier to do business with". Through OpenAccessSolutions.com we make publishing easier for small publishers by providing seamless solutions from several vendors, allowing each publisher to create an optimal service package....

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Walter de Gruyter has introduced a hybrid OA option.  (Thanks to the Informationsplattform Open Access.)  Excerpt:

...Effective immediately, authors of journal articles and book chapters in collected volumes and series titles have the option of making their accepted articles freely accessible on the service Reference Global.

de Gruyter Open Library will be offered in addition to the subscription or purchase-based publication channels, which remain free of charge to authors.  This will result in a mixture of traditionally published and open access articles within the online version of journals and ebooks.  Open access articles will be clearly indicated on the online's list of contents.  Online, print and combined subscription options will continue to be available to institutions and individuals.

de Gruyter Open Library is only available to authors whose articles have been accepted for publication.  Therefore, all submitted papers will continue to undergo the established, entirely independent peer-review processes.

Price caps

The purpose of de Gruyter Open Library is to allow for research funding agencies to shift budgets from supporting subscription and book acquisitions to funding the publication of articles at the author’s choice. Therefore, de Gruyter guarantees that subscription prices in the case of journals and book prices will be lowered according to the share of open access income compared to the original calculation of the title. If the publisher’s calculation for a specific book was for example a sales line of 10,000 Euro and a minimum of 20% of the income is generated through open access fees, the price of the book will be lowered by 20%.

Authors’ service

In addition to publication on the website, articles included in de Gruyter Open Library will be archived in an open access repository.

Authors who have previously published their work in de Gruyter journals will also be entitled to apply for their papers to be retrospectively included in the de Gruyter open access publishing program.

de Gruyter Open Library Details ...

The authors, or their institutions or funding agencies, are required to pay an access fee.  This fee is 1,750 Euro (currently $2,450)

Copyright and License Agreement

Authors opting for de Gruyter Open Library retain the copyright to their article but are required to sign the de Gruyter Open Library License Agreement, certifying that they are the original authors and warranting the integrity and lawfulness of the article....

Also see the April 2 press release, in German or Google's English.

Comments

• This hybrid policy has five strengths that many others lack. It allows authors who select the OA option to retain copyright.  The articles are published under an open license (equivalent to CC-BY-NC).  Copies are deposited in an OA repository.  de Gruyter promises to reduce subscription prices roughly in proportion to author uptake.  And the option is available retroactively to any previous de Gruyter authors who wish to take advantage of it.  The first four of these are among the most important of the nine criteria I used to assess hybrid programs. 
• I can't tell whether the OA editions are the same as the published editions (as opposed to abridgments), but they appear to be.  I see that de Gruyter deposits the OA editions in an OA repository, but I can't tell which repository or whether authors may deposit them in repositories independent of the publisher.  I can't tell whether authors under a prior obligation to their funding agency to provide OA to their peer-reviewed manuscripts must pay for de Gruyter's OA option in order to comply.  Finally, I can't tell whether de Gruyter previously allowed postprint archiving (SHERPA doesn't know either) or, if so, whether it has now retreated from it in order to steer authors toward the new fee-based gold OA option.
• I believe that de Gruyter is the first publisher to extend its hybrid OA policy to book chapters.  Not only can book-chapter authors select the option, but book purchasers will see the book price drop roughly in proportion to author uptake.

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A boost to open access, The Hindu, April 2, 2009.  An editorial.  (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.)  Excerpt:

In yet another initiative favouring the scientific community, President Barack Obama recently signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Bill that includes a provision making the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) public access policy permanent....The rationale is simple: research carried out using government funding should be freely available to everybody and not be locked up in subscription-based journals. It is established that freely accessible papers are read by a larger number of people than online content that is priced....

However, despite its unquestionable benefits, the revised policy faces a challenge. A retrogressive bill — the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act — reintroduced in February 2009 aims at overturning the free access policy. The opposition stems from the fact that commercial publishers would no longer enjoy full rights over a large number of papers submitted to their journals. While the policy does not take away the publisher’s right to assert ownership over the paper’s copyright, it requires researchers to ensure that the copyright transfer agreement they sign with the publisher permits them to submit their papers to the NIH. The hollowness of the special interest opposition is exposed by the fact that the public access policy does not apply to papers already published, and it is within the right of publishers not to entertain papers where the authors would permit the NIH to make the content available in the online archive. The concept of open access is gaining greater acceptance among forward-looking publishers. Many open-access journals exist, and several subscription-based journals make papers freely available after a certain period of time. What needs to be remembered is that it is in the nature and spirit of science to seek open access.

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The Boston Globe has published two letters to the editor in response to Richard Roberts' March 23 op-ed piece defending the NIH policy and denouncing the Conyers bill (blogged here the same day).

From Patricia Schroeder, President of the Association of American Publishers, March 30, 2009:

Richard J. Roberts declared that scientific publishers must "stop trying to rob the public" of free access to taxpayer-funded scientific research ("Protect our access to medical research," op-ed, March 23). But research manuscripts are the foundation of the products developed by scientific publishers, and those products are neither free nor government-funded.

Imposing revenue-free business models on scientific publishing is a bad idea for science and society. New England Biolabs, where Dr. Roberts works, derives some products from government-funded research - and succeeds by not giving its products away.

Most publishers, including small nonprofits run by scientific societies, firmly oppose the deceivingly reasonable-sounding new mandate that National Institutes of Health-funded articles be posted openly on the Web after one year. That practice may be harmless for a weekly journal but can be devastating for a monthly or quarterly.

Is public access a problem? Not with Google indexing copies of articles that authors often post on personal or institutional websites. Is patients' access to medical literature a concern? Most publishers will provide free or modestly priced copies of individual studies. And scientific publishers translate the highest- impact articles into understandable lay-language summaries.

From Mike Rossner, Executive director of Rockefeller University Press, April 3, 2009:

Patricia Schroeder declares that the National Institutes of Health public-access mandate "may be harmless for a weekly journal but can be devastating for a monthly or quarterly" ("An unfair formula," Letters, March 30). We at the Rockefeller University Press have proved that this is not true.

We publish three biomedical journals (two of them monthly and one biweekly), and we have released our content to the public six months after publication since January 2001, but our revenues have grown every year since then.

Many biomedical publishers feel an obligation to give something back to the public that has funded the research they publish, and they release their content after a short period under subscription control.

However, a few large, highly profitable publishers have refused to do this, and have thus forced the NIH into the position of mandating public access.

The Rockefeller University Press is a member of the Association of American Publishers, of which Schroeder is chief executive, but she does not speak for us when it comes to the issue of access to the results of publicly funded research.

We strongly oppose any attempts to overturn or weaken the NIH mandate.

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I just mailed the April issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at 25 misunderstandings about open access.  The round-up section briefly notes 158 OA developments March.

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Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured, a press release from the DOAJ and the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands (dated today).  Excerpt:

The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) - Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) today announced the start of a cooperation in order to secure long-term preservation of open access journals. The Swedish Library Association is generously acting as sponsor.

Long-term preservation of scholarly publications is of major importance for the research community. New formats of scholarly publications, new business models and new ways of dissemination are constantly being developed....

The composition of the DOAJ collection (currently 4000 journals) is characterized by a very large number of publishers (2.000+), each publishing a very small number of journals on different platforms, in different formats and in more than 50 different languages. Many of these publishers are – with a number of exceptions – fragile when it comes to financial, technical and administrative sustainability.

At present DOAJ and KB carry out a pilot project aimed at setting up a workflow for processing open access journals listed with DOAJ. In the pilot a limited number of open access journals will be subject to long term preservation. These activities will be scaled up shortly and long term archiving of the journals listed in the DOAJ at KB’s e-Depot will become an integral part of the service provided by the DOAJ....

Comments

• Preservation matters.  Because it matters, and because doing it right can be difficult to arrange, new OA projects face a difficult decision:  delay launch to ensure preservation from birth or launch first and let preservation follow on.  One of the best features of the new DOAJ service is that it will follow on and catch up with OA journals already launched.  New OA journals will know from birth that it's available.  Another nice feature is that it will become part of the DOAJ array of services, simplifying life for the many small OA publishers.  It's one more reason for institutions to join the DOAJ membership program. 
• Effective preservation reassures all the stakeholders, from authors and readers, to librarians, publishers, and P&T committees, that the valuable research in OA journals will last, that it will last in digital form (OA literature has always been compatible with the preservation of printouts), and that it will last in OA form. 
• This is not the first preservation program for digital journals, or even the first for OA journals.  Two of the leading services are Portico and LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe).  LOCKSS has an OA-specific offshoot called OpenLOCKSS.

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DIAL (Dépôt Institutionnel de l'Académie universitaire 'Louvain') is the new multi-institutional IR for the Académie 'Louvain' (composed of the Facultés universitaires catholiques de Mons, Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix à Namur, Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, and the Université catholique de Louvain). (Thanks to Fabrizio Tinti.)

The history and context section of the repository notes that the Université catholique de Louvain adopted a mandatory OA policy on July 7, 2008, which requires deposit in the IR.

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The UK Department for International Development (DFID) has launched R4D (Research for Development), an OA repository. 

For details, see Peter Ballantyne, R4D, tool to access DFID-funded research, Europe's Forum on International Cooperation, March 30, 2009:

Over the last decade, DFID has invested around £700m in international development research. Hundreds of research partners around the world, running thousands of projects and programmes, have generated knowledge to shape our thinking on key development topics.
For the first time, information about this research is available on a free searchable database through DFID’s research portal (R4D). 

It has never been easy to find out what research topics, projects, and programmes DFID is funding or has funded. Researchers all over the world (and even DFID staff) had to rely on a network of personal contacts or inspired detective work to discover who was already working in a particular area, what was already known, and what lessons had been learned.

But now, R4D puts that information at your fingertips. Responding to a demand expressed by many DFID stakeholders for better and open access to all this information, R4D is a free on-line database containing information about research programmes supported by DFID.

R4D contains nearly 5,000 project records, and details of more than 20,000 research outputs. Every month we add new items, update existing information, and add historical documents as they become available....

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Universities UK and the Research Information Network have released a major report, Paying for open access publication charges, March 2009.  (Thanks to Matt Cockerill.)  From the summary in Annex A:

Higher education institutions

We recommend that: ...

• HEIs should establish dedicated budgets to which researchers can apply for funds to meet the costs of publication fees.
• Even if management of the budget is devolved, a consistent and coordinated approach to managing the payment of publication fees is taken across the institution.
• HEIs should establish clear criteria as to the circumstances in which researchers can apply for funds, including: eligibility for support when articles include authors from other institutions; eligibility for multiple grants in any one year; the priority to be given to researchers whose work is not supported by any external grant; the criteria for judging between competing claims for grants if funds are limited and any requirement to have the institution properly identified, e.g. within the context of the REF.
• Whatever arrangements institutions adopt to meet publication fees, it is vital that they are communicated effectively to all relevant academic and administrative staff.

Funders

We recommend that:

• Funders should clarify how they will provide support for researchers in meeting their open access policies in general, and the payment of publication fees in particular.
• RIN should continue to work with funders and UUK to monitor and assess developments in policy and practice, and in the funding environment; to advocate through dialogue coherent approaches to the development of policy; and to promote innovation in scholarly communication that is both cost-effective and in the best interests of research and the research community.

Publishers

We recommend that the submission process should include:

• for fully open access journals, a requirement for corresponding authors to confirm that they will pay the fee, or arrange for payment, if the paper is accepted for publication, and
• for hybrid journals, a requirement for corresponding authors to indicate whether or not they wish to pay a publication fee, and if so to confirm that they will pay it, or arrange for it to be paid, if the paper is accepted for publication....

Authors should be alerted to relevant fee waivers and discounts during the submission process....

Publishers should be as open as possible about their business models, about the income they are receiving in subscription and publication fees respectively, and about how they set their fee levels, and publishers of hybrid journals in particular should adjust their subscription rates to reflect increases in income from open access fees.

Authors

We recommend that:

• Authors should make use of services such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, and consider the options for publishing their results in such journals.
• Authors should familiarise themselves with their funders’ policies and requirements, with the options and the arrangements available to them in their institutions for meeting the costs of publication in open access and hybrid journals and with the administrative arrangements to apply for such funds.
• Before they submit articles for open access publication, corresponding authors should ensure that they have access to the funds necessary to meet the publication fee.

Also see RIN's earlier studies and recommendations on publication fees.

Comments

• This is helpful.  To me the three most important recommendations are these (and I support all three): 
  1. Universities should create funds to help pay these fees.
  2. Hybrid OA journals should reduce their subscription prices in proportion to fee revenue.
  3. Universities and funders willing to pay these fees should make that fact very clear to faculty and grantees (to dispel the harmful assumption that publication fees are only paid by authors out of pocket).
• I'd make at least four additions to the list: 
  1. Under universities:  Before any university creates a fund to pay these fees, or at the same time that it creates such a fund, it should require green OA for its research output (for example, as MIT just did).  A green OA mandate will cover a much larger body of literature than a journal fund, and at a much lower cost.  I'm not saying that a green OA mandate will make gold OA support unnecessary.  Universities should take both steps, but should take the more cost-effective step first.
  2. Under both universities and publishers:  Those who support OA journals and those who publish them should understand that the publication fee is only one of many business models compatible with OA.
  3. Under authors:  Authors should understand that they can make their work OA through a repository (green OA), not only through a journal (gold OA). 
  4. Under authors:  Authors should understand that most OA journals do not charge publication fees.

Update (3/28/09).  Also see Stevan Harnad's comments:

...A university should on no account spend a single penny on Gold OA fees until and unless it has first adopted a Green OA mandate to deposit all of its own refereed journal article output in its own institutional repository....

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Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) has introduced LOW COST (Learning Opportunities With Creation of Open Source Textbooks, HR 1464), a bill to "require Federal agencies to collaborate in the development of freely-available open source educational materials in college-level physics, chemistry, and math, and for other purposes."  (Thanks to David Wiley.)

What kind of help would agencies have to provide?  From Section 3:

(a) In General- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the head of each agency that expends more than $10,000,000 in a fiscal year on scientific education and outreach shall use at least 2 percent of such funds for the collaboration on the development and implementation of open source materials as an educational outreach effort in accordance with subsection (b).

(b) Requirements- The head of each agency described in subsection (a) shall, under the joint guidance of the Director of the National Science Foundation and the Secretary of Energy, collaborate with the heads of any of the agencies described in such subsection or any federally supported laboratory or university-based research program to develop, implement, and establish procedures for checking the veracity, accuracy, and educational effectiveness of open source materials that--

1. contain, at minimum, a comprehensive set of textbooks or other educational materials covering topics in college-level physics, chemistry, or math;
2. are posted on the Federal Open Source Material Website;
3. are updated prior to each academic year with the latest research and information on the topics covered in the textbooks or other educational materials available on the Federal Open Source Material Website; and
4. are free of copyright violations.

Comments

• Which is more surprising:  this progressive idea or its sharp contrast with the regressive Conyers bill?  One of these bills could pass and other fail, of course, or both could fail.  But think about the possibility of both passing:  on the one hand, agencies would be required spend 2% or more of their education budgets on OA textbooks, and on the other, the NIH would have to stop requiring OA for medical research already funded by taxpayers, when the extra cost of making it OA costs the agency about 0.01% of its budget ($2-4 million out of $29 billion). 
• If you're a US citizen and plan to write to your Congressional delegation in support of the Foster bill, please take an extra minute to write in opposition to the Conyers bill as well.

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Robert Kiley, ACS Open Choice articles - now in PMC and UKPMC, UK PubMed Central Blog, March 24, 2009.

Papers published by the American Chemical Society (ACS) under their [AuthorChoice] option are now available in [PubMedCentral] and UKPMC. ...

All future papers published under this model will be made available through these repositories at the time of publication.

ACS [AuthorChoice] articles are fully open access in the sense that the licence allows users - for non-commercial research and education purposes - to "access, download, copy, display and redistribute articles as well as adapt, translate text and data mine the content...."

This model meets the requirements of the Wellcome Trust - and the other funders in the UKPMC Funders Group.

See also Peter Murray-Rust's comments.

See also Peter Suber's past post.

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JANUL Statement on Open Access:  Pursuing New Scholarly Communication, a public statement from the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL), March 16, 2009.  Excerpt:

Free and public accessibility to the results of scientific research must be an essential component of research promotion and also serves as the foundation for future development of science and society. University libraries recognize that it should be their crucial mission to contribute to scholarly development and social progress....Therefore, we at the Japan Association of National University Libraries (JANUL) appeal strongly to the world in support for the promotion of 'open access.' ...

JANUL makes the following appeal to the stakeholders in all fields to realize 'open access' for sustaining new scholarly communication:

Government and Funding Agencies should:

1. Implement the policies needed to promote 'open access' to publicly-funded research products.
2. Accelerate 'open access' to the digital data of cultural heritages and research data.

Researchers should:

1. Endorse 'open access' and cooperate to make their research results publicly accessible.
2. Try to self-archive their articles in their institutional repositories.
3. Try to retain the right of copyright ownership for their articles, i.e. their right to use them for educational, research, or other non-commercial purposes.

Universities and Research Institutions should:

1. Help affiliated researchers to make their research outputs openly accessible.
2. Try to develop the functionality needed (institutional repositories) to disseminate the affiliated researchers' scientific results.

Scientific Societies and Associations should:

1. Endorse 'open access' and cooperate to make their affiliated researchers' research results publicly accessible.
2. Foster 'open access' with society-published journals, through shortening embargo periods and providing published version of articles to institutional repositories.

Publishers should:

1. Nurture understanding of and cooperation with other stakeholders to realize 'open access.'
2. Enhance utilization of research results by respecting author's rights and demanding only the rights necessary for publication.
3. Advance 'open access' through shortening embargo periods and providing publisher version of articles to institutional repositories.

University Libraries should:

1. Appeal to library users and other related parties for support and cooperation toward 'open access' and promote it in cooperation with faculty and researchers.
2. Try to develop institutional repositories as a disseminating source for 'open access' and university-launched research results.

Comment.  A good list.  I'd add that universities, like public funding agencies, should mandate green OA for their research output.  For details and supporting arguments, see my article in last month's SOAN.

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When Switzerland's University of St. Gallen adopted its OA mandate in December 2008 and announced it last month, the text was initially available only in German.  About a week later an unofficial English version was posted to ROARMAP.  Today the university issued an official English version.  (Thanks to Ruedi Lindegger.)  Excerpt:

Regulations concerning the Open Access Policy

Adopted by the Senate on 15 December 2008...

Art. 1: Open access

Open access to research results generated by the University of St. Gallen and to any concomitant publications shall be guaranteed and supported within the framework of the relevant legal provisions....

[T]he University of St. Gallen...has made the communication and dissemination of knowledge its aim and that the following explanations must be interpreted against the back-ground of that selfsame aim....

Art. 4: Protection of exploitation rights

To the extent to which this is possible, researchers shall be obliged definitely and permanently to reserve in their contracts with publishing houses a non-exclusive exploitation right for the free digital publication of their research results in the institutional archive of the University of St. Gallen.

If an arrangement pursuant to Art. 4(1) is only feasible on condition that blocking periods are observed, such blocking periods shall be agreed with the publishing house.

The reservation of exploitation rights for the protection of open access shall be regularly and explicitly demanded prior to the execution of a contract....

Art. 5: Availability of full texts

Full texts shall be made available in the institutional archive when the post-print manuscript has been accepted for publication by the publishing house and when the publishing house permits the self-archiving of the post-print or the pre-print version.

In principle, full texts shall be made available at the same time as or at the earliest possible point in time after publication by the publishing house.

Publication of book contributions, commentaries and books shall not be subject to this obligation.

Art. 6: Publication in open access journals

The publication of research results in open access journals is welcome and shall be supported by the University of St. Gallen....

Art. 7: Publication pursuant to the principle of open access

The University of St. Gallen shall support its researchers in their publications pursuant to the principle of open access by

1. providing its researchers with advisory support in negotiations with publishing houses concerning contracts for self-archiving,
2. supporting publication in an open access journal by providing its researchers with advisory support,
3. expressing due recognition during the evaluation of its re-searchers’ research results published in open access journals....

Art. 9: Effective date

These Regulations shall take effect on 1 January 2009.

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The Autonomous Community Government of Madrid adopted an OA policy, apparently an OA mandate, in May 2008.  Last month it formalized the mandate in its official research regulations, February 19, 2009.

Acceso abierto a la información científica has posted the relevant excerpt, which makes clear that the new policy is a mandate.  (Thanks to Eloy Rodrigues.)  Read it in Spanish or Google's English.

The policy requires Madrid-funded researchers to deposit the final versions of their articles in their institutional repository.  It permits a delay on deposit (not just on OA) of six months for STM research and 12 months for SSH research.

Updates (3/30/09). 

• The May 2008 policy might have been limited to certain research projects.  If so, February 2009 policy is the Madrid government's first general OA mandate.  (Thanks to Eloy Rodrigues.)  I'll post more if I learn more.
• I was wrong to say that the new policy requires deposit in the researcher's IR.  It requires deposit in the researcher's IR and/or the Madrid central repository.  (Thanks to Gavin Baker.)
• I believe the Madrid policy is just the second mandate anywhere to use different embargo periods for different fields.  The first was the EU-wide pilot project from August 2008.

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Yesterday 10 major science organizations issued a joint statement (in German) explaining the rudiments of OA and reaffirming that OA does not violate copyright or interfere with the freedom of publication.  Read it in German or Google's English.

The joint statement is an answer to the objections and misunderstandings of the Heidelberg Appeal, a sign-on petition against Google Books and OA launched earlier this week.  The petition's criticism of OA is based on several mistakes, including the assumption that OA policies apply to royalty-producing works like novels and that OA expropriates the intellectual property of authors or publishers, rather than resting on the consent of authors or publishers.

The 10 science organizations are:

• Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
• Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
• Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
• Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
• Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (which organized the joint statement)
• Hochschulrektorenkonferenz
• Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
• Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
• Wissenschaftsrat

Update (3/26/09).  Also see Christian Hauschke's extensive collection of other responses to the Heidelberg Appeal.  (Thanks to Klaus Graf.)  Read Hauschke's page in German or Google's English.

Update (3/27/09).  Also see the public statement against the Heidelberg Appeal from Rainer Kuhlen and the Aktionsbündnis: Urheberrecht für Bildung und Wissenschaft (Coalition for Action:  Copyright for Education and Research), March 25, 2009.  Read it in German or Google's English.

Update (3/31/09). The joint statement has now been translated into English. (Thanks to Andreas Hübner.)

Update (4/9/09). German Medical Science issued its own statement in support of OA and against the Heidelberg Appeal.

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In early 2008, the European Commission assembled an Expert Group of 13 academics to rethink how the EU funds research and, in particular, "to undertake an evidence-based, ex-post evaluation of FP6."   As group chairman, it appointed Ernst Th. Rietschel, President of the Leibniz Association and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lübeck.  The group met six times between July 2008 and January 2009, and in February submitted its final report, Evaluation Of The Sixth Framework Programmes For Research And Technological Development 2002-2006, February 2009. 

From recommendation 5.2.3 (p. 60):

...The public accountability of the FP [Framework Programme] must be increased – not through audit control, but through clear procedures and access to information at all stages and, where appropriate, through open access to the research results obtained through the FP funding....

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This afternoon, the MIT faculty unanimously adopted a university-wide OA mandate.  Here's the resolution the faculty approved (thanks to Hal Abelson, MIT professor of computer science and engineering, who chaired the committee to formulate it):

MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy

Passed by Unanimous of the Faculty, March 18, 2009

The Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author, who informs MIT of the reason.

To assist the Institute in distributing the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each Faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the Provost's Office in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office.

The Provost's Office will make the scholarly article available to the public in an open- access repository. The Office of the Provost, in consultation with the Faculty Committee on the Library System will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty.

The policy is to take effect immediately; it will be reviewed after five years by the Faculty Policy Committee, with a report presented to the Faculty.

The Faculty calls upon the Faculty Committee on the Library System to develop and monitor a plan for a service or mechanism that would render compliance with the policy as convenient for the faculty as possible.

Comments

• This is big.  Another of the world's great research universities has an OA mandate.  Unlike Harvard and Stanford, which now have OA mandates for some of their schools, the MIT mandate is university-wide.  Moreover, while the votes at Harvard and Stanford were unanimous within the relevant schools, and the Boston University vote was unanimous within the University Faculty Council, this is the first university-wide unanimous faculty vote. 
• Like the Harvard policy, the MIT policy allows faculty to opt-out.  Faculty must make separate requests for separate works, and must give a reason. 
• MIT developed DSpace (with Hewlett-Packard), of course, and already has an OA repository (also named DSpace) with over 30,000 deposits. 
• The new policy does not specify the method of deposit.  Faculty are not even asked to make direct deposits, merely to make their work available for deposit.  The Provost's Office will insure that the works make it to the repository.  Note that a faculty committee has an essential role in the interpretation and implementation of the policy.
• Kudos to Hal Abelson and the MIT faculty!
• Also see our past posts anticipating this policy at MIT (1, 2), and our many posts on MIT's other OA projects, including its pioneering Open Courseware. 

Update (3/19/09).  Also see Hal Abelson's 'comments:

I chaired the committee that drafted the resolution and led faculty discussions on it throughout the fall. So I’m particularly gratified that the vote was unanimously in favor. In the words of MIT Faculty Chair Bish Sanyal, the vote is “a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas.”

Our resolution was closely modeled on similar ones passed last February by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and by the Harvard Law School, also passed by unanimous vote. Stanford’s School of Education did the same, as did Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government just last Monday.

Harry [Lewis] blogged last month about the execrable “Fair Copyright in Research Act” introduced by Rep. Conyers of Michigan, which would repeal the National Institute of Health mandate on open-access publishing and forbid government agencies from imposing similar mandates. This act is harmful to the progress of science and should be scuttled. Now that there are unanimous votes supporting open access by faculty at world-leading institutions supporting open access, Rep. Conyers should recognize what everyone else does, and deflate his ill-conceived trial balloon.

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