Science Oct 4 2013 Special Section on Scholarly Communication

The most recent issue of Science includes a section covering developments in communicating science including topics such as open access, peer review and scientific meetings.
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/scicomm/index.xhtml

The Scholarly Kitchen also comments on content in the special issue: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/10/04/open-access-sting-reveals-deception-missed-opportunities/

Fair Access to Science and Technology Research

The bipartisan FASTR (Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act) bill was introduced into both the House and the Senate in February.  Support for this Bill continues to grow in the academic communities. 

http://www.sparc.arl.org/blog/opportunity-your-campus-support-open-access-encourage-your-provosts-sign-open-letter-support

Open Access Week 2013

Open Access Week this year is Oct 21 to 27, 2013.  This year’s Open Access Week theme is “Redefining Impact”.

http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/about

U.S. Representatives Introduce Bill Expanding Access to Federally Funded Research

New bills calling for public access to research funded by all federal agencies are being introduced in the House and Senate.

http://doyle.house.gov/sites/doyle.house.gov/files/documents/2013%2002%2014%20DOYLE%20FASTR%20FINAL.pdf

Georgia State University ereserves case

There are further developments in the Georgia State University ereserves case on appeal to the 11th Circuit.   A couple of newstories on the most recent development can be found at:

Obama Administration Considers Joining Publishers In Fight To Stamp Out Fair Use At Universities - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130131/00310621834/obama-administration-considers-joining-publishers-fight-to-stamp-out-fair-use-universities.shtml

Unwelcome Intervention? - http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/01/library-supporters-worry-us-may-back-publishers-copyright-case#.UQwhIlJhcU4.email

John Willinsky in a panel discussion on the legacy of Aaron Swartz

The world of academic publishing is complicated and not always in the best interests of the academic or the public who has to pay to access articles. 

This panel discusses the efforts of Aaron Swartz, the importance of open access, and issues with the current academic publishing system.  

http://huff.lv/VHK7NV

NIH to recruit Associate Director for Data Science

National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., announced plans to recruit a new senior scientific position, the Associate Director for Data Science. The associate director will lead a series of NIH-wide strategic initiatives that collectively aim to capitalize on the exponential growth of biomedical research data, such as from genomics, imaging, and electronic health records. Dr. Collins recently charged a working group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) to examine the growing data and informatics challenges associated with biomedical research. One of the major recommendations made by that working group in June 2012 is the creation of a new NIH leadership position focused on data science.

See more...http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jan2013/od-10a.htm

ORCID and CrossRef Collaborate to Accurately Attribute Authorship of Scholarly Content

Two not-for profit organizations, ORCID and CrossRef, have collaborated to solve the problem of ambiguous author names in scholarly content. ORCID began assigning unique identifiers to researchers in October. As part of the ORCID Registry, individuals can search the metadata from CrossRef, the largest organization assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to scholarly content, and add their works to their personal ORCID records. For more on this, see: http://subscription-agents.org/orcid-and-crossref-collaborate-accurately-attribute-authorship-scholarly-content

For more information on ORCID, or to register for your own ORCID ID, please see http://www.orcid.org.

High-impact open access journals

Librarians are sometimes asked to identify high-impact open access journals. That’s a hard question, in part because there’s not much consensus about how to measure journal impact. Andrew Bonamici takes a stab at answering the question. http://openaccess.uoregon.edu/2012/03/02/high-impact-open-access-journals/

Open Access Explained!

Right to Research Coalition launched a video in collaboration with PhD Comics. The video entitled “Open Access Explained!” provides a quick look at the many reasons why Open Access to research is important for students, researchers, and other stakeholders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1

Ten Years after Budapest Open Access Initiative New Recommendations Released

New guidelines for scholarly publishing have been released by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, to set the default to open for all publishing: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/boai-10-recommendations

Databib

Databib, http://databib.org, is a tool for helping people to identify and locate online repositories of research data. Over 200 data repositories have been cataloged in Databib, with more being added every week. Users and bibliographers create and curate records that describe data repositories that users can browse and search.

Is the Academic Publishing Industry on the Verge of Disruption?

U.S. News and World Report covers the open access debate: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/23/is-the-academic-publishing-industry-on-the-verge-of-disruption

UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Accessible to Public

Health Sciences Campus Becomes Largest in Nation to Adopt Open-access Policy

The UCSF Academic Senate has voted to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public, helping to reverse decades of practice on the part of medical and scientific journal publishers to restrict access to research results.


Full press release:
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/05/12056/ucsf-implements-policy-make-research-papers-freely-accessible-public

Full text of policy and supporting documents
http://senate.ucsf.edu/2011-2012/j-lib-openaccess.html

Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research

There is a petition to the Obama Administration to require free access to scientific journal article arising from taxpayer-funded research.  This expands greatly on the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy.  It is 300 signatures short of its 25,000 goal.

See the petition here.

World Bank Live Event Report: Open Access Policy and Development

The World Bank hosted an event called What the World Bank’s Open Access Policy Means for Development.  Participants included Peter Suber from Harvard University, Michael Carroll from American University (Mike is on the Board of Directors at Creative Commons), and Cyril Muller and Adam Wagstaff from the World Bank. The discussion was timely given the Bank’s recently-announced Open Access Policy and Open Knowledge Repository.   See more...http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32839 

Georgia State University Decision on Fair Use

Read summary and recap here: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/gsu_issuebrief_15may12.pdf

Open Access Spreads to Miami University

http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/05162012/open-access-spreads-miami-university

Academic publishing: Open sesame

When research is funded by the taxpayer or by charities, the results should be available to all without charge....

http://www.economist.com/node/21552574

Harvard University: Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing

Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called “providers”) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.

Read more at: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448