Technology Blog

source: Notes on the Rio iCommons

source: More on OA to data

Martin Weller, Academic publishing - a rant, The Ed Techie, June 28, 2006. (Thanks to Ray Corrigan.) Excerpt:

For those who don’t engage in [academic publishing], the deal goes something like this:

• Academics provide the content
  
• Academics do the reviewing
  
• Academics often do the editing
  
• Publishers print it and sell it back to academics
  
• Authors are often restricted from making their own work publicly available
  
• Authors receive no payment for the published work

Not an entirely fair system one would have thought, but because journal publication is tied up with academic esteem, promotion and the rather pernicious RAE, it is a process many of us feel compelled to go along with.

Thankfully the tide is turning and there are a number of different models for publishing now, including online journals, open content and err, blogs I guess.

PS: Right. I’d just add that the remedy, or the superior alternative, does not lie in “online” journals as such, which may be guilty of the same practices. It lies in open-access journals, which are online but also free of charge and free of the restrictions that prevent authors from sharing their work as widely as possible. Open-access archives are another part of the solution, giving authors the same benefits even if they publish in conventional, non-OA journals.

source: More on the problem and the solution

Steven Bell, Honoring Ray English - ACRL Academic/Research Librarian Of The Year, ACRLog, June 28, 2006. Excerpt:

One of the best ACRL traditions that occurs at ALA conferences is the reception that follows the ACRL President’s Program. The focus of the reception, other than general schmoozing, is to celebrate the winner of the ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The winner of the 2006 award, Ray English, Azariah Smith Root Director of Libraries at Oberlin College, was honored at the reception. The award, sponsored by YBP Library Services, recognizes an outstanding member of the library profession who has made a significant national or international contribution to academic/research librarianship and library development….Congratulations to Ray English on receiving the ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year award.

PS: I whole-heartedly add (or repeat) my congratulations. Ray is not only a librarian’s librarian, but a champion of OA. He’s the chair of the SPARC Steering Committee, an active member of the Open Access Working Group –and by chance, co-author (with me) of an article published earlier this month on the FRPAA and CURES bills now before the US Senate.

source: Ray English, ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year

SHERPA has launched JULIET, a database of the OA policies adopted by various funding agencies. As of today, it covers the eight Research Councils of the UK, the Wellcome Trust, and the NIH. JULIET is the natural complement to SHERPA’s RoMEO list on the OA policies of publishers and journals. From today’s announcement:

SHERPA’s new JULIET service breaks down the differing requirements from
each of the Research Councils (and others) to try and simplify [1] what the policy says has to be done, [2] what authors should archive, [3] when they should archive, [4] where they should archive their outputs….

It is intended to add other policies from other funding bodies to JULIET as these become available.

Comment. This is an excellent idea announced with perfect timing. It should be very useful for researchers who need to understand the terms of funding from different agencies and for advocates and analysts who need to track the progress of funder-stimulated OA.

source: Database of funding agency OA policies

JISC has issued a press release in support of the new RCUK OA policy. Excerpt:

JISC today welcomed the RCUK’s position statement on access to research outputs, saying that the statement represents ‘an important step’ in helping to ensure that the fruits of UK research are made more widely available. With individual research councils beginning to set out their guidance for implementing the RCUK principles, the statement will have major repercussions for the future of UK research.

Published today, the statement reaffirms the RCUK’s belief in the value of repositories as a means of improving access to the results of publicly-funded research. It also restates its encouragement given last year to UK researchers to deposit their outputs in e-print repositories, suggesting that deposit should take place at the earliest opportunity.

JISC fully supports this principle and is investing significantly in the development of institutional repositories in the UK through its £3.5m digital repositories programme and the £13.8m repositories and preservation strand of its capital programme. JISC is also supporting the development of UK PubMed Central as a repository for research outputs in bio-medicine. JISC is therefore well placed to ensure that repositories are available for researchers who wish to deposit their outputs in them, and that the necessary national infrastructure is in place to support access and resource discovery across institutional and subject-based repositories….

source: JISC endorses new RCUK OA policy

Stephen Pincock, UK research to be open access, TheScientist, June 28, 2006. Excerpt:

Scientists funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will soon be obliged to deposit copies of their published articles in an online repository “at the earliest opportunity,” the council announced today (June 28).  The new archiving requirements will apply to papers arising from grant applications submitted on or after October 1st 2006, and for projects funded at BBSRC-sponsored institutes, the council said in a statement on its Web site.

The BBSRC decision came as part of a wider position statement published today by Research Councils UK, the umbrella body for all of the UK’s seven research councils, which distribute government funds.  That long-awaited policy says that researchers funded by any of the councils should deposit their research outputs in a repository. However, it leaves the decision on how and when to implement such a policy up to each of the individual research councils, each of which funds research in different disciplines.

Leaving the decision up to the individual councils was an important point when drafting the statement, said Adrian Pugh from RCUK. “We’ve been aware that there is a huge breadth of variation within the research community and it’s very difficult to capture all the nuances that go across that community,” he told The Scientist….

Today’s statement comes 12 months after RCUK published a draft position statement on this issue. That earlier statement had triggered a hostile reaction from some journal publishers, but Sally Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, told The Scientist she was “much happier with what the RCUK has now done.”  For instance, Morris applauded the fact that RCUK had put an emphasis on working with publishers to make the arrangements, and that the policy recognized that different disciplines would respond in different ways….

source: More on the RCUK policy

source: Report on the Lund conference on biomedical publishing

The Research Councils UK have issued an updated position statement on access to research outputs (dated June 2006, released today). Excerpt:

[1] In June 2005, the Executive Group of Research Councils UK (RCUK) issued a draft position statement on access to research outputs. Following consultation and discussion, the research councils remain committed to the principles that underpinned that statement and agree on the further activities necessary to develop their position. These principles state that:…Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable….

[3] RCUK Executive Group reaffirms its long-standing position that authors choose where to place their research for publication. It is for authors’ institutions to decide whether they are prepared to use funds for any page charges or other publishing fees. Such funds could be part of an institution’s indirect costs under the full economic costing regime. RCUK Executive Group makes no judgement as to the most appropriate publishing model.

[4] Research councils agree that their funded researchers should, where required to do so, deposit the outputs from research councils funded research in an acceptable repository as designated by the individual research council. This requirement will be effective from the time indicated in the guidance from the individual research council, This guidance will be published on individual Research Council websites and will, where appropriate, require funded researchers to:

• Personally deposit, or otherwise ensure the deposit of, a copy of any resultant articles published in journals or conference proceedings, in an appropriate repository, as designated by the individual research council.
• Wherever possible, personally deposit, or otherwise ensure the deposit of, the bibliographical metadata relating to such articles, including a link to the publisher’s website, at or around the time of publication.

[5] Full implementation of these requirements must be undertaken such that current copyright and licensing policies, for example embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors. The research councils’ position is based on the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies.

[6] Where relevant, grant guidelines will be amended to provide guidance to grant holders on the requirement for ensuring the deposit of material, and will apply from the date indicated in individual research council’s guidance. These research councils will also encourage, but not formally oblige, award-holders to deposit articles arising from grants awarded as a result of applications before that date.

[7] RCUK Executive Group has consulted widely on its position statement and it is clear that there is a wide spectrum of views on the likely impact of self-archiving on subscription journals. Accordingly, RCUK Executive Group will:

• Organise a workshop jointly with interested learned societies to discuss the implications for them of self-archiving.
• Consult with the publishing community regarding copyright and licensing issues through existing forums. There is no intention that individual researchers will be expected to break publishers’ copyright or licensing agreements or to negotiate with publishers.
• Initiate a project to investigate the impact of author-pays publication and self-archiving on research publishing. Three leading publishers (Macmillan, Blackwell and Elsevier) have indicated that they are prepared to be involved in the project. Discussions have also taken place with the Royal Society, which also believes that such research could be useful. It is intended that this project will start late in 2006 and report in late 2008. RCUK will review its position in mid to late 2008 in light of the findings from this research. A pre-study with the Research Information Network and the Department of Trade and Industry on the availability of data on scholarly publishing has already started.

Also see the RCUK press release.

In recognition of the diverse research communities served by each Research Council individual Councils will publish guidelines for their communities on access to research outputs in each field. This will ensure that each discipline is best able to respond in ways aligned to their needs. Initial guidance has been published today on Research Council websites.

Here are the eight Research Councils and the web sites where they will describe (or are already describing) their separate OA policies:

• Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
• Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)
• Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
• Medical Research Council (MRC)
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)

Comments. This news is big but mixed.

1. See my summary of the draft RCUK policy (June 2005) superseded by today’s policy.
2. The 2005 draft policy was superb and had four chief strengths: First, it mandated OA and did not merely request it. Second, it applied to all publicly-funded research, not just biomedicine. Third, it gave authors some flexibility about the OA archive in which to deposit their work. Fourth, it offered to pay the fees at OA journals that charge fees. The new policy preserves the second two strengths but may or may not preserve the first two.
3. The new policy seems to mandate OA and seems to cover all the disciplines. But all it really does is defer to the eight separate policies of the eight Research Councils, most of which are still under development. We already know that some will mandate OA and some won’t (see next). Today’s policy merely requires OA when it is required by one of the Research Councils, an unremarkable tautology.
4. Some of the eight Research Councils say they are working on policies and will announce them before the end of 2006. The EPSCR may not announce its policy until 2008. But three have already taken positions. For example, the CCLRC has decided to “strongly encourage” rather than mandate OA, a major disappointment. It’s following the path of the NIH, which has proved that strong encouragement does not work. The ESRC has decided that “its funded researchers should deposit the outputs from any research in the ESRC awards and outputs repository, where this is permitted by publishers’ licensing or copyright arrangements,” another major disappointment that gives publishers discretion to nullify the policy. The MRC has decided to mandate OA effective October 1, the only one of the eight so far to take this stand.
5. Because some of the Research Councils will not mandate OA, and because they are not required to do so, the new policy is a retreat from the 2005 draft policy. If the RCUK is thinking that different agencies in different disciplines face different circumstances, and need flexibility to respond to those differences, then it’s correct. But it could still mandate OA in each field, and if it still adheres to the principles of the 2005 draft (as it says it does), then it should do so. For one way to to this, see the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), introduced in Congress last month. FRPAA asks federal agencies to develop their own OA policies under certain guidelines laid down in the bill, and one of those guidelines is that they mandate OA to the research they fund.

source: The RCUK updates its OA policy

The new issue of Data Science Journal (Vol. 5, 2006) is now online. Two of its articles are on OA:

1. Jitendra Gaikwad and Vishwas Chavan, Open access and biodiversity conservation: changes and potentials for the developing world. Abstract: Access to and sharing of data is essential for biodiversity conservation. However, workers from developing nations that harbor rich biodiversity often do not have access to biodiversity information and often are not keen on making what data they have accessible to others. Open access initiatives offer a great opportunity to make the world’s biodiversity information accessible to anyone, at any time and in any place. This article reviews the state of open access in the developing world and argues for the increase of data on biodiversity in the public domain. It makes specific suggestions about how the developing world can reap the benefits of this global S&T movement to better conserve and sustain biotic resources through the creation of a “virtual biodiversity research space”.
2. Jens Klump and nine co-authors, Data publication in the open access initiative. Abstract: The ‘Berlin Declaration’ was published in 2003 as a guideline to policy makers to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base. Because knowledge is derived from data, the principles of the ‘Berlin Declaration’ should apply to data as well. Today, access to scientific data is hampered by structural deficits in the publication process. Data publication needs to offer authors an incentive to publish data through long-term repositories. Data publication also requires an adequate licence model that protects the intellectual property rights of the author while allowing further use of the data by the scientific community.

source: More on OA to data

Virginia Barbour and Mark Patterson, Open access: the view of the Public Library of Science, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 4 (2006) pp. 1450-1453. Excerpt:

In 2006, the publishing landscape contains an increasing
number of fully open-access journals. There are also many
journals that are experimenting with hybrid models, offering
OA models to authors who have the funds to pay for this.

source: The PLoS view of OA

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants open access to Whois in order to help fight spam, scams, and spyware.

Comment. We all hate spam, scams, and spyware, but we should understand what’s in the other pan of the scale here. Whois isn’t research data. It includes some private information on domain registrants, such as an email address, snail-mail address, and phone number. Apart from the

source: OA to Whois

Jan Velterop, An ‘Alms’ Race? The Parachute, June 27, 2006. Excerpt:
In a posting entitled Mandating OA via Paid Publisher-Archiving (PPA) versus Author Self-Archiving (ASA), Stevan Harnad states s published in a journal with an impact factor?), worth a lot more to the funder, worth a lot more to science, and worth a lot more to society at large….
If there is value in the system, however, it

source: Making the valuable sustainable

The seven discussion papers structuring the the 12-day online forum, The Open Access Movement and Information for Development (sponsored by the Coady International Institute, May 29 - June 9, 2006) are now online. (Thanks to Heather Morrison.)

source: OA for development

• Light Blue Touchpaper: Ignoring the “Great Firewall of China”
  just firewall out RSTs, and the Great Firewall’s keyword blocker is defeated
  (tags: china censorship half-baked richard-clayton tcp-ip firewalls great-firewall-of-china)
• Essentials, 2006 edition
  Mark Pilgrim’s suggested apps for an Ubuntu desktop — some quite good suggestions here, with lots of KDE goodness. I just wish amaroK was as user-friendly and usable as the amazing (but not well-maintained) JuK, though
  (tags: linux kde unix desktops software applications)

Tags:

This post was written by dailylinks, source: links for 2006-06-27

Why, I actually watch a videoblog for the first time, that’s what. I even downloaded a new video player (VLC) in order to watch it.

Here’s Mark’s introduction to the video: “Welcome to the first annual “dive into mark” show! It’s just like reading my blog, except it takes forever to download, requires an unwieldy array of third-party software, and it’s not accessible to blind people, deaf people, or search engines.”

Also, his response in the comments to his post: “Zefrank was obviously my inspiration to try out video blogging. Of course, Dave Winer was my inspiration to try out text blogging, and we all know how well that turned out. Here’s hoping.”

It was worth watching this one, because I’ve never actually_met_ Mark—we seem not to frequent the same conferences—and I’m a total fangirl of his writing. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a sense of what he looks and sounds like.

Will I keep watching if he keeps uploading videos? Probably not. For all the reasons he alludes to above. The text of his video is in his blog entry, and it doesn’t require speakers or headphones or adjusting video settings. Plus it’s a lot harder to quote video.

source: what happens when ze frank inspires mark pilgrim to videoblog?

Biowizard has launched PubMed Wizard. From today’s announcement:

BioWizard….announces the launch of PubMed Wizard, an online resource enabling the universal open-access review of scientific and medical literature. For the first time, scientists have the ability to freely rank and discuss in real-time any of the more than 16 million published articles within the PubMed database.

BioWizard was designed to make scientific knowledge dynamic, enable post-publication review in an open-access forum, and resolve vital deficiencies in how scientific information is accessed, reviewed, shared, and archived. Now, BioWizard’s PubMed Wizard transforms current static literature searches into an active and interconnected resource for scientists. Using PubMed Wizard, authors and researchers can now post comments, share ideas, and ask questions on a live archive of all published literature, giving everyone in the community a voice and allowing ground-breaking research to rise to the forefront of scientific debate….

source: Adding retroactive, open review to PubMed

If you’re a long-time reader of my blog, you’ve probably seen a number of comments over the years from meg, aka Michelle Goodrich, of Mandarin Design.

Back in 2003, only six months after I’d started blogging, she made an icon to represent me in her “House of Mandarin” (also known by many as her “blogger’s quilt”)—and I was so touched and honored by that gesture.

Yesterday I saw in AKMA’s blog that meg had passed away over the weekend. I don’t know what happened, but I’m deeply saddened by the loss of meg’s voice—not just on her own blog, but on the many, many blogs that she visited and commented on. She was so a part of the tapestry of blogs and bloggers that I know and love, and she will be missed by many.

source: goodbye, meg

Scott Carlson, Publisher Gives 10,000 E-Books to 7 New Orleans Colleges Hit by Katrina, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2006. Excerpt:

Perhaps people living in flood zones have a kinship that defies traditional rivalries and animus. At least that’s the perspective of Robert E. Skinner, the university librarian at Xavier University of Louisiana, after his library and six others in the state were given more than $1-million in e-books by Springer, a publishing company founded in part in the flood-prone Netherlands.

Librarians and publishers are usually at opposite ends of negotiating tables and frequently squabble in public over the rising prices of online journal subscriptions. With the gift from Springer, the seven Louisiana libraries will get free, permanent access to more than 10,000 electronic books, mainly in the sciences, technology, and medicine.

The announcement of the gift was made at this year’s American Library Association conference, held in New Orleans, still devastated in areas 10 months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. At the event, “one of their reps mentioned in the presentation that Holland is 50 percent below sea level,” Mr. Skinner said. With this gift, “I think they are saying that there but by the grace of God and technology go us.”…

source: Springer gives $1 million in free ebooks to New Orleans universities

Proposed Law Puts Scholarly Societies in Curious Spot, Greenhouse Associates, June 2006.

Many of the nation’s scholarly societies and associations are up in arms about a proposed law that would require research conducted with federal money to be made available to the public free of charge. The proposed Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) puts the scholarly society and associations in a contradictory spot. On one hand, they represent the interests of serious scholarship, which favors wide dissemination of research findings. But many of them also publish prestigious journals-and depend on the profits from journal subscriptions to underwrite their other activities-so a bill that might reduce journal revenues is anathema to them. In fields like medicine, most research depends on federal dollars and therefore would be subject to FRPAA’s open access rules.

There is some evidence that the public believes open access will have positive societal consequences. A solid majority of the public favors open access to publicly-funded research, according to a Harris poll released May 31, which said that that large majorities believe that open access would help advance medical care and scientific accomplishments in the civilian world. Whether open access is ultimately a salient enough issue like stem cell research for the public to weigh in, however, remains to be seen.

source: More on FRPAA and the society publishers