Open Access NewsNews from the open access movement Jump to navigation | |||||||||||||||
Declan Butler, Britain
decides 'open access' is still an open issue Nature 430, 390 (22 July
2004). (Access restricted to subscribers.) A brief news article summarizes
the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report and
includes several quotes from Ian Gibson, the committee chairman, who notes
the untenability of the current publishing system, suggests that OA
experiments be closely watched, and explains the rationale behind urging
government funding of OA. Gibson hopes the report leads scientists to
greater awareness of OA issues; the article concludes: "According to a
recent survey by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation
of Research at City University London, 82% of working scientists say they
know little or nothing about open access." Computer science -- energized for Open Access Two forthcoming computer science journals, both
specializing in theory, attribute their nascent existence to Donald Knuth
and the editorial board revolt at the Journal of Algorithms. [For background
on this topic, albeit from my perspective, read Commentary: The Crisis In
Scholarly Communication and Journal of Algorithms Fallout Getting
Noticed, Stanford U Takes Stand Against "Pricey Journals".] Logical Methods in Computer Science
(LMCS) is a free, Open Access ejournal published through the
International Federation for Computational Logic (IFCoLog). LMCS is an overlay journal, utilizing
the Computing Research Repository
(CoRR), the computer science portion of arXiv. Theory of Computing (ToC) is based
at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science, with mirrors
IIT Kanpur and SzTAKI, Budapest. ToC cites the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
(EJC) as the source of its publishing model. Considering that
EJC recently was added to ISI's Web
of Science journal list, this seems like a reasonable choice of role
models. Interestingly, Neil Calkin, a founding editor of EJC, is formally affiliated with LMCS. Calkin sits on the LMCS advisory board which includes
Andrew Odlyzko and Krzysztof Apt. Monthly Weather Review backfile grows Monthly Weather
Review has an expanded backfile, moving the horizon back to 1950.
Monthly Weather Review - Fulltext
v78+ (1950+); Print ISSN: 0027-0644 | Online ISSN: 1520-0493. According to
the NOAA
Central Library, Monthly Weather
Review archival fulltext is free up through volume 101 (1973), the
period during which the journal was published by various units of the
federal government. The Allen Press/American Meteorological Society (AMS)
website does not tout this free service. As I'm at an institution which
has paid for archival access to the AMS journal archives, I'm unable to
independently determine the actual behavior with respect to
nonsubscribers. I've sent inquiries to Allen Press and to AMS. Monthly Weather Review - Fulltext
v78-101 (1950-1973) [free]; Print ISSN: 0027-0644 | Online ISSN:
1520-0493. PS - Georgia Baugh (Saint Louis University) and Marie Schneider
(NASA Ames Research Center) have independently verified the free portion
of the archive. Alison McCook, Open access to US
govt work urged, The Scientist, July 21, 2004. Excerpt: "A US
House of Representatives committee has recommended that the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) provide free access to all research it funds
and asked the NIH to submit a plan by December 1, 2004 for how to
implement the new policy in fiscal year 2005....'This is the policy that
many of us have been advocating for some time,' Peter Suber, from Earlham
College in Richmond, Ind., told The Scientist. 'It's an
extraordinarily important step.' The response from publishers, however,
was less positive. Barbara Meredith, vice president of Professional and
Scholarly Publishing at the Association of American Publishers (AAP), told The Scientist
that, if enacted, the NIH recommendation could undermine the
sustainability of the publishing industry and exert a 'chilling effect' on
NIH-funded authors by potentially limiting which journals accept their
work....A similar system is already common in other subjects, like
physics, [Robert] Campbell [of Blackwell] said, where
researchers often publish in traditional journals then self-archive their
papers. And they've found that papers listed in free archives often get
more citations, which is ultimately good for the journal, he said. 'It
seems to be working out,' Campbell told The Scientist. 'You could
say it's a win–win situation.'...Suber argued that the US recommendation
is 'perfectly compatible' with traditional business models, because it
establishes a 6-month embargo before the research can be released, which
is likely long enough for publishers to retain their subscription base. He
added that last month, Elsevier...announced that authors could post a
final version of their manuscript on a personal or institutional Web
site....In addition, Richard K. Johnson, director of the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC], said
that journals that choose funding over quality will quickly develop a bad
reputation. 'I can't see that this would change selection policies on the
part of the journal,' he told The Scientist. Suber noted that the
NIH is the largest science funder in the US federal government, and it is
ultimately responsible to its own funder --the taxpayers, who deserve
access to the research they paid for. 'The NIH does not work for the
publishers. It works for the taxpayers,' he said." Free UK access to Gale reference works UK
Colleges Receive Free e-Reference Books "In Perpetuity", Managing
Information, July 21, 2004. Excerpt: "An agreement signed between
JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) and the publisher Thomson
Gale will mean that every college in the UK will be able to gain access to
the free content of twenty-one top electronic reference titles in
perpetuity. The titles included in the Gale Virtual Reference Library -
including the Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, the Worldmark Encyclopedia
of the Nations, the six-volume Gale Encyclopedia of Science, and many
others – have been specially chosen by representatives of the FE community
for their quality and their relevance to the curriculum." On the effect of the UK report Richard
Wray in the July 21 Guardian: "Reed Elsevier is pushing to
raise the price of its academic journals by more than three times the rate
of inflation despite a committee of MPs yesterday raising concerns that
prices are already too high."
Agence
France Presse in the July 21 ChannelNewsAsia: "Shares in
[Reed Elsevier] rose 10-1/2 to 496-1/2 following a benign House of Commons
Select Committee investigation into scientific publications, in which the
Anglo-Dutch group is a major player. The market had feared that the Select
Committee would recommend a move away from a subscription-based model to
one based on open-access for all. However, the report fell far short of
recommending the mandatory adoption of open-access." Richard Sietmann, Britische
Parlamentarier für Open Access, Heise Online, July 21, 2004.
The story in German. More on the UK and US developments Daniel Clery and Jocelyn Kaiser, Two
Plugs for Open Access, Science, July 20, 2004 (accessible
only to subscribers). Excerpt: "The nascent 'open-access' publishing
movement got two high-profile endorsements this week. After a 7-month
investigation, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee urges
that papers produced by publicly funded research be put in free
repositories soon after publication. And in a surprise move, a U.S. House
committee has recommended that the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
post its grantees' papers on a free Internet site. Scientific societies
and for-profit publishers were stunned by the language, which they say
would drive traditional journals out of business....A coalition of
libraries and open-access publishers that pushed for the language says it
does not require scientists to publish in open-access journals--just that
their final manuscripts be made public. But scientific societies say
subscriptions would dry up if essentially the same material were available
immediately for free on the Web. The Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology points out that many journals already make full-text
research articles freely available within 6 months or a year (the policy
of Science). As the appropriations bill heads for a possible
House vote this week, Representative Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-OK), who
wrote the language, and House Labor/HHS subcommittee chair Ralph Regula
(R-OH) are preparing to issue a statement on the House floor that would
modify the directive. It would say that the intent is for NIH to "bring
all the stakeholders to the table to come up with a model" to improve
public access, says Istook's spokesperson." (PS: The nascent
open-access movement...?) The University of Southampton has issued a press
release on the UK report. Excerpt: "The Committee has recommended that
all researchers should self-archive their papers within a month of
publication, and that universities should be funded to provide the
facilities to allow them to do this. This fulfils the vision and
principles under which the [School of Electronics and Computer Science]
scientists have been working, as part of the Open Access movement. 'The
Committee's conclusions, if followed by universities in this country, will
improve the visibility and impact of UK research,' says Dr Les Carr, who
has been leading the digital archiving research at ECS." Mike Shanahan, UK
politicians back open access to research findings,
SciDev.Net, July 21, 2004. Excerpt: "Ian Gibson, the chair the
committee — who was a professor of biology at the University of East
Anglia before being elected a member of Parliament in 1997 — said that
that open access publishing was 'a very democratic way forward', along
which publishing was moving gradually. Most of the report focuses on
measures that the committee feels would increase the benefits to
scientists....A central recommendation is the establishment of
'institutional depositories' to house research papers electronically so
that they can be accessed for free. The report also recommends that UK
research councils provide funds to authors wishing to publish in open
access journals....Blackwell Publishing told the committee in evidence
presented earlier this year that the open access model would present
barriers to scientists in poorer countries, as many authors would not be
able to afford the fee. But the committee argues that publishers could
develop schemes by which authors from developing countries are paid for
their submissions — in the same way that journals currently subsidise
developing country access. In any case, says the report, because research
output from developing countries is currently relatively low, such
countries might find it easier to pay publication fees for a relatively
small number of authors than to cover the costs of subscriptions to all of
the journals they need." Official links to the UK report Scientific Publications: Free for
all? is now online, both in HTML
and PDF
formats. So is the oral and written evidence (PDF
for now, HTML to follow shortly). Until now the oral testimony was only
available in the form of uncorrected transcripts (Sessions 1,
2,
3,
4)
and the 38 written submissions had not been collected in one place and
only some had been put online by their authors. The proceedings of the International
Workshop on Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and
Information for Science (Paris, March 10-12, 2003) have now been
published by the National Academies Press as an open-access book of
the same title, edited by Julie M. Esanu and Paul F. Uhlir.
More on the Google-DSpace project Mike McDonald, Google
Crawls Into Academia, WebPro News, July 19, 2004. A brief
note on the story. Rachel Stevenson, MPs
call for biennial review of profits from science journals, The
Independent, July 20, 2004. Excerpt: "As part of an overhaul of the
system for publishing scientific material, the committee will suggest that
all universities and public-funded research bodies publish all their
research material online, free of charge....Reed has already said it will
allow wider scope for authors to 'self-archive' by publishing their work
on either their own or their university's website. And today it will make
a statement to welcome the proposals. But its recent pronouncement on the
issue raised eyebrows at the committee, which said it was 'in little doubt
that Elsevier timed the announcement of its new policy on self-archiving
to pre-empt the publication of this report'. It is understood that an
inquiry has begun into whether the report was leaked to Reed, which has
denied having any advance knowledge of the committee's findings."
Bobby Pickering, MPs brand scientific publishing
'unsatisfactory', Information World Review, July 20, 2004.
Excerpt: "In a report that committee member Paul Farrelly (Labour MP,
Newcastle-under-Lyme) described as 'extremely balanced and heavily
caveated', the committee recommended that all UK higher education bodies
should establish institutional repositories 'on which their published
output can be stored and from which it can be read, free of charge,
online'. It also recommends that Research Councils and other government
funded bodies should mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of
all their articles in these institutional repositories. The committee's
unanimous view was that the Government should intervene in the market to
support and encourage open access publishing, but also to monitor how it
develops." Call for
freely available science, BBC, July 20, 2004. An unsigned
story on the UK report. Excerpt: "[The report] wants publicly funded
research to be made freely available online by means of archived digital
information banks. At present, access is limited to those who can afford
costly journal fees. These subscriptions have risen dramatically in recent
years, and amount to several hundred pounds a year for some titles." If
you have Real Player, then listen to Tom
Feilden's audio story on the news, including interviews with several
of the principals. Journals: how to get Google to index your articles The Association of Learned and Professional
Society Publishers (ALPSP) has
released a most helpful document, Enabling
Google to Index your Full Text Content. Unfortunately it's only
available to ALPSP members.
Conference presentations online The presentations from the pre-conference
to LIBER's 2004 Annual General
Conference (St. Petersburg, June 28 - July 2) are now online.
All are relevant to open access. The Genetic Alliance has written an
open letter to
Congressmen Regular and Obey supporting the House Appropriation
Committee's recommendation that the NIH require open access to articles
reporting NIH-funded research. Excerpt from the letter: "Today...most
American taxpayers do not have access to the reports on biomedical
research conducted with U.S. Government funds. Although the public paid
for this research, informative, carefully screened reports on the research
results are generally available only through costly journal subscriptions
averaging thousands of dollars annually or via per-article purchases that
can run $30 or more each. It is sometimes suggested that this information
is not available to the 'homemaker in Nebraska' because she is ill
equipped to deal with this information. We know, from our 600 members -
disease-specific advocacy organizations - that the homemaker has many
resources to help her use that information. The advocacy organizations
help their millions of members digest this information, and the homemaker
can bring this information to her doctor. In addition, this access is
critical for the thousands of rare diseases - clinicians are unable to
keep us with information on 6000 rare diseases, and patients must be the
bridge to new knowledge....The Genetic Alliance also calls upon the U. S.
Senate to ensure the inclusion of the House language in the final
Congressional Appropriations report. This consumer-centered measure is a
long over-due means by which to enhance public health education, speed the
translation of genetic advances into quality, affordable health care, and
inform and empower patients in their health care decisions. Ensuring the
widespread dissemination of research knowledge is an essential and
inseparable component of our nation's investment in research itself."
Kim Zetter, Downloading
for Democracy, Wired News, July 19, 2004. Excerpt: "While
legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one
website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to
expose its inner, secretive workings. But outragedmoderates.org isn't
offering copyright music and videos for download. The site, launched two
weeks ago, has aggregated more than 600 government and court documents to
make them available for download through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek
P2P networks in the interest of making government more transparent and
accountable....Although all of the documents on [Thad] Anderson's site are
available elsewhere, they are buried deep in government and court sites or
scattered among the sites of various government watchdog groups and media
outlets. It took Anderson about four hours and 2,000 mouseclicks to
download more than 13,000 documents related to Vice President Dick
Cheney's energy task force from the National Resources Defense Council's
website and from Judicial Watch. But a visitor to
Anderson's site can download a folder containing all of these documents in
a few minutes with a couple of mouseclicks." (Thanks to LIS News, which rightly compares the
service to LOCKSS-DOCS.) Stephen Pincock, UK committee
backs open access, The Scientist, July 20, 2004. Excerpt:
"Jan Velterop, publisher of BioMedCentral, a for-profit publisher of
open-access journals, called the report an important milestone in the
open-access movement. (BioMedCentral is a partner with The
Scientist.) 'The overall report...is really a ringing endorsement of
the whole concept of open access to scientific material,' Velterop said.
'It definitely is a major development. I even think that with hindsight,
we may look back on this as a turning point.'...Peter Suber, an
open-access advocate at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., said he was
delighted that the report 'doesn't merely endorse open access, but calls
for a national commitment to open access --encompassing all UK higher
education institutions, the British Library, the research councils, the
government funding agencies, and government policymakers. The report
recommends many steps, but properly focuses on the one step that will do
the most good: asking government funding agencies to put an open-access
condition on research grants and requiring grantees to deposit the
full-text articles based on funded research in open-access repositories,'
Suber told The Scientist....Just last week, the US House of
Representatives Appropriations Committee also recommended that the
National Institutes for Health (NIH) make research it funds freely
available." Lila Guterman, British
Parliamentary Panel Endorses Open Access to Scientific Literature,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2004 (accessible only to
subscribers). Excerpt: "The report comes just days after a U.S.
Congressional committee recommended requiring free access to papers based
on research financed by the National Institutes of Health (The
Chronicle, July 19)....The report recommended that all British
academic institutions establish online repositories for researchers'
published papers. It also recommended that government agencies require all
researchers they finance to place copies of their articles in the
repositories. 'These articles will be free for anyone who has access to
the Internet,' said Ian Gibson, a Labor Party member who is chairman of
the Science and Technology Committee, in an interview....The report also
suggested that the government require researchers to maintain copyright to
their articles if they receive government money. Most scientific journals
currently acquire the rights to the articles they publish....Michael
Eisen, a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, called the
committee's concerns [about the upfront funding model for OA journals]
'important things to be worried about' and said he was 'ecstatic" at the
report's overall support for open access. 'The current system is so
inefficient and so irrational and so needlessly denies people access to
knowledge that these concerns are really just things to think about along
the way to open access,' he said." Clive Cookson, Call
for shake-up in way scientific journals provided, Financial
Times, July 20, 2004. Excerpt: "Researchers and publishers should be
encouraged by the government to make a fundamental change in the way
scientific journals are provided, the Commons science committee says, so
that anyone with a computer can have free, open access to research
findings....Ian Gibson, chairman, said the committee decided to
investigate scientific publishing because the government - and many
scientists - did not take the 'crisis' in university libraries and the
provision of scientific information seriously enough." Richard Wray, MPs
back free access to research results, The Guardian, July 20,
2004. Excerpt: "The 118-page report stops short of fully endorsing the
open access publishing movement, where authors are charged for their
research to be made freely available to everyone on the web, but 'strongly
supports' further experimentation with this new business model....But
advocates of open access warmly welcomed the report as heralding a
dramatic change in the way scientific research is disseminated. 'The
report reinforces our view that the current system of publishing the
results of scientific research is failing both science and the public at
large,' said Dr Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, the world's
largest medical research charity." (PS: Like other
reporters covering this story, Wray confuses OA through journals with OA
itself. The report fully endorses OA through repositories and only stops
short of a full endorsement for OA through journals.) David Litterick, MPs
damn profits of scientific publishers, The Telegraph, July
20, 2004. Excerpt: "MPs have launched a stinging attack on the scientific
publishing industry and called on the Government to press for change 'as a
matter of urgency'....The committee called on publishers to keep profit
margins 'at a reasonable and sustainable level'. Reed Elsevier, which has
the largest market share in scientific publishing, has an operating margin
of 34pc, the MPs noted. It also accused publishers of inflating the cost
of peer review - the method by which research is validated by other
scientists - 'to justify charging higher prices'....Vitek Tracz, chairman
of BioMed Central, an open-access publisher, welcomed the report. He said:
'The report recommends that the UK research funding bodies mandate free
access to all their findings. It is time for the publishing model to
change.' " Jeremy Warner, http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/story.jsp?story=542723,
The Independent, July 20, 2004. Excerpt: "With more than 35 per
cent of the global market for scientific publishing in UK hands (besides
Reed Elsevier, there's Taylor & Francis and Blackwell Publishing),
Britain doesn't so much lead this industry as dominate it. There is no
other global industry where this is the case. You might have thought the
body politic would be careful to nurture and encourage such an outstanding
British success story. Regrettably, that's not always the case. Dr Ian
Gibson, chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, has long
had a bee in his bonnet about scientific publishing, which he seems to
think profits excessively at the British taxpayer's expense, and for
choice he would have mandated a complete upheaval in the way the industry
operates by moving it from a subscriber pays basis on to an author pays,
open access model. Fortunately his bark has turned out to be worse than
his bite....Though the report is generous in its support for the open
access model, it stops well short of recommending mandatory adoption.
Rather its tone is that the market should decide." (PS: This is not how I
read the report. It wouldn't mandate OA through journals, but it would
mandate OA through institutional repositories. Like many others, Warner
confuses OA through journals with OA itself.) Here are three press releases from friends of open
access.
From
PLoS: "The report released today by the Science and Technology
Committee of the United Kingdom's House of Commons, 'Scientific
Publications: Free for All?' insists that the 'published output' of UK
higher education institutions must be made available such that 'it can be
read, free of charge, online,' and provides a practical roadmap for
achieving this goal. 'The report makes clear that open access is the only
acceptable outcome for publicly funded science,' said Public Library of
Science (PLoS) co-founder Dr. Michael B. Eisen, 'and challenges
scientists, publishers and research funders to make open access happen
rapidly.'...In conjunction with other recent developments in the UK and
the United States, this report suggests an international consensus growing
in support of the open access movement."
From
BMC: "Crucially, the report recommends that UK research funding bodies
mandate free access to all their research findings. 'This will lead to a
profound change in the way that scientific literature is published, and
validates the author-pays "Open Access" publishing model which we at
BioMed Central pioneered,' Tracz remarked....Some UK funders have already
shown great support for the Open Access publishing model. By signing
agreements with BioMed Central, JISC and NHS England have made it possible
for many UK researchers to publish free of charge in Open Access journals.
The Committee recommends that UK Research Councils follow this lead and
make funds available to pay author charges. This would mean that all
publicly funded UK researchers would be able to make their research
findings Open Access, at no cost to themselves. 'This support will help to
ensure the success of the author-pays model of publishing,' said Tracz."
From
JISC: "JISC today welcomed the Report of the Science and Technology
Select Committee and indicated its support for its recommendations,
published today. These recommendations will enable research funded by the
UK taxpayer to be made available to a wider readership than the present
scholarly publication system allows....In particular the Science and
Technology Select Committee’s support for institutional repositories will
build upon the work of the JISC FAIR (Focus on Access to Institutional
Resources) Programme. The institutions participating in the FAIR Programme
have established repositories for the work of their academic staff, and
the Committee’s support for these developments will encourage all UK
academic authors to improve access to the results of publicly-funded
research through this route." Pharmaceutical journals from AAPS AAPS, the American
Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, publishes a couple of free,
online journals in the area of pharmaceutical research and development.
One of the journals has undergone a title change, with the appropriate
assignment of a new ISSN for the new title, in the last couple of months.
AAPS PharmSci - Fulltext v1-6(2)
(1999-2004). Continued by AAPS Journal; ISSN: 1522-1059.
Indexed by PubMed, Web of Science. AAPS
Journal - Fulltext v6(3)+ (2004). Continues AAPS
PharmSci; ISSN: 1550-7416. AAPS PharmSciTech - Fulltext v1+
(2000+); ISSN: 1530-9932. Indexed by Chemical Abstracts, PubMed. AAPS also publishes a
subscription only title, Pharmaceutical Research, through
Kluwer. Microbiology journals from sfam Society for
Applied Microbiology (sfam) is the UK's oldest microbiological
society. Several of their journals, distributed via Blackwell Synergy,
have implemented delayed/embargoed access to fulltext. Notably missing
from this list is a fourth sfam journal, Environmental Microbiology, which
does not provide any fulltext access without a current subscription. Cellular Microbiology - Fulltext v1+
(1999+) 2 year moving wall; Print ISSN: 1462-5814 | Online ISSN:
1462-5822. Journal of Applied Microbiology -
Fulltext v82(3)+ (March 1997+) 3 year moving wall; Print ISSN: 1364-5072 |
Online ISSN: 1365-2672. Letters in Applied Microbiology -
Fulltext v24+ (1997+) 3 year moving wall; Print ISSN: 0266-8254 | Online
ISSN: 1472-765X.
UK House committee releases its report on open access About 90 minutes ago, the UK House of Commons Science
and Technology Committee released the long-awaited report on its
inquiry into journal prices and open access, Scientific
Publications: Free for All? Here's my summary of the major
recommendations:
The full report (a 118 page PDF file) will soon be available at the
committee's page of
reports. (It's still night time in England.) In a posting to
SOAF, I've quoted extensively from the report's conclusions and
recommendations, for those who don't have time to read the full report.
Here are eleven freely available online
ophthalmology journals. Most are Open Access, which is not coincidental
when a list contains numerous entries from SciELO and BioMed Central. Two embargoed titles,
British Journal of Ophthalmology
and Investigative Ophthalmology &
Visual Science, are part of the enormous free
scientific literature collection at HighWire Press. British Journal of Ophthalmology is
further noteworthy since it is on the short list for
retrodigitization, back through volume 1, at PubMed Central. Archivos de la Sociedad Espanola de
Oftalmologia - Fulltext v77(11)+ (November 2002+); ISSN:
0365-6691. Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia
- Fulltext v64(5)+ (September/October 2001+); ISSN: 0004-2749. BMC Ophthalmology - Fulltext v1+ (2001+)
(BioMed Central) (PubMed
Central); ISSN: 1471-2415. British Journal of Ophthalmology -
Fulltext v81+ (1997+) 1 year moving wall; Print ISSN: 0007-1161 |
Online ISSN: 1468-2079. Bulletin de la Societe Belge
d'Ophthalmologie - Fulltext no272+ (1999+); ISSN: 0081-0746. Digital Journal of Ophthalmology -
Fulltext v3+ (1997+); ISSN: 1542-8958. Internet Journal of Ophthalmology & Visual
Science - Fulltext v1+ (2000+); ISSN: 1528-8269. Investigative
Ophthalmology & Visual Science - Fulltext v40(8)+ (July
1999+) 1 year moving wall; ISSN: 0146-0404. OSL - Oftalmologica Santa Lucia -
Fulltext v1+ (2001+); ISSN: 1666-1346. Review of
Ophthalmology - Fulltext v3+ (2003+); ISSN: 1081-0226. Revista Cubana de Oftalmologia -
Fulltext v8+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-2176. Mental health - 3 fulltext journals of varying degrees of
openness In descending order of openness, here are three
journals from the mental health field. The publishing models range from
Open Access, to embargoed, to a frozen slice of fulltext. eCOMMUNITY: International Journal of Mental
Health & Addiction - Fulltext v1+ (2003+); ISSN: 1705-4583.
Evidence-Based Mental Health -
Fulltext v1+ (1998+) 1 year moving wall; Print ISSN: 1362-0347 | Online
ISSN: 1468-960X. Journal of Mental Health Policy &
Economics - Fulltext v1-3 (1998-2000); Print ISSN: 1091-4358 |
Online ISSN: 1099-176X. Thanks Paoshan Yue and Alex Grunfeld for bringing
eCommunity to my attention. Robert E. Filman, Not Free,
But Relatively Inexpensive, IEEE Internet Computing 8(4), 4-6
(July/August 2004). Filman doesn't mention open access as such, but argues
that the public perceive web publishing as "naturally free." He points out
the value of peer review and editing towards producing a quality
publication and that journal publishers "offer certification, which
remains one of the few places that people ignore price tags."
Democratization and economic efficiency afforded by the internet threaten
traditional publishing, he writes, suggesting that print journals will be
"valuable antiquities." While Filman calls the internet a "disruptive
technology" for academic publishing, he seems to be stuck in the paradigm
of the print journal. Cuban science -- a selection of 15 Open Access journals The majority of these titles include fulltext
content beginning in 1995 or 1996, relatively early in the evolution of
web-based electronic journals. This is merely a sampling of the Cuban
journals available online. There are a couple of major repositories of
Cuban science which I have mined for these titles, Revistas Medicas Cubanas
and SciELO
Cuba. Revista Cubana de Cardiologia y Cirugia
Cardiovascular Fulltext v10+ (1996+); ISSN: 0864-2168 Revista Cubana de Cirugia Fulltext
v37+ (1998+); ISSN: 0034-7493 Revista Cubana de Educacion Medica
Superior Fulltext v9+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-2141 Revista Cubana de Endocrinologia
Fulltext v6+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-4462 Revista Cubana de Enfermeria
Fulltext v11+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-0319 Revista Cubana de Estomatologia
Fulltext v33(2)+ (May/August 1996+); ISSN: 0034-7507 Revista Cubana de Hematologia, Inmunologia y
Hemoterapia Fulltext v11+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-0289 Revista Cubana de Higiene y
Epidemiologia Fulltext v33+ (1995+); ISSN: 0253-1751 Revista Cubana de Medicina Fulltext
v34+ (1995+); ISSN: 0034-7523 Revista Cubana de Medicina General
Integral Fulltext v11(2)+ (March/April 1995+); ISSN: 0864-2125
Revista Cubana de Medicina Tropical
Fulltext v47+ (1995+); Print ISSN: 0375-0760 | Online ISSN: 1561-3054 Revista Cubana de Oftalmologia
Fulltext v8+ (1995+); ISSN: 0864-2176 Revista Cubana de Pediatria Fulltext
v69+ (1997+); ISSN: 0034-7531 Revista Cubana de Plantas
Medicinales Fulltext v1+ (1996+); ISSN: 1028-4796 Revista Cubana de Salud Publica
Fulltext v21+ (1995+); Print ISSN: 0864-3466 | Online ISSN:
1561-3127 When public domain rubs against commerce Kathleen Burge, Fighting
to be free: Thoreau lover denied bid to give out book at Walden,
Boston Globe, July 19, 2004. Eric Eldred, as part of his Internet
Bookmobile campaign that shows people how to download free books from the
internet, was recently at Walden Pond distributing free copies of the
public domain Walden when he fell afoul of park officials who asked him to
leave for handing out literature without a permit. It also became clear
that Eldred's actions might eat into the profits of the Thoreau society,
which sells copies of Walden at the pond, and which would make it
difficult for Eldred to get any kind of permit. More on Google indexing of OAI-compliant archives Kinley Levack, A
Giant Leap for Academia? Google Ventures into DSpace, EContent,
EContent, July/August, 2004. Excerpt: "DSpace is open-source
software designed to assist colleges and universities in creating,
managing, and maintaining digital repositories. There are currently about
125 schools using this software, but no tool existed that enabled
searching across repositories instead of just within them. [PS: Untrue,
but these tools are not as popular or comprehensive as Google.] Enter
Google into DSpace. Google and 17 partner schools have joined forces on a
pilot program to enable searching among DSpace repositories....Although
both sides have been tight lipped about the project, representatives from
DSpace have commented that the agreement with Google is not exclusive and
that they are open to working with other search engine companies or even
developing their own technology. Plans with Google continue to move
forward, though, and if all goes well with the pilot, then Google may
launch the program under its Advanced Search section within the next few
months." Andrea Foster, House
Committee Tells NIH to Post Research Results Online and Make Them
Free, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 19, 2004
(accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "In a coup for the open-access
movement, the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives has recommended that the National Institutes of Health
provide the public with free, online access to articles resulting from
research it has financed. The recommendation is included in a report that
accompanies a spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Education, and
Health and Human Services for the 2005 fiscal year. The report says that
within six months after an article is published, the NIH should make
available researchers' final manuscripts via PubMed Central, a popular
digital archive maintained by the National Library of Medicine. The
Association of American Publishers is aggressively pressing members of
Congress to gut the open-access language in the report, saying that the
recommendation is worded like a requirement and would threaten publishers'
ability to decide when and if to make articles free."
Barriers to health info are barriers to health Fiona Godlee, Neil Pakenham-Walsh, Dan Ncayiyana,
Barbara Cohen, and Abel Packer, Can
we achieve health information for all by 2015? The Lancet,
July 9, 2004. Abstract: "Universal access to information for health
professionals is a prerequisite for meeting the Millennium Development
Goals and achieving Health for All. However, despite the promises of the
information revolution, and some successful initiatives, there is little
if any evidence that the majority of health professionals in the
developing world are any better informed than they were 10 years ago. Lack
of access to information remains a major barrier to knowledge-based health
care in developing countries. The development of reliable, relevant,
usable information can be represented as a system that requires
cooperation among a wide range of professionals including health-care
providers, policy makers, researchers, publishers, information
professionals, indexers, and systematic reviewers. The system is not
working because it is poorly understood, unmanaged, and under-resourced.
This Public Health article proposes that WHO takes the lead in championing
the goal of 'Universal access to essential health-care information by
2015' or 'Health Information for All'. Strategies for achieving universal
access include funding for research into barriers to use of information,
evaluation and replication of successful initiatives, support for
interdisciplinary networks, information cycles, and communities of
practice, and the formation of national policies on health information."
(Thanks to ResourceShelf.)
OA is how the web changed science Michael Kenward, The
Web that changed the world, Scientific Computing World,
May/June 2004. In a one-page reflection on what the web has done for
science in its 10 years of existence, Kenward gives half his space to open
access. He briefly covers the New Journal of
Physics, the Public Library
of Science, the UK
inquiry, and Google indexing of
CrossRef. (PS: It's a nice
question. If you had only one page to summarize what the web has done for
science in its 10 year life to date, how much space would you give to open
access?) Yesterday was the last day of Global PR Blog Week 1.0 (July
12-16). In summarizing the discussions and activities of the week,
Constantin Basturea blogged a note
in which he wonders how the success of the OA movement will change life
for PR professionals. Part of the "New PR", he argues, will be ask authors
(both scholarly and non-scholarly authors, apparently) to provide OA to
their articles through self-archiving. WHO joins call for public access to drug trials Shankar Vedantam, WHO
Wants to Start Drug Trial Registry, Washington Post, July 8,
2004. Excerpt: "The World Health
Organization wants to establish an international registry of drug
trials to ensure that the public finds out when medications do not work,
as well as when they do, officials said yesterday. Pressure has been
growing on pharmaceutical companies to fully disclose details of all
clinical trials, not just those that support the use of their products.
WHO officials said an international database, which would be modeled on
registries in the United States and other countries, will be proposed to
national health ministers at a meeting in November." "Universities have obligations to developing countries" Ronald Phillips and three co-authors, Intellectual
Property Rights and the Public Good, The Scientist, July 19,
2004. Excerpt: "For developing countries, access to new products,
particularly drugs and seeds, is often a question of life and death. The
market power inherent in intellectual property may restrict access by
poorer consumers. Furthermore, coordination problems and the transaction
costs involved in negotiating terms of access to patented innovations
invariably raise the cost of producing and distributing inventions in
developing nations. One example is 'golden rice,' which is enhanced for
beta carotene (provitamin A). It provides hope for alleviating the severe
vitamin A deficiency that causes blindness in a half-million children
every year. Extensive patenting has hampered delivery of this rice to
those in need; forty organizations hold 72 patents on the technology
underlying its production. Problems with access to golden rice and
essential medicines have stimulated debate on the obligations of American
universities to facilitate the provision of goods for the public benefit.
A recent symposium
at the University of Minnesota addressed this question." Tracey Brown et al., Peer Review
and the acceptance of new scientific ideas, Sence About
Science, June 24, 2004. A thorough exploration of peer review,
particularly to help the public understand the process and learn to ask
the right questions about controversial research results. For brief
overviews, see the publisher's
announcement and press
release. The report endorses open access in several ways. For example,
when "commercially generated scientific findings" must be disclosed prior
to peer review, e.g. to prevent insider trading, then they should be
accompanied by open-access data files to help researchers assess the
reported findings (pp. xii, 28). OA journals may change the way they
manage peer review but will not change the principle of peer review (p.
21). Self-archiving has created a new outlet for peer-reviewed articles
(pp. 21-22). "Open Access may even increase the extent to which science is
self-corrective because all qualified experts will be able to access all
published papers" (p. 22).
Marla Misek, HighWire
Press: Keeping the Scholars in Scholarly Publishing,
EContent, July 1, 2004. Excerpt: "The goals of [Highwire Press],
which today serves roughly 150 client publishers, were twofold: 'to
improve the delivery of scientific research articles through the Web and
to help reputable, small- to medium-sized scholarly publishers make the
transition to the online environment both efficiently and economically.'
Nine years later, the urgency of these goals is palpable. 'The basic
problem set is unchanged,' [Michael] Keller laments. 'The aggressive
consolidation of journals into a very small group of for-profit
publishers, the unjustifiable pricing policies of certain publishers, the
inefficiency and inadequacy of small-scale Web publishing efforts for
professional journals, the inefficiency of editorial processes, the delays
in publishing results, and the gross inadequacy of library acquisition
budgets to maintain subscription levels in a hyper-inflated and expanding
market' all fuel HighWire's mission....No matter how you slice it, 'there
is an urgent, dramatic, critical struggle under way,' he says, 'between
the needs of the academy and the dynamics of leveraged greed which
controls scholarly publishing.' " Revista Colombiana de Matematicas archive available Revista
Colombiana de Matematicas, as noted by Elizabeth Cherhal,
is available for its entire run. Revista Colombiana de Matematicas -
Fulltext v1+ (1967+); ISSN: 0034-7426
Statement on OA in Latin America The Ibero-American Science & Technology
Education Consortium (ISTEC) and its
Digital Library Linkages initiative (DLL) have released a public statement on
Open
Access to scholarship and research in Latin America:
The statement was drafted by participants in the Second
International Symposium on Digital Libraries (Campinas, Brazil, May
17-21, 2004). IBICT is the Brasileiro
de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia. One result of the symposium is that
ISTEC will soon sign the Berlin
Declaration. For more details see the press
release or our June
16 blog posting. The more you publish, the more you pay Oxford University
Press punishes publication in Nucleic Acids Research A blog posting in
medinfo weblog critiques the OUP policy for the NAR journal, pointing out
that smaller institutions with fewer publications in the journal will save
money on subscription costs, but larger institutions with more
publications will pay increasingly higher fees. Adam Penenberg, Searching
for the New York Times, July 14, 2004. The visibility of NYT
is reduced by its low ranking in Google. This in turn is due to its
required registration and toll-access back-run. "It's not like the Times
reaps a whole lot from its Web archive. The archive accounts for only 2 to
3 percent of the profit for its digital division....In fact, New York
Times Digital earns most of its money from a pre-existing agreement with
Lexis-Nexis, which brings in more than $20 million a year....So it's no
surprise that Times management has no plans to completely open up its
archive....[Says Aaron Schwartz:] 'A far more sensible position for the
Times would be to charge for new news, not old news. Can you imagine the
possibilities if it opened up its archive?' "
Also see the comments
by Steven Cohen and Gary Price on ResourceShelf. Taylor & Francis merger may reduce its exposure to the OA
challenge Stephen Foley, Investment
Column, The Independent, July 15, 2004. Excerpt: "The merger
of Taylor & Francis merger with Informa...reduced T&F's dependence
on subscriptions to its academic journals, which account for well below
half of the combined group's revenues. This could be important as the
debate over 'open access' to such journals hots up. Rather than readers
paying for access to scientific research, some organisations are
experimenting with free access, with the cost of publishing instead being
shouldered by the researcher, which pays for his or her article to appear.
A committee of MPs reports on the issue next week, but the real test will
be whether the open-access model proves commercially viable, and that
could take much longer to establish. The threat to profits may not be as
great as some in the City fear, but the fact that there is a debate at all
reflects years of irritating subscription price rises. These are at an
end." Profile of CSB.DB, an OA systems-biology database D. Steinhauser and four co-authors, CSB.DB:
A comprehensive systems-biology database, Bioinformatics,
July 9, 2004. Only this abstract is free online: "The open access
comprehensive systems-biology database (CSB.DB) presents results of
bio-statistical analyses on gene expression data in association with
additional biochemical and physiological knowledge. The main aim of this
database platform is to provide tools, which support insight into life's
complexity pyramid with a special focus on the integration of data from
transcript and metabolite profiling experiments. The central part of
CSB.DB, which we describe in this application note, is a set of
co-response databases, which currently focus on the three key model
organisms, Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Arabidopsis
thaliana. CSB.DB gives easy access to the results of large-scale
co-response analyses, which are currently based exclusively on the
publicly available compendia of transcript profiles. By scanning for the
best co-responses among changing transcript levels CSB.DB allows to infer
hypotheses on the functional interaction of genes. These hypotheses are
novel and not accessible through analysis of sequence homology. The data
base enables the search for pairs of genes and larger units of genes,
which are under common transcriptional control. In addition statistical
tools are offered to the user, which allow validation and comparison of
those co-responses, which were discovered by gene queries performed on the
currently available set of pre-selectable datasets. AVAILABILITY: All
co-response databases can be accessed through the CSB.DB web
server. A repository for foundation-supported research reports PubHub is "A
Repository of Foundation-Supported Reports" hosted by The Foundation Center. It's a
searchable, browseable, open-access repository, "[s]tarting with the arts
— and eventually including the full scope of philanthropic activity in the
United States". It also supports current awareness by email. (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) PubMed Central - a new journal and two major updates Evidence-based Complementary and
Alternative Medicine, the recently
launched Open Access journal from Oxford University Press and INMPRC
(Ishikawa Natural Medicinal Products Research Center) is now mirrored by
PubMed Central. [Announced by
Brooke Dine on the PMC-News
mailing list.] Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative
Medicine - Fulltext v1+ (2004+) Oxford | PubMed
Central; Print ISSN: 1741-427X | Online ISSN: 1741-4288 PubMed Central is continuing to fill
in gaps in their online archives with a backfile
digitization project. Major chunks of backfiles have recently been
added to Journal of Clinical Investigation and Infection and
Immunity. Journal
of Clinical Investigation - Fulltext v1-32 (1924-1953), v35
(1956), v38-71 (1959-June 1983), v72(4)-96 (October 1983-1995), v107+
(2001+); ISSN: 0021-9738 Infection
and Immunity - Fulltext v1-26 (1970-1979), v31+ (1981+) 6 month
moving wall; Print ISSN: 0019-9567 | Online ISSN:
1098-5522 More on the Appropriations Committee OA plan The Association of American Publishers
(AAP) has launched an emergency appeal to its members to stop the Appropriations
Committee's open-access plan. AAP President Pat Schroeder has written
to the members of the AAP, members of the Appropriations Committee, the
NIH Director (Elias Zerhouni) and the President's Science Advisor (John
Marburger) urging them to oppose the plan. She is asking AAP members to
phone and fax their members of Congress today.
PS: Congress goes on summer recess a week from tomorrow (Friday, 7/23).
Because the time is tight and the AAP opposition is strong, many AAP
members will undoubtedly send messages. I recommend that friends of OA
send messages in support of the plan to the same people. Here's contact
info for the members
of the Appropriations Committee, Elias
Zerhouni, and John Marburger. Of
these, the most important are the members of the Appropriations Committee
and your own
representatives in Congress. Major development in providing OA to taxpayer-funded research Rick Johnson, Director of SPARC, just sent this message to
SPARC members. I blog it here with his permission.
I want to alert you about an important development. Yesterday the
U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee approved an
important provision in connection with the FY 2005 National Institutes
of Health (NIH) appropriation. The Committee Report accompanying the FY
2005 Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill
recommends that NIH provide free public access to research articles
resulting from NIH-funded research. The Report calls on NIH to offer
access to authors' final manuscripts (as accepted for journal
publication) and supplemental materials via PubMed Central six months
after publication. If the grantee used NIH funds to pay any publication
charges (e.g., page or color charges, or fees for digital distribution),
PMC access would be immediate. The Report instructs NIH to inform the
Committee by December 1, 2004 how it intends to implement the policy.
This proposal is a reasoned, incremental step that balances the
interests of taxpayers and publishers. We believe it will enhance the
nation's return on investment in NIH research and contribute to the
translation of bench science into clinical practice.
SPARC and its allies are working to ensure that the proposal is
endorsed in the Senate. In the coming days I will share with you
additional information, including steps you can take to demonstrate your
support. PS: This is extraordinarily important news. It sensibly focuses on OA
archiving, which leaves authors free to publish in non-OA journals if they
like. It sensibly avoids the mistakes of the Sabo bill, such as needlessly
requiring the public domain rather than open access and needlessly
interfering with patentable discoveries. The NIH is the largest funder of
science in the US federal government, five times larger than the
second-largest funder, the NSF. Expect opposition, and be prepared to
support this proposal through personal and institutional letters to
members of Congress. I'll report further details as I get
them. Jessamyn West, Free
as in Tibet: ibiblio's cultural cultivation and community creation,
OCLC Systems and Services, 20, 2 (2004) pp. 82-86. Only this
abstract is free online: "ibiblio is a digital library hosted at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill that manages to be both a
repository for cultural information and a resource for community building.
The project has existed in many forms since the beginning of the web, and
has maintained a core commitment to open source software and tools.
ibiblio's maintainers have continually expanded the project's offerings in
response to the availability of new technologies and the support of
financial and technological partners. Their newest project is an open
source weblog development and distribution system." Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has released Version 54 of
his unparallelled Scholarly Electronic
Publishing Bibliography. The new edition cites over 2,150 print and
online books, articles, and other resources on scholarly electronic
publishing. Looking forward to the report from the UK House of Commons The Public Library of Science has
issued a press
release to anticipate the July 20 release of the House of Commons
Science & Technology Committee report on its inquiry into journal
publishing and open access. Excerpt: "As the second largest research
funder in the world, the decisions of the British government have a global
impact on access to science and medical research results, and will
influence U.S. government policy and legislation....Recent analyses of
open access publishing model by impartial and vested parties such as the
Wellcome Trust have shown it to be cost-effective and
sustainable." June issue of Against the Grain The June issue of Against the Grain is
now out. This issue is guest-edited by Steve McKinzie and devoted to
changes in scholarly communication. Not even the TOC and abstracts are
online, at least not yet. Here are
the OA-related articles. (Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr.)
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