Scholarly Communications News

Just Published: Open Access: Opportunities and Challenges--a Handbook

A Joint publication of the European Commission and the German Commission for UNESCO, 2008

The English version of the handbook, a joint publication with the European Commission's Science in Society Programme, has just been published. The publication is available in print and electronic versions. The handbook aims to provide information about the opportunities and challenges offered by Open Access, and to present a wide array of issues and positions under debate. The English version of the handbook is a translation of the handbook in German, published by the German Commission for UNESCO in 2007.

Download the book here or here.

More details about the book: http://www.unesco.de/openaccess-en.html
[source: Diglib announcement from Anup Kumar Das, 2008-07-09]

The American Psychological Association recently announced that it would charge authors $2500 for depositing articles into PubMed Central. But the Association has apparently decided to rethink the new policy. According to APA's website, the policy is "currently being re-examined and will not be implemented at this time."

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported the policy on July 15, 2008 and its blog quickly filled with comments. According to The Chronicle , authors publishing in APA journals were told not to deposit the articles themselves and that the fee would be billed to the author's university.

Authors who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health are now required to submit articles arising from the funded research into PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine's digital archive. For more information, visit the VCU Libraries' page on Navigating the New NIH Mandatory Public Access Policy.