Scholarly Communications News

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released its Analysis of Comments and Implementation of the NIH Public Access Policy on September 30, 2008. The report summarizes findings from the open meetings held earlier this year. It also addresses the actions NIH has taken on the concerns including updates to the website and the release of new tools to assist with deposits.

From the SPARC press release .....

"SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded research, Open Access Day will create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content."

For details visit the Open Access Day web page.

Scientific American's news blog reports that open access publisher BioMed Central has been sold to Springer. For other reports on the acquisition see LJ Newswire and Open Access News.

A press release from the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library:

New Open Access Monograph: Economics and Usage of Digital Libraries: Byting the Bullet

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library is pleased to announce the availability of a new open access monograph, Economics and Usage of Digital Libraries: Byting the Bullet , edited by Wendy Pradt Lougee (University Librarian, University of Minnesota) and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason (Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science, School of Information, University of Michigan). In the late 1990's, researchers and digital library production staff at the University of Michigan collaborated on deploying the Pricing Economic Access to Knowledge project (PEAK), a full-scale production-quality digital access system to enable usage of content from all of Elsevier's (then about 1200) scholarly journals, and at the same time to conduct a field experiment to answer various questions about the interplay between pricing models and usage. The experiment culminated in a lively conference that engaged scholars, library practioners and publishers. This volume captures some of the most interesting and provocative discussions to come out of that conference. PEAK was a ground-breaking effort in its day, and references to the project have continued over time. It raised important questions about the potential for highly functional journal content and new economic models of publishing. In today’s context of socially-enabled systems and open-access publishing, the motivating questions of PEAK remain relevant.

This monograph is part of the SPO Scholarly Monograph Series , an interdisciplinary collection of original, open-access scholarly monographs and essays. The University of Michigan Library, through its Scholarly Publishing Office , provides academic publishing services that are responsive to the needs of both producers and users, that foster a sustainable economic model for academic publishing, and that support institutional control of intellectual assets.

From a SPARC press release:

PLOS AND SPARC RELEASE NEW “VOICES OF OPEN ACCESS” VIDEO SERIES
Clips describe a rich new world where access to research is open

San Francisco, CA and Washington, DC – October 14, 2008 – A new video series presents six unique perspectives on the importance of Open Access to research across the higher education community and beyond. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the organizers of the first Open Access Day with Students for FreeCulture, today released the series of one-minute videos capturing why teachers, patient advocates, librarians, students, research funders, and physician scientists are committed to Open Access.

The “Voices of Open Access” series defines Open Access as a fundamental component of a new system for exchanging scholarly research results, where: health is transformed; research outputs are maximized to their fullest extent; efficiencies in the research process enable faster discoveries; the best science is made possible; young people are inspired; access transcends the wealth of the institution; cost savings are realized across the research process; and medical research conducted for the public good is made available to everyone who needs it.

The videos are available for the public to view, download, and repurpose under a CC-BY license at http://www.vimeo.com/oaday08. They are also available as a single file for viewing at events.