I’ve often reflected that OA is closer to raincoat science than rocket science. The essential message is super-simple:

About as deep and complex as the following — and yet, for two decades, the response has been Zeno’s Paralysis:

Look kids, it’s raining
Time to put on your raincoats…

Can’t: against the law
Won’t: no clouds I saw
Can’t: branding’s at risk
Won’t: I must keep wet
Can’t: which coat to choose?
Won’t: my pay I’ll lose
Can’t: coats may go bad
Won’t: drought risk increased
Can’t: too much to do
Won’t: rain’s good for you
Can’t: can’t read instrux 
Won’t: need cheaper meds
Can’t: standards at risk
Won’t: risks towel biz
Can’t: weathermen’s needs
Won’t: there’s too much rain
Can’t: the look’s not right
Won’t: let’s wait sky-shield
Can’t: trees need their jobs
Won’t: might miss good drops
Can’t: they have no tags 
Won’t: need weathercasts 
Can’t: careers at risk
Won’t: steals druggists’ biz
Can’t: could dehydrate
Won’t: lest I’m not first
Can’t: which safe to wear?
Won’t: wait for clime change
Can’t: raincoats decay 
Won’t: cuts medics’ pay
Can’t: bankrupts brollies
Won’t: parents’ excess
Can’t: global drying
Won’t: disrupts climate
Can’t: quality risk
Won’t: false weathercasts
Can’t: risks coat recall
Won’t: not wet at all
Can’t: can’t fasten snaps
Won’t: dries others up
Can’t: god meant us wet
Won’t: dry’s not enough

• Of the 28 founding members of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories launched last week by the (European) DRIVER project, 5 are from outside Europe.
• OA, writes Richard Grant, is socialism — provoking a 150+ comment discussion. Apparently not all of his readers agree.
• Christopher Kelty thinks that Kickstarter, a “funding platform” where supporters pledge to support a project before production, could be a revenue model for OA.
• Libraries, writes Barbara Fister, “have to figure out how to stop equating the price tag with our actual worth, roll up our sleeves, and find interesting new ways to make good information freely available.”
• Rufus Pollock says he tries to practice open notebook social science.
• The aim of open approaches in science “isn’t to replicate ‘open source’ as we know it in software,” writes John Wilbanks, but “to create the essential foundations for distributed science”.
• The Lyon library says the details of its digitization agreement with Google are confidential (Google translation).
• The new issue of Research Library Issues features an interview with Peter Hirtle on Cornell University Library’s decision not to claim restrictions on its digitized public domain materials.
• Our spiritual cousins at Open Education News passed the 1,000 post milestone this week.

Hala Essalmawi, ed., The Access to Knowledge Movement: Opportunities, Challenges and the Road Ahead, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, November 2009. Contents:

• Hala Essalmawi, Introduction
• James Love, Demand, Take and Supply: The Ecology of Access
• Barbara Stratton, A2K Quinquennium – Now we are five – The Library perspective
• William New, Access To Influence In WIPO‘s Development Agenda
• Manon Ress, Limitations and Exceptions for Reading Disabled Persons: A New Paradigm at the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights
• Mohammed El Said, Access to Knowledge, Education, and Intellectual Property Protection in the Arab World – The Challenges of Development
• Denise Rosemary Nicholson, Addressing Access To Knowledge Issues In Africa
• Brian Fitzgerald, Anne Fitzgerald and Kylie Pappalardo, The A2K Movement in Australia (2006 – 2009)

The Association of American Universities yesterday posted a series of documents relating to a previously-unpublicized effort by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology. From the proposal, Roundtable on Public Access to Federal Research and Data:

… The House Science and Technology Committee, which has oversight of the federal civilian R&D enterprise, has a strong interest in [the question of public access]. The Committee seeks to convene a Roundtable of the key stakeholders to explore and develop an appropriate consensus regarding access to and preservation of federally funded research information that addresses the needs of all interested parties.

The progress of science and technology is very dependent on:

1. The wide dissemination of research results and data from which new science is born;
2. A peer review system that ensures the quality and integrity of scientific research results and analyses; and
3. Preservation and access to the archive of historic and current research results.

The federal government is an important funder of basic and applied research in the United States. As a result of this stewardship, the government should provide resources and establish policies where appropriate to facilitate access to scientific data and publications and preserve an accessible record to both entities. In doing so, the government must take into account the important role of the private sector in this enterprise. …

To this end, a Roundtable forum is proposed to discuss these issues. … Participants will be asked to contribute their expertise and proposed solutions on the respective role of the federal government, libraries, institutional repositories and the scholarly publishers on the topics of access and preservation of the results of federally funded research. …

The total number of participants will be limited (to approximately 10) in order to facilitate the scheduling and productivity of the meetings. The initial roundtable meeting will be chaired by representatives of the House Science and Technology Committee with appropriate support and advice from staff in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Roundtable participants will be selected by the S&T Committee based on their interest and expertise on the issue. …

To promote an open dialogue and exchange and to foster working toward a fair and balanced solution, participants will be at the table as knowledgeable individuals, but not as official representatives of their parent organizations. … Participants will be asked to refrain from public disclosure of Roundtable deliberations until a consensus report has been completed. …

The proposal is undated, but the status report states the roundtable was convened in “early summer 2009”.

The AAU documents also include a list of participants and biographies of the roundtable members.

From the status report, dated October 29, 2009:

… In-person meetings and conference calls have taken place over the summer and early fall, with the goal of producing a consensus report containing views and recommendations before the end of the year. The Roundtable report will be submitted to the HSTC and OSTP and subsequently will be made widely available to all stakeholders as well as the broader public. Members of the Roundtable will be available for comment regarding the report after its public release. …

Comment. Observers of American politics will know the central role of Congressional committees in policymaking. To date, two committees have given significant consideration to OA: the House Appropriations Committee, which passed the NIH mandate (and the earlier voluntary policy), and the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman introduced the anti-public access Fair Copyright in Research Works Act and which held a hearing on the bill. (FRPAA was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, but that committee has not held a hearing on that bill in either its current or previous form. In addition, questions about OA have occasionally been asked of executive branch officials and nominees in their oversight committees.) Noticeably absent from that list, as I’ve previously noted, are committees with jurisdiction over science or education — arguably the committees best suited to consider policies issues facing the research community and higher education. This effort changes that.

In addition, the involvement of the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first significant public engagement of the Obama White House with OA. (The Bush White House expressed mild concern about the NIH mandate, but ultimately signed a bill containing the measure.)

Accordingly, this process has the opportunity to shape discourse about public access in a major way. Unfortunately, since it’s secret, we don’t have much to go on until the recommendations are released and the participants’ vow of silence is lifted.

At first glance, the proposal itself is fairly even-handed. The biggest criticism I can level so far is that, while presuming increased access to be beneficial, it fails to ask the crucial question of what exactly are the benefits of access and the costs of lack of access. Nevertheless, the proposal counters two claims sometimes heard from (or implied by) opponents of OA: that greater access is not necessary (e.g. that benefits from OA would be negligible) and that government has no proper role in access and preservation.

There’s also the question of focus. This roundtable was tasked with considering access and preservation to publications and data from federally-funded research, rather than a narrower focus only on peer-reviewed article manuscripts. While other types of documents should be considered, that shouldn’t distract from a swift recommendation for a FRPAA-style mandate.

In tagging the documents for the OATP, Peter remarks, “Is the membership list balanced? Read it and decide for yourselves.” Of course, the theory behind this arrangement is that members will check their agendas at the door and work together as unbiased experts, so “balance” wouldn’t matter. We’ll only learn later (if ever) if practice followed theory in this case.

Update. Post title revised to more accurately reflect the essence of the matter.

ROARMAP

OA Self-Archiving Mandate:
Madurai Kamaraj University (INDIA)

Institution’s OA Eprint Archives:
[growth data] http://eprints.bicmku.in
eprints repository for School of Biotechnology from July 2009

Institution’s/Department’s OA Self-Archiving Policy:
IDOA – immediate deposit and optional access

Added by: S. Krishnaswamy (Senior Professor, Nodal person for open access in MKU) mkukrishna AT gmail.com on 29 Oct 2009

• RoMEO, the database of publisher OA policies, is surveying users about how to make the service better.
• Two more student organizations have signed the Student Statement on The Right to Research: the Simmons College Library and Information Science Student Association and the University of Tennessee Student Government Association. Also see coverage in the Tennessee Daily Beacon.
• OpenTheGovernment.org issued an action alert for OA to Congressional Research Service reports.
• The Fall 2009 issue of the Digital Commons newsletter highlights universities using the repository software.
• The Public Knowledge Project released a case study of the the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences’ use of PKP’s Open Journal Systems publishing software.
• DeepDyve launched an article “rental” program: $0.99 for 24 hours of viewing (no printing or downloading).
• The ticTOCs project released its recommendations on RSS feeds for scholarly publishers, including the recommendation for feeds to include licensing information.
• The American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy is soliciting nominations for its L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award in recognition of individuals or groups who have helped “promote the progress of science and useful arts”.

Kevin Donovan, Call for Participation: Join the Open University Campaign!, Students for Free Culture, October 27, 2009.

As many of you know, following the Free Culture 2008 Conference, Students for Free Culture began the Open University Campaign – an initiative to increase collaboration, sharing, and openness at the level of higher education. …

A primary method through which this will be accomplished is through “report card” style profiles of leading institution of higher learning, similar to College Sustainability Report Cards. Students for Free Culture has already begun this work by defining principles of measurement, researching available resources, and developing surveys to be distributed to universities.

Mirroring the Wheeler Declaration, the Open University Report Cards, as currently envisioned, will evaluate schools on five topics:

1. Open Access: Are faculty required to make their scholarship open access? Is the university press publish open access materials? …

Establishing credible criteria under which schools will be assessed will be essential to creating a respected resource. For example, Which schools’ open access policies are currently lacking important criteria? … The volunteers currently involved with the project are working through these questions on the wiki page, and we encourage you to join the conversation.

In order to make this a successful endeavor, Students for Free Culture needs your involvement!

• Are you a student who can research official university open access policies? …
• Are you statistically-inclined and can handle data on universities?
• Are you a web developer who could create a public website for the Open University Report Cards?
• Are you a graphic designer who could create posters to raise awareness on campuses?

The Open University Campaign recognizes that scholastic advancement occurs most readily in an environment of sharing, openness and collaboration. By providing a cross-index of leading universities, the project will add important comparative measurements to encourage increased academic openness. Our hope is that these resources will provide a platform from which openness activists can endeavor to improve the scholastic environment.

See also our past posts on the Wheeler Declaration.

Cornell University Library Publishes New Digitization Manual, press release, October 29, 2009.

How can cultural heritage institutions legally use the Internet to improve public access to the rich collections they hold?

Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, a new book by published today by Cornell University Library, can help professionals at these institutions answer that question.

Based on a well-received Australian manual written by Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon of the University of Melbourne, the book has been developed by Cornell University Library’s senior policy advisor Peter B. Hirtle, along with Hudson and Kenyon, to conform to American law and practice.

The development of new digital technologies has led to fundamental changes in the ways that cultural institutions fulfill their public missions of access, preservation, research, and education. Many institutions are developing publicly accessible Web sites that allow users to visit online exhibitions, search collection databases, access images of collection items, and in some cases create their own digital content. Digitization, however, also raises the possibility of copyright infringement. It is imperative that staff in libraries, archives, and museums understand fundamental copyright principles and how institutional procedures can be affected by the law.

Copyright and Cultural Institutions was written to assist understanding and compliance with copyright law. It addresses the basics of copyright law and the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of “risk assessment” when conducting any digitization project. Case studies on digitizing oral histories and student work are also included. …

As an experiment in openaccess publishing, the Library has made the work available in two formats. Print copies of the work are available from CreateSpace, an Amazon subsidiary. In addition, the entire text is available as a free download through eCommons, Cornell University’s institutional repository, and from SSRN.com, which already distributes the Australian guidelines. …

Nancy Watzman, How Congress and Special Interests Kept Clinical Trial Data Secret, Sunlight Foundation, October 28, 2009.

Meet Bray Patrick-Lake, a 39-year-old mother of two and director of a Colorado nonprofit serving the homeless. In 2008, she volunteered for a clinical trial, regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, testing a medical device designed to close a hole in her heart, in hope of putting an end to the migraine headaches that were ruining her life. Three months later, she found out over the Internet that St. Jude Medical Inc., the manufacturer of the device, had terminated the study. (Read all the details here.) …

Now Patrick-Lake can’t find out the results of that clinical trial. That’s because pharmaceutical and medical device industry lobbyists—including those representing St. Jude Medical, Inc. and its trade association, AdvaMed—convinced Congress in 2007 to insert a last-minute provision in the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act that allows medical device manufacturers to withhold data disclosure to a public government database, ClinicalTrials.gov, when their products fail to make it to the market. …

For the lobbyists and members of Congress, it was business as usual in Washington. The lobbyists got a few phrases changed in a lengthy bill—phrases that would have required public access to results of clinical trials that did not lead to an approved medical device or drug. … For Patrick-Lake, Washington’s standard operating procedures have left her—and the public—in the dark about the device in her heart.

What is true for Patrick-Lake is true for the thousands of people who volunteer for studies of drugs or medical devices every year that companies for one reason or another do not bring to market. What industry claims is proprietary information could be useful to doctors and patients as they decide what sort of treatment is best for any number of conditions. As Steven Nissen, chairman of the cardiology department at the Cleveland Clinic, says, “If you expose human beings to an experimental treatment, the public has a fundamental right to see the results of those experiments.” …

To coincide with the start of Open Access week, EDINA (a JISC UK-national academic data centre based at the University of Edinburgh) is pleased to announce that the Depot has been opened up internationally. Building upon its initial role given to it by JISC, the Depot is now being opened up into a facility to support the Open Access agenda internationally.

The Depot is an assured gateway to make research Open Access – we provide two main services:

1. a deposit service for researchers worldwide without an institutional repository in which to deposit their papers, articles, and book chapters (e-prints).

2. a re-direct service which alerts depositors to more appropriate local services if they exist.

The first time a researcher visits the Depot we will automatically check with OpenDOAR, the registry for open access repositories, to find a more appropriate local repository. If none exists then the author will be invited to deposit their research in the Depot. The Depot is OAI-compliant allowing deposited e-prints to be ‘harvested’ by search services, and other repositories, giving them instant global visibility.

For the present you can find the Depot at http://www.depot.edina.ac.uk/ but working with eIFL-OA we hope to provide a more international URL to denote its new role.

Warm regards, Theo (on behalf of the Depot team)

Theo Andrew
Edinburgh University Library
& EDINA National Data Centre
Tel: 0131 651 3850 (Mon-Weds)
0131 6502913 (Thu – Fri)

Three day residential conference for everyone in the scholarly publishing industry.  The programme includes the ALPSP Annual General Meeting and ALPSP Awards Dinner.

Sunil Bhopal and Rossetta Cole, Access to information for medical students – Sierra Leone, Healthcare Information For All by 2015, October 28, 2009.

We are two medical students from the UK (Sunil Bhopal, University of Leeds) and Sierra Leone (Rossetta Cole, College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, Freetown). We are trained in a similar manner, first in lectures and other formal teaching arrangements in a university, and then by spending more and more time in hospitals until we emerge finally as junior doctors ready to tackle the next hurdle. We met when I (Sunil) spent a month on medical elective in Freetown.

The starkest difference in our education has been in access to information. While in Leeds I (Sunil) have access to thousands of books through the university library, hundreds of journals in print and online and am a mere (university funded) bus ride away from a copyright library containing everything ever printed in the UK, in Freetown I (Rossetta) have had to make do with 20 year old donated textbooks, no paper journals, and access to HINARI online journals once (through a local internet cafe) over the 6 year course.

The issue of accessing information is a particular problem in Sierra Leone where there is no bookshop selling new books, and no medical text book importer. …

• The Hong Kong Open Access Committee launched a Web site.
• Brown University is developing a repository and hopes to launch it next spring.
• The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, a cancer center in Manchester, England, launched a repository.
• The University of Washington will lose access to 1,000 Springer journals as the result of a change to a consortial purchase agreement in order to cut costs. (Update: Revised for clarity.)
• The Association of College and Research Libraries released its 2008 survey of libraries, showing that “serial expenditures as a percentage of total library materials expenditures saw very little variation” but “the median unit cost of monographs (per volume) increased significantly”.
• Innovate, an OA journal published by the Nova Southeastern University School of Education and Human Services, will cease publication. The journal was founded in 2004 (see our launch announcement).
• The American Society for Cell Biology is developing an OA library of cell images, thanks to $2.5 million in funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

A taste of comments and activities from Open Access Week:

• At the University of Florida, Thomas Walker gave a presentation advocating for an OA mandate.
• A blog post by the Antioch University New England Library suggests the same there.
• “We face an interesting challenge when it come to reengineering libraries to support open access instead of our traditional job of procuring content from corporations,” writes Barbara Fister.
• Dorothea Salo posted a profile of Sarah Shreeves, IR manager at the University of Illinois.
• “Publishing and research open access models should be considered apart from open access in relation to cultural heritage materials and archival content,” writes Kimberly Christen.
• Marlène Delhaye shares a case study (in French) of E-LIS, a repository for library and information sciences.
• Robert Stern complains that medical conferences unfairly restrict access to journalists, impeding research results from reaching the public.
• On my personal blog, I posted a look back at the history and growth of OA Week.

P.S. The crush of OA Week overwhelmed my usual triage processes, so I’m still digging out. Thanks for your patience.