“The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community. BHL also serves as the foundational literature component of the Encyclopedia of Life…“

“LIBER is seeking an Advocacy Officer to work on our European projects relating to policy and advocacy and to support the Executive Director in developing our advocacy programme. The post-holder will work on advocacy and policy in the areas of copyright and text and data mining, open access, and research data management….”

“Calling all library school students! CDRS [Columbia University’s Center for Digital Research and Scholarship] is an organization that is dedicated to being leaders and innovators in providing equitable access to and participation in the scholarly conversation through openness, partnerships, and community collaborations. We have a limited number of internship opportunities available, and are searching for students interested in working with us to increase the efficacy and impact of scholarship and research in a more inclusive and integrated scholarly communication ecosystem through the use of multiple technologies and media.

Abstract:  At least one child dies of malaria every minute of every day, mainly in Africa and Asia. According to Matthew Todd, who leads the Open Source Malaria Consortium in Sydney, Australia, given minimal financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new treatments and a high degree of suffering among the affected communities, a large-scale collaborative research model provides a solution. Todd turned publicly available data into a global effort to help identify new anti-malaria drugs. He did this by creating an open-source collaborative involving scientists, college students and others from around the world. They use open online laboratory notebooks in which their experimental data is posted each day, enabling instant sharing and the ability to build on others’ findings in almost real time. Todd’s Malaria Consortium could provide a model for researchers collaboratively tackling other daunting medical challenges, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Abstract:  This paper makes the strong, fact-based case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The existing journals, with their well-tested functionalities, should be retained and developed to meet the demands of 21st century research, while the underlying payment streams undergo a major restructuring. There is sufficient momentum for this decisive push towards open access publishing. The diverse existing initiatives must be coordinated so as to converge on this clear goal. The international nature of research implies that this transformation will be achieved on a truly global scale only through a consensus of the world’s most eminent research organizations. All the indications are that the money already invested in the research publishing system is sufficient to enable a transformation that will be sustainable for the future. There needs to be a shared understanding that the money currently locked in the journal subscription system must be withdrawn and re-purposed for open access publishing services. The current library acquisition budgets are the ultimate reservoir for enabling the transformation without financial or other risks. The goal is to preserve the established service levels provided by publishers that are still requested by researchers, while redefining and reorganizing the necessary payment streams. By disrupting the underlying business model, the viability of journal publishing can be preserved and put on a solid footing for the scholarly developments of the future.

“I’m glad to see this new Max Planck Gesellschaft report on the large-scale transition to OA, and I’m adding it to the list of works to cover in the new Harvard literature review <osc.hul.harvard.edu/journal-flipping> on converting non-OA journals to OA.

But I’m sorry to see that the announcement of the report uses its short space to broadcast two false assumptions — first, that all or most OA journals charge publication fees (also known as article processing charges or APCs), and second that all or most of the fees at fee-based OA journals are paid by authors. I haven’t read the report itself yet, but I hope it shows better understanding than the announcement.”

“The Max Planck Digital Library has put forward a study on the transformation of the subscription-driven system for scientific publications to an Open Access model. For the first time, quantitative parameters are presented showing that the liberation of scholarly literature is possible at no extra costs….”

“The NCSU Libraries invites applications and nominations for the position of GOKb [Global Open Knowledge base] Editor. GOKb is a collaborative  project to develop an open source, community-managed knowledge base of electronic resources metadata….”

“Some scholars may seek to incubate genuinely new approaches to historical reasoning. Those

a strength rather than an impediment….”

“Nature Publishing Group are recruiting a Marketing Manager to join its Open Research team.

The Marketing Manager, Open Research, is responsible for the planning and implementation of the marketing plans for two of Nature Publishing Group’s open access titles, Scientific Data and Scientific Reports- the largest and fastest growing title within the portfolio. The role will also involve wider support of the departments open access initiatives….”