Online and Distance Learning.com

I just mailed the January 2010 issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at the progress of OA in 2009.  The roundup section briefly notes 118 OA developments from December.

Dublin Institute of Technology has adopted an OA mandate:

Academic staff, research assistants, research students and other members of the Institute are entitled and required to deposit digital copies of refereed and other research publications and documents. ...

Exceptionally, material that is to be commercialised, or which can be regarded as confidential, or the publication of which would infringe a legal commitment of the Institute and/or the author, is exempt from inclusion in the repository.

Uploading of items into [the IR] is the responsibility of authors and researchers. It is desirable that items be self-archived. However, this task may be delegated to others or to Library Services.

All deposits of journal articles must comply with Publishers’ policies. ...

The University of Abertay Dundee has adopted an OA mandate:

It is the University’s policy to establish a comprehensive database of research outputs, recording bibliographic information and, where permissible under publishers' copyright policies, providing access to the full text of published research produced by University staff and research students.

The University therefore requires that all staff and research students submit the following to the repository:

• Full text electronic copies and bibliographic details of peer-reviewed research published from 1 January 2010.
• Bibliographic details (including abstracts, where available) of peer-reviewed research published between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2009.

and that:

• The electronic version of theses accepted for research degrees after 10th July 2009 will be deposited in the repository on behalf of the students. ...

The ict@innovation programme builds capacities in African small and medium ICT enterprises to make a business with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). ict@innovation aims to encourage the growth of African ICT industries, particularly in Southern and East Africa, through three main actions: spreading FOSS business models for enterprises in Africa, fostering FOSS certification and supporting innovative local FOSS applications for social and economic development. ict@innovation is a partnership

Last year, Finland's 26 universities of Applied Sciences launched a consortial OA repository (Theseus.fi) and in October they adopted a joint OA mandate.  Excerpt:

After 1 January 2010, the Universities of Applied Sciences will require all teachers and researchers who work at the universities to save a copy of their research essays that are published in scientific publications, or a university publication series, in the open electronic library, Theseus....

Comments

• This is, by far, the largest set of institutions to adopt a joint OA mandate.  Kudos to the Rectors' Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (ARENE ry) for making it happen. 
• The Theseus deposit system automatically offers authors the option to attach CC licenses.
• Thanks to Herkko Hietanen and Anna-Kaisa Sjölund for the alert.

Update.  Although there are 28 members of ARENE ry, only 26 participate in Theseus, and only 26 have adopted the OA mandate.  The 26 with mandates are those governed by the Finnish Ministry of Education.  One institution, the police academy at Tampere, is governed by the Ministry of Interior, and one, the Åland University of Applied Sciences, is in Mariehamn, an autonomous territory.  (Thanks to Anna-Kaisa Sjölund for these details.) 

Columbia University Commits to Open-Access Publication Compact, press release, December 11, 2009.

Columbia University has joined several leading institutions of higher learning in a commitment to a Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. Other signatories to the compact are Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley.

The compact commits signatories to the timely establishment of mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open access journal articles authored by researchers without alternative funding. The effort around the compact arose as a result of discussions within the university community about providing sustainable, efficient, and effective business models for journal publishing. "The growth of this new strategy for support for high quality scholarly communication in the expanding number of open access journals requires our participation and support," said Jim Neal, Columbia’s Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian. ...

Following from the compact commitment, Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is establishing a fund to help support Columbia faculty, staff, and students who wish to publish in OA journals. The Libraries are currently formulating policy and eligibility requirements for the fund, which will be administered by the Scholarly Communication Program, based at the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS). ...

See also our past post on Columbia joining COPE.

The Obama administration is calling for public comments on ways to enhance access to federally-funded research.  From today's announcement:

With this notice, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, requests input from the community regarding enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from research funded by Federal science and technology agencies. This RFI [Request for Information] will be active from December 10, 2009 to January 7, 2010. Respondents are invited to respond online via the Public Access Policy Forum...or may submit responses via electronic mail. Responses will be re-posted on the online forum. Instructions and a timetable for daily blog topics during this period are described at [the White House Open Government Initiative web site]....

[T]he Administration is dedicated to maximizing the return on Federal investments made in R&D. Consistent with this policy, the Administration is exploring ways to leverage Federal investments to increase access to information that promises to stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness. The results of government-funded research can take many forms, including data sets, technical reports, and peer-reviewed scholarly publications, among others. This RFI focuses on approaches that would enhance the public's access to scholarly publications resulting from research conducted by employees of a Federal agency or from research funded by a Federal agency....

The Executive Branch is considering ways to enhance public access to peer reviewed papers arising from all federal science and technology agencies. One potential model, implemented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...requires that all investigators funded by the NIH submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance for publication no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Articles collected under the NIH Public Access Policy are archived in PubMed Central and linked to related scientific information contained in other NIH databases....

The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer- reviewed scholarly publications. The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms....

Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually)....[PS: Here omitting the nine questions; but anyone submitting a comment should read and address them.]

Comments

• This is big.  We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA.  The question here is about separate action from the White House.  What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt?  This is the first major opening to supplement legislative action with executive action to advance public access to publicly-funded research.  It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something similar at other federal agencies.
• Don't forget that FRPAA has to stand in line behind healthcare reform, financial regulation, and climate change.  This is the perfect time to open a new front from the executive branch.  Also don't forget that the federal funding agencies belong to the executive branch and are subject to executive order.
• Comments are due January 7.  Please write one and spread the word, not necessarily in that order.  As far as I can tell, comments from non-citizens addressing the nine questions are as welcome as comments from US citizens. 
• You can be sure that the publishing lobby will be writing comments.  It's vital that the research community be heard as well, loud and clear.

Update.  For those who want to post their comment(s) to the forum (rather than by email), and/or follow the discussion at the forum, the discussion has begun at the OSTP blog.

University of Ottawa among North American leaders as it launches open access program, press release, December 8, 2009.

The University of Ottawa is the first Canadian university to adopt a comprehensive open access program that supports free and unrestricted access to scholarly research.

The University’s new program includes:

• a commitment to make the University’s scholarly publications available online at no charge through the University’s repository, uO Research;
• an author fund to help researchers defray open access fees charged by publishers;
• a fund to support the creation of digital educational materials organized as courses and available to everyone online at no charge ;
• support for the University of Ottawa Press’s commitment to publishing a collection of open access books; and
• a research grant to support further research on the open access movement.

The University of Ottawa also becomes the first Canadian university to join the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE) ...

For more information on the University of Ottawa’s open access program, visit [ink].

Comments.

• Although Michael Geist describes the strategy as including a mandate, it doesn't appear to. The plan doesn't seem to mention either a commitment/obligation to self-archive or a university-wide license. (If I'm wrong, please let me know.)
• The implementation of the COPE fund differs from those of Harvard, etc.: most notably, it allows funds to be used for hybrid OA journals.

I just mailed the December 2009 issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at the OA implications of the amended version of the Google book settlement.  The roundup section briefly notes 150 OA developments from November.

David Wiley, Two Units in BYU Adopt Open Access Policies, iterating toward openness , November 23, 2009.

Two units at Brigham Young University have adopted open access policies – both the Harold B. Lee Library faculty and the faculty in my own department, Instructional Psychology and Technology, voted to adopt the policies earlier this month. IP&T’s policy was based on the HBLL policy, which was based on existing OA policies at other universities. ...

For those who are interested, here’s the text of the IP&T policy:

... Each Instructional Psychology and Technology Department faculty member grants to Brigham Young University permission to make scholarly articles to which he or she has made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available as part of the Harold B. Lee Library’s ScholarsArchive system, or its successor ...

The term “scholarly articles” includes articles prepared for presentation or publication, whether in electronic or print media. ...

The IP&T Department Chair or the Chair’s designate shall waive application of the policy to a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member explaining the need. The IP&T Chair, in consultation with the faculty, will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the faculty. This policy will be formally reviewed two years after implementation, by September 30, 2011.

As of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the University Librarian’s Office in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the University Librarian’s Office.

See also: Peter included BYU in his January newsletter's list of "mandate proposals known to be under discussion".

Oberlin College Faculty Unanimously Endorses Open Access, press release, November 20, 2009.

The Oberlin College General Faculty unanimously endorsed on November 18 a resolution to make their scholarly articles openly accessible on the Internet. As a result of the measure, the rich scholarly output of the Oberlin faculty will become available to a much broader national and international audience. The Oberlin resolution is similar to policies passed at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Kansas, and Trinity University. ...

Under the new policy, Oberlin faculty and professional staff will make their peer-reviewed, scholarly articles openly accessible in a digital archive managed by the Oberlin College Library as part of the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons. Oberlin authors may opt out of the policy for a specific article if they are not in a position to sign journal publishing agreements that are compatible with the policy, or for other reasons. The resolution also creates an institutional license that gives Oberlin College the legal right to make the articles accessible on the Internet through the digital archive. The resolution further encourages, but does not require, authors to submit publications other than peer-reviewed articles in the same manner. ...

Adopted at the recommendation of the General Faculty Library Committee, the policy calls for the committee, in consultation with a faculty council, to establish procedures for carrying out the policy and to monitor its implementation. Policy implementation will be coordinated by a scholarly communications officer, a member of the library staff designated by the director of libraries. ...

The Oberlin College Student Senate recently endorsed the national “Student Statement on the Right to Research,” which expresses a similar commitment to making scholarly research information openly accessible.

Google and the plaintiffs in the Google Book settlement released their revised settlement on November 13; see the proposed Supplemental Notice. The change most directly related to OA is this:

... The Amended Settlement provides that the Registry will facilitate Rightsholders’ wishes to allow their works to be made available through alternative licenses for Consumer Purchase, including through a Creative Commons license. ... The Amended Settlement also clarifies that Rightsholders are free to set the Consumer Purchase price of their Books at zero. ...

Some other changes also may be of interest:

• Rightsholders can negotiate with Google to change the restrictions on their included works (e.g. to remove the DRM).
• The Book Rights Registry can allow more than one free terminal per public library building.

Also of note is that many international books will be excluded. Whereas the original settlement included any books under copyright in the U.S. (effectively, any book published anywhere in the world), the amended settlement only includes books published in the U.S., UK, Canada or Australia, or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

The revised settlement also establishes an independent fiduciary agent to manage unclaimed works (where no rightsholder has stepped forward to manage the options under the settlement and claim payments). The Unclaimed Works Fiduciary is meant to act as a proxy for absentee rightsholders, but it doesn't have all the abilities of an actual rightsholder. Instead, the revised settlement enumerates some specific abilities for the Unclaimed Works Fiduciary, and provides that the fiduciary also can act "otherwise as the Board of Directors of the Registry deems appropriate".

The abilities enumerated seem to not include the options to set the price at zero, apply a CC license, or remove DRM restrictions. In other words, the Unclaimed Works Fiduciary apparently does not have the ability to make orphan works OA without the agreement of the Registry board (which is composed of publisher and author representatives). I've put in a question to the parties' press contacts to confirm or clarify this.

The plaintiffs' memo proposes a 45-day period for class members to respond, with an extra week for the U.S. Department of Justice, and the final fairness hearing two weeks subsequent. (That schedule would start after the judge grants preliminary approval to the revised settlement, which hasn't happened yet.)

See also: For more information, including the many aspects to the amended settlement which aren't discussed here, see the oa.google.settlement tag on the Open Access Tracking Project.

The CG virtual library (CGVlibrary) is a global link to leading research on food crops, livestock, fisheries, water resources, forestry, plant genetics, and food and nutrition policy. It includes resources from the online libraries of all the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers.

Alliance for Taxpayer Access, Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act to ensure free online access to federally funded research results, press release, November 10, 2009.

“For America to obtain an optimal return on our investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as broadly as possible,” is the message that forty one Nobel Prize-winning scientists in medicine, physics, and chemistry gave to Congress in an open letter delivered yesterday. The letter marks the fourth time in five years that leading scientists have called on Congress to ensure free, timely access to the results of federally funded research – this time asking leaders to support the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S.1373).

The Nobel Prize-winners write:

As the pursuit of science is increasingly conducted in a digital world, we need policies that ensure that the opportunities the Internet presents for new research tools and techniques to be employed can be fully exploited. The removal of access barriers and the enabling of expanded use of research findings has the potential to dramatically transform how we approach issues of vital importance to the public, such as biomedicine, climate change, and energy research. As scientists, and as taxpayers too, we support FRPAA and urge its passage.

The bi-partisan Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), introduced by Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX), would deliver online public access to the published results of research funded through eleven U.S. agencies and departments, requiring that peer-reviewed journal articles stemming from publicly funded research be made available in an online repository no later than six months after publication. ...

The number of Nobelist signatories on this letter (41) is an increase from past letters: 33 in 2008, 26 in 2007, and 25 in 2004. The signatories include two of the three 2009 laureates in medicine.

I just mailed the November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at a few threads in the argument that knowledge is and ought to be a public good.  The roundup section briefly notes 223 OA developments from October.

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.

Katherine Raichlen, Requiring the right rights, Cavalier Daily, October 26, 2009.

... [T]he University [of Virginia] Faculty Senate is considering a resolution that would require all faculty members to retain the rights to enter their academic articles into a publicly accessible University repository. The proposed policy — which will be voted on at the Senate’s Nov. 20 meeting — brings with it larger debates and concerns about open access and preservation issues. ...

The resolution applies only to scholarly articles and does not extend to books or works of art, [education professor Brian Pusser] said.

The proposed policy also includes a waiver process, which allows faculty to opt out if they cannot complete an addendum with the publisher, Pusser said. ...

Members of the task force are currently gathering information from faculty about the resolution, conducting dialogues with faculty and making presentations to various departments and schools around Grounds, Pusser said. ...

[Faculty Senate Chair Ann] Hamric said faculty members also may find out about the policy through the Faculty Senate Web site, which has posts of the resolution, a section of frequently asked questions and a letter from Madelyn Wessel, University associate general counsel and Senate Task Force member. ...

Some faculty members, however, have raised questions about the Senate’s copyright resolution because of the waiver process and whether the policy will create obstacles for faculty, Pusser said. ...

English Prof. David Vander Meulen, editor of the journal Studies in Bibliography, supports the resolution’s aims of “[disseminating] scholarship more widely, and [giving] authors greater rights to their own writing,” but he believes that “the current proposal ignores some key components in scholarly publishing,” according to an e-mail.

The exorbitant subscription fees for scientific, medical and technological journals were an important impetus for the proposal, Vander Meulen said, but different circumstances apply to other disciplines. ...

“If the University of Virginia fails to do this, it’s going to be a huge embarrassment to our faculty,” [media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan] said. “Faculties at every major research university in the country are considering this and almost all of them are going to pass it, and Harvard and MIT have led the way. We would be holding ourselves out as champions of the 18th century, if we hold back from this.” ...

Hamric ... was unwilling to speculate about the outcome of the vote, though she said she hopes the resolution passes.

“A number of our colleagues have given a great deal of time to understanding this issue,” she said, “and those are the people that are the most convinced that we need to do this and I take that seriously.” ...

See also our past posts on the proposed policy at UVa (1, 2).

MKU to go for Open Access Mandate, press release, undated but recent.

... At Madurai Kamaraj University, an Open Access Repository using E-prints has been initiated at a School level and will be expanded to the whole University as part of its open access initiatives.

As indicated by the Vice-Chancellor of MKU, the University plans to go for a green open access policy. This will mandate its faculty to deposit their publicly funded research publications including student thesis, dissertations, faculty seminar presentations, journal publications into the open access repository.

Trinity University is First Small, Liberal Arts University to Endorse Open Access for Sharing Scholarly Work, press release, October 23, 2009.

Trinity University’s faculty members today endorsed a measure to allow them to bypass some publication restrictions while sharing their scholarly research with the broader academic community.

Trinity becomes the first small, primarily undergraduate liberal arts institution to pass such a measure, known as Open Access. ...

The new Open Access policy also would enable Trinity professors to post the author’s version of the article in a freely-accessible digital repository. Such a repository already exists as part of the Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository, a collaboration among Trinity and other private liberal arts colleges, including Carleton College, Bucknell University, Grinnell College, University of Richmond, St. Lawrence University, and Whitman College. ...

The vote sends a message from Trinity to other primarily undergraduate institutions to act regarding the future of the publishing world, [economics professor Jorge G. Gonzalez] said. ...

Trinity’s Faculty Senate approved the proposal in late September. The vote by the full faculty on Friday, Oct. 23 was taken at an assembly during International Open Access Week. ...

From the Trinity University Open Access Policy Statement draft dated September 25:

... Each Faculty member grants to the President and Board of Trustees of Trinity University limited use of his or her scholarly articles. An article is defined here as a scholarly work published in a journal or as an independent chapter of a multi-authored book. ... [T]he policy applies only to works for which the author does not retain full copyright. Faculty members are allowed to opt out of this policy for any reason. ...

While faculty members are encouraged to publish their scholarly work in the most prestigious journals, when Open Access journals of equal quality are available, faculty members should give strong consideration to them. Faculty members are also encouraged to explore opportunities to retain copyright of their works regardless of the ultimate publication venue.

Each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the final version of the article, through a website established for this purpose, at no charge to the Open Access Faculty Committee. ... Each article will be embargoed until it has appeared either in print or on-line at the publisher’s web site, whichever comes first.

The Open Access Faculty Committee will be a standing university committee, appointed by the President with the assistance of the Faculty Senate. The Open Access Faculty Committee will be responsible for implementing and interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to time. The policy will be reviewed after three years and a report presented to the Faculty. ...

Pending confirmation of the final text approved, it looks like a mandate.

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya recently adopted its Política institucional d’accés obert. The document was approved by the university's Consell de Govern on October 7. Because I don't speak Catalan, I can't tell whether the policy is an exhortation or a mandate (Google translates the relevant phrase as "calls upon") to deposit in the university's IR.

If you know more, please contact me.