Open Access Week Kick-off Video
Hear leading scientists discuss the benefits of open access to scholarly research in this video of the Open Access Week Kick-off Online Event from SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute Dr. Harold Varmus will offer welcoming remarks. Varmus, a long-time champion, has been an unparalleled leader in promoting Open Access in a succession of key roles – from introducing the topic of wider access and launching PubMed Central to increase public access to the literature as the Director of the National Institutes of Health, to helping to found the Public Library of Science, one of the world’s leading open-access publishers.
Varmus will be joined by Dr. Cameron Neylon, a Senior Scientist at the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, biochemist, and author of the widely read “Science in the Open” blog. Neylon will highlight the kinds of scientific advances Open Access can facilitate, and discuss current examples along with future opportunities. A host of leading researchers from around the globe will also add their voices to the event.
Open Access Week (October 18-24) Events at UAB
October 18-24, 2010 is the second international Open Access Week.
Open Access Week is “an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research” (Open Access Week website).
What is open access?
A common definition comes from the Budapest Open Access Initiative for open access to scholarly literature:
[W]e mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.
See Peter Suber’s A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access for more information.
The theme for Open Access Week is Learn. Share. Advance. You’re invited to do all three at Open Access Week events sponsored by Mervyn H. Sterne Library and Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. Events are supported by UAB Faculty Development.
UAB Research Repository: A pilot project between Lister Hill Library and the School of Optometry
Tuesday, October 19th, 12:00 – 1:30
Lister Hill Library, Ireland Room
The project’s objective is to create an institutional repository using DSpace open source software to collect, share, and preserve the intellectual properties of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)’s School of Optometry. The goal is to seamlessly connect the School’s data, knowledge, and scholarship to the greater global health and vision community. The principal investigators will discuss progress on the repository and take questions from the audience.
To register, visit www.uab.edu/facultydevelopment and click “workshop registration” on the right of the page.
From UAB to the World: UAB Digital Collections
Thursday, October 21
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Mervyn H. Sterne Library, Room 163
From Birmingham oral histories to Florence Nightingale letters, the archives and special collections at UAB include materials of national interest. Join us to learn how these unique materials and the scholarship and creative works of UAB faculty and students are shared worldwide through UAB Digital Collections.
To register, visit www.uab.edu/facultydevelopment and click “workshop registration” on the right of the page.
Library cuts threaten research
Megan Scudellari
The Scientist
28 September 2010
Library cuts threaten research
As journal cancellations sweep across the US, scientists worry about how they will affect research
Copyright ruling expands educational use of film clips
Jailbreaking your smartphone has dominated most of the news related to the recent exemptions on circumventing technology controlling copyrighted works, but the announcement from the Librarian of Congress also expands educational use of movie clips.
In an Inside Higher Ed article “Movie Clips and Copyright,” Steve Kolowich covers how the new ruling extends fair use of video clips by faculty and students by establishing “exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act . . . . This means that any professors can legally extract movie clips and incorporate them into lectures, as long as they are willing to decrypt them . . . .”
The exemptions from the U.S. Copyright Office also cover circumventing digital-rights management (DRM) technology for certain uses of video games and electronic books. However, all these exemptions apply to legally purchased products only, and the use of the products after disabling DRM must not infringe upon the rights of the copyright holders.
House committee to hold hearing on public access to publicly funded research
Alliance for Taxpayer Access
July 20, 2010
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and National Archives announced it will hold a hearing on the issue of public access to federally funded research on Thursday, July 29. The hearing will provide an opportunity for the Committee to hear the perspectives of a broad range of stakeholders on the potential impact of opening up access to the results of the United States’ more than $60 billion annual investment in scientific research. [Full press release]
Georgia State University and e-reserves lawsuit
Good update and overview of the lawsuit over e-reserve practices at Georgia State University:
A Failure to Communicate
In a lawsuit against Georgia State University over e-reserves, scholarly publishing faces a defining moment
By Andrew Richard Albanese
Jun 14, 2010
While the high-profile Google settlement has captured the attention of the publishing industry at large, a contentious copyright infringement lawsuit filed in Atlanta in 2008 by academic publishers against four individuals at Georgia State University has quietly progressed. And while a New York court now considers whether to approve the sweeping Google deal, a court in Atlanta could yet deliver something that publishers expressly chose to avoid in their settlement with Google: a fair use ruling.
The case, known as Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Patton et al., involves a popular practice known as e-reserves, or electronic reserves, on college campuses and the murky contours of copyright and fair use in the digital age. But perhaps the most notable aspect of the suit is that publishers are in essence suing their very partners in the scholarly publishing enterprise (including a university librarian), something critics say represents something of a waterloo for publishing.
U. of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs
Jennifer Howard, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 June 2010:
U. of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs
The University of California system has said “enough” to the Nature Publishing Group, one of the leading commercial scientific publishers, over a big proposed jump in the cost of the group’s journals.
On Tuesday, a letter went out to all of the university’s faculty members from the California Digital Library, which negotiates the system’s deals with publishers, and the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. The letter said that Nature proposed to raise the cost of California’s license for its journals by 400 percent next year. If the publisher won’t negotiate, the letter said, the system may have to take “more drastic actions” with the help of the faculty. Those actions could include suspending subscriptions to all of the Nature Group journals the California system buys access to—67 in all, including Nature.
Open Access Week 2010 declared for October 18 to 24
Sterne Library, along with individuals and institutions worldwide, will be observing Open Access Week in October. “Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (Peter Suber, Open Access Overview).
Stay tuned to this site for details about October 18-24 activities at UAB and how you can participate. You can also view a list of events sponsored by Sterne and Lister Hill Library during Open Access Week 2009.
Find out more about Open Access Week in the press release from SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and on the interactive Open Access Week website.
Scholarly Publishing/Open Access presentation slides online
Slides from The Future of Scholarly Publishing and the Role of Open Access The Future of Scholarly Communications and the Role of Open Access, a March 4 presentation by Rick Luce, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries at Emory University, are now available online. Luce’s talk covered the evolution of how scholars share research and the development of new scholarly communication models, including open access publications.
During one section of his presentation, Luce introduced examples of scholarly communication projects at Emory University:
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Luce’s presentation was sponsored by the Scholarly Communication Working Group at UAB Libraries and the UAB Office of the Associate Provost for Faculty Development and Faculty Affairs.
The Future of Scholarly Publishing and the Open Access Debate
Hill University Center Alumni Auditorium
Thursday, March 4, 2010 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Lunch will be provided.
Registration is required. Please visit UAB Faculty Development and choose Workshop Registration.
Presenter: Rick Luce
Vice Provost and Director of Libraries
Robert W. Woodruff Library
Emory University
This talk will highlight the factors driving the crisis in scholarly communication and how the ways we share and use academic results are changing. Scholarly communication-the process used by scholars to share the results of their research-is at a crossroads. Individual disciplines and the scholarly community as a whole will soon need to make far-ranging decisions affecting how scholarly information is formally and informally exchanged. Many different disciplinary communities and “movements” are coalescing around open access strategies — an intriguing and often misunderstood alternative to traditional scholarly communication — to effect changes in how research results are communicated. Alternative methods of scholarly communication will be highlighted with examples from the physical sciences to humanities research. These developments portent a fundamental paradigm shift for scholars and libraries.