Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #86
June 2, 2005

Read this issue online
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-05.htm


Publisher policies on NIH-funded authors

In April, a few journals had already adopted policies on how their NIH-funded authors would be allowed to comply with the NIH public-access policy.  I described them in SOAN for 4/2/05.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#nih

Several more journals and publishers have announced their policies since then and it's time to catch up.  But before I get into detail, here's the pattern. 

Open-access journals and publishers are cooperating fully with the NIH request.  In most cases (e.g. BMC and PLoS) they already deposit their articles in PubMed Central, whether or not the authors have NIH funding.  In response to the NIH policy, they have made clear that they will continue this practice, will deposit the published versions of the articles, and will authorize immediate public access. 

All the toll-access journals and publishers that have announced policies will allow their NIH-funded authors to deposit postprints in PMC.  In most cases, authors may *not* deposit the published versions of the files.  In some cases, authors must add disclaimers designed to frighten users away from using the free versions and steer them toward the priced versions.  In nearly every case, authors are prohibited from authorizing immediate public access and must stipulate a six or 12 month delay.  In some cases, the journals offer to deposit postprints on behalf of authors, apparently in order to control the process and ensure that authors don't request early public access and short-circuit the publisher's desired embargo.

Toll-access journals with these polices say they are complying with the NIH policy.  It's true that the NIH policy permits delays up to 12 months after publication, and no journal that I know of imposes an embargo longer than 12 months.  But it's not true that the NIH policy endorses six or 12 month delays.  On the contrary, the NIH "strongly encourages" authors to choose public access "as soon as possible" after publication. 
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html

In the press release announcing the NIH policy on February 3, Dr. Elias Zerhouni went even further and acknowledged an author's "right" to early public access.  "While this new policy is voluntary, we are strongly encouraging all NIH-supported researchers to release their published manuscripts as soon as possible for the benefit of the public. Scientists have a right to see the results of their work disseminated as quickly and broadly as possible, and NIH is committed to helping our scientists exercise this right. We urge publishers to work closely with authors in implementing this policy."
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/feb2005/od-03.htm

According to the new NIH Authors' Manual on the public-access policy, late release should be the exception, not the norm.  "The Policy requests and strongly encourages all NIH-funded investigators to make their peer-reviewed author final manuscripts available to other researchers and the public...immediately after the final date of journal publication.  Authors are given the option to release their manuscripts at a later time, up to 12 months after the official date of final publication. NIH expects that only in limited cases will authors deem it necessary to select the longest delay period."
http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/publicaccess_Manual.htm

Publishers who put embargoes on public access think they are protecting themselves from a bad policy.  But if they really dislike the NIH policy, this is a short-sighted response.  They are proving that embargoed release will be the norm, not the exception.  They are building the case that the NIH policy is not meeting its goals.  That will give Congress and the NIH the evidence they need to strengthen the policy --by requiring PMC deposit, shortening the permissible delay, and grounding public access in a statutory license that makes publisher dissent irrelevant.

If you're an NIH-funded author and the journal publishing your work wants to impose an embargo on public access, what should you do?  First, self-archive your article outside PMC immediately upon publication.  Over 80% of journals already allow this.  Second, consider authorizing immediate public access at PMC and precipitating a confrontation with your publisher to clarify your respective roles.  Remember that the NIH request is directed to authors, not publishers.  Third, consider submitting your work to another journal, especially an OA journal.

Here are the journals and publishers I know of that have announced policies on NIH-funded authors.  I welcome additions.  I list their policies briefly, highlighting the constraints on NIH-funded authors and omitting general support or criticism of the NIH policy.

* The four journals of the American Diabetes Association allow authors to deposit the peer-reviewed versions of their manuscripts, but not the published texts, and require a six month embargo on public access.  The copies deposited in PMC must link to the published version and include a short disclaimer explaining that the text has not been copy-edited.
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/misc/ifora.shtml

* The three journals of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) will allow NIH-funded authors to deposit their "accepted manuscripts" in PMC.  Authors may not request public access until 12 months after publication.  ASPET journals have a background policy of putting all their contents free online after 12 months.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1886.html

* _Blood_ imposes a 12 month embargo on public access through PMC.  It also requires the PMC copies to carry a lengthy disclaimer.   The disclaimer explains that deposited articles have not been copy-edited or fact-checked and relieves the journal of responsibility for any errors or omissions in the article even though the PMC version was approved by the journal's peer review process.  _Blood_ is published by the American Society of Hemataology.
http://www.bloodjournal.org/cgi/reprint/2005-04-1396v1
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_17_fosblogarchive.html#a111386131486210474

* _CHEST_, the Cardiopulmonary and Critcal Care Journal, will require its NIH-funded authors to request a 12 month embargo on public access from PMC.  It will also ask them to sign a disclaimer relieving the journal of responsibility in case the PMC version contains errors.  However, _CHEST_ will provide the published PDF to authors and encourage them to deposit it in place of any other version.  _CHEST_ is published by the American College of Chest Physicians.
http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/127/5/1471
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111629545442579257

* The _Journal of Cell Biology_ will allow its NIH-funded authors to deposit the published PDFs, apparently with no embargo, but asks NIH not to request both HTML and PDF editions.
http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/168/7/991
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_10_fosblogarchive.html#a111323988829235800

* _Nature_ encourages its authors to self-archive their postprints, provided they respect a six-month embargo.  This policy applies to all _Nature_ authors, not just NIH-funded authors.  When the _Nature_ policy was announced in January, the NIH policy itself called for only a six-month embargo and the _Nature_ policy was intended to show support.  When the NIH extended the permissible delay to 12 months, _Nature_ did not extend is embargo.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-05.htm#nature
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1467.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_01_09_fosblogarchive.html#a110538367512965738

* Oxford University Press announced a revised postprint archiving policy at the same time that it announced its new Oxford Open program.  Authors who pay a fee may archive their postprints immediately upon publication.  Other authors must wait 12 months.  Oxford says that it revised its archiving policy in order to comply with the NIH public access policy, although the NIH does not require 12 month delays.  For more details, see the "Top Stories" section below.
http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/press/2005/05/04/index.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_01_fosblogarchive.html#a111525462372609258

* The _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ (PNAS) will let authors choose immediate public access if they have paid the PNAS processing free for OA publication.  Authors who have not paid the fee must wait at least six months.  In both cases, PNAS will deposit the published PDF in PMC.  Moreover, PNAS will deposit its articles in PMC, at least after six months, even for authors whose work is not based on NIH funding.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2F232F2B
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_03_fosblogarchive.html#a111279844149784380

* _Radiology_ encourages but does not require its authors to choose a 12 month embargo.  If they do choose a 12 month embargo, _Radiology_ will deposit their "accepted manuscripts" for them (as soon as NIH authorizes third-party deposits).  It urges NIH to link to the published version of the article at the journal web site.  _Radiology_ is published by the Radiological Society of North America.
http://www.rsna.org/publications/rsnanews/may05/nih0505.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111755963804714065

Here's how the open-access journals and publishers have responded:

* BioMed Central will not only deposit the article on behalf of authors, but will deposit the published PDF and will authorize public access immediately upon publication.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/pr-releases?pr=20050204
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_01_30_fosblogarchive.html#a110754950601280711

* The Public Library of Science will not only deposit the article on behalf of authors, but will deposit the published PDF and will authorize public access immediately upon publication.
http://www.plos.org/news/announce_nihpapolicy.html
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1592.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_01_30_fosblogarchive.html#a110752590924799978

* The _Neurobiology of Lipids_ will permit its authors to deposit the published PDF in PMC and authorize immediate pubic access.  As soon as NoP can arrange to deposit its contents in PMC (under negotiation) it will offer to do so on behalf of authors.
http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/newsstand/2005/02/neurobiology-of-lipids-welcomes-new_07.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_02_06_fosblogarchive.html#a110783354268028011

Finally, here are the two policies I covered in April, just to have them all in one place.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-05.htm#nih

* _Biochemical Journal_ will let its NIH-funded authors deposit their articles in PMC and even offers to make the deposit on their behalf.  When BJ makes the deposit itself, it will use the published version of the article and request a six month embargo on public access.  It's unclear whether authors can get immediate public access (perhaps to the peer-reviewed author's edition) if they make the deposit themselves.  BJ is published by Portland Press.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1776.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_20_fosblogarchive.html#a111141169194979531

* The 30+ journals of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will let their authors deposit their articles in PMC and also offers to deposit papers on their behalf.  ACS will not use the published version and will require a 12 month embargo.  It's not clear whether authors may authorize immediate public access if they decline the ACS offer make the deposit directly.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i10/8310acs.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_06_fosblogarchive.html#a111020678336074672

* Postscript 1.  I've learned that on May 2, the day the NIH policy took effect, Jo Anne Goodnight, the Acting Director of the NIH Office of Extramural Programs, told the NIH's intramural researchers that the policy applied to them as well as to external investigators using NIH funds.  In a memo to NIH scientists, she wrote, "[T]he Policy applies to all research grant and career development award mechanisms, cooperative agreements, contracts, Institutional and Individual Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards, AS WELL AS NIH INTRAMURAL RESEARCH."  (Emphasis in original.)  At the same time, Michael Gottesman, Deputy Director for Intramural Research, urged the NIH intramural researchers to comply with the NIH public-access request.  "We strongly encourage all intramural scientists to submit their papers and specify the shortest possible time between journal publication and appearance of their papers in PubMed Central." 

* Postscript 2.  Here are some of the journals, publishers, and publisher organizations that have commented on the NIH policy without announcing their own policies on NIH-funded authors.

Robert Steinbrook, Public Access to NIH-Funded Research, New England Journal of Medicine, April 28, 2005.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/352/17/1739
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_24_fosblogarchive.html#a111465563383130445

Olaf Sparre Andersen, Editorial, Journal of General Physiology, April 25, 2005.
http://www.jgp.org/cgi/content/full/125/5/441
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_24_fosblogarchive.html#a111452273799608716

The Association of American Publishers, March 2, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1723.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_02_27_fosblogarchive.html#a110982211458704467

The publishers who signed the DC Principles, February 3, 2005. 
http://www.dcprinciples.org/nih_rule.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_01_30_fosblogarchive.html#a110752880431069809

* Postscript 3.  Here are some other bits and pieces on the official launch of NIH policy on May 2.

The NIH released an Authors' Manual and a PowerPoint presentation (PDF version) on the public-access policy.
http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/publicaccess_Manual.htm
http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/051205paslides.ppt

The NIH named the 17 members of the Public Access Working Group. The list is a mix of friends and foes of OA.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/od/bor/workgroup_roster.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111629702330036558

Jeanne Lenzer, Medical societies react against public access to findings, BMJ, May 14, 2005.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7500/1104-d
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111616291729295050

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access issued a press release on the policy, May 2, 2005.
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_01_fosblogarchive.html#a111506021459802186

I updated my FAQ on the NIH policy to reflect the fact that it has gone into effect and is now supported by new web pages on implementing the policy and manuscript submission.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm

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What software do we need?

What software would advance the cause of open access?  How can programmers help?  Here's an informal list.  If you have other ideas, please send them to the SPARC Open Access Forum.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/soa/index.html#forum

* Help develop the many open-source projects that already exist to support open access, such as Eprints and DSpace for archiving, and Open Journal Systems and DPubS for journal management.  I don't know of a general list of open-source software that supports OA.  (Making such a list would be another contribution.)  But here are two lists to get you started:

The BOAI Guide to Institutional Repository Software (limited to open-source packages)
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/software/

The SPARC list of journal and archiving software (not limited to open-source packages)
http://www.arl.org/sparc/resources/pubres.html

* Automate the metadata annotation of scholarly journal articles.  The more we can automate this process, the more we can simplify and shorten the process of self-archiving.  If we could completely automate this process, then OA archiving would become so easy that we could move toward bulk archiving of eprints.  Until then, it would help for software to take the first stab at metadata annotation, and let the author or another human being correct or finish the process.

The good news is that the state of the art is further along than existing software.  That is, there's room for the software to catch up.  See Jane Greenberg et al., Final Report for the AMeGA (Automatic Metadata Generation Applications) Project, submitted to the Library of Congress, February 17, 2005.  "The main finding...is that there is a *disconnect* between experimental research and application development. It seems that metadata generation applications could be vastly improved by integrating experimental research findings."
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/lc_amega_final_report.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_27_fosblogarchive.html#a111219331954819324

An important, related job is to automate the classification (tagging) of articles by discipline.  This will make it much easier for institutional or multi-disciplinary repositories to support browsing by field, not just searching by field-specific keywords.

* Today most journals permit postprint archiving, but most do not let authors use the published PDF for this purpose.  However, some journals --like the New England Journal of Medicine and the California Law Review-- do not let authors use anything else.  Journal anxiety about the version-control problem is likely to increase the number of journals in the second category.  For these journals, we need a tool to download a specific PDF from a publisher web site and deposit it in a designated archive.  The author should only have to enter two URLs, one for the article and one for the archive, and run the program from an IP address with access to the article.  Of course, the URLs could be entered by a secretary, student worker, librarian, or OA activist rather than the author.

If we already have the metadata annotators by this time, then this tool could call on them to annotate the articles as they are deposited.  Otherwise it could fire an email to the author on how to follow up by adding the metadata.

* Scrape the text from a PDF file, preferably including the pagination.  If we had an easy, no-cost way to take plain-text from a PDF, we could move the text to any other file format we wanted or add layers of intelligent tagging.  When journals give authors permission to post the final version of the published text but not to use the publisher's PDF, authors have a laborious and error-prone job in front of them --one which lends itself to automation.  Even when authors have permission to use the publisher's PDF, they may want to move the text to a file format friendlier to crawling and indexing software. 

* Scrub executable scripts from PDFs.  For the reasons why, see my essay from last month's newsletter on Trojan Horse eprints.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-05.htm#trojanhorse

* Many programs today can summarize digital texts, reducing long news stories or journal articles to a couple of accurate, succinct paragraphs.  What we need are tools to connect these programs to the research process.  For example, imagine selecting an option on a good search engine and getting back short summaries along with each URL.  Imagine bookmarking 100 relevant-looking articles, clicking on a summarizing tool, and getting back summaries of each article and a report on where their conclusions conflict and which ones draw upon which others.

Article summarizing software
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-18-02.htm

François Schiettecatte once planned to add a text-summarizing feature to My.OAI, his excellent cross-archive search engine for OAI-compliant repositories.  But unfortunately My.OAI is now defunct.
http://www.myoai.com/
(The link is dead.  I include it only for reference or in case the program revives in the future.)

The Columbia Natural Language Processing group once planned to integrate searching, text summarizing, and consistency-checking into one tool for medical researchers.  But it looks like the project is defunct; at least the web site hasn't been updated since 2002.  See PERSIVAL (PErsonalized Retrieval and Summarization of Image, Video And Language Resource).
http://persival.cs.columbia.edu/

* Mine facts and assertions from free-form text and deposit them in growing scientific databases for further querying, processing, and interconnection.  There's a lot of literature, and a lot of work, on this problem.  For a good recent survey of the issues and benefits, see Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann, Harald Kirsch, Francisco Couto, Facts from Text --Is Text Mining Ready to Deliver? PLoS Biology, February 15, 2005.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030065
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_03_06_fosblogarchive.html#a111056339859943872

* You get the idea.  We need tools that make it easier to get literature online for OA and then tools to make OA literature more useful than it already is.  Of course, in every case, open-source is preferred.

We have OA strategies that depend on persuading authors, persuading universities, persuading libraries, persuading funders, and persuading governments.  There is certainly an effective strategy that depends on persuading programmers.  The software strategy is simply to make spectacular tools that are limited to, or optimized for, OA literature.  If there are cool tools waiting to enhance any literature that becomes OA, then they operate as so many more incentives to make literature OA.

Today, many authors make their work OA precisely to make it visible to Google.  One day soon, text-mining software should exert an even stronger force on serious researchers.  Text-miners will work best on OA literature and vastly leverage our ability to find what we need, no matter how it is expressed. 

I stand by this assessment from 2002:

I...expect that software to help readers find relevant literature will become more and more sophisticated over time, roughly matching the advances in artificial intelligence. Readers frustrated by information overload will come to rely on these sophisticated tools. Works of scholarship invisible to these new-generation searching, recommendation, and evaluation tools will be invisible to researchers....As we move further into an era in which serious research is mediated by sophisticated software, commercial publishers will have to put their works into the public Internet in order to make them visible to serious researchers. In this sense, the true promise of [open access] is not that scientific and scholarly texts will be free and online for reading, copying, printing, and so on, but that they will be available as free online data for software that acts as the antennae, prosthetic eyeballs, research assistants, and personal librarians of all serious researchers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/morrison.htm

Programmers, start your engines!

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Top stories from May 2005

This is a selection of open-access developments since the last issue of the newsletter, taken from the Open Access News blog, which I write with other contributors and update daily.  I give both the item URL and blog posting URL so that you can read the original story as well as what I or another blog contributor had to say about it.  For other developments, the blog archive is browseable and searchable.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Here are the top stories from May:

* Oxford University Press launches Oxford Open.
* The Wellcome Trust announces a strong OA policy and plans to launch UK PMC.
* DARE launches the Cream of Science.
* The American Chemical Society wants to shut down PubChem.
* The AAUP complains that the Google library project violates copyright.
* More universities and organizations adopt OA resolutions.

* Oxford University Press launches Oxford Open.

On May 4, the Journals Division of Oxford University Press launched Oxford Open, an author-choice OA model for a number of OUP journals.  Authors of accepted articles who can arrange to pay a $2,800 processing fee will get immediate OA.  Authors who cannot will get TA.  If the author's institution subscribes to the journal, the fee is discounted to $1,500.  Further discounts are available in cases of economic hardship.  Over time, subscription prices will decrease in proportion to author uptake of the OA option.  Only authors who pay for OA option will be allowed to deposit their articles in OA repositories immediately upon publication; authors who do not pay will have to wait 12 months.

I commend OUP for undertaking this OA experiment. I'm less sanguine about the new policy to embargo self-archiving for authors who do not pay fees.  On the one hand, OUP journals did not previously permit postprint archiving at all, except perhaps with case-by-case permission.  So I'm glad that OUP is permitting it now, and that it continues to accommodate preprint archiving.  But on the other hand, an embargo on postprint archiving slows research, limits author impact, and limits journal impact. I'm sorry to see OUP lend its weight to this harmful new trend.  Oxford says that its postprint archiving policy was revised in order to comply with the NIH public-access policy.  But this is cynical or mistaken.  The NIH permits but does not require 12 month delays.  In fact, the NIH "strongly encourages" authors to authorize public access to their postprints "as soon as possible" after publication.

Oxford Open press release (May 4, 2005). 
http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/press/2005/05/04/index.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_01_fosblogarchive.html#a111525462372609258

Oxford Open, email list for updates
http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/oxfordopen

Oxford self-archiving policy
http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/selfarchivingpolicy

Laura Wales, Open Access Trail, Student Direct, May 15, 2005.
http://www.student-direct.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2273
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111625409635575262

Richard Wray, OUP widens open access trial, Guardian Unlimited, May 6, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1477423,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_01_fosblogarchive.html#a111537904573461715

* The Wellcome Trust announces a strong OA policy and plans to launch UK PMC.

There are two pieces of news here.  The first is that the Wellcome Trust has officially announced its policy to mandate OA to Wellcome-funded research --a policy it announced informally last November.  The second is that the Trust has announced plans with several other UK funders of medical research to launch a UK version of PubMed Central (UK PMC).  The two developments are connected:  the new Trust OA policy requires grantees to deposit copies of their work either in the US PMC or the UK PMC.

The most important part of this package is the Trust's decision to mandate --not merely encourage or request-- OA archiving for the research it funds.  Most research funding agencies worldwide, public and private, have the same interest in sharing the results of their work, and we can hope that the Wellcome decision will help them decide to adopt similar policies themselves.  When funders mandate OA, they will accelerate research on the important questions that they have decided are worth investigating, increase the impact of their research, and increase the return on their investment in that research. 

It looks like the evolving OA policy for publicly-funded research in the UK will use repositories hosted by the researchers' employers or universities rather than repositories hosted by their funding agencies.  This decentralized approach was recommended by the House of Commons report last summer and a subsequent Key Perspectives report.  The Wellcome Trust sees its policy to use the two PMC repositories as following this good advice --because UK PMC will be the institutional repository of the sponsoring private funders.  But you could also see the policy as departing from this advice --because traffic at UK PMC will not stimulate archiving across all the disciplines pursued by a research university.  If the departure has its drawbacks, it also has its advantages, since not all Wellcome-funded researchers have institutional repositories.  At least the two approaches are compatible.  There's no harm if publicly-funded research goes into one set of repositories and privately-funded research into another, especially if, as here, all the repositories in both sets will be interoperable and users will be able to search them as if they formed one grand, virtual archive.  What's most important is that a very large body of valuable research literature will be freely available online for all who can make use of it. 

The new Wellcome policy mandates OA within six months of publication, not immediate OA.  This is a compromise with the Trust interest (and the public interest) in rapid and unimpeded access to medical research, but it's much better than the longer delays allowed by the NIH. 

The Wellcome Trust announcement of its policy to mandate OA to Wellcome-funded research.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX025191.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111650594201461574

The Wellcome Trust solicitation of bids to run UK PMC.  (The deadline for submissions is June 10, 2005 --next week.)
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD015366.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111581442638618891

Press release on the solicitation (May 11, 2005)
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1920.html

UK PMC FAQ
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd015611.pdf

Matthew Cockerill, Access all articles, The Guardian, June 2, 2005.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/comment/0,10577,1497526,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111771266493875778

BioMed Central press release on the new Wellcome Trust policy, May 24, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1949.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111694998478219608

On the American Scientist Open Access Forum, Stevan Harnad criticized the Wellcome Trust policy for relying on a central OA repository (UK PMC) rather than distributed institutional repositories.  Robert Terry of the Wellcome Trust responded with a defense of the central archiving plan.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?B5CC22B1B  (Harnad criticism, May 19, 2005)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F1DC22B1B  (Terry response, May 19, 2005)

Stephen Pincock, Wellcome insists on open access, The Scientist, May 19, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20050519/01
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111652577443412145

Stephen Pincock, UK PubMed Central proposed, The Scientist, May 12, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20050512/02
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111592746577189795

Richard Wray, Medical researchers bankroll innovative online database, The Guardian, May 11, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1480943,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111581346200918516

Tony Delamothe, Initiative could give free access to UK medical research, BMJ, May 7, 2005.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7499/1043-a
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111564402726048548

Richard Wray, Britain a leader in making research available on web, The Guardian, May 17, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1485460,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111633258230940226

* DARE launches the Cream of Science.

On May 10, the Dutch DARE project launched the Cream of Science, a collection of the best work from the network of Dutch institutional repositories.  On the launch day it featured 41,000 publications by 206 researchers --some of the work OA and some not.  It was so popular that the surge of traffic temporarily shut down the server.  One purpose of the Cream of Science was to draw attention to OA archiving and its benefits.  The launch was so successful that this purpose is already being fulfilled.  Reports from the Netherlands are that Dutch scholars who have not been self-archiving are eager to begin.

The launch was part of a CNI-JISC-SURF conference (Making the strategic case for institutional repositories, Amsterdam, May 10-11, 2005).  In addition to the Cream of Science, the conference culminated in JISC and six major Dutch research organizations signing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.
http://www.surf.nl/en/bijeenkomsten/index2.php?oid=6
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111633475513698684

Cream of Science
http://www.creamofscience.org/
http://creamofscience.org/page/language.view/keur.page

DARE
http://www.darenet.nl/en/

Anon., Overwhelming interest in 'Cream of Science', SURF, May 17, 2005.
http://www.surf.nl/en/actueel/index2.php?oid=40
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111642847398434467

Richard Poynder, Cream of Science, Open and Shut, May 16, 2005.
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/05/cream-of-science.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111625318062465852

Henk Ellermann, Cream of Science, DigLib, May 12, 2005.
http://db.weblog.ub.rug.nl/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111599004252400792

Jan Libbenga, Dutch academics declare research free-for-all, The Register, May 11, 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/open_access_research/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111582902676540726

* The American Chemical Society wants to shut down PubChem.

This story has been simmering for a few months already but the temperature rose sharply in May.  The American Chemical Society (ACS) wants to shut down the NIH's PubChem, fearing that the publicly-funded, open-access database will threaten ACS revenue from the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS).  PubChem's defenders point out that it has 1% of the CAS staff size, 1% of the budget, and 3% of the coverage.  PubChem is usefully integrated into other NIH databases and has already become a critical tool research tool for biologists.  ACS received public funding to create CAS.  The two services differ substantially in their purpose, scope, content, and audience, making them much more complementary than competitive.  The NIH is willing to discuss ways in which the two services can coexist for mutual benefit, but ACS has broken off the discussions.  For more detailed descriptions and defenses of PubChem, see the statements collected below.

To help save PubChem, contact Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA).  If you're from Ohio, please contact the entire Ohio delegation, which is being lobbied hard by the Ohio-based ACS.

Contact information on members of the U.S. Congress
http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/powersearch.htm

PubChem
http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

American Chemical Society
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/home.html

Chemical Abstracts Service
http://www.cas.org/

Salaries of ACS officers
http://www.idontcare.com/acs/
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1965.html

Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, wrote a strongly worded letter against the ACS position on PubChem (June 1, 2005).
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1977.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111765735427075284

The University of California Office of Scholarly Communication created a web page on the controversy, collecting the position statements, the major documents, and a list of actions that can support PubChem.
http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/acs_pubchem.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111759075146642588

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) issued a public statement in support of PubChem, May 30, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1962.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111747748136630237

Peter Murray-Rust and Henry Rzepa, An Open Statement on the Value of PubChem, May 30, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1961.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111747748136630237

Bernadette Toner, Parties on Both Sides of CAS/PubChem Dispute Take to the Web --and the Hill, Bio1nf0rm, May 30, 2005.
http://www.bioinform.com/index.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111732052905060677

Aliya Sternstein, Chemical publisher goes after NIH, Federal Computer Week, May 27, 2005.
http://www.fcw.com/article88988-05-27-05-Web
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111756033369275014

John Blossom, Contradictory Noises on Google's Library Efforts, Commentary (the Shore Communications blog), May 27, 2005.
http://shore.com/commentary/weblogs/2005_05_01_m_archive.html#111721501909659484
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111730455777364119

The Open Access Working Group publicly released its May 24 letter to Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH) in support of PubChem.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/oa/PubChemlet.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111697117117081520

Mark Leggott, American Chemical Society vs. Open Access to Research, Loomware, May 20, 2005.
http://blog.uwinnipeg.ca/loomware/archives/001063.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111668434294116427

SPARC issued an action alert to save PubChem from ACS lobbying, May 19, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1939.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111654144841955263

The American Chemical Society released a public statement and FAQ (May 18, updated May 23) on its complaint that the US government should not provide OA to chemical data through PubChem.
http://www.cas.org/acsnih/acscas_statement.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111652057839176530

Patrice McDermott, Am Chem Soc calling for shutting down govt chem database, a posting to the OMBWatch Access list, May 17, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1929.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111636311724964822

Bernadette Toner, ACS Accuses NCBI's PubChem of Copying Its CAS Registry; Is Compromise Possible?, Bio1nf0rm, May 16, 2005.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1937.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111652267541906439

RGRP, Government-funded Free Information for Chemists 'Unfair' Competition for Private Monopolies, Digital Rights Network, May 10, 2005.
http://www.okfn.org/drn/node/56
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111652301260407586

Jocelyn Kaiser, Chemists Want NIH to Curtail Database, Science Magazine, May 6, 2005.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5723/774a

* The AAUP complains that the Google library project violates copyright.

Commercial book publishers initially responded with cautious enthusiasm to Google's plan to digitize millions of library books, including a few million still under copyright.  Now some publishers are expressing concern that the plan will infringe their copyrights.  In the vanguard of the new skepticism is the American Association of University Presses (AAUP), which sent a letter to Google on May 20 asking 16 questions about the company's plans for digitizing and indexing copyrighted books.  The publishers cite copyright lawyers who say that Google's plan amounts to massive infringement.  Google cites copyright lawyers who say that the plan falls within "fair use".  Don't believe articles that make it sound clear-cut one way or the other; there is plenty to be said on each side.  This is normally a good recipe for litigation --interesting and important litigation.  But it's very likely that while publishers collect answers from Google and opinions from lawyers, they will also watch the project's effect on their bottom line.  If book sales increase as expected from Google indexing and Google links from book snippets to online vendors, then publishers may quietly drop their copyright objections and we'll never know how a court would have resolved them.

Also in May, Google launched a dedicated search box for Google Print, limited to the full-text books in its Publisher Program --which is to be distinguished from the full-text books in its Library Program. 
http://print.google.com/

Letter from Peter Givler, Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) to Alexander Macgillivray, Senior Intellectual Property and Product Counsel at Google, May 20, 2005.
http://aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/0865_001.pdf
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2005/nf20050523_9039.htm

David Whelan, Google's Scan Plan Hits More Bumps, Forbes, May 31, 2005.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/05/31/cz_dw_0531google.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111755069059740816

Jeffrey Young, From Gutenberg to Google: Five views on the search-engine company's project to digitize library books, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2005.  Young's article introduces five others on Google's Library project, one each by Michael Gorman, John P. Wilkin,  Adam M. Smith, Peter Givler, and Jean-Noël Jeanneney.
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i39/39a02401.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111754887536205306

Barbara Quint, Google Library Project Hit by Copyright Challenge from University Presses, Information Today NewsBreaks, May 31, 2005.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb050531-2.shtml
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111754847462257968

Burt Helm and Hardy Green, Google This: "Copyright Law", Business Week, May 27, 2005.
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/bw/20050527/bs_bw/b3936043mz011
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111738057830167695

Gary Price, Can Full Book Preview Prevention Be Hacked? SearchDay, May 27, 2005.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050527-111111
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111731534250198910

Susan Kuchinskas, Google Print Goes Live, InternetNews, May 27, 2005.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3508536
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111730868635636435

Anon., University Publishers Question Google Print Library Project, an unsigned news brief from the ALA, May 27, 2005.
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=95192
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111728714882468167

Alan Williams, Death of the Page: Google and the New Frontier of Reading, The Simon, May 27, 2005.
http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/between_the_covers/0855_death_page_google_new_frontier_reading.html

Danny Sullivan, Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe, SearchEngineWatch, May 25, 2005.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050525-093716
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111711901380468486

Google and Libraries: The Passive-Aggressive Approach to Copyright? Outsell Now, May 25, 2005.
http://now.outsellinc.com/now/2005/05/google_and_libr.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111711666466361099

Stefanie Olsen, Publishers lay into Google Print, ZDNet, May 25, 2005.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39199954,00.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111702770755008677

John Oates, Google Books under fire, The Register, May 25, 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/25/google_libraries/
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111702730765416131

Michael Liedtke, Scholarly publishers protest Google's online library project, Associated Press, May 25, 2005.
http://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-googlemay25,0,5261417.story?coll=all-businesslocal-hed

The AAUP letter to Google about copyright infringement triggered a Slashdot discussion, May 24, 2005.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/1721206&tid=217&tid=192&tid=155
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111711347860888959

Juan Carlos Perez, Scholarly publishers take on Google, The Industry Standard, May 24, 2005.
http://www.thestandard.com/internetnews/001314.php

Ernest Miller, Google's Library Digitization Plan Runs Into Opposition, Corante, May 24, 2005.
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/05/24/googles_library_digitization_plan_runs_into_opposition.php

The Associated Press, Google library criticized, The Olympian, May 24, 2005.
http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050524/NEWS/505240311
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111694236462241892

Burt Helm, A Google Project Pains Publishers, BusinessWeek, May 23, 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2005/tc20050523_9472_tc024.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111685753739967375

Jeffrey Young, University-Press Group Raises Questions About Google's Library-Scanning Project, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2005.
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/05/2005052301t.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_22_fosblogarchive.html#a111686609297382221

* More universities and organizations adopt OA resolutions.

Several other resolutions in support of OA were adopted in May or made public in May.

On May 11, the Cornell University Faculty Senate adopted a Resolution Concerning Scholarly Publishing.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111609847094774976

On May 11, the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) adopted wide-ranging policy statement with a very skimpy section on OA.
http://www.amsa.org/news/release2.cfm?id=223
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111609708568194647

On April 25, 2005, the Case Western Reserve Faculty Senate adopted a resolution on open access.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1932.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_15_fosblogarchive.html#a111636066641985254

In April, the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) issued a Statement Towards an Effective Scientific Publishing System for European Research. 
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/frankfurtgroup/openaccess/eblida.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111572710920127693

In March, the University of California at Berkeley Faculty Senate adopted a Scholarly Publishing Statement of Principles.
http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/news/statement_of_prin_for_web.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_01_fosblogarchive.html#a111508706586259273

On February 25, 2005, Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) adopted a Resolution on Journals, Databases, and Threats to Scholarly Publication.
http://www.iupui.edu/~fcouncil/documents/scholarly_publication.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_08_fosblogarchive.html#a111609908353856079

For excerpts from these resolutions, and my list of previous resolutions, see
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions

----------

Coming up later this month

Here are some important OA-related events coming up in June.

* June 10.  Deadline for submitting expressions of interest to establish and run the UK PubMed Central.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD015366.html

* Sometime in June.  The Public Library of Science and the International Society for Computational Biology should publish the inaugural issue of PLoS Computational Biology.
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/

* Sometime in June.  The Research Councils UK (RCUK) should announce their OA policy.  It was due in mid-May and  may appear any day now.
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/whatsnew.asp

* Notable conferences this month

Information and Innovation (2005 annual conference of the International Association of Technological University Libraries) (OA is among the topics)
http://www.bibl.ulaval.ca/iatul2005/
Quebec, May 29 - June 3, 2005

Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting 2005 (OA is among the topics)
http://www.sspnet.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3536
Boston, June 1-3, 2005

Here Today; Here Tomorrow?: Journal Archiving in the Electronic Environment (sponsored by the ACRL/NEC Serials Librarians Interest Group)
http://www.hatchresources.com/acrlsig/SLIG-ITIGprogram.htm
Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 2, 2005

Putting Knowledge to Work; SLA 2005 Annual Conference (OA is among the topics)
http://www.sla.org/content/events/conference/ac2005.cfm
Toronto, June 4-9, 2005

Open Access and its Impact on Research in the Developing World.
http://web.idrc.ca/es/ev-10380-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Ottawa, June 7, 2005

Digital Libraries: Cyberinfrastructure for Research and Education (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2005)
http://www.jcdl2005.org/
Denver, June 7-11, 2005

From author to reader: Challenges for the digital content chain (9th ELPUB conference) (OAI and institutional repositories are among the topics)
http://www.elpub.net/page.php?edi_id=1
Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium, June 8-10, 2005

DSpace: An Open Source Institutional Digital Repository (sponsored by NERCOMP)
http://www.nercomp.org/sigs/0304/040609DSpace/DSpaceSched.html
Waltham, Massachusetts, June 9, 2005

International Conference on Humanities Computing and Digital Scholarship (sponsored by the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing)
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/achallc2005/
Victoria, British Columbia, June 15, 2005

Chaos Control 2005 (OA is among the topics)
http://www.chaoscontrol.at/programm.htm
Vienna, June 15-16, 2005

Canadian Library Association Conference 2005: Rediscover the Library Movement (OA is among the topics)
http://www.cla.ca/conference/2005/index.htm
Calgary, Alberta, June 15-18, 2005

2005 International Conference on Digital Archive Technologies (ICDAT2005)
http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ICDAT05/
Taipei, June 16-17, 2005

Everything you always wanted to know about e-journals but were afraid to ask... (UKSG E-Journal Technical Update)
http://www.uksg.org/events/200605.asp
London, June 20, 2005

Open Access Debate (Paul Ayris of University College London v. Michael Mabe of Elsevier)
http://www.cilip.org.uk/NR/exeres/7F36CE2D-AF69-4C2D-AA2E-A56FEFE5AA39
Oxford, June 21, 2005

First International Conference on e-Social Science
http://www.ncess.ac.uk/conference_05.htm
Manchester, June 22-24, 2005

International Conference on Policies and Strategies for Open Access to Scientific Information (sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Inter-Academy Panel on International Issues)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q3ED2101B
Beijing, June 22-24, 2005

American Library Association 2005 Annual Conference
http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2005a/home.htm
Chicago, June 23-29, 2005
--Three Big Ideas Transforming Scholarly Communication [The Commons, Taxpayer Access, and Googlization], a session sponsored by SPARC and ACRL, Saturday, June 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Hilton Chicago Hotel, Constitution Room C.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala05/index.html
--Policies and Practices of Institutional Repositories, a session sponsored by the Emerging Technologies Interest Group of LITA, Monday, June 27, 2005, 8:30 - 11:00 [am?]. Location TBA.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1687.html
--Repositories: New Beginnings for Libraries, a session sponsored by OCLC on Monday June 27, 1:00 - 3:00 pm, Sheraton Chicago, Mayfair Room
https://www3.oclc.org/app/ala_registration/
--Google and Libraries: What's in Store for Google Print and Google Scholar, a session co-sponsored by the LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group and the ACRL Electronic Text Centers Discussion Group on Monday, June 27, 1:30 - 3:30 pm, Hotel Intercontinental, Grand Ballroom.
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaevents/annual2005chicago/ac2005litaprogs.htm

Open Culture: Accessing and Sharing Knowledge
http://www.aepic.it/conf/index.php?cf=3
Milan, June 27-29, 2005

* Other OA-related conferences
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm

----------

Housekeeping

* I've added 14 new conferences to the conference page since the last issue.  In the next few days I'll delete the second asterisk marking them and the new entries will blend into the rest of the collection.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm

==========

This is the SPARC Open Access Newsletter (ISSN 1546-7821), written by Peter Suber and published by SPARC.  The views I express in this newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of SPARC.

To unsubscribe, send any message to <SPARC-OANews-off@arl.org>.

Please feel free to forward any issue of the newsletter to interested colleagues.  If you are reading a forwarded copy of this issue, see the instructions for subscribing at either of the first two sites below.

SPARC home page for the Open Access Newsletter and Open Access Forum
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http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm

Newsletter, archived back issues
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm

Forum, archived postings
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SOA-Forum/List.html

Conferences Related to the Open Access Movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/conf.htm

Timeline of the Open Access Movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm

Open Access Overview
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Open Access News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
peter.suber@earlham.edu

SOAN is an open-access publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.  Users may freely copy, distribute, and display its contents, but must give credit to the author.  To read the full license, visit
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