June 26, 2009
Federal Research Public Access Act, 2009
Yesterday, Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX) (re-)introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.1373), a bill that would ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies. S.1373 would require those agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from such funding no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The bill gives individual agencies flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for interoperability and public accessibility, and have provisions for long-term archiving.
The bill specifically covers unclassified research funded by agencies including:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation
S. 1373 reflects the growing trend among funding agencies and college and university campuses to leverage their investment in the conduct of research by maximizing the dissemination of results. It follows the successful path forged by the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as by private funders like the Wellcome Trust, and universities such as Harvard and MIT.
The Library has requested that our Washington government relations liaison contact our representatives in support of this bill.
If you would like to voice your opinion on this bill to our representatives, an easy way to do so has been provided at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access website:
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=sparc
You may use one of their pre-written forms, or compose your own.
Detailed information about the Federal Research Public Access Act is available at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Release09-0625.html.
Or read the text of the bill, online.
This memo was clipped from a longer message received from:
Heather Joseph
Spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and Executive Director of SPARC
Telephone: (202) 296-2296
Email: heather [at] arl [dot] org
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:08 PM
April 28, 2009
President Obama Addresses the National Academy of Science
On April 27th, 2009 President Obama addressed the assembled US National Academies members. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a 1863 congressional charter.
From the NAS Press Release:
"President Barack Obama announced new initiatives and investments in scientific research, innovation, and education, declaring once again to restore science to its rightful place. "The days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over," he said.
Calling science "more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, and our environment than it has ever been," Obama said he is going to make major investments -- 3 percent of the gross domestic product -- in research and innovation. This exceeds the amount invested in 1964 at the height of the space race. He emphasized the importance of using funds to encourage high-risk, high-return research and to support researchers at the beginning of their careers."
,,,
"The president committed to doubling the budgets of three key science agencies -- the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also announced the launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, a new Department of Energy organization modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And Obama said he would triple the number of NSF graduate research fellowships."
Video:
http://edg1.vcall.com/video/nas/launch.asp
Audio only:
http://nationalacademies.org/podcast/20090427.mp3
Still photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalacademyofsciences/sets/72157617300994183/
Text:
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=65
Press Release from the NAS:
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=20090427
Posted by Katie Newman at 11:38 AM
February 12, 2009
NIH Public Access Mandate in Jeopardy!
An email from ARL (Association of Research Libraries) concerning a recently submitted bill, supported by some of our largest publishers, that would reverse the NIH Public Access mandate, and also make it impossible for other government agencies to start similar programs.
The basis theses of the NIH mandate is that research publications that were supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health -- we have many researchers on this campus who are so supported -- must be made freely available to all within year of publication. The thought is that the citizens paid for the research so they should have access to it!
The publishers are saying that this infringes on their copyrights, but the mandate requires the authors to make available THEIR version of their work; that is, the version before they hand over copyrights to the publishers (which we're encouraging them NOT to do, but that's another story!)
Read on for more information as well as a recommendation that we contact our congressmen about this proposed legislation.
Katie Newman
U of Illinois Biotechnology Librarian
----------------
From: Jennifer McLennan
Subject: [SPARC-ADVOCACY] CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act
Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” ( http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.111hr801).
All supporters of public access – researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others – are asked to please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. As always, it’s important to let us know what action you’re able to take, via http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/log.html.
H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). In effect, it would:
1. Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.
2. Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.
3. Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.
4. Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.
5. Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
All supporters of public access -- researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others -- are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place.
Thank you for your support and continued persistence in supporting this policy. You know the difference constituent voices can make on Capitol Hill.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Heather or myself anytime.
All best,
Jennifer
--------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
-------------------------
Draft letter text:
Dear Representative;
On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to oppose H.R. 801, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act,” introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. This bill would amend the U.S. Copyright Code, prohibiting federal agencies from requiring as a condition of funding agreements public access to the products of the research they fund. This will significantly inhibit our ability to advance scientific discovery and to stimulate innovation in all scientific disciplines.
Most critically, H.R. 801 would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing the results of the crucial biomedical research funded by their taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in life-saving research and scientific discovery.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
H.R. 801 affects not only the results of biomedical research produced by the NIH, but also scientific research coming from all other federal agencies. Access to critical information on energy, the environment, climate change, and hundreds of other areas that directly impact the lives and well being of the public would be unfairly limited by this proposed legislation.
[Why you support taxpayer access and the NIH policy].
The NIH and other agencies must be allowed to ensure timely, public access to the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars. Please oppose H.R.801.
Sincerely,
(name)
[END LETTER TEXT]
Posted by Katie Newman at 1:12 PM
January 26, 2009
Invention to Venture Urbana 2009: Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences!
Welcome to Invention to Venture Urbana 2009: Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences!
Date: February 21, 2009
Time: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Location: Chemical Life Sciences Lab (CLSL) auditorium
The Technology Entrepreneur Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will host a one-day workshop February 21, 2009 on life sciences technology entrepreneurship.
The workshop is intended primarily for college and university students, but is also open to anyone who wants to know more about this very important topic. Presentations will focus on venture capital, marketing, intellectual property, business plans, and related topics in biotech and the life sciences. Guest speakers are experts drawn from the region.
Invention to Venture workshops are held in cooperation with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
Cost: BRING A FRIEND AND SAVE $$$! (Must be of same Registration Status)
Students: $15 or 2/$25 (save $5!)
Faculty Members & Staff: $40 or 2/$70 (save $10!)
Alumni: $60 or 2/$110 (save $10!)
Business Community & Other: $75 or 2/$140 (save $10!)
Participant guide, lunch and a continental breakfast are all included in the fee.
For registration, speakers, agenda, etc. please visit the website:
http://www.invention2venture.org/urbana09/
Please note: need-based scholarships for this event are available. Please contact Rhiannon Clifton (rclifton@uiuc.edu) for more information and a brief application.
Posted by Katie Newman at 4:36 PM
January 13, 2009
Spring Savvy Researcher Workshops
The Savvy Researcher Workshops are starting up again.
See the listing:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/learn/instruction/workshops.html
These workshops are geared to graduate students in all disciplines, but post-docs, faculty and other researchers are also welcome to attend.
They are designed to be:
* small class size
* hands-on
* quick paced
* one-hour sessions
Among the topics of possible interest to biologists:
* Library Research Skills
* The Grad Student Toolkit
* Drowning in Data? RefWorks can Help
* Journal Impact Factors: How to Identify Key Research in Your Field
* Where's the Money? Finding and Securing Grant Funding
* InfoHacks
* Responsible Scholarship Practices: Plagiarism and Academic Integrity at Illinois
* Your Research Rights: Ownership Awareness to Maximize the Impact
* Practical Copyright: Considerations for Teaching and Research
* Past Writer's Block
For registration information, please visit:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/learn/instruction/workshops.html
and click on the link for the date and time of the workshop(s) you want to attend.
Co-sponsored by the Graduate College
Posted by Katie Newman at 5:23 PM
January 8, 2009
Springer Books Available Electronically
Recently (2008) the U of Illinois Library purchased electronic access to over 8000 books published by Springer-Verlag during 2005-2008. We expect to continue this program, purchasing Springer books as electronic books rather than as printed books. The subjects in which we are purchasing Springer e-books include:
* Architecture and Design
* Behavioral Science
* Biomedical and Life Sciences
* Business and Economics
* Chemistry and Materials Science
* Computer Science
* Earth and Environmental Science
* Engineering
* Humanities, Social Sciences & Law
* Mathematics and Statistics
* Medicine
Find a book of interest:
The easiest way to locate a Springer e-book is to search the Library Online Catalog. Using the Quick Search in the Anyword Anywhere mode, search for:
+springerlink +xxxx
where xxxx is some topic of interest. E.g.,:
+springerlink + bioinform? [187 titles]
+springerlink +genom? [114 titles]
+springerlink +biol? [700 titles]
Note: be sure to put a plus (+) right in front of all words. And use the question mark (?) to search for word variations. For example, "genom?" finds genome, genomes, genomic; "biol?" finds biology, biological, etc.
_________
Springer MyCopy
Would you like to have a PRINT version of the Springer e-book? You can, for just $24.95! Yes, because the Univ of Illinois Library provides access to several Springer eBook packages, SpringerLink exclusively offers you MyCopy books:
* You can order a printed copy of the book in a black-and-white softcover (cover is colored) version. It will be shipped conveniently to your home or work address.
* The price is just $24.95 per book and includes shipping and handling. The delivery time is approximately 8-11 business days.
__________
To find OTHER biology e-books, take a look at our Electronic Reference for the Life Sciences web site!
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:50 PM
December 3, 2008
HighWire Press: Over 2 Million Subscription-free Articles
Recently HighWire Press announced that they had reached the milestone of 5 million articles from scholarly societies and academic presses. Over two million of these are freely accessible to all.
Societies that contract with HighWire Press to provide online access to their journals are free to specify the terms of access to their journals, including the embargo period for their journals. An increasing number of societies, recognizing the scholarly mission of their society, have chosen to -- at their own expense -- have their complete back files digitized and made freely accessible. Often these free articles are available not only through the HighWire Press site, but are also being deposited into PubMed Central.
The HighWire Press home page provides the current statisitics for the number of articles and the number of openly-accessible articles -- as of this moment, 5,008,753 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers; 2,013,535 articles are freely accessible by all.
HighWire Press maintains a page where the embargo period for their journals is listed -- http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl. There are nearly 50 journals that are completely free. Of the over 1100 journals served through HighWire, it appears that at least 255 have some free access to their back files content. The embargo period for those that offer free back file access to their journals is usually 12 months, but can be as short as 2 months or as long as 5 years.
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:03 PM
December 1, 2008
PubMed: Some Links to Full Text not Working
A faculty member reported on November 17th that, using PubMed, he was not able to access the full text of articles from off-campus. Both Library IT and PubMed's IT group have been contacted, but so far (12-9-2008) there has been no resolution to this problem.
UPDATE: AS OF DECEMBER 18TH, THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN RESOLVED!! The problem disappeared once our proxy settings were re-installed.
The issue:
When accessing PubMed from off campus using our proxied URL:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=406312
which allows the user to authenticate themselves as a U of Illinois member and thus have access to the full text of subscribed journals, the user finds that some of the PubMed links to full text do not work -- in fact, they lead to a blank page.
For any given article in PubMed, you may see several different links to full text:
The Publisher's link (Elsevier, Springer, Oxford, Wiley, etc.):
The "Discover UIUC Full Text Linking" link:
The "Full text for Illinois" link:
For an example, take a look at the PubMed reference for Plant Mol Biol. 2005 May;58(1):65-73.
Until this problem is resolved, the only link that will lead to the full text of the article from off-campus is the "Full text for Illinois" link
-- the other two links just open blank screens!
If the article of interest does not contain the "Full text for Illinois" link, you have several other options for getting to the full text of the article:
Option One:
Go to the ORR (Online Research Resource) , to discover if we have a subscription to the journal. Do this in a separate browser window, so you can retain the citation information (journal, year, volume, pages).
Option Two:
You can drop the citation into the Library's Journal and Article Locator:
http://search.grainger.uiuc.edu/linker/
Enter as much of the citation as you know, or use the copy/paste option to fill in the information for you.
Option Three:
You may want to switch databases, using either Biological Abstracts or Web of Science. The links to full text and "Discover UIUC Full Text Linking" links are working properly in both of these databases.
Option Four:
Change the URL that is at the top of the "blank" page, so that it resolves properly!
Here's an example of a "Discover" URL that, from off-campus through PubMed, resolves to just a blank page:
If you carefully remove the SECOND instance of
".proxy2.library.uiuc.edu"
(both instances are shown bolded, above) from the URL, the link will work! You would edit the above URL to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy2.library.uiuc.edu/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?PrId=uiuclib&itool=AbstractPlus-otool&uid=18089771&db=pubmed&url=http://openurl.library.uiuc.edu/sfxlcl3?sid=Entrez:PubMed&id=pmid:18089771
--------------
Remember, this problem is ONLY if you are access PubMed from off-campus. If the records has a "Full text for Illinois" link,
this link should work fine. It's just if this link is not available that you may want to try one of the other alternatives to access the full text.
The library IT continues to work on this problem, and we hope it will be resolved soon.
Send me your email address if you would like to be notified when the links in PubMed are again working properly. - Katie Newman (florador@illinois.edu)
Posted by Katie Newman at 12:07 PM
