September 17, 2009
Five Major American Universities Commit to Support OA Journals
From Open Access News...
A Compact for Open-Access Publication, press release, September 14, 2009.
Five of the nation's premier institutions of higher learning—Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technoology, and the University of California, Berkeley—today announced their joint commitment to a compact for open-access publication. ...
Since open-access journals do not charge subscription or other access fees, they must cover their operating expenses through other sources, including subventions, in-kind support, or, in a sizable minority of cases, processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal. While academic research institutions support traditional journals by paying their subscription fees, no analogous means of support has existed to underwrite the growing roster of fee-based open-access journals.
Stuart Shieber, Harvard's James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University's Office for Scholarly Communication, is the author of the five-member compact. According to Shieber, "Universities and funding agencies ought to provide equitable support for open-access publishing by subsidizing the processing fees that faculty incur when contributing to open-access publications. Right now, these fees are relatively rare. But if the research community supports open-access publishing and it gains in importance as we believe that it will, those fees could aggregate substantially over time. The Compact ensures that support is available to eliminate these processing fees as a disincentive to open-access publishing."
The Compact supports equity of the business models by committing each university to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open-access journal articles written by its faculty for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.
Additional universities are encouraged to visit the compact web site and sign on. ...
,,, the Compact's FAQ establishes a loophole for grant-funded research: "a compact institution may reasonably expect that ... the funding agency should be responsible for payment of the publication charge, and the article would not be eligible for underwriting by the institution whether or not the funding agency actually covers the particular charge."
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Addendum: At the time this compact was signed, only Berkeley already had established an OA fund. But subsequently both Cornell and Harvard have also established OA funds to support the OA publishing of their faculty (follow links for additional information). It is expected that MIT and Dartmouth will announce OA funds eventually, too.
Currently the U of Illinois is a supporting member of BioMed Central, so our members get a discount on the publication fees when they publish in BMC journals. And we have a membership in Oxford's Nucleic Acids Research, which also provides our authors with a discount when publishing in NAR. If you have comments on whether the U of Illinois should join the Compact and set up an OA fund, please contact Paula Kaufman, the University Librarian.
Posted by florador at 11:07 AM
August 13, 2009
Libraries Closed Friday, August 14, 8am-1pm
All campus libraries will be closed on Friday, August 14, from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The closure will provide library staff the opportunity to complete various tasks to prepare for the new semester. Please arrange your study or research schedule accordingly. Questions? Contact Jeff Schrader, Assistant Dean of Libraries for Facilities, via e-mail or by telephone at 333-0317.
Melody Allison
Assistant Biology Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration
Biology Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
101 Burrill Hall, 407 South Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
mmalliso@illinois.edu
(217) 333-7461; 3654
Posted by mmalliso at 12:20 PM
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 mmalliso at 12:06 PM
June 24, 2009
Seminar: Infrastructure for The Data Web
I thought many of you would be interested in attending this seminar! Especially if you are dealing with large data sets or are interested in making data and publications more freely available on the Web.
(please pardon redundant notifications)
Speaker: John Wilbanks, VP for Science, Creative Commons
(creativecommons.org; sciencecommons.org; neurocommons.org)
Title: The Digital Commons: Infrastructure for The Data Web
Where: NCSA Auditorium (Room 1122 NCSA Bldg)
When: 3 - 4 PM, Monday, July 13th
Please read the accompanying flyer for a descriptive abstract of the talk.
Local Contact: "Beth McKown" bmckown@ncsa.uiuc.edu, 244-0078
~ Katie
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Prof. Katie Newman
Biotechnology Librarian
Office: 2130 IGB (Inst. for Genomic Biology)
Email: florador@illinois.edu
Phone: (217) 265-5386
FAX: (217)-244-1800
Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) website:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/biotech/
BIC News: http://www.library.illinois.edu/blog/bicnews/
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Posted by mmalliso at 3:01 PM
June 12, 2009
Library Catalog: Upgrade and unavailablity
Hi, everyone, (sorry for any duplicate message you may receive on this issue...)
The Library Catalog is being upgraded to provide a more user-friendly search interface for you!
The upgrade will start early Sunday morning and is expected to be finished by Tuesday or Wednesday, next week.
During the Upgrade:
* You may continue to search the catalog during the upgrade period, but you will be searching a "frozen" database ... the frozen data was captured June 7th.
* You will not be able to request or renew books online for a few days.
* If you need to check a book out or renew it, you will have to go to a library.
* If you returned a book sometime after June 7th, the Catalog will not reflect that until next Tuesday or Wednesday.
* Down time will be Sunday & Monday, but could extend into Tuesday & Wednesday.
* The ORR, journal databases, and access to electronic journals will continue to work as usual.
If you have any questions / concerns about this process, please let me know!
Katie
~ Katie
--<- @ --<-@ --<-@ --<-@ --<-@
Prof. Katie Newman
Biotechnology Librarian
Office: 2130 IGB (Inst. for Genomic Biology)
Email: florador@illinois.edu
Phone: (217) 265-5386
FAX: (217)-244-1800
Biotechnology Information Center (BIC) website:
http://www.library.illinois.edu/biotech/
BIC News: http://www.library.illinois.edu/blog/bicnews/
Posted by mmalliso at 2:41 PM
June 10, 2009
Trial subscription to AMA Manual of Style Online
The Library has a trial subscription to the new AMA Manual of Style Online (10th edition), the Manual’s first online edition. The Manual is a product of Oxford University Press and JAMA and the Archives Journals Click to trial subscription here.
Please let us know if you find this resource useful so we know whether to advocate for a full subscription to this resource.
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Melody Allison
Assistant Biology Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration
Biology Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
101 Burrill Hall, 407 South Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
mmalliso@illinois.edu
(217) 333-7461; 3654
Posted by mmalliso at 4:15 PM
June 4, 2009
New Exhibit in Biology Library
The Biology Library has a new exhibit, "Medicinal Plants and Indigenous Medicinal
Plant Knowledge." Displayed are selected titles received thanks due to a 2009 collection development grant from the Consortium of Academic & Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI).
Four libraries participated in the collection theme “Impact of the Environment in Health & Wellness:” Chicago State University Library, Columbia College Library, Northern Illinois U. Founders Memorial Library, and University of Illinois Biology Library.
Enjoy!
Melody Allison
Assistant Biology Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration
Biology Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
101 Burrill Hall, 407 South Goodwin
Urbana, IL 61801
mmalliso@illinois.edu
(217) 333-7461; 3654
Posted by mmalliso at 4:34 PM
