Recent links on Open Access

• Survival — Through Open Access: Utah State University Press survives by becoming part of the university library and embracing open access.  Library Journal has more details.
• Pirate Party Gains Second Seat In EU Parliament: The new MEP ‘will focus on a platform of fairer and more sensible copyright legislation, and will spend time on education and the development of Europe’s knowledge economy’.
• A Call for Copyright Rebellion: Lawrence Lessig argues that academic research should be released under Creative Commons licences.
• Open access movements in developing countries: ‘Dr Buhle Mbambo-Thata, Executive Director from UNISA responds to questions raised at the conference about whether the benefits of open access are limited in developing countries. She stresses the importance of the open access movement for researchers in developing countries and argues that it can support greater access to local research. She talks about how institutions need to change and promote their own researchers work in-country rather than purchasing from elsewhere, and encourage researchers to publish in open access journals.’
• Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act to ensure free online access to federally funded research results: The scientists sent the letter in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA): ‘For America to obtain an optimal return on our investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as broadly as possible.’
• Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: Call for Proposals: ‘OKCon, now in its fifth year, is the interdisciplinary conference that brings together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of presentations and workshops.’  The conference will take place in London, UK, on 24 April 2010.
• Open Access: Petition to the German Parliament: ‘A Petition to the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) for Open Access of documents in science and research has been launched.’ Please sign it if you’re an EU citizen.

Recent links on Open Access

• Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers: ‘A study provides evidence that file sharing takes place with some very specialized media: the research papers published in scientific journals.’
• Another Publishing World is Possible: A rough sketch of an idea about how authors, including academics, could bypass publishing companies altogether.
• Copyright versus Universal Access to All Human Knowledge and Groups Without Cost: the state of play in the global copyfight: Video of a lecture by Cory Doctorow.  ‘The Internet promises the realization of two of humanity’s noblest dreams: universal access to all human knowledge and the capacity to form and coordinate groups at virtually no cost. As great as this sounds, it’s bad news for certain kinds of top-heavy organizations and the kinds of companies that got rich on exclusion from information. From the UN to shady back-room “plurilateral” treaty negotiations, from the blogosphere to staid standards-committees, the fight over the future rages, with diplomacy and activism at its core.’ (Thanks to Fabio Gironi.)
• Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony: ‘Adobe is pushing hard to get Flash, PDF, and other technologies used to realize recent open government initiatives. The problem is that the technologies fall short of the goal of full accessibility, and cause problems for those seeking to use government-supplied data in any meaningful way.’
• Students for Free Culture’s Open University Campaign: The goal of this project is ‘to generate a report card for universities in order to help prospective students make informed decisions about the university’s copyright, patent, and technology policies.’  The project needs your help.
• Florida free textbook project gets $300,000 grant: ‘Florida’s effort to provide free textbooks and low-cost textbooks to college students has received a $300,000 boost from the federal government.’