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.’