Posts from — March 2009

The Public Knowledge Project is a research and development initiative directed toward improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online publishing and knowledge-sharing environments. They are having a conference in Vancouver from July 8 - 10, 2009.

Highlights include:

- An opening keynote address by PKP founder and principal investigator, Dr. John Willinsky

- Pre-conference Workshops on various PKP software applications and communities

- A post-conference Workshop on creating open access journals led by Dr. David Solomon and Dr. Caroline Sutton

- A day-long series of sessions from the Open Humanities Press on monograph publishing

- A wide range of sessions for editors, libraries, and developers, from speakers from around the world

Spaces are limited for the workshops and the conference, so please register early to avoid missing out on what promises to be a fascinating conference.

The Open Access world has seen a few red letter days over the past few weeks.

Today, Lund University announced that they have established an OA publication fund and set up a relationship with PLoS. Below is an excerpt from their Press Release:

In accordance with its commitment to ensure public availability of its research output, the Lund University (LU) has reached an agreement with the Public Library of Science (PLoS) for the central funding of publication fees of LU scientists without burdening the budget of the individual researcher.

Like many Open Access journals, PLoS journals charge a fee for publication. For papers accepted in PLoS journals after March 1st 2009, LU will pay the publication fee directly to PLoS from central funds for all articles where the corresponding author is affiliated with a LU department.

“Lund University is committed to the movement towards open access to scientific information and PLoS is a top quality Open Access publisher” says Lars Björnshauge, Director of Libraries, Lund University.

Last week, MIT unanimously adopted a university wide OA mandate which is best summed up by quoting MIT Faculty Chair Bish Sanyal, who said that the vote was “a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas.” Peter Suber’s blog reported this story.

In addition, Harvard’s Kennedy School also embraced OA last week and adopted a Mandate, that’s in addition to the historic vote by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’s (FAS) in February, 2008. In the words of Kennedy School Dean, David T. Ellwood “In the developing world especially, where access to expensive journals is rare, there is a pressing need for access to the latest policy advice and scholarship coming from HKS faculty”. You can read more in the Library Journal.

Finally earlier this month, Oregon State University Library Faculty Adopted a  Strong OA Policy, the first library faculty in the USA to do so.

The Dutch higher education sector has declared 2009 to be ‘Open Access Year’. The aim is to boost Open Access to the results of scientific/scholarly and practice-based research in the Netherlands.  Efforts will be made throughout the year to formulate and implement an Open Access policy, develop and improve the knowledge infrastructure, establish a clear legal framework, and create awareness with all stakeholders.

With this in mind, we would like to bring your attention to a short film (Dutch language version without subtitles also available) that they commissioned from University Administrators and Professors in the Netherlands, that highight views on Open Access, including:

• Dr Sijbolt Noorda,  Chairman of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU)
• Paul Doop ,Vice president of The Board University of Amsterdam and University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam
• Huib de Jong,  Member of The Board, University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht
• Martin Bossenbroek, Director, National Library of the Netherlands

You can also view the film right here: