Petion for Public Access for Federally Funded Research

A petition calling for public access to all federally funded research, posted on the White House’s “We the People” website on May 21, already has 14,743 signatures as of the morning of May 24. If the petition gets 25,000 signatures by June 19, it will be considered for action by the White House staff.

Open Access Policy for UC San Francisco

Open Access Movement Finds New Ally in University of California, San Francisco

May 24, 2012 By Michael Kelley 

From

The open access movement received another major boost on May 21 when the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), one of the leading public, scientific institutions in the country, adopted an open access policy.

The UCSF academic senate voted unanimously to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public. This is particularly significant because, according to numbers from the university, the UCSF health campus is the country’s largest public recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), receiving 1,056 grants last year valued at $532.8 million.

“This vote is very, very good news,” said Karen Butter, UCSF librarian and assistant vice chancellor. “I am delighted that UCSF will join leading institutions in changing the model of scientific communications, and that UCSF authors have chosen to take control of their scholarship, providing new audiences with incredible opportunities to translate UCSF’s remarkable research into improving health care.”

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"E-Content: The Digital Dialogue" - e-book release from American Library Association

American Library Association (ALA) released “E-content: The Digital Dialogue,” a new report examining fair and reasonable access to digital content through our nation’s libraries.  A major focus of this report is e-books.  Certainly a timely topic and one of interest to most of the RUSA membership. 

From the press release: "The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, explores various licensing models and the state of librarian-publisher relations. Additionally, the report provides an update on the ALA-wide effort to promote access to digital content (co-chaired by Robert Wolven, associate university librarian at Columbia University, and Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library)."

 

Announcement from May 23, 2012

Inaugural Issue of Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Inaugural Issue of Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication released May 16, 2012

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication (JLSC) is now available (http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/), featuring open access, peer-reviewed research, about library-led scholarly communication initiatives, online publishing and digital projects. Journal content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The journal is a not-for-profit endeavor, published by Pacific University Library. In support of open and equitable opportunities for authors, JLSC does not charge article submission or publication fees.

“Because libraries are actively working to shape the scholarly communication sphere, there was a need for this important work to be specifically represented in the literature. JLSC meets this need by providing a dedicated ‘home’ for librarians to share their ideas about institutional and digital repositories, open education initiatives, library e-publishing services, authors’ rights advocacy efforts, data curation and other emerging issues,” says editor Marisa Ramirez (Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo).

JLSC is open to experimental formats and innovative alternatives to the traditional publishing system.

The first issue is available online at http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/.

SPARC Open Access "Funds in Action"

SPARC's latest  updates to our  Open Access "Funds in Action" document is now available.

The updated document contains information from twenty-four universities, you can see how these universities are spending their funds and what their current usage stats are. Looking at the big picture this document represents a large increase in the number of institutions experimenting with open access funds. This in turn, shows that a larger conversation has begun on campuses generating more awareness to open access. 

The updated document is available on our website at http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/oa-funds-in-action-attachment.pdf.

Think Like a Start-Up: a White Paper - Brian Matthews (University of Virginia)

Think Like a Start-Up: a White Paper

April 4, 2012, 1:19 pm

By Brian Mathews

This project has been in the works for a long time. I think that the initial seed was planted during my time at Georgia Tech. It simmered while I was out in California. And it crystalized as soon as I arrived in Blacksburg. I thought this document would be a one-pager that I could finish over a weekend, but it grew into something much more involved.

I’ve been fascinated with startup culture for a long time and as I considered all the changes happening in academic libraries (and higher ed) the parallels were quite stunning. No, we’re not developing new products to bring to market, and no, we’re not striving for an IPO payday, but we are being required to rethink/rebuild/repurpose what a library is and what it does. The next twenty years are going to be an interestingly chaotic time for the history of our institutions.

Here’s a snippet that frames the paper:

The media and pop culture provide us with romanticized visions of dorm room ideas becoming billion dollar IPOs. And indeed, that does happen sometimes, but startups are more than rags to riches stories. In concise terms: startups are organizations dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This sounds exactly like an academic library to me. Not only are we trying to survive, but we’re also trying to transform our organizations into a viable service for 21st century scholars and learners.

This paper is a collection of talking points intended to stir the entrepreneurial spirit in library leaders at every level. I think it is also useful for library science students as they prepare to enter and impact the profession. My intention is for this to be a conversation starter, not a step-by-step plan. The future is ours to figure out and I hope that this captures the spirit of the changes ahead.

Think Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism (3.96 Mb) PDF

Infographic:

Science R&D Spending in the Federal Budget (Infographic)

by Karl Tate, LiveScience

Date: 27 January 2011 Time: 11:35 AM ET

 
Source:LiveScience