Springer Announces New Open-Access Journals

"The Springer publishing company today announced that it is setting up a new open-access journal program. Called SpringerOpen, the program will initially include 12 new online-only, peer-reviewed journals in science, technical, and medical fields."

ARL Panel: Open Access to Research Inevitable

"Public access to research is 'inevitable,' but it will be a slog to get to it. That was the takeaway message of a panel on the role libraries can play in supporting current and future public-access moves. The panel was part of the program at the membership meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, held here yesterday and today."

Portico to Preserve Open Access Content from BioMed Central

"Portico (www.portico.org) is pleased to announce that it will preserve BioMed Central’s entire collection of 60,000 open access online articles and all newly published articles going forward."

Open Access Encyclopedias

". . .a number of academic institutions are quietly trying to do what Britannica and others say can’t be done: build online encyclopedias that are rigorous, scholarly, and free to access."

Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

"Public access to research is 'inevitable,' but it will be a slog to get to it. That was the takeaway message of a panel on the role libraries can play in supporting current and future public-access moves. The panel was part of the program at the membership meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, held here yesterday and today."

New Open-Access Monograph Series Announced

"Open Humanities Press (OHP) is joining the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) to create five new open-access monograph series with a focus on critical and cultural theory. 'All of the books will be freely available in full-text, digital editions and as reasonably priced paperbacks,' according to a statement released today, and they will be subject to 'the highest standards of editorial vetting and peer review.' The series include New Metaphysics, Critial Climate Change, Global Conversations, Unidentified Theoretical Objects, and Liquid Books, a series in which readers are invited 'to annotate, tag, edit, add to, remix, reformat, reversion, reinvent, and reuse, the material.'"

Institutional Repositories: Thinking Beyond the Box

"In February 2008, the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University made history, unanimously passing a revolutionary open access mandate that, for the first time, would require faculty to give the university copies of their research, along with a nonexclusive license to distribute them electronically. In the press, Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton proudly spoke of reshaping 'the landscape of learning' and fixing a damaged, overly expensive system of scholarly communication. And the very fulcrum of Harvard's vision is a library-administered institutional repository (IR). 'In place of a closed, privileged and costly system,' Darnton told the New York Times, Harvard's mandate—and its IR—would lead the way toward 'a digital commonwealth in which ideas will flow freely in all directions.'"