Earlier this month, Apple announced the productivity suite iWork 08 for Macintosh users.

Three days ago I blogged about Yale University dropping their Biomed Central (BMC) membership. Matthew Cockerill, the BMC publisher yesterday wrote a response. Briefly, he argues that the author-pays model is a viable business model for Open Access publishing and that the rising costs cited by Yale are simply a reflection of the increasing number of articles submitted to BMC. This is an important discussion.

The Yale University science libraries have decided to cancel their Biomed Central membership. Dramatically increasing page charges are the reason behind this decision. Other former members of Biomed Central include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Brown University, The Jackson Laboratory, the drug company Eli Lilly, University of Oxford, Cancer Research UK, EMBL and DKFZ in Heidelberg, and many others.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is currently recommending public access of all papers from NIH-funded research. Fewer than 5% of research papers have gone this route since the policy went into effect in 2005.