The Communia Workshop on Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data (London, March 26-27, 2009) has released this statement on OA to public sector information: See also Jonathan Gray's notes on the workshop.
The Research Councils UK has released a new report, Open Access to Research Outputs (plus annexes). The report is dated September 2008, but was only released yesterday. From the announcement: I'd include an excerpt from the report itself, but it's a locked PDF which has disabled cut/pasting. ( Why? This is a report on OA from publicly-funded agencies committed to OA .)
London Book Fair panel calls JISC e-textbook study ‘myth-shattering’, a press release from JISC, April 23, 2009.
J.J. Musakali and D.C.Rotich, Open Access in African Publishing Industry: Opportunities and Challenges, abstract of a presentation at next month's KMAfrica 2009 meeting, Knowledge to Reposition Africa in the World Economy (Dakar, May 4-7, 2009).
The University of Maryland University Senate just voted down a mixed green/gold OA policy. From the defeated resolution: From Tizra Austin's story in today's Diamondback Online on the debate in the Senate: Comments The resolution didn't focus more on gold OA (OA through journals) than green OA (OA through repositories), but the controversy focused more on gold OA than green OA.
Open Access Anthropology Day is an event on Bloggers Unite, scheduled for May 1, 2009. For more information, see the post at Sara Anthro Blog.
CaseCheck Launches UK-wide Service – Free Access to over 5000 legal case summaries and more, press release, posted to SPARC-OAForum, April 22, 2009.
Bora Zivkovic, Academic Editor Interview - Craig McClain, everyONE, April 21, 2009. McClain is the Section Editor for Aquatic and Marine Sciences at PLoS ONE.
Taste Fine Wines, Visit Old California, and Explore the History of Life on Earth, University of California Press Blog, April 22, 2009. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.) See also our past posts on the UC Press or the California Digital Library.
Last month the US Federal Aviation Administration floated the idea that it should stop providing OA to bird strike data. The idea was that keeping the data secret would encourage airlines and airports to report it. But the agency made a mid-course correction when its proposal was hit by a barrage of public protests, including a protest from the National Transportation Safety Board.
Nick Sheppard, Google indexing and SEO, Repository News , April 22, 2009. Tips for helping Google index an OA repository. PS: Also see my 2005 hand-out on this topic, probably very much outdated.