The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) new Principles on Conduct of Clinical Trials and Communication of Clinical Trial Results took effect on October 1. (Thanks to the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.) The voluntary guidelines describe ethical standards for industry-sponsored clinical trials.
The New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Partner to Make 500,000 Public-Domain Books Available to the World, press release, September 29, 2009. Via email, Jonathan Pace of NYPL tells me that the digitized books will "ultimately" be OA: "We don't have a specific timeline, but we are currently looking into it." See also our past posts on Kirtas.
Bill Hubbard discusses repository policies, such as what should happen to an author's deposits in an institutional repository when the author leaves the institution. The presentations from the Workshop de Editores Científicos Chilenos (Valparaíso, Chile, September 28-29, 2009) are now online (in Spanish). Topics include SciELO, REDALYC, and working with Open Journal Systems.
I just mailed the October issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter . This issue takes a close look at ten challenges facing OA journals. The roundup section briefly notes 177 OA developments from September. Update . Correction : I tried and failed to mail the October issue. I'm having trouble with my ISP and can't send any email at all.
Two recent statements of support for the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA, S.1373), the U.S. legislation which would provide OA to publicly-funded research government-wide: American Library Association, September 29, 2009 (also see the blog post) Chief academic and research officers of 18 research universities, members of the Greater Western Library Alliance, October 1, 2009 (also see the press release) See also my past
Here's a new feature I'm trying out. The aim is to distill some of the news that comes across the Open Access Tracking Project every day, but that doesn't require as extensive coverage as our full posts. Let me know what you think. —Gavin David Wiley likes Sen. Durbin's OER mandate and open textbooks grants.
Heather Morrison, Dramatic Growth of Open Access: September 30, 2009, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, September 30, 2009.
Colin Smith, Institutional repositories and the REF, Open Research Online, September 30, 2009. See also our past posts on the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) last week introduced the Open College Textbook Act (S. 1714). (Thanks to TechLaw.) The bill has two main parts: Authorizes $15 million for grants to develop open textbooks for college courses. The grants would be managed by the Department of Education, with a peer review process involving the National Science Foundation.
T. V. Padma, Agricultural research 'should be open access', SciDev.Net, September 29, 2009.
This was alluded to in the Daily Pennsylvanian column which we linked to yesterday, but here's official confirmation that the University of Pennsylvania may form a group to consider OA: Minutes from the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, September 23, 2009: