Michael Sniffen, First Freedom of Information ombudsman appointed, Associated Press , June 10, 2009. Excerpt: Comment . I got to know Miriam when she was legislative counsel for the ALA and an active and effective member of the Open Access Working Group. See for example her defense of the proposed OA mandate in the CURES Act of 2005.
Sanford Thatcher, From the University Presses — The Hidden Digital Revolution in Scholarly Publishing: POD, SRDP, the “Long Tail,” and Open Access, Against the Grain , April 2009.
Three French associations have issued a call for a national policy on scientific and technical information. The associations are COUPERIN (Consortium Universitaire des Publications Numériques), ADBU (Association des directeurs et des personnels de direction des bibliothèques universitaires et de la documentation), and AURA (Association du réseau des établissements utilisateurs de l'ABES); see also comments by COUPERIN.
The importance of data sharing within the Global Earth Observation System of Systems- CODATA speaks to José Achache, Director Geo Secretariat, CODATA Newsletter Special Issue, May 2009. See also our past posts on GEOSS.
A new Lithuanian law on science requires online access for publicly-funded research. It was adopted by parliament on April 30 and took effect on May 12. Read the new law in Lithuanian or Google's English. Thanks to Emilija Banionyte and Rima Kupryte for hand-translating the section on research access: Comments The new law only requires that publicly-funded research be online, not that it be free online.
SPARC, National student organizations call for Open Access to research, press release, June 10, 2009. From the statement's call to action: Disclosure. I have been a paid consultant for my work supporting this project.
Dan Cull, The Open Access Apocalypse, Dan Cull Weblog , June 10, 2009.
John Houghton, Jos de Jonge, Marcia van Oploo, Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation, May 29, 2009. A major new report sponsored by the Dutch SURFfoundation. From the summary: Also see today's press release: Also see our past posts on Houghton's research on the economic impact of OA, including criticism from TA publishers and Houghton's responses.
Philip Davis, Open Access Publisher Accepts Nonsense Manuscript for Dollars, Scholarly Kitchen , June 10, 2009. Excerpt: Also see Kent Anderson's follow-up post in the same blog: Comments There has been public suspicion about Bentham's operation for more than a year now (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
The April 2009 issue of Ariadne is now online. See especially: Richard Green and Chris Awre, The REMAP Project: Steps towards a Repository-enabled Information Environment Debra Morris, Encouraging More Open Educational Resources with Southampton’s EdShare Heila Pienaar and Martie van Deventer, To VRE or Not to VRE?: Do South African Malaria Researchers Need a Virtual Research Environment?
Arnaud Dhermy, Les revues savantes dans Gallica, Gallica, June 5, 2009. Read it in the original French or Google's translation. Includes a table of journals digitized (or to be digitized) by region of France.