Sigi A. Jottkandt, No-fee OA Journals in the Humanities, Three Case Studies: A Presentation by Open Humanities Press, a presentation at Berlin 5 Open Access: From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination, (Padua, Italy, 19-21 September, 2008). The three journals are: Culture Machine Cosmos and History S
Wendy Hall has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for her work in computer science, which includes important work on OA. See the announcement from the University of Southampton or the announcement from the Royal Society, both from May 15, 2009. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad).
The library faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College adopted an Open Access Pledge on May 14, 2009. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.) Here's the pledge in its entirety: Comments This is the fourth library faculty to adopt an OA policy, after Oregon State (March 6, 2009), Calgary University (May 1, 2009), and the University of Oregon (May 7, 2009). Note that three of the four were adopted this month.
The US Patent Office has awarded Scott Moskowitz and Mike Berry a patent on a method for scrambling the data in an OA data file to a specific, reversible, degraded level of signal quality.
If you recall, in February 2007 the Research Information Network (RIN) developed a set of seven principles for public policy on scholarly communications. Because the principles were vague and non-committal on OA, they could be signed by proponents (JISC, the RCUK, and the Wellcome Trust) and opponents (ALPSP, the Publishers Association, and STM) of strong OA policy. See my comments on the principles at the time.
Stevan Harnad, Against Squandering Scarce Research Funds on Pre-Emptive Gold OA Without First Mandating Green OA, Open Access Archivangelism , May 15, 2009.
I just found this post in my blogging queue for May 9. After writing it, I forgot to post it. (Now I wonder how often I've done that.) Apologies for the delay. I went looking because I wanted to link back to it when citing Michael's new Friday Forum on OA, with presentations by Carl Malamud, Leslie Chan, Subbiah Arunachalam, and John Wilbanks.
The May/June issue of D-Lib Magazine is now online. Here are the OA-related articles.
Wolfram|Alpha has officially launched. But don't expect to try this exciting OA "knowledge engine" any time soon. User traffic has brought it to its knees. You can still read the project FAQ and blog or watch the overview video (recommended). Alpha is open in several senses. It's free to use. It has an open API.
Dan Cohen, Idealism and Pragmatism in the Free Culture Movement, Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog, May 12, 2009. A review of Digitize This Book! The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now by Gary Hall (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). See also our past posts on Digitize This Book.
Jane Park, Open Education and Open Science in Poland, Creative Commons, May 14, 2009.