Last year, Finland's 26 universities of Applied Sciences launched a consortial OA repository (Theseus.fi) and in October they adopted a joint OA mandate.  Excerpt: Comments This is, by far, the largest set of institutions to adopt a joint OA mandate.  Kudos to the Rectors' Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (ARENE ry) for making it happen.

Columbia University is "planning to sign an open-access compact [ed.: presumably COPE] within a few weeks and set aside funds to subsidize fee-based, open-access publications". The University of California Press and the California Digital Library launched their OA publishing service, UCPubS, as previously announced. The University of Oxford's Global Economic Governance Programme launched an Expert Taskforce on Global Knowledge Governance.

Sarah Ngu, Dangerously Democratic, The Eye, December 10, 2009.

OSTP to Launch Public Forum to Discuss Options for Improving Public Access to Results of Federally Funded Research, OSTP Blog, December 9, 2009. See also our past post on the consultation.

The faculty of the University of Northern Colorado Libraries unanimously adopted this OA resolution on December 2, 2009. (Thanks to Jayati Chaudhuri and Wendy Highby.) Excerpt: Comment . By my count, this is the 5th OA policy adopted by library faculty and the 18th OA policy adopted by a unanimous faculty vote. Kudos to all involved.

Katharine Ball, The Indexing of Scholarly Open Access Business Journals, Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, Winter 2009.

The second issue of Open and Libraries Class Journal, from Ellyssa Kroski's class at San Jose State University, is now available. See especially: Dana M. Weber, Hybrid OA Journals: A Progression or a Destination?

OA journal announcements, launches, and conversions spotted in the past week or so: Converted to OA: Anthropology of East Europe Review (announcement) New OA journals: Teaching Classical Languages , successor to CPL Online Converted to delayed OA: ALT-J (journal of the Association for Learning Technology) (18 month delay) (announcement) New on PubMedCentral: Indian Journal of Community Medicine (immediate OA) (announcement) Indian

Panos Georgiou and Fiori Papadatou, Scholarly Publishing & Open Access in Greece: 2009 Report, report for Hellenic Academic Libraries Link, October 23, 2009.

The Obama administration is calling for public comments on ways to enhance access to federally-funded research.  From today's announcement: Comments This is big.  We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA.  The question here is about separate action from the White House.  What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt?

A new Nordbib report looks at IRs and current research information systems (CRIS) in the Nordic countries. UNESCO released a template to guide national policymaking under its Information for All Programme. The Association of Research Libraries released its latest statistics on ARL libraries, academic health science libraries, and academic law libraries, including information on serials and monograph expenditures.