Catching up on news announced as part of Open Access Week: JISC released a guide to its work on OA, including a booklet, videos, and a podcast. The Alliance of German Science Organization's OA working group published a review of OA policies in Europe (in German). The IRcuresILL project displayed posters in Japanese libraries encouraging users to search for an OA copy of an article before filing an interlibrary loan request.

More news announced as part of Open Access Week: The Waterford Institute of Technology Libraries launched ResearchScope, a portal of OA research in Ireland. The University of Pretoria Library Services released a document on the history of its OA mandate, Africa's first, and a scorecard on the progress of OA at the university.

MKU to go for Open Access Mandate, press release, undated but recent.

Trinity University is First Small, Liberal Arts University to Endorse Open Access for Sharing Scholarly Work, press release, October 23, 2009. From the Trinity University Open Access Policy Statement draft dated September 25: Pending confirmation of the final text approved, it looks like a mandate.

Some other news announced as part of Open Access Week: The Confederation of Open Access Repositories launched (as previously announced) and started signing up members, including JISC, eIFL, and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Also see Neil Jacobs' comments on JISC's membership.

Sneha Janardhanan, Faculty consider Open Access to journal articles, Trinitonian, October 23, 2009. Comment. I'm surprised if this is an accurate summary of the proposed policy. As far as I know, all existing OA mandates require deposit after a publication has been accepted for publication, i.e. after peer review. The description here sounds more akin to a mandate for working papers.

The Committee for Economic Development, a longstanding American business-led think tank, has released a draft of its report, Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

According to an email by Abul Bashirullah (as posted here), library director at the Universidad de Oriente: In addition, the university has signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative and is establishing an IR, which is hopes to launch within a month. I haven't been able to find any details of the policy; if you know, please contact me.

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya recently adopted its Política institucional d’accés obert. The document was approved by the university's Consell de Govern on October 7. Because I don't speak Catalan, I can't tell whether the policy is an exhortation or a mandate (Google translates the relevant phrase as "calls upon") to deposit in the university's IR. If you know more, please contact me.

New Look, Enhanced Services for eScholarship, press release, October 19, 2009. Also see the accompanying video. Also see Roy Tennant's comments: Update. Also see Roy Tennant's additional comments.

SHERPA, Major RoMEO Upgrade Released, announcement, October 22, 2009.