Stevan Harnad, On the affinities and disaffinities among free software, peer-to-peer access, and open access to peer-reviewed research, a QuickTime movie of a presentation at Free Software and Beyond: The World of Peer Production (Manchester, March 26, 2009).

When Switzerland's University of St. Gallen adopted its OA mandate in December 2008 and announced it last month, the text was initially available only in German.  About a week later an unofficial English version was posted to ROARMAP.  Today the university issued an official English version.  (Thanks to Ruedi Lindegger.)

The Autonomous Community Government of Madrid adopted an OA policy, apparently an OA mandate, in May 2008.  Last month it formalized the mandate in its official research regulations, February 19, 2009. Acceso abierto a la información científica has posted the relevant excerpt, which makes clear that the new policy is a mandate.  (Thanks to Eloy Rodrigues.)  Read it in Spanish or Google's English.

Paola Gargiulo, Chi legge non paga , Il Pensiero , March 25, 2009.  Read it in Italian or Google's English.

The Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom collection, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (MIT Press, 2006) has been translated into Italian (Mondadori, 2009). The English versions of all the articles are OA.  The details are in my post on the original English edition.  (Full disclosure:

The abstracts from Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data (London, March 26-27, 2009) are now online, with placeholders for other downloads (papers, video, audio, etc.). Also see the list of proposed policy recommendations from the workshop speakers:

Alison Henning, UK PubMed Central - enabling easier reporting on the outcomes of grants, UK PubMed Central Blog, March 23, 2009.

Philip Davis, Access: Revolution or Evolution? Scholarly Kitchen , March 26, 2009.  Excerpt: Comment. Phil's final sentence suggests that it makes no sense to cheer for the inevitable.  But I'm not sure why.  First, inevitable things --at least things like OA-- can be sped up or slowed down by human action.

The International Journal of Gender Science and Technology is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal published by the Open University and sponsored by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering & Technology. The inaugural issue is scheduled for publication in July 2009 and will publish three issues annually.

Flat World Knowledge, an open textbook publisher, announced it received another $8 million in venture funding. See also our past posts on Flat World Knowledge.

World Intellectual Property Organization Secretariat, Dissemination of Patent Information, report to the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (Geneva, March 23-27, 2009). From the executive summary: See also Sisule F. Musungu, Commentary on WIPO’s Study on Dissemination of Patent Information, Ideas in Development, March 25, 2009.