The text of the OA policy adopted by the Spanish principality of Asturias, which we previously posted, is now available. The policy is dated January 12. The host repository, Repositorio Institucional de Asturias (RIA), is also now open. (Thanks to Raquel Lavandera Fernández.) Comment. The text of the policy appears to be as previously reported: requiring deposit in RIA and allowing up to a 6 month embargo.

Some recent news items on OA to public sector information: A state appeals court ruled that a California county must release geodata in response to a public records request. See EFF's summary. Several sources (e.g. 1, 2, 3) are reporting that Vivek Kundra will be named the new e-government administrator at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Kundra is noted as an advocate for opening access to PSI.

Five journals were accepted to Revues.org in January. As with other Revues.org titles, the journals will be either immediate or delayed OA. See the February 6 announcement in the original French or in Google's English. The titles: Bulletin d’Études Orientales Cahiers d’Asie Centrale La Révolution française.

Brewster Kahle, Yiddish literature goes online, Internet Archive, February 7, 2009. See also the press release or the New York Times story. Update (3/16/09).  On the downside (for OA, not for Yiddish), 10k turns out to be much less than half the number of published books in Yiddish.  On the upside (for Yiddish and perhaps one day for OA as well) over 1.5 million Yiddish books have been saved from oblivion.

India's Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) has recommended that each of its 40+ laboratories adopt an OA mandate.  From the memorandum of Naresh Kumar, Head of CSIR's R&D Planning Division, to the directors of all CSIR labs (and others), February 6, 2009: Comment .  This is not an OA mandate, but a request or recommendation that individual labs adopt their own mandates.

Here are three recent developments on US research funding.  The OA connection is indirect:  where we have OA mandates in place, such as the NIH, then higher funding translates into new OA literature and lower funding reminds us of the need to maximize at least the return on our national investment in research.

Heather Morrison, Canada, let's fix the open access policy loophole BEFORE we harmonize, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics , February 8, 2009.  Excerpt: Comment. Hear, hear.  See my original criticism of the loophole in the CIHR policy (September 2007).

Peter Sefton, Scholarly Publishing using the Integrated Content Environment, ptsefton, December 11, 2008. See also our past posts on the ICE.

Harvard University Press' first OA journal, the Journal of Legal Analysis, has released its inaugural issue. See the February 3 announcement. See also our past posts on the journal.

Gideon Burton, Podcast #004: Open Access and the Institutional Repository, Academic Evolution, February 7, 2009. In this interview with [Brigham Young University] Scholarly Communications Librarian Jeff Belliston, we discuss how Open Access can bring broader impact and exposure for scholarship--especially if scholars will preserve copyright so they can deposit their work in an institutional repository ...

Ulf-Dietrich Reips and Uwe Matzat, High Impact of a Start-Up Journal - Surprisingly so?, International Journal of Internet Science 3(1), 2008. An editorial.