The German federal government's 2008 media and communications report ( Medien- und Kommunikationsbericht der Bundesregierung 2008 ) was published last month, December 17, 2008. (Thanks to KoopTech.) It's a PDF, so I can't link to a machine translation.
Joe Gollner, The Emergence of Intelligent Content: The evolution of open content technologies and their significance, January 6, 2009. Apparently a preprint. (Thanks to Alles over Content Management.)
The Burney Collection of 17th and 18th newspapers was digitized in a public-private partnership, but the results are TA rather than OA. (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) From a JISC press release (January 13): Comment . Publicly-funded digitization projects have a lot to learn from publicly-funded research projects.
Mamiko Matsubayashi and six co-authors, Status of open access in the biomedical field in 2005, Journal of the Medical Library Association , January 2009. Here's an unexpected finding not evident from the abstract: PS: Also note that in first third of 2005, no form of the NIH policy had yet taken effect, and in the second two thirds only the low-compliance voluntary form was in effect.
Harvard's page on its Open-Access Policies has added links to a waiver request form and a quick-submit service for the repository. Both require a Harvard ID for login.
Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) has expressed interest in joining the CERN SCOAP3 project.
Audra Mahlong and Siyabonga Africa, IP Bill locks down innovation, IT Web , January 15, 2009. Excerpt: Comment. Tech transfer laws like this one do allow the patenting of otherwise patentable discoveries made by publicly-funded research, and to that extent they enclose more of the commons. We can debate their wisdom.
OCLC Board of Trustees and Members Council to convene Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship, press release, January 13, 2009. For more on the ARL review, see: Josh Hadro, ARL/ASERL Task Force to Investigate OCLC Policy Change, Library Journal, December 15, 2008. Andrew Albanese, ARL: OCLC Review a Chance To Be Heard on Policy Change, Library Journal, December 18, 2008. See also our past post on the policy change.
Michael Mandiberg, Howto Negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten Steps, Michael Mandiberg, January 12, 2009. (Thanks to Creative Commons.) Gavin Baker, How to negotiate a Creative Commons license in a work contract, A Journal of Insignificant Inquiry, January 14, 2009.
The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit, which includes sections on OA-related topics such as digital repositories and journal economics, has been updated.
David Bollier's new book, Viral Spiral, now has a Web site and an OA, CC-licensed edition. See especially chapter 11, "Science as a Commons". See also our previous post on the book, or past posts on Bollier.