Allan Adler for the Association of American Publishers and Martin Frank for the DC Principles Coalition have released their December 22 letter to the Obama transition team, asking it to oppose the NIH policy and support the Conyers bill. Excerpt: The letter is also signed by 36 publishers and accompanied by a petition from 400 scientists. Excerpt from the petition: Comments Here we go again.
A new issue of NewSpace, the DSpace newsletter, is available.
Abstracts from the American Astronomical Society meeting (Long Beach, Calif., January 4-8, 2009) are online from the Astronomy Abstract Service.
Elaine A. Nowick, Academic Rank of Authors Publishing in Open Access Journals, Agricultural Information Worldwide 1(2), 2008.
Repositories Support Project, RSP and the JISC Repository Projects Call, Repositories Support Project, January 7, 2009.
The International Journal of Role-Playing is a new peer-reviewed OA journal.
Heather Joseph, the Executive Director or SPARC, has released her December 1 letter to Howard Berman, answering five of his follow-up questions and supplementing her testimony at the September 2008 hearing on OA, the NIH policy, and the Conyers bill ("Fair Copyright in Research Works Act"). Berman is the last chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, which held the hearing.
John Wilbanks, Beliefs, Knowledge, Articles, Databases, Common Knowledge , January 5, 2009.
Jonathan Kimmelman, Charles Weijer, and Eric M. Meslin, Helsinki discords: FDA, ethics, and international drug trials, The Lancet , January 3, 2009. Accessible to subscribers only.
Dorothea Salo wrote on Monday: Paul Ginsparg replied by email (posted with permission): Update . Here's a follow-up from arXiv's Simeon Warner (posted with permission): Update (1/8/09). Also see Dorothea's response.
The Wellcome Trust is taking steps to increase the compliance rate with its OA mandate.