Peter Sefton, Potential projects: #2 Integrating ICE with the Open Journal Systems, ptsefton , January 6, 2009.  Excerpt: PS:  Also see our past posts on ICE.

At its December 16-17 meeting, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure (ACCI) adopted this statement, drafted in its previous meeting: (Thanks to Tony Hey.) Comment .  The NSF should be the next agency after the NIH to adopt an OA mandate.  This important recommendation carries special weight because it comes from the ACCI.  Kudos to all the ACCI members.

In-Tech, the Austrian OA publisher, has launched two new peer-reviewed OA journals: International Journal of Cyber-Physical Systems International Journal of Engineering Business Management In both cases, the inaugural issues are still forthcoming.  In-Tech first announced the journals about two months ago, when it launched its new web site intechweg.org.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama today named Elena Kagan as his nominee for Solicitor General. See the announcement. Kagan currently serves as dean of Harvard Law School. She presided over the adoption of the school's OA mandate last year, the first such policy for a law school. See e.g. her positive comments on the policy here. Kagan also presided over the successful efforts to lure Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig back to Harvard.

Doctor Spurt, Proposal: The Journal of Null Results, Effortless Incitement, January 5, 2009. Comment. For examples, see the OA Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine, Journal of Negative Results (ecology and evolutionary biology), and Journal of Interesting Negative Results in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning.

International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, How accessible is your agricultural information?, AgInfo News from IAALD, January 2, 2009.

The UK Data Archive released a suite of Web pages on data sharing and management on December 23, 2008.

The International Journal of Insect Science is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal published by Libertas Academica. See the January 5, 2009 announcement. Article processing charges are $1395, subject to discount or waiver.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Francis S. Collins May Be in Line to Head the NIH.  Excerpt: Comment .  This would be a superb appointment.  Collins has the respect of researchers in the field and he's a strong supporter of OA.  He's the person most responsible for OA to the results of the human genome project, as well as a defender of PubChem against the ACS.

Open for Questions is a feature of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's transition Web site. Open for Questions is a Digg-style, user-submitted press conference, where users submit questions and vote them up or down, and the most popular questions in each round are answered by the transition team. The current round was opened December 29. A question about OA is presently ranked in the top 40 Science &

Peter Hirtle, When is a published work not a publication? Library Law Blog , January 4, 2009.