Japan's Digital Repository Federation signed a Memorandum of Agreement with DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research).

The Cabinet Papers, 1915-1977 is a new OA collection of minutes and memoranda of the UK government. The project was funded under the JISC Digitization Program. See the December 2 announcement.

BioMed Central has joined HIFA2015 (Health Information For All by 2015) as a supporting organization.

5 Million Articles Online at HighWire, press release, posted to SPARC-OAForum, December 2, 2008.

Dick Kaser, Hindawi - Where Open Access Is Simply Good Business, InfoToday blog , December 2, 2008.

Tim Buckley Owen, A new beginning for open access publishing? Information World Review , December 3, 2008.

Two committees of Germany's Archivreferentenkonferenz des Bundes und der Länder (ARK) released a report in March, Digitalisierung von Archivgut im Kontext der Bestandserhaltung [ Digitization of archival documents in the context of conservation ], highlighting the value of OA for archival content.  ARK coordinates all state archives in Germany. Klaus Graf excerpts the key passage.  Read it in German or Google's English.

Jan Velterop, Repositioning repositories, The Parachute , December 2, 2008.  Jan is the CEO of KnewCo.

Dana L. Roth, FRPAA and NIH Mandate A Blessing in Disguise for Scientific Society Publishers? Science & Technology Libraries , September 15, 2008.  (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)  Only this abstract is OA at the journal site: But see the OA full-text, self-archived at Caltech.

Jenny Pickerill, Open Access Publishing: Hypocrisy and Confusion in Geography, Antipode , October 17, 2008.  Not even an abstract is free online, at least so far.

The EU has released the results of its public consultation (May 16, 2008 - September 15, 2008) on the PSI Directive.  Excerpt: Also see the submitted comments themselves.