I am snowed under with things that I have to do and want to do. I therefore cannot give as much attention to others, so I will comment briefly on them below
My main focus now is on these areas (all of which require several blog posts)
- Semantic Physical Science(see http://www-pmr.ch.cam.ac.uk/wiki/Semantic_Physical_Science)
- Open Bibliography (exciting developments from the software and design teams). See http://openbiblio.net but I shall write more. This will combine with Open Research Reports
- Panton Discussions. We have two in the can and I shall convert them tomorrow
So some others which I would normally devote whole posts to:
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Congratulations to Alma Swan on her appointment of Director of Open Advocacy (https://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum/browse_thread/thread/9d1c030b3239bb08 ). I have had the privilege to work with Alma for several years and can testify to her single-minded commitment to Open Access. She has made a major contribution in adding unchallengeable metrics that show that Open Access increases the value of scholarships through, for example, increased citations. I quote Alma: “I’m delighted to be taking on this new role,” said Swan, “Policymakers are increasingly interested in hearing the arguments. Presenting the evidence-based case to them will help to bring about the policy developments we all want to see.”
Alma also created a very beautiful calligraphic calendar of Open Access – something that still brings inspiration when I look at it.
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Springer announces change for its author-paid hybrid Open Access from CC-NC to CC-BY. https://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum/browse_thread/thread/24ef282b6ec3b963# I am VERY pleased by this and congratulate Springer. (I knew about this earlier when I wrote to Springer and agreed to abide by the embargo). This brings Springer’s hybrid model (Open Choice) into line with its Open Access offerings (all of which use CC-BY). Very few publishers use CC-BY, but Springer is showing the lead from the major publishers and there is every reason why the others should follow.
CC-BY allows text-and-data mining and represents the full value that one can get from OA.
- Richard Poynder for his frequent and very objective blogging of the current state of Open Access – see http://poynder.blogspot.com/ with a very comprensive daily list of those who have distanced themselves from the Research Works Act, H.R.3699
Expect a daily post on Semantic Physical Science (may depend on my weekly Vimeo quota) although Charlotte is also mounting them at http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/ , the excellent Cambridge streaming video site. And expect slightly lower frequency for Open Biblio, and Panton discussions.