Chemical Information Monster, American Chemical Society (ACS), Failed to Stop NIH Public Chemistry Database Needed by All

"Bobby Pickering, US Congress fails to back ACS, Information World Review, June 16, 2005. Excerpt: 'The American Chemical Society has put a brave face on a snub it has received from the US Congress, which has refused to take its side in a dispute with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)... The ACS had hoped to put pressure on the NIH through Congressional supporters, but last week the House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee approved the annual NIH budget with only the slightest admonishment that both parties work together. The committee said it "urges NIH to work with private sector providers to avoid unnecessary duplication and competition with private sector chemical databases." The ACS declined the opportunity to speak to IWR this week, but issued a statement that it is "very pleased that the House Appropriations Subcommittee expressed concern about PubChem replicating private scientific information services. We will continue to work diligently with NIH toward a collaborative model and solution." Yet it is now difficult to see how it can develop a dialogue with the NIH and work towards a compromise solution, having already adopted such heavy-handed tactics. The ACS is noted for taking a bullish stance over the threat to its revenues from open access publishing. In December 2004, it filed a complaint in the US District Court of DC against Google for alleged trademark infringement of the CAS SciFinder Scholar brand and for "unfair competition". The US organisation is also under fire from some parts of the academic community for the levels of remuneration it awards employees. The not-for-profit organisation paid out 46% of its total expenses of $404m in salaries and fringe benefits last year, with its executive director receiving a total compensation package of over $1m.'"

Source: Suber P. More on the failure of ACS lobbying in Congress. OAN Blog (16 June 2005) [FullText]

Putting Scientific Results Into the Public Domain is the Technology-based Public Demand

"Henrik Egelyng, Evolution of capacity for institutionalized management of intellectual property at international agricultural research centers: A strategic case study, CheckBiotech.org, June 14, 2005. Excerpt: 'In contrast to the IP offices of private companies and semipublic entities, the objective of IRRI's [International Rice Research Institute's] IP administration was not to preserve the legal identity of innovations as intellectual property. On the contrary, for IRRI-generated innovations, the objective was to ensure that these innovations were put into the public domain. IRRI's policy on intellectual property combines IP provisions with provisions dealing with access to germplasm. Emphasizing free availability of germplasm and information, inventions, and biological material developed at IRRI, the policy provides for any necessity to seek IP protection in order to secure the availability of advanced biological technologies or materials to developing countries... Some universities around the developing world remain strictly public-sector institutions, providing public goods in the classical sense of the word and bringing their science to the public domain. To such a university, the term protection would mean to protect an innovation from being appropriated by any single private-sector or semipublic interest wishing to patent it. Universities in this category are found all over the world. However, there are probably far fewer such universities in this category today than just five years ago. The objective of any IP administration in this structural setting is not primarily a defensive one, with a view to destroy the novelty of innovations. Instead, the overriding objective is to bring new knowledge to the public domain based on scientific (rather than legal) criteria and merits. The editors are scientists, not lawyers. If an organization such as IRRI were to institute a defensive publication unit (DPU), contrary to the scientific journals in which the findings of IRRI researchers are reported, publications coming out of a DPU would not be edited by scientists and their peers. The staff of a DPU would collaborate with IP professionals not with a view to scientific merit, but rather to provide the specific details required to effectively make IRRI innovations prior art. The objective of a DPU would thus be to make enabling disclosures of IRRI science outputs, thereby making sure that IRRI outputs remain available in the public domain rather than being appropriated by others.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Putting scientific results into the public domain. Open Access News Blog (15 June 2005) [FullText]

Open Access to US government publications

"The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is proposing to digitize "a complete legacy collection of tangible U.S. Government publications" in order to "ensure that the digital collection is available, in the public domain, for no-fee permanent public access through the FDLP [Federal Depository Library Program]." For more details see the GPO's Report on the Meeting of Experts on Digital Preservation: Metadata Specifications."

Source: Suber P. OA to US government publications, all the way back. OANews Blog (16 June 2005) [FullText]

Michigan's Contract with Google Becomes Public

"The University of Michigan has posted its contract with Google for digitizing seven million books from the Michigan library. (Thanks to Danny Sullivan in yesterday's SearchEngineWatch.) We all knew that Google would give participating libraries a copy of the digital files. But we didn't know whether the libraries would be free to provide open access to the files for the public-domain books. The Michigan-Google contract answers that question. Here's the relevant provision:

4.4.1 Use of U of M Digital Copy on U of M Website. U of M shall have the right to use the U of M Digital Copy, in whole or in part at U of M's sole discretion, as part of services offered on U of M's website. U of M shall implement technological measures (e.g. through use of the robots.txt protocol) to restrict automated access to any portion of the U of M Digital Copy or the portions of the U of M website on which any portion of the U of M Digital Copy is available. U of M shall also make reasonable efforts (including but not limited to restrictions placed in Terms of Use for the U of M website) to prevent third parties from (a) downloading or otherwise obtaining any portion of the U of M Digital Copy for commercial purposes, (b) redistributing any portions of the U of M Digital Copy, or (c) automated and systematic downloading from its website image files from the U of M Digital Copy. U of M shall also cooperate in good faith with Google to mutually develop methods and systems for ensuring that the substantial portions of the U of M Digital Copy are not downloaded from the services offered on the U of M's website or otherwise disseminated to the public at large.As I read this, Michigan can provide free online access to full-text, public-domain books for reading and printing. It can even allow individual downloads as long as downloading does not become "systematic" and downloads are not redistributed. Michigan must block commercial reuse and even crawling by other search engines. The contract expires on April 30, 2009, but section 4.4 is one of the sections that will survive the expiration or termination of the contract."

Source: Peter Suber. Michigan's contract with Google. OA News Blog. (17 June 2005) [FullText]

Major New Genetics Journal Will be Open Access Publication

"PLoS Genetics will officially launch on July 25 but already has a couple of "sneak preview articles" online. See the PLoS press release (June 16): 'PLoS Genetics, a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), will premier on July 25, 2005. The journal is lead by the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Wayne N. Frankel, a Senior Staff Scientist at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. PLoS Genetics will capture the breadth and scope of quality genetics research from around the world. We invite you to judge PLoS Genetics for yourself by reading the two papers we are previewing from the first issue. Open access --free availability and unrestricted use -- to all articles published in the journal is central to the mission of PLoS Genetics. "Genetics and genomics research have lead the way for timely, open access policies to all types of biological data?it is high time that we applied the same principle to our papers and unleash our creativity to develop new ways to use the scientific literature," the editorial team says. The two papers released now report a gene involved in diaphragm defects in humans, and a community effort to annotate the genome of the yeast that causes thrush and other conditions.'"

Other PLoS Journals include PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology .

Source: Suber Peter. Preview of PLoS Genetics. OANBlog (18 June 2005) [FullText]

A Primer To Israeli Academic Libraries: Leading UK research universities endorse Open Access

"The Russell Group of UK universities has issued a Statement on Scholarly Communication and Publishing endorsing open access. Here's the statement in its entirety:

The Russell Group, in association with the Joint CURL/SCONUL Scholarly Communications Group, has adopted the following statement on scholarly communication and publishing. The Russell Group supports the principle that publicly-funded research should be publicly available. The Russell Group believes that the current system of scholarly publishing does not always work in the best interests of the research community. Russell Group institutions support the development of institutional repositories of research papers, and will actively encourage their researchers to deposit their work in them. The publication charge model of journal publishing is still in its early stages but warrants further consideration. The Russell Group would encourage further research and development on the feasibility of the model. The Russell Group supports discussion of these issues in fora such as UUK, RCUK and Government departments, as well as within institutions. The Russell Group consists of 19 major research universities that receive 60% of the research grants in the UK, analogous to the AAU in the US. (Thanks to SHERPA News.)

Source: Suber P. Leading UK research universities endorse OA. OANews Blog (18 June 2005) [FullText]

"Google Library: Peril for Publishers?"

"Susan Kuchinskas, Google Library: Peril for Publishers? Internet.com, June 17, 2005.

Excerpt: 'Google promises publishers they can earn money when searchers click on contextual ads that appear alongside the book pages. But book publishers were taken aback when they heard about Google Library, a project that had been under way since 2002 with the University of Michigan... The Library Project was positioned as an extension of Google Print, but some publishers saw it as more of a collision with it....Deals with Google were struck one publisher at a time, but they included restrictions on the amount of material from a work under copyright that Google could show in search results, maintaining a fair-use argument for the search engine's use. When searchers click on a listing, they might be able to read anywhere from several pages to only a few sentences containing the keywords....[A]ll the ad money would stay in Google's pocket... "Having reached these agreements with publishers for the use of books under their copyright, Google now announced they'd scan works from several libraries -- including works that are currently under copyright -- without requesting the permission of the copyright owners," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal affairs for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). "Imagine the consternation that caused among publishing houses who realized the possibility that books they had agreed to provide to Google under contract might nevertheless be scanned by Google without those agreements." Adler said AAP members were wondering why Google had sat down with them, then announced two months later that it didn't really need publishers' permission to scan... The AAP's Adler said the publishing community wasn't focusing on the murky fair use question, but rather on Google's plan to make money from books it hadn't bought. "Google's use of these copyrighted works in order to expand the kinds of responses it offers to users of its search engine is clearly going to be used to enhance its ability to sell advertising in conjunction with the operation of that search engine," Adler said... The crux of the copyright issue, according to Adler, is not whether supplying anywhere from a few sentences to a few pages of a book to searchers is covered by the admittedly murky fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Rather, the Library Project seems like a way for Google to profit off books without buying them.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Publishers want a cut. Open Access News Blog (18 June 2005) [FullText]

Canadian Library Association endorses Open Access

"The Canadian Library Association (CLA) adopted A Resolution on Open Access on June 17, 2005.

Excerpt: Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of a library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values; and Whereas scholars and funders of research desire to share their research results and enhance the impact of their research; and Whereas the scholarly publishing industry has been experiencing a cycle of price increases above inflation rates, leading to library cancellations, leading to further price increases, and so forth, with no relief in sight, and has thus negatively impacted access to research; and Whereas the Open Access alternative involves making peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles freely available over the web through open access journals and/or author self-archiving; [...] Be it resolved that the CLA formally declare its commitment to Open Access by signing the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities; and Be it resolved that CLA implement Open Access as expeditiously as possible, and CLA Executive Council report back to the next Annual General Meeting with regards to progress. "

Source: P. Suber. Canadian Library Association endorses OA. OANews Blog (19 June 2005) [FullText]

Information feudalism in the US and Australia

Ronald Sackville, Cultivating the Creative Commons, On Line Opinion, June 15, 2005. Reflections of an "old-fashioned, even Luddite" Australian judge on his country's retroactive extension of the term of copyright under pressure from the United States.

Excerpt: 'Even from [my] limited perspective, it is impossible to avoid being struck by how rapidly (to use the words of Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite in their book Information Feudalism) there has been a transfer of knowledge assets from the intellectual commons into private interests... Despite the [U.S.] Supreme Court's ruling [in Eldred v. Ashcroft] and the willingness of Australian negotiators to accept the position of the US, it is extremely difficult to understand the policy justification for a further extension of the term of copyright, let alone the application of the extension to subsisting copyright... In his dissenting opinion in Eldred v Ashcroft, Justice Stevens, in words that echo the famous speech given by Lord Macaulay in 1841, pointed out that: Ex post facto extensions of copyright result in a gratuitous transfer of wealth from the public to authors, publishers and their successors and interests. The real sting in the tail of this comment is that for the most part, beneficiaries of the extension will not be authors or even the original publishers, but commercial entities which acquired the rights long before the extension... There are many commentators who have appreciated - in the words of James Boyle - that we are in the middle of the ?second enclosure movement?, which he sees as exemplified by the recognition of patent rights in human genes. Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite draw a parallel between medieval feudalism and what they describe as "information feudalism". Under the earlier variety, a lord of the manor exercised not only private power by virtue of his ownership of land, but public power, though a system of manorial taxes, courts and prisons. In the modern form of feudalism, the transfer of intellectual commons has been to media conglomerates and integrated life sciences corporations, rather than to individual scientists and authors. The effect of this, they argue, is to raise levels of private monopolistic power to dangerous global heights, at a time when States, which have been weakened by the forces of globalisation, have less capacity to protect their citizens from consequences of the exercise of this power.'

Source: Suber P. OANews Blog (15 June 2005) [FullText]

United States Science Policy Board Recommends Open Access

"Long-Lived Digital Data Collections: Enabling Research and Education in the 21st Century, National Science Board, March 30, 2005. The U.S. National Science Board (NSB) is an independent body established by Congress to set policy for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Excerpt from the report: 'The term 'data' is used in this report to refer to any information that can be stored in digital form, including text, numbers, images, video or movies, audio, software, algorithms, equations, animations, models, simulations, etc... This report adopts the definition of 'long-lived' that is provided in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standards, namely a period of time long enough for there to be concern about the impacts of changing technology... The Board task force held two workshops to hear the opinions of relevant communities. These workshops have shaped the Board's analysis of issues. The first workshop focused on the experience of the NSF and other Federal agencies with digital data collections. The second workshop provided a forum to gather the views of the NSF grantee community... Long-lived digital data collections are powerful catalysts for progress and for democratization of science and education. Proper stewardship of research requires effective policy in order to maximize their potential... In pursuing their respective interests in data collections, each actor in the data collection universe has a distinct set of responsibilities, which are outlined in the paragraphs that follow. In addition to their separate responsibilities, the groups must also act collectively to pursue some of the higherlevel goals important to the entire fields. Examples of such goals are the following:.. [3] work towards interoperability between communities and encourage cross-disciplinary data integration;... [5] encourage free and open access wherever feasible; and [6] provide incentives, rewards, and recognition for scientists who share and archive data... Data authors... [should] allow free and open access to data consistent with accepted standards for proper attribution and credit, subject to fair opportunity to exploit the results of one's own research and appropriate legal standards for protecting security, privacy and intellectual property rights.'"

Source: Peter Suber. US science policy board recommends OA. OA News Blog (6 April 2005) [FullText]

Open Access in Israel: Israel Medical Association Journal (IMAJ)

The Israel Medical Association Journal (IMAJ), Publisher: Israel Medical Association, ISSN: 0021-2180, representing medical sciences and medicine in Israel, is published in English by the Israel Medical Association.

The Israel Medical Association Journal (IMAJ) was initiated in 1999. The editor is Prof. Yehuda Shoenfeld and the deputy editors are Prof. Shuki (Joshua) Shemer and Prof. Gad Keren.

IMAJ is distributed to 16,000 members of the Israel Medical Association and to additional subscribers in Israel and worldwide. It replaces the former Israel Journal of Medical Sciences that was in existence for 30 years.

IMAJ publishes original articles and reviews, editorials, case reports and other feature columns, such as Images in Clinical Medicine, conference reports, book reviews, medical education, current and historical viewpoints, Israel’s ultra-new state-of-the-art technology for diagnosis and treatment. Unique is IMAJ’s coverage of specific regional issues - infectious and parasitic diseases, effects of the local environment on morbidity and mortality, Jewish genetic diseases, epidemiology of subpopulations - relevant to medical practice in distant countries with similar biopsychosocial problems.

Israel Medical Association Journal, 2 Twin Towers, 11th floor, 35 Jabotinsky Street, P.O. Box 3604, Ramat Gan 52136, Israel

Israel Medical Association Journal is available free of charge as an Open Access journal on the internet. Abstracts available online. Articles available in PDF format. Current Issue: Vol 7 Issue 6 June 2005

Source: News of New Electronic Journals Mailing List posting of 20 June 2005

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Milestone

OANews Blog reported that on June 10, 2005 the Directory of Open Access Journals logged its 1600th open-access, peer-reviewed journal.

Elsevier's Scirus Indexing Open Access Repositories

"Scirus, the academic search engine from Elsevier, has launched a Repository Search Service. From yesterday's press release: 'Elsevier today announced that its free science-specific search engine, Scirus, has launched Scirus Repository Search, a new service developed to support institutional repositories. T-Space, the University of Toronto's institutional repository, is Scirus' first collaboration. Scirus has added T-Space to its index and is also providing additional search capabilities on the T-Space website at no cost. The new initiative will make the intellectual output from the University of Toronto, the leading and most distinguished university in Canada, easier to find on both T-Space and the Scirus website. Scirus indexed the full-text of T-Space's complete repository, consisting of articles, datasets, preprints, presentations, technical reports and more. By optimizing its field capturing, Scirus allows users to search on all important bibliographical information such as author, title and keyword. As with all valuable sources, Scirus will brand the search results so that users can easily identify T-Space content in the results list...."Elsevier understands that an increasing amount of valuable content is currently held in academic repositories and has launched Scirus Repository Search to support institutes with these initiatives," said Ammy Vogtlander, general manager of Scirus. "Scirus is proud to work with the University of Toronto to ensure the content found in T-Space is made available to Scirus' one million users."' (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) Update. Scirus keeps an online list of its sources, including many OA sources.

Source: Peter Suber. Scirus indexing OA repositories. Open Access News Blog (8 June 2005) [FullText]

Major New Study on Self-Archiving Released

"Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown, Open access self-archiving: An author study, Key Perspectives, May 2005. (Repository copy.) Another major (97 pp.) study from the scholars of scholarly communication at Key Perspectives. The six page Introduction is an excellent stand-alone primer on self-archiving and its benefits, answering the most common questions and objections.

From the executive summary: 'Almost half (49%) of the respondent population have self-archived at least one article during the last three years in at least one of the three possible ways ? by placing a copy of an article in an institutional (or departmental) repository, in a subject-based repository, or on a personal or institutional website... [T]he main growth in self-archiving activity over the last year has been in these latter two more structured, systematic methods for providing open access. Use of institutional repositories for this purpose has doubled and usage has increased by almost 60% for subject-based repositories. Postprints (peer-reviewed articles) are deposited more frequently than preprints (articles prior to peer review) except in the longstanding self-archiving communities of physics and computer science... Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst the most prolific authors... There is still a substantial proportion of authors unaware of the possibility of providing open access to their work by self-archiving. Of the authors who have not yet self-archived any articles, 71% remain unaware of the option. With 49% of the author population having self-archived in some way, this means that 36% of the total author population (71% of the remaining 51%), has not yet been appraised of this way of providing open access....The findings here show that 20% of authors found some degree of difficulty with the first act of depositing an article in a repository, but that this dropped to 9% for subsequent depositions....Only 10% of authors currently know of the SHERPA/RoMEO list of publisher permissions policies with respect to self-archiving, where clear guidance as to what a publisher permits is provided... Almost all (98%) of authors use some form of bibliographic service to locate articles of interest in closed archives such as publisher websites, but only a much smaller proportion of people (up to 30%) are yet using the specialised OAI search engines to navigate the open access repositories. Nevertheless, at the time of this survey, 72% of authors were using Google to search the web for scholarly articles... The vast majority of authors (81%) would willingly comply with a mandate from their employer or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an institutional or subject-based repository. A further 13% would comply reluctantly; 5% would not comply with such a mandate.'

From the Introduction: 'In a separate exercise to this present study, we asked the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what their experiences have been over the 14 years that arXiv has been in existence. We asked how many subscriptions have been lost as a result of arXiv. Both societies said they could not identify any losses of subscriptions for this reason....Moreover, both societies say that they do not view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the opposite, in fact) and this is underlined by the fact that the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror site at the Brookhaven National Laboratory ? hardly the action of a society with its back to the wall because of that repository.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Major new Key Perspectives study of self-archiving. OANews Blog (10 June 2005) [FullText]

On the Launch of the Open Access Law Project

"From Lessig blog posting yesterday: 'Following my whining about a copyright agreement I was asked by Minnesota Law Review to sign (and an update to that complaint: Minnesota was very gracious about changing the contract once I asked them), Dan Hunter of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Michael Carroll of Villanova Law School, and on the Creative Commons board, began pulling together an Open Access Law Project, as part of the Science Commons....We were motivated to launch this project by the recognition that in fact, there is no substantial institutional resistance to open access publishing in law. The major commercial publishers of online journals, Lexis and Westlaw, don't require exclusivity. Any resistance is therefore primarily inertia. Our hope was to coordinate efforts to overcome this inertia, and make access to legal materials cheaper and more universal. Each part of this project will evolve as we learn more about how best to achieve these goals. We're looking for more feedback, and are opening a discussion list for input. You can help this project by encouraging other authors and journals to sign on. If you're a law student, then send an email to your professors asking them to join. The same with law journals you might have connections with. We are eager to establish a minimum set of Open Access Law standards quickly, so that others can begin to experiment with better, more ambitious, ideas.' "

Source: Peter Suber. Lessig on the launch of the Open Access Law Project. OANB (9 June 2005) [FullText]

National Library of Medicine Medline Citations Will Note NIH Funding

"To support the NIH public-access policy, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has added two new research support headings to the 2005 MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) vocabulary: (1) Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural and (2) Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural. The headings will be added to new Medline citations but not retroactively to existing citations."

Source: Peter Suber. Medline citations will note NIH funding. OAN Blog (8 June 2005) [FullText]

New Generation of Doctors and Nurses Will Need Open Access

"MedGadget asked eight anonymous pundits to write fragments of a commencement address to this year's new doctors and nurses. Excerpt from one of them: 'Today's graduates will need open access to science and medicine research and news if they hope to stay informed. So we at Medgadget were disturbed the American Medical Association moved to restrict access to their AMNews site. Despite rallying our colleagues, the service was limited to AMA members on June 1st. A free workaround still exists, however, for PDA users of AvantGo. Vive la resistance!' "

Source: Peter Suber. New doctors and nurses will need OA. Open Access News Blog (8 June 2005) [FullText]

UK PubMed Central To Be Developed Soon

"Mark Chillingworth, PubMed Central hits UK, June 8, 2005. Excerpt: 'Six biomedical research funding bodies and charities, headed by the Wellcome Trust, have formed an alliance to create the UK's own PubMed Central, a British version of the US repository of openly available peer-reviewed scientific research. UK PubMed Central will provide free access to its digital archive, alongside links to the US National Library of Medicine operated by PubMed Central. Wellcome has aligned with the British Heart Foundation (BHF), the Arthritis Research Campaign, two biomedical research councils and JISC to back the project. "Digital archives such as PubMed Central add enormous value to research," said Dr Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust. "Everyone will be able to read the results of the research that we fund." The consortium has called on organisations interested in hosting UK PubMed Central to place tenders by 10 June... "We are committed to achieving the maximum impact from the research we fund - that means making the findings accessible to those who most want to see them," added Walport. Only final peer-reviewed papers would be placed on the repository, said a Wellcome spokesman. "If everything is peer-reviewed it doesn't sacrifice the quality." The Wellcome Trust has revised its depositing rules. From 1 October 2005, all new research projects it funds will have to be deposited within six months of publication.'"

Source: Peter Suber. More on the UK PMC. OANews Blog (12 June 2005) [FullText]

PM Ariel Sharon's Speech on Science: The Goal is to Advance Israel to New Horizons of Scientific Excellence and Technological Developments

"I am happy to be here tonight and commend the initiative of the Ministry of Science and Technology and of all those who assisted in organizing this conference. I regret that in light of all my other tasks I was not able to spend more time with you and learn more about the achievements and requirements of science in Israel.

Lately, I have been investing most of my time in the Disengagement Plan. I ensure you that the Disengagement Plan will be implemented. It is the right and best possible step for the State of Israel.

I also believe that following this step, which is a very difficult and painful step, security in Israel will increase, and I also believe that investments will grow and the level of interest in Israel's technological and scientific know-how will go up. I am also confident that the need for scientists will increase and I am certain that you will all have much more to do. I hope that it will go as smoothly as possible and we will be able to advance towards a political agreement, and following that, G-d willing, also towards peace.

It is good to see that while we are engaged in the implementation of the Disengagement Plan, there are those who are occupied with something which is no less important - the scientific advancement of the State of Israel and the entire human race. I am confident that, as all citizens of Israel will enjoy a better security and economic situation following the Disengagement Plan, so will the scientific community enjoy its benefits. I also hope that we will soon see the time in which the Prime Minister of Israel will be able to spend more time in scientific conferences and conventions and less time in political and security discussions.

The story of science in Israel is also that of a far-reaching vision. The leaders of the Jewish community in Israel, headed by Chaim Weitzman, understood at the beginning of the last century, that the future was science. And indeed, among the first, large factories established by the Zionist movement, were institutions of science and research - the Technion in Haifa, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Ziv Institute - which later became the Weizman Institute.

This investment soon paid off, when Israeli science, which flourished at their institutions - and at others which followed - made an unprecedented contribution to the people of Israel and its society. The accomplishments of Israeli science place Israel at the forefront of advanced countries in the world. Despite its small size, Israeli scientists publish approximately 6,000 scientific articles every year, and are placed third among scientists in the world at the rate at which they write articles.

The scientific and technological infrastructure built here over dozens of years allowed for the impressive success of Israeli high-tech firms, which places Israel in the global elite in this field. The knowledge-based industry contributed greatly to Israeli growth in the last 15 years, and today constitutes half of our industrial exports.

However, in a world in which science develops and renews itself at a dizzying pace, we must not rest on the laurels of yesterday's accomplishments nor even those of today. I am certain that you do not do so, and continue your efforts. Therefore, in order to preserve its national strength, Israel must continue nurturing its scientific might.

Israel must serve as a magnet for scientists - certainly Jewish scientists - from around the world. It must be a melting pot of breakthrough ideas and the birthplace of innovative technologies. It must continue investing in scientific infrastructures which will allow us to add scientific accomplishments in the future. In the next decade, Israel must establish its position as one of the leading countries in the field of nanotechnology and biotechnology, improve the national ability in the various engineering fields and develop fields of research vital to the future of Israel and the future of the planet - such as environmental science, planetary science, health and space.

I view it as a national duty to invest not only in research and academic institutes, but also in strengthening the connection between science and the community. It is our duty to promote science and technology education among the broadest possible public, primarily in peripheral areas and in population sectors in which access to science is unnatural and not self-evident - in order to bring youth and adults closer together as one, in the world of science.

This Conference, the Rehovot Conference for Science and Technology - at the initiative the Ministry of Science and Technology - which is gathering together all the officials in the fields of science and science policy in Israel - serves to lay the groundwork for the formulation of a comprehensive, national science policy.

This policy must take into account the human potential and financial ability of Israel and its economic, security and social needs. It must ensure the continuing advancement of science in Israel and the recruitment of government funded research and development to promote subjects and fields which are at the forefront of science today.

I am certain that the Rehovot Conference for Science and Technology will create a process in which all the relevant authorities are partners. And I expect that, at the next Conference which will, G-d willing, take place in another year, all the relevant authorities will present their stands regarding the national science policy. Of course, I would be happy to participate in your next conference.

Only cooperation - based on fruitful dialogue, deep examination and critique and agreement as to national goals - can lead to the formulation of a science policy which will steer the State of Israel to success in the years to come.

Our goal must be clear: to advance Israel to new horizons of scientific excellence and technological developments, which will assure the improvement in the quality of life in Israel, strengthen national security, increase the rate of growth and reinforce equal opportunities for all strata of the country's population.

Thank you, good luck and a happy Shavuot to all of you."

Source: Ariel Sharon. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Speech at the Rehovot Conference for Science and Technology - Weizmann Institute. Prime Minister Office Web site - Briefing Room - PM Speeches (9 June 2005) [FullText]

University of Bielefeld Resolution on Open Access

"On June 6, the University of Bielefeld adopted a resolution on open access (in German). It requests [fordert auf] that Bielefeld faculty deposit copies of their postprints in the Bielefeld institutional repository. It encourages and supports [ermutigt und unterst?them to submit their work to OA journals. Update 1. Richard Sietmann has written a news story (also in German) about the Bielefeld resolution for the June 8 issue of Heise Online. Update 2. Bielefeld has just registered its OA archiving policy at the Registry of Institutional OA Self-Archiving Policies."

Source: Peter Suber. Bielefeld resolution on OA. OENews Blog (6 June 2005) [FullText]

American Institute of Biological Sciences Special Symposia: Open Access Journal Publishing

Recap

AIBS convened a 1.5 day meeting on the topic of open access journal publishing. The first day was with the AIBS Council of member societies and organizations; the second day was with a larger group of attendees and guests. The meeting was sponsored by Burk and Associates.

Venue: Washington DC, 8-9 May 2005 Duration: One-and-a-half days
Speakers and Slide Presentations, in Chronological Order (A Meeting Transcript will be Posted Here in June 2005)
(Note: Contact speakers directly for permission to re-use slides)

8 May

1. "Libraries and Scholarly Publishers in an Open Access Environment" (view slides as PDF), Richard Fyffe, Assistant Dean of Libraries, University of Kansas, rfyffe@ku.edu

2. "The Economics of Open Access" (view slides as PDF) , Barbara Meyers, Meyers Consulting Services, mcsone@erols.com

3. "The Economics of Biology Journals and the Prospects for Open Access" (view slides as PDF) , Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington, cbergst@u.washington.edu

Panel (no slides)

Richard Fyffe, Assistant Dean of Libraries, University of Kansas, rfyffe@ku.edu , Martin Apple, Council of Scientific Society Presidents, cssp@acs.org ; Alan Kahan, Director of Communications, Entomological Society of America, akahan@entsoc.org ; Kent Holsinger, President-Elect, AIBS; Chair, BioOne, kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu ; Linda Rowan, Director of Government Affairs, American Geological Institute, rowan@agiweb.org ; Barbara Meyers, Meyers Consulting Services, mcsone@erols.com ; Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington, cbergst@u.washington.edu
Todd Carpenter, Director of Business Development, BioOne, todd@arl.org

9 May

1. "A Closer Look at Open Access" (view slides as PDF) , Mary Waltham, Publishing Consultant, Moderator, mary@marywaltham.com

2. "Free Access to Science?" (view slides as PDF) , Martin Frank, Executive Director, American Physiological Society and representative for the DC Principles Coalition, mfrank@The-APS.org

3. Heather Joseph, President, BioOne, heather@arl.org (no slides)
"The ALPSP/AAAS/HighWire study on Open Access" (view slides as PDF) Cara Kaufman, Kaufman-Wills Group, ckaufman@verizon.net

"Libraries and Scholarly Publishers in an Open Access Environment" (view slides as PDF) , Richard Fyffe, Assistant Dean of Libraries for Scholarly Communication, Univ. of Kansas, rfyffe@ku.edu

Panel

"The Economics of Biology Journals and the Prospects for Open Access" (view slides as PDF) , Carl Bergstrom, University of Washington, cbergst@u.washington.edu

"Building a Public Library of Science" (view slides as PDF) Catriona MacCallum, Senior Editor, Public Library of Science, Biology, cmaccallum@plos.org

"NIH Public Access Policy" (view slides as PDF) , David Gillikin, Head, MEDLARS Management Section, National Library of Medicine, NIH, gillikd@mail.nlm.nih.gov

"Scientific Communication in the Internet Age" (view slides as PDF) , Richard Johnson, Director, Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, rick@arl.org

Samuel Scheiner, National Science Foundation, sscheine@nsf.gov(no slides)

Kent Holsinger, President-Elect, AIBS; Chair, BioOne, kent@darwin.eeb.uconn.edu (no slides)

Martin Frank, Executive Director, American Physiological Society, mfrank@The-APS.org (no slides)
Panel

"A Society Publisher's Limited Foray into Open Access" (view slides as PDF) , Alan Kahan, Director of Communications, Entomological Society of America, akahan@entsoc.org "Launching a Cross-Disciplinary Open Access E-Journal." (view slides as PDF) Philippa J. Benson, Consulting Editor, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, p.benson@conservation.org

Richard Fyffe, Assistant Dean of Libraries for Scholarly Communication, Univ. of Kansas, rfyffe@ku.edu (no slides)
Heather Joseph, President, BioOne, heather@arl.org (no slides)
Barbara Meyers, Meyers Consulting Services, mcsone@erols.com (no slides)
Cara S. Kaufman, Kaufman-Wills Group, ckaufman@verizon.net (no slides)
Commentary (no slides)
Robert Harington, Global Science Publishing Director, Blackwell Publishing, RHarington@bos.blackwellpublishing.com
Trish Thomas, Executive Editor, U.S. Humanities and Social Science Journals, Oxford University Press,atricia.thomas@oupjournals.org
Wrap Up (no slides)
Mary Waltham, mary@marywaltham.com

Source: Symposium Home Page (last viewed 10 June 2005) [FullText]

Discussion List on OA topics for STM Journal Editors

"Alexei Koudinov, editor of the OA journal Neurobiology of Lipids, has launched an email discussion list on OA topics for STM journal editors. From the announcement: 'This is to invite STM Journal Editors (of both Open Access Journals and Subscription Journals) to join New Mailing List. The list is devoted to the issues of Open/Public Access Development, and is thought to be the forum to educate editors about new trends in scholarly publishing, new information technologies and opportunities, and the benefits and public demand for Open Access and publication integrity.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Discussion list on OA topics for STM journal editors. OANews Blog (6 June 2005) [FullText]

Revising German copyright Law to Permit Open Access

"Richard Sietmann, Wissenschaftliche Informationsversorgung, May 25, 2005. On a proposal to revise "fair use" under German copyright law in order to permit the copying and distribution of scientific research for teaching, research, or archival purposes.

Source: Peter Suber. Revising German copyright Law to Permit OA. OAN Blog (6 June 2005) [FullText]

Copyright and Free Culture

"Jason Griffey, The Perils of Strong Copyright: The American Library Association and Free Culture, a Master's Thesis at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004 (but newly deposited in the dLIST repository). Abstract: 'The current state of intellectual property law is labyrinthine in every sense: it is difficult to follow, full of blind alleys, and the only people who know the way through it are the ones who designed it in the first place. Pamela Samuelson notes in Towards a New Politics of Intellectual Property, "copyright industry groups have cultivated relationships with policy makers in the executive and legislative branches over a long period of time" (98) and these relationships have been used to maintain control over copyrighted materials far beyond the length of time of commercial success of said materials. James Boyle noted that "the ground rules of the information society are being laid down by lawyers (strike one) employed by the biggest players in the field (strike two) all with little public debate or press scrutiny." (Boyle, "Sold Out") My goal in this paper will be to examine the history of copyright, attempt to unite some of the disparate aspects of the open information meme, and finally to consider how this meme is being distributed (or not distributed) by academic librarians. I will also attempt to make prescriptive suggestions that might assist librarians in seeing the strengths of the Open Information memepool.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Copyright and free culture. OANews (6 June 2005) [FullText]

Association of Research Libraries List of University Statements on Scholarly Communication

"Karla Hahn, the ARL Director of Scholarly Communication, has compiled a list of university statements on scholarly communication in 2005. (PS: Also see Peter Suber list, which is not limited to 2005.)"

Source: Peter Suber. ARL list of university statements on scholarly communication. Open Access News (6 June 2005) [FullText]

New Mailing List for STM Journal Editors

Quoting Neurobiology of Lipids press release:

"This is to invite STM Journal Editors (of both Open Access Journals and Subscription Journals) to join New Mailing List. The list is devoted to the issues of Open/Public Access Development, and is thought to be the forum to educate editors about new trends in scholarly publishing, new information technologies and opportunities, and the benefits and public demand for Open Access and publication integrity.

The list also serves to build new generation of scholars-editors lacking dependency on commercial STM publishers.New mailing list subscriptions are presently moderated. To subscribe please send subscription request e.mail message to: oajeadmin[at]neurobiologyoflipids.org .

Please use the following subject: "subscribe oaje mailing list". In your subscription request message body please provide brief note on why you believe you should join OAJE mailing list, along with your affiliation details. After submitting subscription request, subscribers must reply to an e-mail from our mailing list system in order to be added to the mailing list.At present there is no post archive, so, in order to participate an interested individual have to subscribe to this mailing list. Noteworthy posts, however, will be available at Israel Scholar Communication Scrolls and other boards.

OAJE Mailing List is founded and presently moderated by Alexei Koudinov, MD, PhD, managing editor of the Neurobiology of Lipids. Dr. Koudinov position paper on Open Access is available in lay language.

This Press Release is prepared by Neurobiology of Lipids (ISSN 1683-5506), an Open Access peer-review journal published by the editorial group."

Alchemists of ACS Administration Won't be Allowed to Fool the Society and the Academics. Period

"The Open Access Working Group (OAWG) has publicly released its letter to Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH) in defense of PubChem. Excerpt: 'It is our understanding from press reports that the American Chemical Society (ACS) has called for NIH to unreasonably restrict PubChem, claiming it threatens the financial viability of ACS's Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). We believe that their concern is unfounded and that the American public is well served by continued development and maintenance of PubChem. Moreover, we feel it is not right for ACS/CAS - a tax-exempt organization that received funding from the National Science Foundation to create their chemical registry system - to now be lobbying against taxpayers' interests in this matter... We reject the ACS contention that PubChem will compete with the giant CAS. Not only is it implausible that NIH's modestly funded program would be a substitute for the wide range of resources integrated by CAS, but there appears to be remarkably little overlap in either content or likely users of PubChem and CAS. The taxpayer benefits of PubChem far outweigh any advantage in acceding to the ACS call to be protected. The prohibitively high price of CAS services limits their availability. For example, only about 1,000 universities have access to the CAS SciFinder Scholar service. That is a fraction of the thousands of institutions worldwide that support users who would benefit from access to PubChem.'"

Source: Peter Suber. Open Access Working Group supports PubChem against ACS. OA News (24 May 2005) [FullText]

The Wall Street Journal Story on Open Access

"Bernard Wysocki Jr., Scholarly Journals' Premier Status Is Diluted by Web, Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2005. Excerpt: 'From a stool at Yali's caf鬠near the University of California campus, Michael Eisen is loudly trashing the big players in academic publishing. Hefty subscription fees for journals are blocking scientific progress, he says, and academics who think they have full access to timely literature are kidding themselves. "They're just wrong," Dr. Eisen says. He suggests scholarly journals be free and accessible to everyone on the Web... For decades, traditional scholarly journals have held an exalted and lucrative position as arbiters of academic excellence, controlling what's published and made available to the wider community. These days, research is increasingly available on free university Web sites and through start-up outfits. Scholarly journals are finding their privileged position under attack... Two UC [University of California] scientists organized a world-wide boycott against a unit of Reed Elsevier - the Anglo-Dutch giant that publishes 1,800 periodicals - protesting its fees. The UC administration itself has jumped into the fray. It's urging scholars to deposit working papers and monographs into a free database in addition to submitting them for publication elsewhere. It has also battled with publishers, including nonprofits, to lower prices. "We have to take back control from the publishers," says Daniel Greenstein, associate vice provost for the UC system, which spends $30 million a year on scholarly periodicals... Some scholars think publishing should operate like the Linux computer operating system, where programmers build on each other's work in an ongoing, collaborative project. In the scholarly realm, a database called arXiv - pronounced "archive," as if the "x" were the Greek letter "chi" - has become a repository of scholarship in the physics field. It's owned and operated by Cornell University and partially supported by the National Science Foundation. If the UC administration has its way, something like that would be the norm throughout academia... Currently, the open-access movement makes up between 1% and 2% of the market, experts say. While that number seems small, the concept is assuming an important role channeling academic discontent.'"

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