Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Federal Research Public Access Act would require federal agencies with an extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make federally-funded research available for free online access by the general public, no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The Federal Research Public Access Act would:

• Require federal departments and agencies with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more, whether funded totally or partially by a government department or agency, to submit an electronic copy of the final manuscript that has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
• Ensure that the manuscript is preserved in a stable digital repository maintained by that agency or in another suitable repository that permits free public access, interoperability, and long-term preservation.
• Require that each taxpayer-funded manuscript be made available to the public online and without cost, no later than six months after the article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt:

The NIH public-access policy did not cause either an increase in the PIs' open-access awareness or a change in their publishing habits. The open-access advocates were supporters of the immediate free access to scientific information before the policy and provided their manuscripts free-of-cost before the policy’s mandate. The non-open-access advocates choose their publications based on quality criteria such as the journal’s prestige, impact factor, speed of publication and the attracted audience, while the article’s open-access availability is considered to be a plus. Furthermore, since a large number of journals comply with the NIH-policy, the participants did not have to change their publishing habits.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here is a selection of comments:

Publishers

• ACS Publications
• American Psychiatric Publishing
• Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
• Elsevier
• John Wiley & Sons
• Oxford University Press
• The Publishers Association
• SAGE Publishing
• Springer Science + Business Media
• Taylor & Francis
• Wolters Kluwer Health Ltd (UK)

Scholarly Professional Associations

• Acoustical Society of America
• American Anthropological Association
• American Association for Cancer Research
• American Association for Dental Research
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• The American Association of Immunologists
• American Association of Petroleum Geologists
• American Association of Physicists in Medicine
• American Astronomical Society
• American Educational Research Association
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Institute of Physics
• American Mathematical Society
• American Physical Society
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• The American Society for Cell Biology
• American Society for Investigative Pathology
• American Society for Nutrition
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Society for Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics
• American Society of Hematology
• The American Society of Human Genetics
• American Physiological Society
• American Psychological Association
• American Sociological Association
• Archaeological Institute of America
• The Association for Research in Vision and Ophtamology
• Botanical Society of America
• Ecological Society of America
• Genetics Society of America
• The Linnean Society of London
• The Optical Society of America
• Phycological Society of America
• Poultry Science Association
• Protein Society
• SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
• Society for Conservation Biology
• Zoological Society of London

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt:

HR 3699, the Research Works Act will be detrimental to the free flow of scientific information that was created using Federal funds. It is an attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind pay-walls, and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity. This is an affront to open government and open access to information created using public funds.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

We fully respect copyright law and the protection it affords content creators, owners, and users. The NIH Public Access Policy operates fully within current U.S. Copyright law as articles reporting on NIH funded research are copyrightable, and the copyright belongs to the author. The NIH Policy requires only the grant of a non-exclusive license to NIH, fully consistent with federal policies such as Circular A-110 and Circular A-102. The author is free to transfer some or all of the exclusive rights under copyright to a journal publisher or to assign these anywhere they so choose—a freedom crucial to the authors of scientific articles, who rightly want to determine where and how their work is distributed.

Under H.R. 3699, authors of articles reporting on federally funded research would face a new restriction. The proposed bill requires authors to seek the permission of a publisher before their work can be distributed through an online, networked government channel such as NIH’s PubMed Central, even if they themselves—as the author of the work and the relevant rights holder—have already consented to do so, potentially limiting the authors ability to distribute their work as widely as they may wish.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that—

1. causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
2. requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a call to action and a draft letter that can be modified and sent to legislators. Here's an excerpt from the call:

Supporters of public access need to speak out against this proposed legislation. We strongly urge you to contact these offices to express your opposition TODAY, or as soon as possible. To support you, draft letter text is available.

• Representative Issa
  @DarrellIssa
  http://issa.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=597&Itemid=73
  Fax: (202) 225-3303
• Representative Maloney
  @RepMaloney
  https://maloney.house.gov/contact-me/email-me%20(Using%20zip%20code%2010128-3679) [Navigate from home page to contact page instead.]
  Fax: (202) 225-4709
• Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – especially if you’re a constituent.
  http://1.usa.gov/zDqnne
• Your representative – through the ATA Action Center: http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc

Also, don’t miss a key opportunity to express support for the expansion of the NIH public-access policy to other federal science and technology agencies. There are six days left to respond to the White House requests for information (RFI) on public access to scholarly publications and data (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-1117.shtml).

Read more about it at "Publishers Applaud 'Research Works Act,' Bipartisan Legislation to End Government Mandates on Private-Sector Scholarly Publishing," "Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail Trying to Wag the Public Research Dog, Yet Again," and "Trying to Roll Back the Clock on Open Access: Research Works Act Introduced."

[Regular DigitalKoans posts resume on 1/17/12.]

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

We found that using trade laws to address the flow of infringing digital goods into the United States makes it possible to avoid many of the pitfalls that would arise from other legislative proposals currently being advanced to combat online infringement. Namely by putting the regulatory power in the hands of the International Trade Commission—versus a diversity of magistrate judges not versed in Internet and trade policy—will ensure a transparent process in which import policy is fairly and consistently applied and all interests are taken into account. When infringement is addressed only from a narrow judicial perspective, important issues pertaining to cybersecurity and the promotion of online innovation, commerce and speech get neglected. By approaching digital good infringement as a matter of regulating international commerce, we are able to take all of these factors into account.

Read more about it at "SOPA on the Ropes? Bipartisan Alternative to 'Net Censorship Emerges."

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

There are three pending copyright infringement lawsuits against universities and their libraries relating to their use of digital technology One of these cases, AIME v. UCLA, concerns the streaming of films to students as part of their course assignments. These lawsuits reflect a growing tension between rights holders and libraries, and some rights holders' increasingly belligerent enforcement mentality. Moreover, legislation such as SOPA and the PRO-IP Act passed in the 110th Congress, and the activities of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (a position created by the PRO-IP Act), encourage federal prosecutors to enforce copyrights law more aggressively.

In this environment, the criminal prosecution of a library for copyright infringement is no longer beyond the realm of possibility. For this reason, we strongly oppose the amendments described above, which would increase the exposure of libraries to prosecution. The broadening of the definition of willful infringement could result in a criminal prosecution if an Assistant U.S. Attorney believes that a library's assertion of fair use or one of the Copyright Act's other privileges is unreasonable. This risk is compounded with streaming, which SOPA would subject to felony penalties even if conducted without purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

| New: Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the scholarly publications RFI:

In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and broad public access to the peer-reviewed scholarly publications that result from federally funded scientific research. The public input provided through this Notice will inform deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications.

Here's an excerpt from the digital data RFI:

In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and encouraging broad public access to unclassified digital data that result from federally funded scientific research. The public input provided through this Notice will inform deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's Interagency Working Group on Digital Data.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A bipartisan group in the House today introduced legislation that expands protections for America's intellectual property (IP) and combats the illegal distribution of counterfeit goods via rogue websites. The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) allows the Attorney General to seek injunctions against foreign websites that steal and sell American innovations and products. The bill increases criminal penalties for individuals who traffic in counterfeit medicine and military goods, which put innocent civilians and American soldiers at risk. And it improves coordination between IP enforcement agencies in the U.S.

Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge issued a statement about the bill. Here's an excerpt:

The new House legislation (HR 3261) is an unwarranted expansion of government power to protect one special interest. The bill would overturn the long-accepted principles and practices of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice and takedown process in favor of a one-sided enforcement mechanism that is far more broad than existing law while not attempting to protect the rights of anyone accused of copyright infringement.

In addition, anyone who writes about, or links to, a site suspected of infringement could also become a target of government action. The bill also features the now well-known dangers to the engineering of the Internet domain-name system (DNS), endangering Internet security while requiring Internet Service Providers and search engines to take on vast new responsibilities to block access to suspected sites.

Read more about it at "House Version of Rogue Websites Bill Adds DMCA Bypass, Penalties for DNS Workarounds."

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt:

‘(2) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if–

‘(A) the offense consists of 10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works; and

‘(B)(i) the total retail value of the performances, or the total economic value of such public performances to the infringer or to the copyright owner, would exceed $2,500; or

‘(ii) the total fair market value of licenses to offer performances of those works would exceed $5,000;’

Read more about it at "New Bill Upgrades Unauthorized Internet Streaming to a Felony" and “U.S. Bill To Criminalize Illicit Movie/Music Streaming.”

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the bill:

Artículo 37. Difusión en acceso abierto.

1. Los agentes públicos del Sistema Español de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación impulsarán el desarrollo de repositorios, propios o compartidos, de acceso abierto a las publicaciones de su personal de investigación, y establecerán sistemas que permitan conectarlos con iniciativas similares de ámbito nacional e internacional.
2. El personal de investigación cuya actividad investigadora esté financiada mayoritariamente con fondos de los Presupuestos Generales del Estado hará pública una versión digital de la versión final de los contenidos que le hayan sido aceptados para publicación en publicaciones de investigación seriadas o periódicas, tan pronto como resulte posible, pero no más tarde de doce meses después de la fecha oficial de publicación.
3. La versión electrónica se hará pública en repositorios de acceso abierto reconocidos en el campo de conocimiento en el que se ha desarrollado la investigación, o en repositorios institucionales de acceso abierto.
4. La versión electrónica pública podrá ser empleada por las Administraciones Públicas en sus procesos de evaluación.
5. El Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación facilitará el acceso centralizado a los repositorios, y su conexión con iniciativas similares nacionales e internacionales.
6. Lo anterior se entiende sin perjuicio de los acuerdos en virtud de los cuales se hayan podido atribuir o transferir a terceros los derechos sobre las publicaciones, y no será de aplicación cuando los derechos sobre los resultados de la actividad de investigación, desarrollo e innovación sean susceptibles de protección.

Here's the Google Translate version:

Article 37. Open access dissemination.

1. The public agents of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation will drive the development repositories, own or shared access open to the publications of its research staff, and establish systems to connect with similar initiatives at national and international.
2. The research staff whose activity research is financed mainly with funds from the State Budget will released a digital version of the final version of contents which have been accepted for publication serial research publications or periodicals, as soon as practicable, but no more later than twelve months after the official date publication.
3. The electronic version will be published in repositories open access recognized in the field knowledge which has developed research or open access institutional repositories.
4. The public electronic version can be used by the government in its processes evaluation.
5. The Ministry of Science and Innovation will facilitate centralized access to repositories, and their connection with similar national and international initiatives.
6. This is without prejudice to agreements under which they have attributed or transferred to third parties rights publications and do not apply when the rights to results of research activities, development and eligible for protection innovation.

Read more about it at "The Congress of Deputies Gives Green Light to Science Act" (in Spanish), "Spain Passes New Science Law," and "Spanish Congress Passes the Law on Science, Technology and Innovation with Open Access Mandate."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PROTECT IP Act, follows bipartisan legislation introduced in 2010, which won the unanimous support of Senate Judiciary Committee members. The PROTECT IP Act narrows the definition of a rogue website, while ensuring that law enforcement can get at the "worst-of-the-worst" websites dedicated to selling infringing goods. Copyright infringement and the sale of counterfeit goods reported cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs, as well as billions of dollars in lost tax revenue for federal, state and local governments. . . .

The PROTECT IP Act will provide law enforcement with important tools to stop websites dedicated to online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods, which range from new movie and music releases, to pharmaceuticals and consumer products. Key updates to the PROTECT IP Act include:

• A narrower definition of an Internet site "dedicated to infringing activities";
• Authorization for the Attorney General to serve an issued court order on a search engine, in addition to payment processors, advertising networks and Internet service providers;
• Authorization for both the Attorney General and rights holders to bring actions against online infringers operating an internet site or domain where the site is "dedicated to infringing activities," but with remedies limited to eliminating the financial viability of the site, not blocking access;
• Requirement of plaintiffs to attempt to bring an action against the owner or registrant of the domain name used to access an Internet site "dedicated to infringing activities" before bringing an action against the domain name itself;
• Protection for domain name registries, registrars, search engines, payment processors, and advertising networks from damages resulting from their voluntary action against an Internet site "dedicated to infringing activities," where that site also "endangers the public health," by offering controlled or non-controlled prescription medication.

Read more about it at "Leahy's Protect IP Bill Even Worse Than COICA," "The 'PROTECT IP' Act: COICA Redux," and "Senate Bill Amounts to Death Penalty for Web Sites."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today, California Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) announced the Reader Privacy Act of 2011 – legislation that would require government agencies to seek a warrant or court order in order to access consumers' reading records from bookstores and online retailers.  SB 602 would establish consumer protections for book purchases similar to long-established privacy laws for library records.

"Current law is completely inadequate when it comes to protecting one's privacy for book purchases, especially considering the increasing popularity of online shopping and electronic books," said Yee. "Individuals should be free to buy books without fear of government intrusion and witch hunts. If law enforcement has reason to suspect wrongdoing, they can obtain a warrant for such information."

Many bookstores already collect information about readers and their purchases.  Digital book services can collect even more detailed information including which books are browsed, how long each page is viewed, and even digital notes made in the margins.

Historically, sensitive reader information has come under fire. During the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, Americans were questioned about whether they had read Marx or Lenin. In the years following September 11, 2001, the FBI sought patron information from more than 200 libraries.

Just this past year, Amazon was asked by the North Carolina Department of Revenue to turn over 50 million purchase records including books, videos, and other expressive material. 

SB 602 will update California state law to ensure that government and third parties cannot access Californians' reading records without proper justification. . . .

SB 602 will receive its first hearing in Senate Judiciary Committee in April.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |