Category: Open Access

"The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries"

Sigi Jöttkandt has self-archived "The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

Librarians often champion open access (OA) as a sustainable alternative to the current scholarly communications system, which is widely accepted as being in a state of crisis. However, there has been little insight into how far libraries are making this support tangible by providing access to OA publications in their OPACs and other library pathways. This study conducted a large-scale survey of US library holdings to determine the extent that records of journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals are held by WorldCat-affiliated Academic libraries. It then followed up with a questionnaire inquiring into the attitudes and practices of librarians from 100 libraries that were ranked highest out of the total population in terms of their holdings of DOAJ journals. The main objective of the study was to develop a better understanding of the factors influencing the incorporation of OA materials into a university library’s holdings, where and by what means they typically appear on library websites, and how librarians feel about having these materials in their collections. Our findings suggest that the majority (54%) of WorldCat-affiliated US academic libraries have at least one record for a DOAJ journal in their holdings. It additionally suggests that librarians from institutions holding high numbers of DOAJ records generally have very positive attitudes towards OA, even though most of the respondents from these institutions were largely unaware that their holdings were more heavily weighted towards DOAJ records than at comparable institutions. Regarding library selection of OA titles, a journal’s subject matter was highlighted as a more important consideration than its access model. Additional findings suggest that large publishers of OA journals tend to have a higher representation in library holdings than smaller independent publishers.

Report on Open Repository Development in Developing and Transition Countries

The eIFL-OA Program has released Report on Open Repository Development in Developing and Transition Countries.

Here's an excerpt:

This study was conducted with the cooperation of eIFL.net, the University of Kansas Libraries, the DRIVER project and Key Perspectives Ltd. The aim was to create an inventory of current digital repository activities in developing and transition countries at both the infrastructure and services level. This is the first attempt to collect such data about digital repository activity in developing and transition countries and we hope this will serve as a useful resource for promoting open access and repository development in these regions.

Serials Crisis: "California against Nature"

Peter Suber has published "California against Nature" in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

* If publishers have been accelerating into a brick wall for decades, and libraries have been warning about the inevitable collision for decades, then why hasn't there been a collision before now?

There are two answers. First, many collisions have already occurred, even if they came and went without the same media attention. Universities have been canceling titles by the hundreds—and in the case of big-deal cancellations, by the thousands—for years. Even when collisions are incremental and cumulative rather than sudden and explosive, they have the same finality. And they have the same catastrophic effect on access to the portion of new research that is metered out to paying customers.

Second, when universities renewed more titles than they could realistically afford, it's not because found previously undiscovered or undisclosed pots of money. It's because they made painful cuts in order to find the money. Most of these cuts came from their book budgets, extending a serials crisis in the sciences to a monograph crisis in the humanities. The long series of small collisions is a measure of the pain universities have endured to postpone a wider and larger one.

At some point there really isn't any money left, or the money can only be found through cuts more painful than journal cancellations. After several decades of hyperinflationary price increases, followed by a severe recession, continuing business as usual will bring a critical mass of universities to that critical point. Publishers aren't just witnesses to this impending crunch. Those that continue to charge hyperinflationary price increases are accelerating it. Those that won't survive the resulting shake-out, even if their own prices had been moderate and affordable, will be co-victims with researchers and research institutions.

THATCamp "Manifesto for the Digital Humanities"

THATCamp Paris 2010 issued a "Manifesto for the Digital Humanities." THATCamp is a "a user-generated 'unconference' on digital humanities."

Here's an excerpt:

9. We call for open access to data and metadata, which must be documented and interoperable, both technically and conceptually.

10. We support the dissemination, exchange and free modification of methods, code, formats and research findings.

11. We call for the integration of digital humanities education within social science and humanities curricula. We also wish to see the creation of diplomas specific to the digital humanities, and the development of dedicated professional education. Finally, we want such expertise to be considered in recruitment and career development.

12. We commit to building a collective expertise based upon a common vocabulary, a collective expertise proceeding from the work of all the actors involved. This collective expertise is to become a common good. It is a scientific opportunity, but also an opportunity for professional insertion in all sectors.

13. We want to help define and propagate best practices, corresponding to needs identified within or across disciplines, which should derive and evolve from debate and consensus within the communities concerned. The fundamental openness of the digital humanities nevertheless assures a pragmatic approach to protocols and visions, which maintains the right to coexistence of different and competing methods, to the benefit of both thought and practice.

14. We call for the creation of scalable digital infrastructures responding to real needs. These digital infrastructures will be built iteratively, based upon methods and approaches that prove successful in research communities.

Digital Video Presentations from the University of North Texas’ Open Access Symposium

The University of North Texas has released digital videos of the presentations at its 5/18/10 Open Access Symposium.

Here's a representative sample of the presentations:

Springer to Offer New Open Access STM Journals

Springer will offer new open access science, technology, and medicine (STM) journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Springer is expanding its open access offering to all disciplines. SpringerOpen will cover all disciplines within the science, technology and medicine (STM) fields and will be offered in cooperation with BioMed Central. The entire content of SpringerOpen journals—including research articles, reviews, and editorials—are fully and immediately open access, and are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No subscription is needed.

"We are seeing an increasing interest from our authors and from funders in all areas for open access publishing options and have responded to a need in the current market," said Wim van der Stelt, EVP Business Development, Springer. "We are happy to serve our authors and editorial boards with the publishing options they want and are also pleased to supply universities, research institutions and our other patrons with the ability to use this content online freely and conveniently."

SpringerOpen journals are e-only journals. Springer is committed to delivering high-quality articles and ensuring rapid publication as with its traditional journals, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process. The final articles are not only published in a timely manner on Springer's online information platform SpringerLink, but are also distributed to archives such as PubMed Central and to institutional repositories as requested.

SpringerOpen journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work. According to this license, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights. The journals ask the authors to pay an article-processing charge, in accordance with market standards.

"Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009"

Bo-Christer Björk et al. have published "Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009" in PLoS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Methodology/Principal Findings

The proportion of peer reviewed scholarly journal articles, which are available openly in full text on the web, was studied using a random sample of 1837 titles and a web search engine. Of articles published in 2008, 8.5% were freely available at the publishers' sites. For an additional 11.9% free manuscript versions could be found using search engines, making the overall OA percentage 20.4%. Chemistry (13%) had the lowest overall share of OA, Earth Sciences (33%) the highest. In medicine, biochemistry and chemistry publishing in OA journals was more common. In all other fields author-posted manuscript copies dominated the picture.

Conclusions/Significance

The results show that OA already has a significant positive impact on the availability of the scientific journal literature and that there are big differences between scientific disciplines in the uptake. Due to the lack of awareness of OA-publishing among scientists in most fields outside physics, the results should be of general interest to all scholars. The results should also interest academic publishers, who need to take into account OA in their business strategies and copyright policies, as well as research funders, who like the NIH are starting to require OA availability of results from research projects they fund. The method and search tools developed also offer a good basis for more in-depth studies as well as longitudinal studies.

ALA: "Copyright Update—June 2010"

The ALA Office of Government Relations has released "Copyright Update—June 2010."

Here's an excerpt:

Rep. Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, introduced The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801) on February 3, 2009. Unfortunately, this not-so-new bill seeking to amend copyright code and create a new category of copyrighted work differs only in the bill number assigned from its predecessor in the 110th Congress (H.R. 6845) that ultimately died in the House Judiciary Committee.

Just as in the last Congress, H.R. 801 negates or reverses the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy currently in place, rolling back hard-fought progress on public access to taxpayer-funded NIH research on the Internet. The bill would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. Library advocates should continue to express to their members of Congress they strongly oppose H.R. 801, as it seeks to amend copyright law and reverse the NIH Public Access Policy.

Open Data: Panton Principles Authors Named SPARC Innovators

The authors of the Panton Principles have been named as SPARC Innovators.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Science is based on building on, reusing, and openly criticizing the published body of scientific knowledge. For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavors, it is crucial that science data be made open.

That's the belief of four leaders who have put forth a groundbreaking set of recommendations for scientists to more easily share their data—The Panton Principles—and who have been named the latest SPARC Innovators for their work.

The authors of The Panton Principles are:

  • Peter Murray-Rust, chemist at the University of Cambridge;
  • Cameron Neylon, biochemist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, England;
  • Rufus Pollock, co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation and Mead Fellow in Economics, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge;
  • John Wilbanks, vice president for Science, Creative Commons, San Francisco.

The authors advocate making data freely available on the Internet for anyone to download, copy, analyze, reprocess, pass to software or use for any purpose without financial, legal or technical barriers. Through the Principles, the group aimed to develop clear language that explicitly defines how a scientist's rights to his own data could be structured so others can freely reuse or build on it. The goal was to craft language simple enough that a scientist could easily follow it, and then focus on doing science rather than law.

The Panton Principles were publicly launched in February of 2010, with a Web site at www.pantonprinciples.org to spread the word and an invitation to endorse. About 100 individuals and organizations have endorsed the Principles so far.

"This is the first time we're seeing diverse viewpoints crystallize around the pragmatic idea that we have to start somewhere, agree on the basics, and set the tone," says Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). "The authors are all leading thinkers in this area—as well as producers and consumers of data. They each approached the idea of open data from different directions, yet with the same drive to open up science, and ended up on common ground."

According to Pollock, "It's commonplace that we advance by building on the work of colleagues and predecessors—standing on the shoulders of giants. In a digital age, to build on the work of others we need something very concrete: access to the data of others and the freedom to use and reuse it. That's what the Panton Principles are about."

To read the full June 2010 SPARC Innovator profile, visit http://www.arl.org/sparc/innovator.

RIAN, Ireland's National Portal for Open Access, Launched

RIAN, Ireland’s national open access portal, has been launched by the Irish Universities Association Librarians' Group.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Ireland’s new national portal for Open Access to Irish published research goes live today. RIAN – http://www.rian.ie will act as a single point of access to national research output, and contains content harvested from the institutional repositories of the seven Irish Universities and Dublin Institute of Technology. RIAN will significantly increase the visibility and impact of Irish research and will expand to harvest content from other Irish Open Access providers as the service develops.

A national network of institutional repositories will increase the exposure of national research output, and allows services, such as enhanced searching, and statistics generation, to be developed using economies of scale. RIAN will demonstrate the impact of research to potential funders, who recognise the value of wider research dissemination.

The Irish Government has identified growth in research as critical to its future as a knowledge economy. Raising the research profile is a key strategy in the Universities’ strategic plans, and the ability to showcase research output and identify institutional research strengths is extremely important in attracting new funding and high quality staff.

The development of RIAN was managed by the Irish Universities Association Librarians' Group and is supported by the Association. This three year project was equally funded by the Universities and the Irish Government’s Strategic Innovation Fund which is administered by the Higher Education Authority.

SPARC Webcast Released: Open Access Week 2010 Kick-Off Planning Event

SPARC has released a webcast of its Open Access Week 2010 Kick-Off Planning Event.

Here's an excerpt from the event's press release:

Open Access Week (OAW) 2010 has been declared for October 18th to 24th and promises to be the biggest event of its kind so far. Already, participation promises to exceed previous years', which included hundreds of campuses and research organizations in dozens of countries.

The success of the event is due to both the progress of Open Access in the world and the efforts and commitment of individuals at institutions across the world. And, every year, participants gather to share experiences, lessons, challenges, and opportunities in using Open Access Week to create change at the local level.

Please join us June 2nd for an Open Access Week 2010 kick-off planning session to learn about this year's plans and current resources, including the new openaccessweek.org Web site. We'll also discuss how two teams worked successfully to capture the attention of policy makers, faculty, and others to advance change in 2009. Presenters will include:

  • Andrew Waller, Licensing and Negotiations Librarian, Collections Services, University of Calgary—site of the first Canadian open-access publishing fund
  • Jamaica Jones, Special Projects Librarian, National Center for Atmospheric Research – the first NSF-funded agency to adopt an open-access policy
  • Jennifer McLennan, Open Access Week Program Director and Director of Programs & Operations for SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)

Digital Video of the Age of Open Access: New Paradigm for Universities and Researchers Session

The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences has released a digital video of the Age of Open Access: New Paradigm for Universities and Researchers session at Concordia University. (No audio during first 48 seconds.)

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Significant technological advances in recent years have made research more accessible than ever. Funding agencies now require researchers to make their findings accessible in open access journals, which have grown significantly in number. Universities everywhere are adopting policies mandating their researchers to post a copy of their published work on institutional repositories accessible to the public. These changes in the way scholarly content is made available are raising the many questions that will be the focus of this panel discussion. What challenges are facing universities that want to promote greater accessibility to their faculties research? What support and infrastructure are necessary for the journals to continue to survive (or better still, thrive) in this new environment? What are the choices and challenges facing researchers interested in advancing their research?

Join moderator Guy Berthiaume (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) at this panel discussion with John Willinsky (Stanford University), Michael Geist (University of Ottawa), Heather Joseph (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington), and Gerald Beasley (Concordia University).

Open Access in Italy: Report 2009

SELL (Southern European Libraries Link) has released Open Access in Italy: Report 2009.

Here's an excerpt:

In Italy the OA movement has mainly pursued a "bottom up approach." Librarians, IT professionals, senior researchers, early adopters in individual universities and research centres have been actively involved in promoting awareness on OA issues, in implementing repositories, in planning projects, writing policies, developing tools. Initially, the academic institutional hierarchies failed to take any clear stand on the issue.

No specific national funding has been allocated for open access initiatives and in most cases the implementation of the Open Archive was financed with ordinary budget expenditures.

In a limited number of cases (i.e. University of Cagliari, University of Naples Parthenope, University of Sassari, and University of Trieste) the repositories were successfully funded under Regional spending. To date neither the government nor the Ministry of Education and Research have made any recommendations on this matter or provided any funding. Parliament has made no stand on the issue.

Presentations from the University of North Texas Open Access Symposium

Presentations from the University of North Texas Open Access Symposium are now available.

Here are the PDF files:

Open Data Study

The Open Society Institute's Transparency and Accountability Initiative has released the Open Data Study.

Here's an excerpt:

There are substantial social and economic gains to be made from opening government data to the public. The combination of geographic, budget, demographic, services, education and other data, publicly available in an open format on the web, promises to improve services as well as create future economic growth.

This approach has been recently pioneered by governments in the United State and the United Kingdom (with the launch of two web portals – www.data.gov and www.data.gov.uk respectively) inspired in part by applications developed by grassroots civil society organisations ranging from bicycle accidents maps to sites breaking down how and where tax money is spent. In the UK, the data.gov.uk initiative was spearheaded by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

This research, commissioned by a consortium of funders and NGOs under the umbrella of the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, seeks to explore the feasibility of applying this approach to open data in relevant middle income and developing countries. Its aim is to identify the strategies used in the US and UK contexts with a view to building a set of criteria to guide the selection of pilot countries, which in turn suggests a template strategy to open government data.

Nature Publishing Group Adds Open Access Options for 7 Journals

The Nature Publishing Group has added open access options for 7 more journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce open access options for seven further journals. Twenty-five journals published by NPG now offer authors an open access option, including all 15 academic journals owned by NPG.

American Journal of Gastroenterology, Bone Marrow Transplantation, Gene Therapy, International Journal of Obesity, Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, Oncogene, and Leukemia have all recently introduced open access options. Authors publishing in these journals can now choose to make their article open access on payment of an article processing charge (APC). . . .

Including the American Journal of Gastroenterology and Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, seven journals published by NPG on behalf of societies offer open access options. Other journals in this portfolio with an open access are: British Journal of Cancer, The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports, European Journal of Human Genetics and Molecular Therapy. . . .

Launched in April 2010, Nature Communications is the first Nature-branded online-only journal with an open access option. In 2009, NPG introduced open access options on twelve of its academic journals.

NPG also publishes two fully open access journals: Cell Death and Disease and Molecular Systems Biology. Cell Death & Disease, launched in January 2010, is the open access sister title to Cell Death & Differentiation. Launched in 2005, Molecular Systems Biology is published in association with the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and has a 2008 Impact Factor of 12.243.

NPG's self-archiving policy ensures that authors of original research papers can comply with funder mandates for public access, regardless of which NPG journal they publish in. In addition, NPG offers a free Manuscript Deposition Service into PubMed Central and UK PubMed Central on 43 of its titles.

Open Source Data Registry Software: CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) Version 1.0 Released

The Open Knowledge Foundation has released CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) version 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As well as being used to power http://ckan.net and http://data.gov.uk CKAN is now helping run 7 data catalogues around the world including ones in Canada (http://datadotgc.ca / http://ca.ckan.net), Germany (http://de.ckan.net/) and Norway (http://no.ckan.net).

CKAN.net has also continued to grow steadily and now has over 940 registered packages:

Here's a description of CKAN from the project page:

CKAN is a registry or catalogue system for datasets or other "knowledge" resources. CKAN aims to make it easy to find, share and reuse open content and data, especially in ways that are machine automatable.

Special Issue of Research Library Issues on Strategies for Opening Up Content

ARL has published a special issue of Research Library Issues on strategies for opening up content.

Here's an excerpt from the press release :

The special issue focuses on approaches now being deployed to increase the amount of content that is open and available to the research library community and by extension the larger world.

In an introductory essay, guest editor Julia C. Blixrud, ARL Assistant Executive Director, Scholarly Communication, highlights the array of institutional, library, and author strategies now in use. She encourages the community to learn from the experiences of others as a way of identifying those strategies that have the best prospects for success in their own circumstances.

Other articles in the special issue are:

Open-Access Funds: Design and Implementation on Campus Webcast Available

SPARC has released a webcast about Open-Access Funds: Design and Implementation on Campus.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

SPARC consultant and author of a set of new SPARC resources, Greg Tananbaum, joined us to explore why institutions are launching open-access funds, what practical and policy issues go into such a decision, how faculty and administration have reacted to these funds, what the results to date have been, and what SPARC is doing to evaluate and track the impact of these funds. Members of the advisory group that helped to develop the guide and SPARC resource, and whose experience in operating funds on their campuses has been an essential resource for others in the space, were also available to field questions.

Draft of University of North Texas Policy on Open Access to Scholarly Works Released

The UNT Open Access Policy Committee has released its draft "University of North Texas Policy on Open Access to Scholarly Works."

Here's an excerpt:

In support of long-term stewardship and preservation of UNT faculty members’ scholarly works in digital form, the UNT community members agree to the following:

  • Each UNT community member deposits a final version of his/her scholarly works in to which he or she made substantial intellectual contributions in the UNT Libraries Scholarly Works repository.
  • Some scholarly works may have access constraints that limit or preclude access to individual works.
  • The Provost’s Designate will work with community members who deposit works into repository to ensure an appropriate level of access to individual scholarly works.
  • UNT Libraries will be responsible for the secure storage (including appropriate access constraints), stewardship, and preservation of all deposited scholarly works.

In support of greater access to scholarly works, the UNT community members agree to the following for peer-reviewed, accepted-for-publication, journal articles:

  • Immediate Deposit: Each UNT community member deposits an electronic copy of his/her final edited version after peer review and acceptance of each article, no later than the date of its publication. Deposit is made into the UNT Libraries Scholarly Works repository. The author is encouraged to make the deposit available to the public by setting access to the deposit as Open Access Immediately Upon Deposit.
  • Optional Delayed Open Access: Upon express direction by a UNT community member for an individual article, the Provost or Provost’s designate will adjust the Open Access Immediately Upon Deposit requirement to align with publishers’ policies regarding open access of self-archived works or the wishes of the community member
  • Licensing: Where not prohibited by a publisher, each UNT community member grants to UNT permission to make scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles to which he or she made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available in the UNT Libraries Scholarly Works repository for the purpose of open dissemination. Each UNT community member grants to UNT a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do so, provided that the articles are not sold. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the license for a particular article upon express direction by a community member.
  • Who Deposits: In the case of multiple authors from multiple institutions, where a UNT community member has made substantial intellectual contributions to the article, the UNT community member will deposit a copy of the article. In the case of multiple UNT authors, and where the lead author is from UNT, the lead author (or designate) will deposit a copy of the article.

To ensure this policy is effective, the following apply:

  • The Provost’s office will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its application, and recommending changes as necessary.
  • This policy will be reviewed by the Faculty Senate, in concert with the Provost’s office, every three years, and a report presented to the Faculty Senate.

Directory of Open Access Journals Tops 5,000 Journal Records

The Directory of Open Access Journals now contains records for more than 5,000 journals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Directory of Open Access Journals reaches new milestones—now 7 years of operation, now more than 5,000 journals, now more than 2,000 journals searchable on article level, very soon more than 400,000 articles searchable! . . .

San José State University Academic Senate Passes Resolution Supporting Open Access

The San José State University Academic Senate has passed "SS-S10-2, Sense of the Senate Resolution, Support for Open Access to Scholarly Work and Research."

Here's an excerpt:

Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate support the principle of open access to scholarly work and research, and

Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate support new models for scholarly publishing that will promote open access and are consistent with standards for peer review and scholarly excellence, and

Resolved: that the San José State University Academic Senate encourage the university to promote the use of the institutional repository—and other new and existing infrastructures—for the dissemination of knowledge created at SJSU to the local, state and global community.

Resolved: that the Academic Senate of San José State University continues to affirm the rights of faculty to publish in the publications of their choice.

Resolved: that the Academic Senate encourage the university to promote the use of the institutional repository and to develop a formal organizational process that shall clearly indicate:

  1. which academic unit (such as the Library) will manage acquisition and maintenance of open access material and issue communications regarding the use of the open access repository;
  2. the scope of the term "faculty" in relation to the open access archive;
  3. the procedure for notifying the faculty how to submit material into the repository;
  4. the nature of the material to be included in the repository;
  5. a procedure for identifying the costs of maintaining the repository and allocating funds to maintain the repository;
  6. a unit outside of the repository unit (such as the Provost Office) responsible for monitoring the progress of the repository and for resolving conflicts or uncertainties regarding the operation of the repository.

Queen's University Librarians and Archivists Pass Open Access Policy

Librarians and archivists at Queen's University have adopted an open access policy.

Here's the policy:

Librarians and archivists at Queen's University recognize the importance of open access to content creators and researchers in fostering new ideas, creating knowledge and ensuring that it is available as widely as possible. In keeping with our long-standing support of the Open Access movement, Queen's librarians and archivists move to adopt a policy which would ensure our research is disseminated as widely as possible and available in perpetuity through deposit in Queen's institutional repository, QSpace.

Policy Statement

Academic librarians and archivists at Queen's University [1] commit to making the best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works. They will endeavour to secure the right to self-archive their published materials, and will deposit these works in QSpace.

The Queen's University academic librarian and archivist complement grant Queen's University Libraries the non-exclusive right to make their scholarly publications accessible through self-archiving in the QSpace institutional repository subject to copyright restrictions.

Guidelines

This policy applies to all scholarly and professional work produced as a member of Queen's University academic staff produced as of the date of the adoption of this policy. Retrospective deposit is encouraged. Co-authored works should be included with the permission of the other author(s).

Examples of works include:

  • Scholarly and professional articles
  • Substantive presentations, including slides and text
  • Books/book chapters
  • Reports
  • Substantive pedagogical materials such as online tutorials

Works should be deposited in QSpace as soon as is possible, recognizing that some publishers may impose an embargo period.

This policy is effective as of 01/01/2010 and will be assessed a year after implementation.

[1] As defined by Collective Agreement 2008-2011, Article 25.1.5.

Internet Archive Makes over a Million DAISY Standard Digital Books Freely Available to Blind, Dyslexic, and Visually Impaired Users

The Internet Archive has made over one million digital books in the DAISY Standard for Digital Talking Books freely available to blind, dyslexic, and other visually impaired users.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

More than doubling the number of books available to print disabled people of all ages, today the Internet Archive launched a new service that brings free access to more than 1 million books — from classic 19th century fiction and current novels to technical guides and research materials — now available in the specially designed format to support those who are blind, dyslexic or are otherwise visually impaired. . . .

The 1 million+ books in the Internet Archive’s library for print disabled, are scanned from hard copy books then digitized into DAISY — a specialized format used by blind or other persons with disabilities, for easy navigation. Files are downloaded to devices that translate the text and read the books aloud for the user to enjoy. To access books visit: http://openlibrary.org/subjects/accessible_book. . . .

Older books are available from the Internet Archive’s unencrypted DAISY library and modern books can be accessed by "qualified users" through their NLS key — an encrypted code provided by the Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), that is dedicated to providing materials to the print disabled. Currently, over 800,000 people in the US are registered with the Library of Congress as being print disabled.

As of today, the Internet Archive offers over one million books for print disabled people. Other large libraries for the print disabled including NLS, Bookshare.org, and Reading for the Blind & Dyslexic.. . .

Most of the older books have been scanned from library collections, with newer books having been donated to the Internet Archive by companies such as the online bookseller Alibris, libraries and individuals.

The print disabled collection of books are now available through the Archive’s new Open Library site (www.openlibrary.org), which serves as a gateway to information about millions of hardcopy books and more than 1 million electronic books.

To access all books, a United States resident with print disabilities must register with the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/nls/signup.html.