Category: Open Access

President Bush Vetoes Bill Containing NIH Open Access Mandate

President Bush has vetoed the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill, which contained the NIH open access mandate.

Here's the open access mandate in the bill:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law

Here's Peter Suber's analysis of the President's veto:

  • First, don't panic.  This has been expected for months and the fight is not over.  Here's a reminder from my November newsletter:  "There are two reasons not to despair if President Bush vetoes the LHHS appropriations bill later this month.  If Congress overrides the veto, then the OA mandate language will become law.  Just like that.  If Congress fails to override the veto, and modifies the LHHS appropriation instead, then the OA mandate is likely to survive intact."  (See the rest of the newsletter for details on both possibilities.)
  • Also expected:  Bush vetoed the bill for spending more than he wants to spend, not for its OA provision.
  • Second, it's time for US citizens to contact their Congressional delegations again.  This time around, contact your Representative in the House as well as your two Senators.  The message is:  vote yes on an override of the President's veto of the LHHS appropriations bill.  (Note that the LHHS appropriations bill contains much more than the provision mandating OA at the NIH.)
  • The override votes—one in each chamber—haven't yet been scheduled.  They may come this week or they may be delayed until after Thanksgiving.  But they will come and it's not too early to contact your Congressional delegation.  For the contact info for your representatives (phone, email, fax, local offices), see CongressMerge.
  • Please spread the word!

Fedora Meets Web 2.0: Repository Redux Presentation from Access 2007

A digital video of Mark Leggott's (University Librarian, University of Prince Edward Island) presentation from Access 2007 is now available.

Here's an excerpt from the program that describes the talk:

The University of Prince Edward Island has embarked on a substantial project to support the institutions Administrative, Learning and Research communities using a Web 2.0/3.0 framework and the Fedora/Drupal/Moodle systems as the foundation. The session will describe the architecture and demo some of the core systems, such as Learn@UPEI, UPEI VRE (Virtual Research Environment) and some sample digital library collections.

Primary Research Group Publishes International Institutional Repository Survey

The Primary Research Group has published The International Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories. Paper and PDF versions are available at $89.50 each.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The study presents data from 56 institutional digital repositories from eleven countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, Turkey and other countries. The 121-page study presents more than 300 tables of data and commentary and is based on data from higher education libraries and other institutions involved in institutional digital repository development. . . .

Close to 41% of survey participants purchased software to develop their digital repositories. US-based institutions were much more likely than others to purchase software for this purpose. . . .

On average, a drop more than 12% of the content in the repositories came from pre-existing repositories maintained by academic departments or some other institutional unit.

A sixth of the libraries in the sample used Digital Commons software, and 28% of US-based repositories used this product. . . .

Those repositories in the sample that required less than 500 hours of labor per year had budgets of just less than $9,000 US. The largest repositories, those requiring 3,600 hours or more annually, had budgets averaging $145,444. 5.21% of the overall labor required to run the digital repositories in the sample came from academic departments not connected to the library. . . .

The mean number of journal articles held by the repositories in the sample was 772 with a mean of 162. . . .

15.56% of the repositories in the sample were funded largely through grants.

Version 1.0 of SWORD, A Smart Deposit Tool for Repositories, Has Been Released

Version 1.0 of SWORD has been released The release includes DSpace (1.5 only) and Fedora implementations, GUI/CLI clients, and the common Java library.

Here's an excerpt from the SWORD Wiki that describes the project:

SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) will take forward the Deposit protocol developed by a small working group as part of the JISC Digital Repositories Programme by implementing it as a lightweight web-service in four major repository software platforms: EPrints, DSpace, Fedora and IntraLibrary. The existing protocol documentation will be finalised by project partners and a prototype 'smart deposit' tool will be developed to facilitate easier and more effective population of repositories. The project intends to take an iterative approach to developing and revising the protocol, web-services and client implementation through evaluative testing and feedback mechanisms. Community acceptance and take-up will be sought through dissemination activities. The project is led by UKOLN, University of Bath, with partners at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the University of Southampton and Intrallect Ltd. The project aims to improve the efficiency and quality of repository deposit and to diversity and expedite the options for timely population of repositories with content whilst promoting a common deposit interface and supporting the Information Environment principles of interoperability.

SPARC/ACRL Explore Sustainability Issues with Three Open Access Journal Publishers

SPARC and ACRL have released podcasts/transcripts of interviews about sustainability issues with Bryan Vickery (BioMed Central), Mark Patterson (Public Library of Science), and Paul Peters (Hindawi Publishing Corporation). It has also released a matrix that analyzes the responses of these OA journal publishers about sustainability issues.

Paul Courant on Michigan’s Mass Digitization Project with Google

In "On Being in Bed with Google," Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, vigorously rebuts arguments against research libraries participating in the Google Books Library Project.

Here's an excerpt:

Since 2005, Siva Vaidhyanathan has been making and refining the argument that libraries should be digitizing their collections independently, without corporate financing or participation, and that those who don’t are failing to uphold their responsibility to the public. "Libraries should not be relinquishing their core duties to private corporations for the sake of expediency."

"Expediency" is a bit of a dirty word. Vaidhyanathan’s phrase suggests that good people don’t do things simply because they are "expedient." But I view large-scale digitization as expeditious. We have a generation of students who will not find valuable scholarly works unless they can find them electronically. At the rate that OCA is digitizing things (and I say the more the merrier and the faster the better) that generation will be dandling great-grandchildren on its knees before these great collections can be found electronically. At Michigan, the entire collection of bound print will be searchable, by anyone in the world, about when children born today start kindergarten.

Update on the British Public Library/Microsoft Digitization Project

Jim Ashling provides an update on the progress that the British Public Library and Microsoft have made in their project to digitize about 100,000 books for access in Live Book Search in his Information Today article "Progress Report: The British Library and Microsoft Digitization Partnership."

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Unlike previous BL digitization projects where material had been selected on an item-by-item basis, the sheer size of this project made such selectivity impossible. Instead, the focus is on English-language material, collected by the BL during the 19th century. . . .

Scanning produces high-resolution images (300 dpi) that are then transferred to a suite of 12 computers for OCR (optical character recognition) conversion. The scanners, which run 24/7, are specially tuned to deal with the spelling variations and old-fashioned typefaces used in the 1800s. The process creates multiple versions including PDFs and OCR text for display in the online services, as well as an open XML file for long-term storage and potential conversion to any new formats that may become future standards. In all, the data will amount to 30 to 40 terabytes. . . .

Obviously, then, an issue exists here for a collection of 19th-century literature when some authors may have lived beyond the late 1930s [British/EU law gives authors a copyright term of life plus 70 years]. An estimated 40 percent of the titles are also orphan works. Those two issues mean that item-by-item copyright checking would be an unmanageable task. Estimates for the total time required to check on the copyright issues involved vary from a couple of decades to a couple of hundred years. The BL’s approach is to use two databases of authors to identify those who were still living in 1936 and to remove their work from the collection before scanning. That, coupled with a wide publicity to encourage any rights holders to step forward, may solve the problem.

Boston Public Library/Open Content Alliance Contract Made Public

Boston Public Library has made public its digitization contract with the Open Content Alliance.

Some of the most interesting provisions include the intent of the Internet Archive to provide perpetual free and open access to the works, the digitization cost arrangements (BPL pays for transport and provides bibliographic metadata, the Internet Archive pays for digitization-related costs), the specification of file formats (e.g., JPEG 2000, color PDF, and various XML files), the provision of digital copies to BPL (copies are available immediately after digitization for BPL to download via FTP or HTTP within 3 months), and use of copies (any use by either party as long as provenance metadata and/or bookplate data is not removed).

Yale Will Work with Microsoft to Digitize 100,000 Books

The Yale University Library and Microsoft will work together to digitize 100,000 English-language out-of-copyright books, which will be made available via Microsoft’s Live Search Books.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

The Library and Microsoft have selected Kirtas Technologies to carry out the process based on their proven excellence and state-of-the art equipment. The Library has successfully worked with Kirtas previously, and the company will establish a digitization center in the New Haven area. . . .

The project will maintain rigorous standards established by the Yale Library and Microsoft for the quality and usability of the digital content, and for the safe and careful handling of the physical books. Yale and Microsoft will work together to identify which of the approximately 13 million volumes held by Yale’s 22 libraries will be digitized. Books selected for digitization will remain available for use by students and researchers in their physical form. Digital copies of the books will also be preserved by the Yale Library for use in future academic initiatives and in collaborative scholarly ventures.

Open-Source IRStats Released: Use Statistics for EPrints and DSpace

Eprints.org has released IRStats, an open source use statistics analysis package that analyzes both EPrints (versions 2 and 3) and DSpace (beta functionality) logs. The software is under a BSD license, and it requires Perl, awstats, MySQL, Maxmind Organisation Database, ChartDirector, and a CGI-capable Web server.

A description of IRStats features is available as well as examples of its use. For additional information on the project, see "Introduction to IRS."

Creative Commons Seeks Feedback from Librarians about LiveDVD

Timothy Vollmer has announced on Lita-L (10/28/07 message) that the Creative Commons is looking for feedback about its LiveDVD for libraries, which is part of its LiveContent project.

Here's an excerpt from the message:

Creative Commons is working with Fedora on creating a LiveDVD for libraries that contains free, open source software (like OpenOffice, The Gimp, Inkscape, Firefox) and open content, including CC-licensed media such as audio, video, photographs, text and open educational resources. . . .

The next iteration we're working on is a LiveDVD for libraries, providing an informational resource and creative tool that would allow library patrons to test open source software, view (and rip, remix, reuse) open content, and even create new content with the software contained on the disc. . . .

We want to get some more feedback/comments/suggestions on the project and are also looking to identify librarians and interested groups to test out the LiveDVD!

DSpace 1.5 Alpha Released

The 1.5 alpha version of the popular DSpace repository software has been released.

Here's an excerpt from "DSpace 1.5 Alpha with Experimental Binary Distribution" by Richard Jones:

There are big changes in this code base, both in terms of functionality and organisation. First, we are now using Maven to manage our build process, and have carved the application into a set of core modules which can be used to assemble your desired DSpace instance. . . .

The second big and most exciting thing is that Manakin is now part of our standard distribution, and we want to see it taking over from the JSP UI over the next few major releases. . . .

In addition to this, we have an Event System which should help us start to decouple tightly integrated parts of the repository. . . . Browsing is now done with a heavily configurable system . . . . Tim Donohue's much desired Configurable Submission system is now integrated with both JSP and Manakin interfaces and is part of the release too.

Further to this we have a bunch of other functionality including: IP Authentication, better metadata and schema registry import, move items from one collection to another, metadata export, configurable multilingualism support, Google and html sitemap generator, Community and Sub-Communities as OAI Sets, and Item metadata in XHTML head ‹meta› elements.

Opensecrets.Org Lists Reed Elsevier as One of Sen. Inhofe's Top Contributors

In a list of Sen. James Inhofe's top contributors for the 2001-2006 Senate election cycle, Opensecrets.Org identifies Reed Elsevier Inc. as his 11th largest contributor, with $13,250 in contributions. Opensecrets.Org notes:

The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Before he withdrew them, Sen. Inhofe was the sponsor of two amendments” to delete or weaken the NIH Open Access Mandate in the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill.

Opensecrets.Org also provides summary information about Reed Elsevier's 2006 lobbying activity, which includes a chart showing 1998-2007 totals.

Inhofe Withdraws Amendments, NIH Open Access Mandate Passes Senate

Peter Suber reports that Sen. James Inhofe withdrew his amendments to the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill that would have deleted or weakened the NIH open access mandate, and that the bill has passed the Senate with the mandate intact.

The House and Senate bills will be reconciled in the fall, and President Bush should receive the final bill by year's end. It is anticipated that President Bush will veto the bill; however, the mandate's strong showing during Congressional deliberations should help ensure its future passage in post-veto legislation.

Here's an excerpt from "Defying President Bush, Senate Passes Spending Bill for Health and Education Programs" (subscription required for full access):

The president has threatened to veto the measure over what he has called "irresponsible and excessive" spending. It would take a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to override a veto. The Senate, which approved the bill 75 to 19, apparently could muster that margin, but the House might not. It passed its version of the bill in July by a vote of 276 to 140, 14 votes shy of the two-thirds mark.

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a press release about the legislative victory.

Read more about it at "More on Inhofe" and "OA Mandate at NIH Passes the Senate."

A Study of Curation and Preservation Issues in the eCrystals Data Repository and Proposed Federation

JISC's eBank UK project, which is now in phase three, has released A Study of Curation and Preservation Issues in the eCrystals Data Repository and Proposed Federation, which addresses key issues related to the establishment of the eCrystals Federation.

Here's an excerpt from "eBank Phase 3: Transitioning to the eCrystals Federation" that explains the overall project:

This project will progress the establishment of a global Federation of data repositories for crystallography by performing a scoping study into the feasibility of constructing a network of data repositories: the eCrystals Federation. The Federation approach is presented as an innovative domain model to promote Open Access to data more widely and to facilitate take-up.

It builds on the work of the eBank project, and has links to Repository for the Laboratory (R4L), SPECTRa and SMART Tea projects in chemistry. The Federation will contribute to the development of a digital repository e-infrastructure for research and will inform the Repository Support Project. . . .

In Phase 3, partners will assess organisational issues and promote advocacy, examine interoperability associated with research workflow and data deposit, harmonise the metadata application profiles from repositories operating on different platforms (EPrints, DSpace & ReciprocalNet), investigate aggregation issues arising from harvesting metadata from repositories situated within the information environments developed in other countries (EU, USA & Australia) and scope the issues of the Federation of institutional archives interoperating with an international subject archive (IUCr).

Brewster Kahle on Libraries Going Open

Brewster Kahle's "Libraries Going Open" document provides some details on where the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance are going with projects involving mass digitization of microfilm, mass digitization of journals, ILL of scanned out-of-print books, scanning books on demand, and other areas.

Text of the Inhofe Amendments That Affect the NIH Open Access Mandate

Below is the text of Sen. James Inhofe's amendments to the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill that affect the NIH open access mandate (thanks to Heather Joseph at SPARC).

Amendment 3416:

To strike provision to maintain the NIH voluntary research public access policy

Beginning on page 76 strike line 24 and all that follows through line 7 on page 77.

Amendment 3417:

To modify provisions to maintain the NIH voluntary research public access policy

On page 77 line 7 insert before the period the following:

'and in addition only where allowed by and in accordance with the policies of the publishers who have conducted the peer review and accepted the manuscripts for publication'

Here's the affected section of the bill:

Page 76

24 SEC. 221. The Director of the National Institutes of
25 Health shall require that all investigators funded by the

Page 77

1 NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National
2 Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic
3 version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon ac-
ceptance for publication to be made publicly available no
5 later than 12 months after the official date of publication:
6 Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access
7 policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

ALA Says Contact Senate Before Noon Tomorrow to Support NIH Open Access Mandate

The American Library Association is strongly recommending that U.S. citizens who want to support the NIH open access mandate by voicing their opposition to the amendments (#3416 and #3417) to the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill proposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) do so by noon on Monday, October 22nd.

Here's the latest action alert from ALA: "Fight Continues for Public Access to NIH Medical Information—Urge Your Senators to Support NIH Public Access Policy (and Oppose Inhofe Amendments)"

You can use a cut-and-paste version of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access text about the amendments to simplify the process of sending the e-mail via the ALA Web form, but personalizing this text with an added sentence or two is recommended.

NIH Mandate May Be Deleted or Weakened: Urgent Need to Contact the Senate

Peter Suber reports that the NIH open access mandate may be deleted or weakened by last-minute amendments to the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill (see his posting reproduced in full below).

You can easily contact your senators using the ALA Action Alert Web form with my cut-and-paste version of the below ATA text or you can use the same form to write your own text.

Urgent action need to support the NIH bill

The provision to mandate OA at the NIH is in trouble.  Late Friday, just before the filing deadline, a Senator acting on behalf of the publishing lobby filed two harmful amendments, one to delete the provision and one to weaken it significantly.  We thought we'd done everything and only had to wait for the Senate vote.  But now we have to mobilize once more, and fast, to squash these amendments.  Here an announcement from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access:

URGENT CALL TO ACTION: Tell your Senator to OPPOSE amendments that strike or change the NIH public access provision in the FY08 Labor/HHS appropriations bill

The Senate is currently considering the FY08 Labor-HHS Bill, which includes a provision (already approved by the House of Representatives and the full Senate Appropriations Committee), that directs the NIH to change its Public Access Policy so that participation is required (rather than requested) for researchers, and ensures free, timely public access to articles resulting from NIH-funded research. On Friday, Senator Inhofe (R-OK), filed two amendments (#3416 and #3417), which call for the language to either be stricken from the bill, or modified in a way that would gravely limit the policy’s effectiveness.

Amendment #3416 would eliminate the provision altogether. Amendment #3417 is likely to be presented to your Senator as a compromise that “balances” the needs of the public and of publishers. In reality, the current language in the NIH public access provision accomplishes that goal. Passage of either amendment would seriously undermine access to this important public resource, and damage the community’s ability to advance scientific research and discovery.

Please contact your Senators TODAY and urge them to vote “NO” on amendments #3416 and #3417. (Contact must be made before close of business on Monday, October 22). A sample email is provided for your use below. Feel free to personalize it, explaining why public access is important to you and your institution. Contact information and a tool to email your Senator are online [here]. No time to write? Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to be patched through to your Senate office.

If you have written in support before, or when you do so today, please inform the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. Contact Jennifer McLennan through jennifer@arl.org or by fax at (202) 872-0884.

Thanks for your continued efforts to support public access at the National Institutes of Health.

—–

SAMPLE EMAIL

Dear Senator:

On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to OPPOSE proposed Amendments #3416 and #3417 to the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill (S.1710). These amendments would seriously impede public access to taxpayer-funded biomedical research, stifling critical advancements in lifesaving research and scientific discovery. The current bill language was carefully crafted to balance the needs of ALL stakeholders, and to ensure that the American public is able to fully realize our collective investment in science.

To ensure public access to medical research findings, language was included in the in the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Bill directing the NIH to make a much-needed improvement to its Public Access Policy — requiring that NIH-funded researchers deposit their manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine’s online database to be made publicly available within one year of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.  This change is supported by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, and a broad coalition of educational institutions, scientific researchers, healthcare practitioners, publishers, patient groups, libraries, and student groups — representing millions of taxpayers seeking to advance medical research.

Amendment #3416 would eliminate this important provision, leaving only a severely weakened, voluntary NIH policy in place. Under the voluntary policy (in place for more than two years) less than 5% of individual researchers have participated — rendering the policy ineffective. The language in Amendment #3417 would place even further restrictions on the policy, ensuring that taxpayers – including doctors and scientists – are unable to take full advantage of this important public resource.

Supporting the current language in the FY08 LHHS Appropriations Bill is the best way to ensure that taxpayers’ investment in NIH-funded research is used as effectively as possible.  Taxpayer-funded NIH research belongs to the American public. They have paid for it, and it is for their benefit.

I urge you to join the millions of scientists, researchers, libraries, universities, and patient and consumer advocacy groups in supporting the current language in the FY08 LHHS Appropriations bill and require NIH grantees to deposit in PubMed Central final peer-reviewed manuscripts no later than 12 months following publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Vote NO on Amendments #3416 and #3417.

Comment.  The ATA is not exaggerating.  This is urgent.  If you're a US citizen, please contact your Senators and spread the word.  Note the short deadline.  Your Senators must hear from you before the end of business on Monday, October 22:  two days from now.

RUBRIC Toolkit: Institutional Repository Solutions Released

The RUBRIC Project has released the RUBRIC Toolkit: Institutional Repository Solutions.

Here's an excerpt from RUBRIC Toolkit: About the RUBRIC Project and the Toolkit page:

The RUBRIC Toolkit is a legacy of the RUBRIC Project, reflecting the discussions, investigation, phases, processes, issues and experiences surrounding the implementation of an Institutional Repository (IR). The sections are based on the collaborative experience of the eight Australian and New Zealand Universities involved in the project.

The content for the RUBRIC Toolkit developed organically and collaboratively in the project wiki over an extended period of time. It was then refined and developed. Project members have populated the Toolkit with useful resources and tools that can be used by other Project Managers and Institutions implementing an IR.

The RUBRIC Toolkit was released in October 2007 and will continue to be updated until the end of the RUBRIC Project in December 2007. As such the Toolkit captures the "best" of available advice, experience and outcomes available for IR development in 2007 and provides links to further reading wherever possible.

Public Domain Works Partners with the Open Library

Public Domain Works has announced that it will partner with the Open Library, sharing its data about works that are in public domain. Public Domain Works supports the Public Domain Works DB, which is now in beta form.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The plan looks to be to upload the Public Domain Works data to the Open Library, and to use read/write APIs to continue to develop different front-ends for different jurisdictions—each with its own algorithms to determine which works are in the public domain.

Co-Action Publishing News: One Journal Converts to OA and a New OA Journal Is Launched

Co-Action Publishing has announced that, starting in January 2008, the Swedish Nutrition Foundation's Scandinavian Journal of Food & Nutrition will become an open access journal and be renamed Food & Nutrition Research. Co-Action Publishing also announced the launch in the first quarter of 2008 of a new open access journal, Ethics & Global Politics. Both journals will be under Creative Commons licenses.

Muradora 1.0, a Fedora Front-End, Released

DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) has released Muradora 1.0, a Fedora front-end that provides identity control (via Shibboleth), authorization (via XACML), and other functions. DRAMA is a sub-project of RAMP (Research Activityflow and Middleware Priorities Project). A Live DVD image simplifies installation.

Here’s an excerpt from the fedora-commons-users posting:

  • "Out-of-the-box" or customized deployment options
  • Intuitive access control editor allows end-users to specify their own access control criteria without editing any XML.
  • Hierarchical enforcement of access control policies. Access control can be set at the collection level, object level or datastream level.
  • Metadata input and validation for any well-formed metadata schema using XForms (a W3C standard). New metadata schemas can be supported via XForms scripts (no Muradora code modification required).
  • Flexible and extensible architecture based on the well known Java Spring enterprise framework.
  • Multiple deployments of Muradora (each customized for their own specific purpose) can talk to the one instance of Fedora.
  • Freely available as open source software (Apache 2 license). All dependent software is also open source.