Monday, April 23, 2007

Making your OA publications easier to find

PublicationsList is a new tool from Textensor that lets authors make an online linked list of their OA publications. From today's announcement:
PublicationsList.org launched to improve access to self-archived and open-access academic publications
Now there is nothing stopping every researcher having a professional and up-to-date list of their publications on the web.
[PublicationsList is] a new easy-to-use, on-line service designed to let researchers maintain a comprehensive public record of their research output with links to full text versions of papers.
With growing interest in open access journals and institutional repositories, an author's home page still remains the obvious starting point to access their work. But all too often personal web pages are out of date or do not link to full text versions of papers even when they are available.
Textensor's new service...is designed to make the process of maintaining a comprehensive publications list on the web as quick and straightforward as possible. For most researchers this is the single most important aspect of their web presence.
Authors who already have their publications organised in reference management systems can simply upload the file to have them all imported in one go. For biomedical researchers, the system will also accept identifiers from PubMed, the central repository of bioscience papers, then fetch all the required data automatically.
Links can be included to full text versions of each paper and, where the publishers allow it, PDF files can be uploaded directly. This means the service can be used for individual self-archiving although Textensor anticipates that most users will prefer to link out to the various journal websites or institutional repositories where their work is already archived. The system will also host abstracts, keywords, and the author's own notes about their publications. These can be particularly useful, for example to indicate where a more recent publication supersedes an earlier one, or to add links to related work.
The key feature of PublicationsList.org is that it focuses on the requirements of the individual and remains a fixed point as they move between institutions in the course of their career and publish in a range of journals. To this end, it also allows the user to include their contact details and bibliography, and their papers are listed at a straightforward and memorable URL such as "publicationslist.org/albert.einstein". Hosting publications on publicationslist.org is free for research students and there is a low cost subscription for academic staff....
From a post in Open Access News, by Peter Suber.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

BBC to Put one Million Hours of its Past Online Corporation wants its entire archive to be available for free

James Robinson, media correspondent
Sunday April 15, 2007
The Observer Guardian Unlimited


Thousands of hours of broadcasting history are to be made available to the public online as part of a plan to open up the BBC's entire archive to licence-fee payers free of charge.

The radio and TV material, some of which has never been repeated, includes an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.

Other programmes include a 1956 episode of the nature series Zoo Quest in which a young David Attenborough captures the komodo dragon on film for the first time. The episode has never been repeated but could soon be available online as part of the ambitious project, headed by the BBC's director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield.

The BBC wants to put nearly one million hours of material on the internet for viewers to watch, listen to and download and has already begun the long process of retrieving and transferring programmes. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month, and the service could be available nationally in a year's time. Highfield will announce details of the scheme in a speech this week.

CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication will be broadcast on the web

The main proceedings of the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI5) will be broadcast on the web as video file attachments in the programme:

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=5710

A file for each session in the main auditorium should appear approximately 10 minutes after the end of the presentation. The first such session takes place on Wednesday afternoon in Geneva, CH, and then on Thursday during most of the day and Friday morning.

We hope that many of you will join us virtually to watch. Messages to participants can be sent to oaiworkshop-organisation@cern.ch.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Copyright Utopia

Copyright Utopia: Alternative Visions, Methods & Policies
May 21-23, 2007
UMUC Inn & Conference Center, Adelphi, Maryland http://www.umuc.edu/cip/symposium/

Ordinary people around the world are revolutionizing the way media is produced and distributed. Sites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, BitTorrent, Wikipedia and Google are completely altering how the masses interact with video, pictures, art, music, and literature. Colleges and universities desire to harness the power of these incredible tools for distributing scholarship and creative works. But does U.S. copyright law accommodate many of these uses?

Please join the Center for Intellectual Property as we discuss these issues with scholars and practitioners about how students, faculty and the general public can continue to innovate within the U.S. Copyright regime. Each panel and speaker will address some aspect of how or whether copyright law can be adapted or developed to accommodate the massive changes that technological innovation brings.

YOU need to be at the table.

Confirmed speakers include:
-- William Fisher, Berkman Center to Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
-- Fred von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation
-- William Brit Kirwan, Chancellor, University System of Maryland; Co-Chair, Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force
-- Donna Ferullo, Purdue University
-- Kenneth Crews, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Confirmed panelists include:
-- Alec French, NBC Universal
-- Robert Samors, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
-- Patricia Aufderheide, Center for Social Media
-- Heather Joseph, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
-- Tracy Mitrano, Cornell University
-- Ann Bartow, University of South Carolina Law School
-- Paul Jaeger, University of Maryland, College Park
-- Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge
-- Matt Skelton, Office of Policy and International Affairs, U.S Copyright Office
-- Miriam Nisbet, American Library Association
-- Denise Troll Covey, Carnegie Mellon University
-- Reed Stager, Digimarc Corporation
-- Mike Carroll, Villanova University School of Law
-- Brian Crawford, American Chemical Society Publications
-- Elizabeth Winston, Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law
-- Karen Coyle, Digital Libraries Consultant
-- Steven M. Marks, Recording Industry Association of America
And many more...

Registration includes a detailed notebook, meals and opportunity for in depth interaction with colleagues and speakers. Early registration deadline has been extended to April 20th! Please check the website for all other discounts.

Co-sponsored by the Copyright Clearance Center
--
Olga Francois, Assistant Director
Center for Intellectual Property
University of Maryland University College
3501 University Blvd. East, PGM3-780
Adelphi, MD 20783
Phone: 240-582-2803
Fax: 240-582-2961
http://www.umuc.edu/cip/

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States

This petition builds on the 24,000+ signatures collected from around the world in support of free and open access to European research and for the recommendations proposed in the EU's 'Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe' as well as the 132 higher education leaders who have written of their explicit support for public access to publicly funded research.

from SPARC <http://www.arl.org/sparc>, ACRL <http://www.acrl.org/>, PLoS <http://www.plos.org/> and more.