Gary Hall posts a call for withdrawal of labor from publishers in favour of the US Research Works Act, which would make it impossible for the U.S. government to require public access to the published results of research that it funds: http://www.garyhall.info/journal/2012/1/16/withdrawal-of-labour-from-publishers-in-favour-of-the-us-res.html Among the publishers of critical and cultural theory on this list are: Sage [...]

Awesome news from Nature Publishing Group – NPG does not support the anti-open access Research Works Act, SOPA or PIPA. Among the traditional scholarly publishers, NPG has been an early leader in supporting open access – and standing up for scholarship against the inappropriate tactics of anti-open-access lobbyists.  In 2007, it was Jim Giles’ article [...]

The Elsevier Foundation just announced on the Liblicense list $650,000 in grants. Generous? Hang on a second – at the same time that the Elsevier Foundation is assessing medical library needs for an Eritrean future, helping Kenyan libraries serve health workers, and translating knowledge into practice for Uganda’s rural health clinics, Elsevier is doing its [...]

Thanks to Neurobonkers for alerting me to this new publisher, Scientific and Academic Publishing (SAP). Some comments: Choosing the acronym SAP suggests a hoax. At best, SAP shows confusion about copyright. Here are two copyright statements from their journal Food and Public Health: from the Author Guidelines: Copyright Authors contributing to Scientific & Academic Publishing [...]

These two charts illustrate the global reach of the open access movement. The first chart illustrates the regional breakdown of the 7,385 journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Please see below for citation information. The second chart below is from OpenDOAR, illustrating the regional breakdown of open access repositories. Note that the [...]

Here is my response to Canada’s Open Government Consultation. Please note that responses are due by January 16, 2011! Open Government Consultation – Response from Independent Scholar First, congratulations and kudos to the Government of Canada for actively participating in the Open Government movement, and for providing this opportunity for citizens to be involved in [...]