Open Access: It’s Not Just PubMed
When I interviewed for my current position as Head, Serials Services at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s Robert M. Bird Health Sciences Library, there was a proposal for the potential privatization of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Due to efforts of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Medical Library Association (MLA) and many other interested organizations and individuals, it appears that Environmental Health Perspectives [EHP] is now an open access journal and the website proudly notes that “all content is freely available to everyone online immediately after publicationâ€. Open Access, like Information Literacy, has a number of definitions and interpretations, and my hope in this guest blog is to provide some avenues of information on the topic. Those of us who remember “early threats†to access to government funded research may recall that one of the first, if not the first, journal of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to be privatized. In 1997, the Government Printing Office’s Library Program Service was notified that the Journal of the National Cancer Institute had been "privatized." Ownership was transferred from the National Cancer Institute to Oxford University Press - USA, Inc. Superintendent of Documents Wayne Kelley said that the letter went on to explain that "because the Journal is no longer a publication of the U.S. Government, copies of the Journal and JNCI Monographs will not be provided to the Depository Library Program nor will sale copies be available at the GPO bookstore." and that "the new price, from Oxford, is $120 for an individual and $150 for an institution". Current pricing for the OUHSC library for this title is $585 for print and online. And, fortunately, Oxford Journals does include JNCI and other titles in it’s “ Open Access experimentsâ€. Continue reading
The Fight for a Toll-Free Internet
Another interesting and informative article on the issue of network neutrality says that "Colleges worry that research and distance education could be left behind if broadband companies are allowed to favor certain content." The same can be said for citizen access to government information.
- The Fight for a Toll-Free Internet, By Andrea L. Foster, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2006.
The online version requires a subscription, but the ACM has this useful summary:
The hot-button "network neutrality" issue is of critical concern to academic institutions, who fear that broadband providers' preferential treatment of certain types of content could hurt their efforts to deliver education and collaborate on research over the Internet. Colleges are lobbying Congress to require telecom companies to allow any kind of Web content or network applications, including those that rival their own offerings, to pass through their broadband pipes, and not to practice discrimination against certain types of network traffic. Meanwhile, telecom firms have been pushing lawmakers to reject net neutrality provisions, arguing that the profits they stand to reap by exacting a toll from users who want their online content to be prioritized and delivered expeditiously would recoup their costs for upgrading network infrastructure for consumers. There is consensus among academic leaders, consumer groups, and technology companies that splitting the Internet into faster and slower service tiers betrays the underlying principles of openness upon which the Web was founded, and could therefore threaten innovations and consumers' unrestricted access to critical information. At a Senate commerce committee hearing in February, Gary Bachula with the Internet2 consortium cited the high-speed Abilene network and the sophisticated applications it supports as an example of innovations that are being crafted by end users rather than phone or cable companies. "That requires an open-standards-based nondiscriminatory Internet," he argued. An anonymous college lobbyist reports that many college presidents are torn between two camps: Broadband carriers in whose good graces the presidents wish to remain because they often supply campuses with communications services; and distance-learning and research programs that could be seriously degraded by a tiered Internet. (ACM TechNews, May 05, 2006)Continue reading
Cindi Wolff: BOTM for May
FGI's blogger of the month is Cindi Wolff (see her bio for more background). Cindi's interests are in open access and govt information. We're loooking forward to seeing what she has to say! And also, thanks to Shane Mackey for his posts as BOTM for April! Continue reading
Cindi Wolff’s bio
Cindi Wolff, our guest blogger for May, 2006, is currently serving as the head, serials services at the university of oklahoma health sciences, The Robert M. Bird Health Sciences Library in oklahoma city, OK. The Bird Library is a selective housing site for the OU Norman campus which Cindi "officially" set in 1990 when she served as the government documents librarian on that campus from 1988-1993 -- when she started her new position in January, 2006, she discovered the 1990 selective housing agreeement signed by the two library directors that she had typed up! Prior to her return to oklahoma, she served as federal documents librarian [u.s. and canada!] at the university of california at berkeley, Project Manager [i.e., library director], the U.S. Department of Labor , Regional Librarian at Lousiana State University, Director of Collections at US Department of the Interior Library, and Acting Head of the Government and Geographic Information and Data Services at Northwestern University. Despite her various titles, she always served as the government information specialist at the institutions she has the pleasure of working. As she likes to point out to classes, "if you elminate pornography, I estimate that 70% of the information that you find on the Internet is government information: created by the government, from the government, or repackaged by commercial and educational entities. And every librarian is a government information librarian because you can no longer just send the user to the basement when they ask a question." Her guest blog will deal with issues concerning open access with the working title: "Open Access: It's Not Just PubMed". Continue reading
Bill to mandate online access to federally funded research
A new Senate bill introduced by John Cornyn (R, Texas), would require that taxpayers receive free online access to journal articles containing federally funded research within six months of the articles’ publication. Agencies would have to preserve the manuscripts in a stable, digital repository that provides free public access, interoperability and long-term preservation.