Posts by Katie Fortney
-
UC campuses celebrate Open Access Week 2018
This year, international Open Access Week is October 22-28. The theme, “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge,” was chosen to reflect a scholarly system in transition, according to Nick Shockey, Director of Programs & Engagement at SPARC. “While governments, funders, universities, publishers, and scholars are increasingly adopting open policies and practices, how these are actually implemented is still in flux. As open becomes the default, all stakeholders must be intentional about designing these new, open systems to ensure that they are inclusive, equitable, and truly serve the needs of a diverse global community.” The University of California Libraries have planned […]
-
Proposed Presidential Policy on Open Access for Theses and Dissertations
A proposed new presidential policy on open access theses and dissertations is open for systemwide review until February 28, 2018. All members of the UC community are invited to comment on the draft policy. Visit the UC Academic Affairs website to read the draft policy, a cover letter with instructions on where to send comments, and a set of Frequently Asked Questions. The draft policy was written by a task force including graduate students as well as representatives of the Graduate Deans, the Coordinating Committee on Graduate Affairs, the UC Libraries, and others. If passed, the policy will expand the […]
-
UC campuses celebrate Open Access Week 2017
This year, international Open Access Week is October 23-29.. The theme, “Open in Order to…,” was chosen, according to Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, to highlight the many benefits of open access for different people, including “increasing citation counts, enabling anyone to learn from the latest scholarship, or accelerating the translation of research into economic gains.” The University of California Libraries have planned a variety of events this year in order to explore and celebrate issues related to open access. Find one near you!
-
A belated update on DMCA takedown notices
Back in 2014, the University of California got its first set of DMCA takedown notices for eScholarship, UC’s open access repository and publishing platform. I wrote about it here on the OSC blog, which you can check out if you want to see our tips for authors who want to avoid receiving a takedown notice (short version: post the right version of your article). I also said in that post that we’d report on any other notices that UC received for eScholarship, because we believe it’s important to be transparent about which publishers are using this procedure to target article […]
-
Check out all the great activities UC libraries are hosting for Open Access Week
October 24-30, 2016 is international Open Access Week. This year’s theme is “Open in Action,” which was chosen to “focus on the small steps everyone can take to make openness in research a reality,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. “This year’s theme will help showcase these actions, the individuals who are leading by example, and the ways this openness advances science and scholarship.” The University of California Libraries have a planned a greater number and wider variety of events this year than ever before in order to explore and celebrate issues related to open access.
-
CC BY and data: Not always a good fit.
Last week I wrote about data ownership, and how focusing on “ownership” might drive you nuts without actually answering important questions about what can be done with data. In that context, I mentioned a couple of times that you (or your funder) might want data to be shared under CC0, but I didn’t clarify what CC0 actually means. This week, I’m back to dig into the topic of Creative Commons (CC) licenses and public domain tools — and how they work with data.
-
Who “owns” your data?
Which of these is true? “The PI owns the data.” “The university owns the data.” “Nobody can own it; data isn’t copyrightable.” You’ve probably heard somebody say at least one of these things — confidently. Maybe you’ve heard all of them. Maybe about the same dataset (but in that case, hopefully not from the same person). So who really owns research data? Well, the short answer is “it depends.” A longer answer is that determining ownership (and whether there’s even anything to own) can be frustratingly complicated — and, even when obvious, ownership only determines some of what can be […]
-
Questions about U.S. federal funder public access policies? We have a page for that.
In February 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memo requiring many federal agencies to develop policies ensuring that the research that they fund would be freely publicly available. It took time for the agencies to develop their plans, get them approved by OSTP, and release them to the public, but most of them have done it now. They’re not all easy to find, and once you find them it’s not always easy to to tell whether you’re looking at the most current version, or to understand the basic requirements. To help UC scholars […]
-
Getting found: Indexing and the independent OA journal
Running an independent journal is a lot of work, even if you’re just focused on managing the process of moving articles through submission, review, and publication. But publishing an article isn’t the end of the story. Even a great article won’t make an impact unless people read it. And without visibility, even a journal with a terrific editorial board won’t get the kind of submissions it’s looking for. WestJEM – the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health – gets ten times the submissions that it got a decade ago. In 2008 it averaged about 2,000 […]
-
Celebrate Fair Use Week 2016
This week UC Libraries join other organizations around the world in celebrating Fair Use Week, which honors the important doctrines of fair use in the United States and fair dealing in Canada and other jurisdictions. It’s a great time to learn about all the ways in which this important exception to the rights of copyright holders enhances our lives both inside and outside the university.
