News
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Google Announces Beta Release of Google Scholar
Google announces the beta release of Google Scholar. The Google Scholar FAQ promises the ability “to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research … from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.” For each article it indexes the service also displays a count of citations of which it is aware.
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UC Response to NIH Call for Public Comment
The UC Office of Scholarly Communication contributed analysis to the preparation of UC’s response to the September 24 NIH call for public comment on their proposed policy on public access and archiving.
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PLoS Launches Second Journal
Open access journal publisher Public Library of Science launches PLoS Medicine, its second journal.
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SAGE Announces Open Access Archiving
SAGE Publications announces that it will allow authors to make available open access postprints without case-by-case requests for permission. Sage thus joins a growing list of like-minded publishers (see, for example, the Sherpa list of publisher copyright policies).
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UC Provost’s Letter in Support of Strengthening NIH Policy
UC Provost Wyatt R. Hume writes a letter to California Senators Feinstein and Boxer encouraging their support of proposed changes to strengthen the NIH policy on public access to research results. In the letter Hume says that the policy goals, including the expanded use of NIH research findings for the advancement of science and public health, “are shared by UC health scientists and by researchers worldwide.”
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“Reshaping Scholarly Communication” in Against the Grain
John Ober, Catherine Candee, and Beverlee French’s article, “Reshaping Scholarly Communication” appeared in Against the Grain. Vol. 16, no. 3. June 2004. Reviews the mounting evidence of the economic unsustainability of scholarly communication systems and outlines the University of California’s strategies for response. [PDF]
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Daniel Greenstein’s “Not So Quiet on a Western Front”
Daniel Greenstein’s article, “Not so quiet on a Western front” appears in the May 2004 Nature Publishing Group’s web forum “Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues.”
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PNAS Introduces Open Access Option for Authors
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) introduces an open access option for authors. The option, which is to be evaluated after an experimental period, allows authors to pay a $1,000 surcharge to make their articles available for free via PNAS Online and PubMed Central immediately upon publication. In a survey informing the decision, nearly half of the respondents were in favor of an open access option. According to Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, PNAS Editor-in-Chief and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Berkeley, “PNAS is starting by experimenting with an open access option for authors. It is […]
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American Physical Society (APS) Announces Decreasing Prices in 2005
The American Physical Society (APS) announces that it will decrease prices in 2005 on all of its journals. With the announcement, the APS continues its reputation as a model society committed to creating sustainable publications whose revenues support only the publications themselves. A letter from publisher Thomas J. McIlrath provides details on how the price reduction was accomplished.
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UC Libraries Conclude Negotiations with Reed-Elsevier
The UC libraries conclude their negotiations with Reed-Elsevier. Starting January 1, 2004, the UC community will have access to a selected list of about 1,200 of the company’s scholarly journals, including titles produced by Harcourt Health Sciences, Academic Press, and Cell Press. The five-year contract accommodates the University’s deteriorating budget situation without sacrificing access to the titles selected by each campus. The libraries report that they have “arrested for now the price inflation that has been common in this market,” and describe the necessity for continuous action to address the economic sustainability of scholarly communications. See the letter to UC […]
