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Sen Jon Tester (D-MT) has proposed a law that would take something like FRPPA one step further, putting most public government documents (e.g., who lobbies the White House, not gov't personnel files) into a searchable database. This would be an improvement in granting access to the public as currently there is a fair amount of hard-copy red tape that must be gone through under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain these documents.

Will open access journals accept anything for publication? Account of an experiment with a Bentham open access journal.

From the February SPARC Open Access Newsletter, by Peter Suber Every research funding agency should have an OA policy, many already do, and most are probably thinking about it.  Here's a guide to the major decisions which come up in framing a new policy, reviewing an older one, or thinking about policies elsewhere.  Peter Suber starts with the choice-points facing funding agencies (1-12), and then look briefly at the choice-points which only arise for universities (13-18).  He offers a recommendation for each. 

Update on the NIH public access story.

Possible generation-gap-type issues for digital educational publishing for colleges: "Today, the college assumes all students not only have computer skills but a plethora of high-tech devices and services. The class schedule and registration procedure is entirely online-even if you're in the registrar's office....In the first class, the professor handed out her e-mail address and the URL where the syllabus could be found--instead of her office phone number and a copy of the syllabus. Unfortunately, the college sites are full of graphics and animations and download very slowly on my dial-up connection. (Even if I could afford a broadband connection, my ISP doesn't provide it in my area.)" "At least one exercise in each chapter requires accessing the publisher's textbook Web site. Many of these exercises could just as easily be put on the computer disk also sold-at an increased profit (I used to work for a textbook-preparation company)-with the text....Again, a dial-up connection won't download the videos. The audio files are .mp3; I can't open them, don't have the skill to know what program I need, and have no access to free technical support....So once every chapter I head for either the heavily used public library or the equally heavily used computer lab in the college's suburban learning center (branch campus)--and hope that a computer is available."

October 14 is Open Access day. Co-sponsored by the Public Library of Science, open access is gaining ground, but PLOS, SPARC, and Students for FreeCulture are hoping to get a little boost with this first OA Day.

Likelihood of open access being favored by the new administration.

Amazon and the Authors Guild reach an agreement on the read-aloud feature. I think it's a smart play by Amazon. Authors that choose to disable may hesitate due to a possible public relations backlash for not wanting disabled readers to get access without getting more money in the process.

Questia Library Plus iPhone app. Credit: Questia We'll spare you the obvious "there's an app for that" joke. But you can get a library's worth of books on your phone. Questia, an online research portal for students, announced its application today for reading books, articles and periodicals on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app costs 99 cents for 5,000 public-domain books and a week of unlimited access. After that, users can buy a two-week subscription for $9.99. There are so many things wrong with this we don't know where to start. For one, students don't like to buy things....

See podcast entitled "The OA Argument is Won", by David Prosser, Executive Director of SPARC Europe, February 4, 2008. Podcast | 8.1MB.

Ursula K. LeGuin is disturbed by Google's keeping secrets about information

Mostly having to do with scholarly publishing....

American Association of Advancement for Science wants to call out politicians and NGOs that intimidate climate scientists from publishing their research in journals or giving it to the public.