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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. 

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

With the Ethics in Publishing conference coming up, this might be interesting to see more of, high profile social networking sites making an effort to increase their own accessibility.  

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.

Free access and non-profit publishers. See "The Value of OA"--talk by the late Peter Banks.

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.

A grapple with how such funds should be administered.

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."

New Open Access Journal announced with no clear business model, but plans to tackle some of the ethical issues in STM publishing.

The dark side of open access?  

Thought this article might be a good place for people, like myself, trying to understand NIH Open Access Research Rules

Update on the NIH public access story.

More on the Google-AAP settlement. Key take-away ""But content owners also belatedly realize that simply suing consumers who find new, convenient ways to access content online is not as good as finding new business models to profit from customer interest that technology makes possible."

Something worth tracking. Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury, announces it will publish, both online and in print, open access textbooks under the creative commons license. First titles to be available in Spring 2009