The University Council’s approval was announced this morning…

Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit. Click here to download the full pdf.

“We believe this is the first time that a university as a whole has taken a stand on behalf of the university as opposed to a single school or college,” says Wendy Mariner, the chair of the Faculty Council and a professor at the School of Law, at the School of Public Health, and at the School of Medicine. “We are looking forward to new forms of publication in the 21st century that will transform the ways that knowledge and information are shared.”

“The resolution passed by our University Council is a very important statement on the importance of open access to the results of scholarship and research created within the University,” says BU President Robert A. Brown. “The digital archive called for in the resolution will become a great repository for the creativity of our faculty and students.”

You can read more at BU Today.

 Patricia Cohen reports in the New York Times that Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty will consider an alternate to traditional scholarly publishing that could have wide implications for the open access movement.

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them.

Open Access Research

From the announcement:

We have recently started Open Access Research (OAR) http://ojs.gsu.edu/oar a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that will enable greater interaction and facilitate a deeper conversation about open access, including topics such as:

* open access journals
* institutional support for open access
* open access publishing services and software
* open access repositories (both institutional and subject-based)
* electronic theses and dissertations
* the impact of open access on scholarly research and communications.

If you are engaged in research relating to open access, or if you have an article in mind, please contact us. OAR’s first issue will be in August, 2007 and will subsequently be published three times a year. Submissions received by March 31, 2007 will be considered for the August issue; subsequent submissions will be considered for future issues.

Send inquiries to:

William Walsh
Head – Acquisitions
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur St. SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
wwalsh@gsu.edu

Rice University Press is being revived in an attempt to break the problematic cycle of scholarly publishing…

Inside Higher Ed :: New Model for Scholarly Publishing
Rice University on Thursday announced a plan to shake up those interconnected problems. Rice University Press, which was killed in 1996, will be revived. But unlike every other university press, it will publish all of its books online only. People will be able to read the books for no charge and to download them for a modest fee. Editors will solicit manuscripts and peer review panels will vet submissions — all in ways that are similar to the systems in traditional publishing.

Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification a new open access journal has posted Jonathan Band’s “The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the Story.”

From the journal’s Web site:

International in scope, Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification is a new scholarly journal devoted specifically to the study of plagiarism and related fabrications/falsifications within the professional literature (i.e. scholarly journals and books) and popular discourse domains (i.e. journalism, politics, audio-visual texts). Providing a forum for scholarly discussion and research on trends and phenomena (both recent and historical) related to plagiarism, Plagiary features refereed research articles, “Perspectives” articles, book reviews, and responses as a point of focus on issues of vital importance to professional and popular discourse communities.