Scholarly Communications @ WU Libraries

Increasing Access to the Results of U.S. Federally Funded Scientific Research

In a policy memorandum dated 22 February 2013, the Executive Office of the President/Office of Science and Technology Support (OSTP) Director John Holdren has directed Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research.

Peter Suber recaps and contrasts both this "Obama directive" and the FASTR bill, currently in House and Senate: United States doubles down on open access to federally-funded research.

Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) Introduced in U.S. House and Senate

The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act is the successor to the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). FRPAA had been introduced in three earlier sessions of Congress (May 2006, April 2009, and February 2012) but had not come up for a vote. In the 113th Congress, Congressional supporters of OA decided to introduced a modified bill. The result is FASTR, a new and strengthened version of FRPAA. Both bills would require open access (OA) to peer-reviewed manuscripts of articles reporting the results of federally-funded research. from Notes on the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act
Here are some links for more information:
Notes on the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act Berkman Center, Harvard Open Access Project
SPARC FAQ for the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)
Added 21Feb13: American Library Association page

Open Access Week 2012

Open Access Week 2012 at Washington University links to webcast, slides, handouts, etc.

Open access and public access in the news, March-April 2012

Letter in Chronicle of Higher Education: An Open Letter to Academic Publishers About Open Access, By Jennifer Howard

Editorial from The Scientist March 19, 2012: Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken, by Michael P. Taylor. The current system by which academics publish their scientific discoveries is a massive waste of money.

Editorial in Science March 16, 2012: Open Access—Pass the Buck, by Maria Leptin (director of EMBO)

FRPAA in the Spotlight: Public Access Bill featured in Congressional Briefing, Two Dozen Bipartisan Co-sponsors add their Support| Background on this legislation

Washington University Libraries introduce Open Scholarship repository

Ivan Oransky talk, October 25: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What Retractions Tell Us About Scientific Transparency

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What Retractions Tell Us About Scientific Transparency
Ivan Oransky, MD, Executive Editor, Reuters Health, Adjunct Asst. Prof. NYU's Sci. Health & Environ. Reporting Program, Clinical Asst. Prof. of Medicine NYU School of Medicine, blogger at Retraction Watch
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - 3:45 PM; reception at 3:15
Location: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, AT&T Auditorium

James Boyle will speak in 2012 for Humanities Lecture Series

James Boyle, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School, will give 3 lectures at Washington University.

February 29, 2012, 5-6:30 pm: Cultural Agoraphobia:Why Most of What You Know About the Internet is Wrong. Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, WU Law School. Twitter tag is #wustlassembly

March 1, 2012, 5-6:30pm: The Internet Threat: //The Farmer’s Tale and Other Myths of Intellectual Property. Women’s Building, Formal Lounge

March 2, 2012, 5-6:30: Seven Ways to Ruin a Technological Revolution (And Why We Shouldn't). Women’s Building, Formal Lounge

Professor Boyle was on the original board of Creative Commons and a co-founder of Science Commons.

One recent book, The public domain : enclosing the commons of the mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, c2008), is available online for free under a Creative Commons license or in paper at the Law Library. James Boyle is also co-author of a comic-book style piece: Bound by law? : tales from the public domain.

More info

New page on open access at Washington University

A library guide on the Washington University faculty senate open access resolution and other related issues is now available: Open Access at Washington University.

WU faculty senate adopts open access resolution

The WU faculty senate adopted a resolution which encourages faculty members to make their scholarly and creative works freely available online.

• Article in WU Record
• Text of the resolution

Focus on Open Access

In honor of International Open Access Week, October 18-24, 2010, we have published a special open access "research guide" and will have a small exhibit in Olin Library, Oct. 11-24. See also Open Access at Scholarly Communications. Events and discussions are happening in many places. Also I recommend the Open Access Topics series at Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Peer review summary

Peer Review in the Digital Age is a nice summary post about peer review, especially in the humanities, and how it is changing. It includes several links to other blogs and websites.