Currently viewing the category: "Open Access and Institutional Repositories"

A little justified bragging

On November 4, 2010 By

It is delightful to be able to report on the impact made at the Berlin 8 Conference on Open Access by the presentation on Duke’s OA initiatives by Paolo Mangiafico, Duke’s Director of Digital Information Strategy.  Paolo told a packed room about all of the various ways in which Duke has pursued open access for [...]

Continue Reading →

Berlin in Beijing – first impressions

On November 2, 2010 By

The week that my colleague Paolo Mangiafico and I spent in Beijing for the Berlin 8 Conference on Open Access flew by, so my first impressions are actually being written after our return, based on notes I made during the conference.  This post is an attempt at a summary of the event, while later [...]

Continue Reading →

Faculty support for Open Access scholarship

On September 22, 2010 By

As we publish a series of posts in this space about open access in preparation for Open Access Week from October 18 through 24, it seems like a good time to interrupt ourselves and note three recent articles in which faculty authors express support, in a variety of ways, for open access to scholarship.

The [...]

Continue Reading →

Can we protect “traditional knowledge?” Should we?

On September 15, 2010 By

In much of the world, the possibility of providing protection for traditional knowledge — indigenous music, stories, dances and even genetic material — is a very lively topic.  Even though such protections are a form of intellectual property right that clearly impacts issues of scholarship and copyright, I have not previously dealt with these discussions [...]

Continue Reading →

What is an author to do?

On September 7, 2010 By

A fascinating little controversy came to my attention the other day; one of those disputes that seems well outside the arena of academic issues, yet raises lots of questions that scholarly authors need to consider.

The basic facts of the dispute, which are summarized here on the Techdirt blog, are that the author Raymond [...]

Continue Reading →

Easy as 123?

On August 16, 2010 By

A colleague recently suggested that I consider why it was that two groups with putatively similar interests – the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) – seemed to take different positions in regard to the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373 and H.R. 5037), which was [...]

Continue Reading →

The Worm at the Core (and several mixed metaphors)

On June 14, 2010 By

Last week, I was a last minute substitute speaker at a “Master’s Class” for mid-level managers in the STM publishing business.  I was invited to speak on “The Battle for Copyright and Digital Rights” opposite Mark Seeley, who is a Senior VP and Legal Counsel for Elsevier.  That Mr. Seeley was a kind and [...]

Continue Reading →

Policy consequences

On May 13, 2010 By

We are trained these days to dread “unintended consequences” whenever we make decisions; it is a fear that sometimes leads to paralysis.  But not all unintended consequences are negative, and I want to take a moment to celebrate some unexpected things that have resulted from the adoption of an open access policy by the [...]

Continue Reading →

Open Access at Duke

On March 19, 2010 By

Yesterday the Academic Council at Duke University unanimously adopted an Open Access policy for scholarly articles written by the Duke faculty.  The policy was brought forward by a Provost-appointed committee of faculty and librarians that was chaired by Professor Cathy Davidson (whose earlier post on the subject is here) and Paolo Mangiafico, Duke’s Director [...]

Continue Reading →

Should the court consider the new Google patent?

On February 17, 2010 By

On Tuesday Google was formally granted a patent on software to selectively control access to content, based on access rules and geographical locations.  There is a story on Ars Technica here that explains the patent and its potential application very nicely.  Basically, this is a technique for filtering what users can see based on [...]

Continue Reading →