For those who have been following  H1N1 influenza virus news (and those who might expect to get questions about it), the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Google have launched a new mashup service:

PLOS Currents : Influenza is built utilizing Google Knol and a new service from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes.  This service allows the user an easy way to follow current research and search for relevant scientific information.

As we approach influenza season, expect greater levels of concern and interest in H1N1.

found via the Official Google Blog

PACER is the online access portal for “U.S. Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court records and documents nationwide”.  Because the documents it provides are created by the federal judiciary, they are not copyrightable; because PACER is the only place to obtain these records, it is a critical link to those who need case information.  PACER also charges a per-page fee ($0.08 per page up to 30 pages in a specific document) for access.

RECAP (which is PACER spelled backwards) is a new, open source Firefox extension which appears to follow all the rules:  you access documents through PACER, paying all assessed fees, and you get your docuements.  RECAP, however adds two elements to the mix:

1. RECAP automatically uploads any document that is accessed by users of the extension to a public repository hosted by the Internet Archive.
2. RECAP will alert the user when a document they wish to access is available through the public repository.

On the surface, it may appear that people are conducting an end-run against the court’s system for providing documents.  However, a broader view strongly suggests that these documents are public, and that the PACER system is actually an exception in the realm of access to public records.

The Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government provide documents free to the user; this is an attempt to make the workings and decisions of the judiciary as public as the other branches.  RECAP is a fully legal means to provide information in a way that is the spirit of the law.

Further reading:

• The Case Against PACER
• Firefox Extension Liberates US Court Docs from Paywall
• Use RECAP to Bypass Court Document Paywall

The Open Humanities Press (OHP) has joined forces with the University of Michigan Library’s Scholarly Publications Office (SPO) to start up a series of open access monographs:

• New Metaphysics
• Critical Climate Change
• Global Conversations
• Unidentified Theoretical Objects

and my favorite…

• Liquid Books

According to the site, Liquid Books will be

“a series of experimental digital books published under the conditions of both open editing and free content. As such, you are free to annotate, tag, edit, add to, remix, reformat, reversion, reinvent and reuse any of the books in the series – and what’s more you are encouraged to do so. The most interesting results of such open editing and writing… will be ‘frozen’ and published by OHP”

This looks to be a great mix of scholarly publishing combined with open access, with some remixing thrown into the vat!  Also check out the press release (pdf).

thanks to Karen Schneiderman for the link

Paper Cut : Missouri College Embraces E-Textbooks is a story that was broadcast this morning on NPR.  The headline is slightly misleading, in that they are running a pilot program in which 500 students are trying out E-Texts for one semester; when the pilot is completed, they may or may not fully “embrace” the concept.

One element that I was surprised was not in the article was the idea of Open Access Texts, which are available for no cost, and are created, edited, and updated in an collaborative fashion.  Perhaps they limited the pilot program to electronic versions of alredy-used textbooks, but I certainly see a progression towards open access as being a natural step for a program such as this.

It will be interesting to see what results Northwest Missouri State gets from this study.

found via LISNews

The Open and Libraries Class Journal is a new, peer-reviewed journal on open access and libraries, and the first issue contains the “final papers for the Open Movement and Libraries class (LIBR287-06) at San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science.”

Each and every one of these articles looks interesting…

via Open Access News

The Library and the Bazaar is an essay by Greer Hauptman that discusses copyright options, libraries, and the freedom to read.

Of note is his argument that with greater control being exerted by publishers over access to content (think e-journals) it becomes important to recognize how critical access to information is to the library’s mission.  Now think about this in terms of e-books where we might be ten years from now.

found via Open Access News

In an example of how much open access may change scholarship, it was announced the Dead Sea Scrolls will be scanned in high resolution and made available online and open access.

As more primary sources are made available for study, scholarship will become more democratic.  This will have both positive and negative aspects, but as with the greater availability of scientific studies, the primary result will be beneficial.

found via Open Access News

Mike Dunford writing in of The Questionable Authority has written a post that compares the business model and profits of journal publishers with oil companies.  One figure that he arrives at is shocking, to say the least, but also illustrative of the current journal market:

Gas prices are going up. You’ve been combining trips, cutting your milage as much as you can, driving a more efficient vehicle, and your fuel costs are still going up. You drive home from work, stopping along the way to put $30+ dollars worth of gas into the 10 gallon tank in your Prius. You sit on the sofa, turn on the news, and hear that Exxon-Mobil just reported quarterly profits of about $1,500 per second. The price of something that you need to buy is going through the roof, it’s making things inconvenient for you, and the people who sell it are making money faster than the mint can print it. How happy are you?

If you want to understand the anger that the major publishing houses are generating, that’s a good place to start.

Publishers don’t make money at anything close to the clip that Big Oil does, but they’re not doing badly. Elsevier is probably the biggest fish, and they come in at a respectable $1,700 per minute. That’s 60 times less than Exxon-Mobil, but it’s still a nice chunk of change.

He goes on to discuss the relationships between authors and publishers, and the reaction to the open access movement.  All in all, this is a good essay that can provide some perspective for those outside of the library and publishing worlds.

found via Open Access News

Peter Suber at Open Access News has an excellent post on the language being used when discussing copyright infringement of textbooks. I personally prefer what I have in the title of this post; results may vary.

We have been through this with digital music. Music publishers and distributers were all up in arms about downloading music, but now they have come to see that the paradigm is shifting and what was needed was a change in their approach. People will follow the rules, generally, as long as those rules make sense to them.

Watch for the misuse of language on both sides of the argument, and remember that the movement in publishing is towards open access and digital downloading. The sooner everyone understands this and adapts, the sooner people will get what they want/need at a fair price, and publishers will make a fair profit.