Paperity, OA journal aggregator

Press release

With the beginning of the new academic year, Paperity, the first multidisciplinary aggregator of Open Access journals and papers, has been launched. Paperity will connect authors with readers, boost dissemination of new discoveries and consolidate academia around open literature.

Right now, Paperity includes over 160,000 articles from 2,000 scholarly journals, and growing. The goal of the team is to cover 100% of Open Access literature in 3 years from now. In order to achieve this, Paperity utilizes an original technology for article indexing, designed by Marcin Wojnarski, a data geek from Poland and a medalist of the International Mathematical Olympiad. This technology indexes only true peer-reviewed scholarly papers and filters out irrelevant entries, like student assignments or drafts that easily make it into other aggregators and search engines....

http://blog.paperity.org/2014/10/08/paperity-launched

Faculty! 10/23 forum- Solving the Textbook Cost Crisis with Open Educational Resources

On 10/23/2014, in the EUC Kirkland, Nichole Allen (SPARC) and a UNCG faculty panel will participated in the faculty forum Solving the Textbook Cost Crisis with Open Educational Resources

Please join us!

FASTR - Proposed legislation would increase open access requirements

FASTR, the "Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act" has been introduced on both sides of Congress and referred to committees.

If passed, this bill would require

"Federal agenc(ies) with extramural research expenditures of over $100,000,000 (to) develop a ... public access policy...for the collection and depositing of papers...from research supported...from funding by the Federal Government..not later than 6 months after publication in peer reviewed journals..."

-From version S.350 of this bill, introduced 2/14/2014

FASTR is based on the  NIH Open Access Policy, which currently requires scientists to "submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts...(arising) from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central...(to be made) accessible to the public (within) 12 months of publication..." 

FASTR is also related to the recently announced policy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  Like FASTR, the OSTP memo requires agencies to address peer reviewed publications. Unlike FASTR, this memo also requires federal agencies to address research data. Keep in mind, the OSTP policy is not a law. It is only in effect during the current administration. Who knows what will happen in two years?

Want to find out more about FASTR?

• SPARC provides some background
• Library Journal has summarized some of the debate surrounding this legislation
• Go to congress.gov. Type the title "Fair Access to Science and Technology Research"in order to read the text of the bill and see the current status

Remember, the library has a guide to Scholarly Communications with background information on open access, author rights, and more.

Omnibus Appropriations Bill Codifies White House Directive

Just received this update from SPARC:

Omnibus Appropriations Bill Codifies White House Directive

Washington, DC –....the FY 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Act....requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the Omnibus bill with research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on federally funded research no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal...

...Omnibus bill...affirms the strong precedent set by the landmark NIH Public Access Policy, and more recently by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Directive on Public Access.  At the same time, SPARC is pressing for additional provisions to strengthen the language – many of which are contained in the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act – including requiring that articles are:

·      Available no later than six months after publication;
·      Available through a central repository similar to the National Institutes for Health’s (NIH) highly successful PubMed Central, a2008 model that opened the gateway to the human genome project and more recently the brain mapping initiative.  These landmark programs demonstrate quite clearly how opening up access to taxpayer funded research can accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, lead to both innovative new treatments and technologies, and generate new jobs in key sectors of the economy; and 
·      Provided in formats and under terms that ensure researchers have the ability to freely apply cutting-edge analysis tools and technologies to the full collection of digital articles resulting from public funding.

“SPARC is working toward codifying the principles in FASTR and is working with the Administration to use PubMed Central as the implementation model for the President’s directive,” said Joseph.  “Only with a central repository and the ability to fully mine and reuse data will we have the access we need to really spur innovation and job creation in broad sections of the economy.”

Background

Every year, the federal government uses taxpayer dollars to fund tens of billions of dollars of scientific research that results in thousands upon thousands of articles published in scientific journals.  The government funds this research with the understanding that it will advance science, spur the economy, accelerate innovation, and improve the lives of our citizens.  Yet most taxpayers – including academics, students, and patients – are shut out of accessing and using the results of the research that their tax dollars fund, because it is only available through expensive and often hard-to-access scientific journals.

By any measure, 2013 was a watershed year for the Open Access movement:  in February, the White House issued the landmark Directive; a major bill,  FASTR, was introduced in Congress; a growing number of higher education institutions – ranging from the University of California System, Harvard University, MIT, the University of Kansas, and Oberlin College – actively worked to maximize access to and sharing of research results; and, for the first time, state legislatures around the nation have begun debating open access policies supported by SPARC.

Details of the Omnibus Language

The Omnibus language (H.R. 3547) codifies a section of the White House Directive requirements into law for the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Department of Education, among other smaller agencies.

Additional report language was included throughout the bill directing agencies and OSTP to keep moving on the Directive policies, including the US Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, and the National Science Foundation.

President Obama is expected to sign the bill in the coming days.