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FOS Newsletter, 2/14/02
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Peter Suber
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Feb 14, 2002 06:32 PST
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
February 14, 2001
The next issue will come out after a longer interval than usual so that I
can take a four-day vacation next week.
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The Budapest Open Access Initiative
Today marks the official launch of the Budapest Open Access Initiative
(BOAI), the most important FOS initiative in a long time. This is the
public statement and plan of action that emerged from the conference in
Budapest I attended in early December (and described briefly in FOSN for
12/5/01). Between the conference and today, the participants have been
drafting the statement and a few other documents to accompany it. I'm very
pleased with the result and very proud to have played a role in it. Let me
give you a quick tour.
The drafters of BOAI represent many perspectives on FOS, many different
nations, and many different FOS initiatives. The experience around the
table came from university research, libraries, philanthropy, and
non-profit and for-profit publishing. You can find the individual drafters
and their affiliations at the bottom of the main document, so I won't
repeat them here. The first point to make, though, is that while
disagreements were plentiful, we all saw that agreements were more basic
than disagreements. This diverse group agreed on a common plan to achieve FOS.
The initiative endorses the goal of "open access", the term used by BOAI
for what I tend to call free online access. BOAI calls for open access to
peer-reviewed research articles in all academic fields and the preprints
that might precede them. It can easily and naturally be extended to all
digital content that its authors consent to disseminate without payment.
BOAI endorses two strategies to achieve open access, and supports
experiments with other strategies that might prove effective. The first
strategy is what Stevan Harnad calls self-archiving. Authors put preprints
in institutional or disciplinary archives that comply with the protocols of
the Open Archives Initiative. When their articles are published in
peer-reviewed journals, they also archive either the refereed postprint or
a list of corrigenda (differences between the preprint and the postprint),
depending on the journal's permission policies. The second strategy is to
launch a new generation of journals committed to provide open access to all
their contents. The two strategies are not only compatible; they are
complementary. Putting them together creates synergy and the acceleration
of parallel processing.
Both strategies are sustainable in the long term. We know this because
providing open access costs much less than traditional forms of
dissemination and much less than the money currently spent on journal
subscriptions. The only problem is the transition from here to there. The
BOAI is especially promising because it understands this and mobilizes the
financial resources to help make the transition possible. George Soros'
Open Society Institute (OSI), which convened the original meeting in
Budapest, is committing one million dollars a year for three years to BOAI,
and recruiting other foundations to add their support to the cause.
What makes BOAI special is the way it embraces different approaches and
combines principle, strategy, tested means to the desired end, and cash.
I'm especially pleased with the BOAI's friendliness toward the many players
in the landscape and its focus on constructive steps toward the goal. The
BOAI doesn't demand that existing journals change their prices or their
access policies. We hope they will, and we will even help pay the costs of
converting to a different business model for journals willing to
change. But if not, we'll just pursue our goal without their
participation. BOAI doesn't call for boycotts of any kind of literature,
any kind of journal, or any kind of publisher. It doesn't call for
violations of copyright or even for changes in copyright law. It doesn't
demand, and needn't wait for, any changes from publishers, markets, or
legislation. Scientists and scholars have all the means within their
grasp. The BOAI calls on scientists and scholars to take up these means
and use them, and it invites the cooperation of all those disposed to help.
My considered judgment is that the primary obstacle faced by BOAI,and the
FOS movement in general, is misunderstanding. Most of the objections we
hear (about copyright, about quality and peer review, about financing...)
are based on misunderstanding. That's good news insofar as it means that
most resistance will melt away when our ends and means are properly
understood. But of course it's bad news if our efforts to date have not
done more to clarify our ends and means. The BOAI is taking steps to
disarm as many objections as possible with a detailed FAQ. Not everyone
will read it, of course. But for those who do, it will answer 95% of the
questions, objections, and anxieties that similar initiatives have provoked
in the past. Of course, FAQ's don't change the world, and we have other
tools for changing the world. But if our primary obstacle really is
misunderstanding, then the FAQ is one of our most potent tools.
HOW YOU CAN HELP. You can help the BOAI by signing it, persuading your
institution to sign it, and spreading the word about it. A signature
indicates a pledge of assistance and participation. If you are willing to
self-archive your own papers, or submit them to open-access journals, help
launch new open-access journals, or any of a number of things listed at the
site, then you should sign. Signatures don't call on others to act, but
demonstrate that someone is acting. The growing list of signatures is a
measure of our strength.
If you have questions about BOAI, send them to me (peters [at] earlham.edu)
and I'll try to answer them in the newsletter or the discussion forum.
BOAI Home page
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
What you can do to help
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/help.shtml
(Separate sections for reseearchers, universities, libraries, journals,
foundations, professional societies, governments,and citizens.)
FAQ
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm
(The FAQ and the list of ways you can help, above, will remain open to
revision.)
See who has signed
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/view.cfm
Sign it yourself
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/sign.shtml
Open Society Institute
http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/
* Postscript. I like the term "open access" and will start to use it more
often in the newsletter. It's not perfect, however. It's short but not
self-explanatory. We decided that this was better than a long phrase that
contained all the needed nuances. ("Free online access" is more
self-explanatory but still falls short; a truly self-explanatory phrase
would be very long.) The BOAI defines the term explicitly, which frees it
to trade off perspicuity for brevity. If the term and its definition can
spread, then we'll have a useful new tool for discussing FOS issues. --Now
all we need is a short term for the body of literature to which this applies.
* PPS. The term "open access" is already spreading in this context. The
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) supports both
free and affordable scholarly journals, and has now flagged the free ones
on its web list with a bright yellow "Open Access" icon. SPARC is an
institutional signatory of the BOAI, and SPARC's director, Rick Johnson, is
one of the BOAI drafters.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=c0
* PPPS. I expected to have no news accounts of BOAI to cite until the next
issue. But here are a few that just came out as I prepare to click SEND.
Declan Butler, Soros Offers Access to Science Papers (for _Nature_)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U21535A6
Ivan Noble, Boost for Research Paper Access (for BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1818000/1818652.stm
Michael Smith, Soros Backs Academic Rebels (for UPI)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=12022002-031227-9710r
More to come!
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International Scholarly Communications Alliance
Eight major research library organizations from eight nations launched the
International Scholarly Communications Alliance (ISCA) on February
6. "Because the ISCA recognizes that both the publishing industry and the
research community are global, its members will concentrate on ways to
ensure open and affordable access to scholarship across national
boundaries. Its essential partnership will be with the scholar-author, the
key provider of the world's research."
ISCA members represent over 600 research libraries around the world, with
budgets over $5 billion (US), and serving more than 11 million faculty and
students. ICAS will act on behalf of all its members to promote
"necessary, practical and viable...initiatives to transform the scholarly
communication process". Its press release gives two examples. One is
SPARC and the other is self-archiving using OAI-compliant institutional
archives.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?A15D6226
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The Alliance for Cellular Signaling (AfCS)
The AfCS is a consortium of scientists studying how cells use contextual
clues to interpret signals. What's unusual is that AfCS puts its research
discoveries into the public domain and supports open, rapid, and mutual
information exchanges among alliance members. Hence, to become a
participating investigator, one must agree in advance relinquish
intellectual property rights to all research discoveries made with AfCS funds.
In November, AfCS announced a partnership with _Nature_ and the Nature
Publishing Group (NPG). Together they will create the AfCS/Nature
Signalling Gateway, which will be free to all users. Research results that
survive the peer review process of the AfCS Molecule Page will count as NPG
publications and will be retrievable as such --and still be accessible to
all without charge. The collaborative site will launch in the
spring/summer of 2002. This is _Nature_'s most important FOS experiment.
Alliance for Cellular Signaling
http://www.cellularsignaling.org/
AfCS position on intellectual property and the public domain
http://cellularsignaling.org/index.cgi?code=data_sharing_plan
AfCS Newsletter story on the role of _Nature_
http://www.cellularsignaling.org/PDFs/Newsletter4.pdf
(Scroll to page 2.)
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Developments
* In May, Lawrence Lessig plans to launch a project called Creative
Commons, which will offer free, flexible intellectual property licenses
designed to protect authors, promote sharing, and encourage the creativity
that has been stifled by copyright. The customizable licenses will protect
art, literature, scholarship, software, or music. The standard Commons
License will assign most of the author's rights to the public domain while
reserving others, such as the right to block the publication of altered,
misattributed, or commercial versions of the author's work. (PS: This is
very similar to the kind of license the Public Library of Science
recommends for scientific journal articles.) The project will also act as
a "conservancy" for this kind of content, and use its resources to protect
the reserved rights of the authors and creators. In this sense, the
Commons will use current copyright law to promote sharing and protect
rights, rather than work to reform copyright law. (In his books, Lessig
advocates significant copyright reforms, but this project doesn't
presuppose or lobby for those refoms.) The combination of licenses that
reserve enforceable rights and a committed organization to enforce them
should encourage more authors and creators to consent to the free online
distribution of their works.
News stories on the Creative Commons
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-834775.html
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R1FF2376
The Creative Commons, beta site
http://www.creativecommons.org/
(Thanks to Internet Law News.)
* The Science Société subcommittee on intellectual property of the French
Académie des Sciences has issued a public statement asking the European
Commission not to apply a May 2001 copyright directive to scientific
publications. A scientific publication like a journal article should be
treated differently from other literature because the author of the
scientific publication "ne cherche pas à tirer un avantage financier de sa
publication" (seeks no financial gain). Copyright law should recognize the
important difference between the two kinds of writing, and should recognize
that applying the rules of revenue-producing literature to donated
literature (e.g. by limiting copying) will actually hinder the
dissemination of the latter against the wishes of authors. To help readers
understand the issues, it refers them to the FOS debate in _Nature_ and the
Public Library of Science. The site includes a web form allowing others to
sign the statement.
http://www-mathdoc.ujf-grenoble.fr/DA/
(Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)
* Eprints v. 2.0 has now been released. Eprints is free software for
making OAI-compatible archives for self-archiving.
http://www.eprints.org/
* Elsevier Science has started distributing science books through
ebrary. Ebrary allows free online full-text reading, but charges for
printing and copying. This counts as another Elsevier experiment with FOS
(see FOSN for 1/30/02).
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E5FA1386
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* Print books are 3D objects, but ebook formats offer only a 2D
experience. Until now. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
has received a grant to develop ebooks that recreate "the experience of
viewing a book in three dimensions". We're not talking about pop-up books
for kids, but rare and antiquarian books whose paper texture or
hand-painted (hence 3D) illustrations can offer clues to scholars that 2D
text and images cannot.
http://www.unc.edu/news/newsserv/univ/grant013102.htm
* This month, CrossRef signed its 100th participating publisher (Hogrefe &
Huber) and registered its 4 millionth journal article. CrossRef is a
non-profit corporation using open standards to automate reference linking
between online journal articles. Its goal is "to register all citable
professional and scholarly content available in electronic form".
http://www.crossref.org/press020802.htm
* Blackwell Synergy (369 science journals) has offered free online access
from its launch until now, to help potential buyers become familiar with
the service. The free trial period is now over. The only free services
left are searching and browsing tables of contents and abstracts, full-text
access to sample issues, and email delivery of tables of contents.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0202/msg00030.html
* Innovative Interfaces has released Metasource, a suite of tools to help
libraries manage their digital collections.
http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/lt/2002/news2245.html
* ISI has adopted SmartLogik to be its cross-archive search
engine. SmartLogik tools create a uniform interface for proprietary and
public (free) databases.
SmartLogik/ISI press release
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P21D5126
SmartLogik home page
http://www.smartlogik.com/flash.shtml
* In Kelly v. Arriba, decided on February 6, the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that search engines may present users with thumbnail images
of copyrighted photographs. That is protected by fair use. However, they
may not let users click on the thumbnail to view a larger image. (PS: This
case doesn't affect most online scholarship, because most scholarship
consists of text without images and most search engines return text without
images. However, we should see this as one more step in the slow and
steady resolution of previously unresolved questions about the legality of
crawling copyrighted content and giving searchers useful summaries and links.)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0055521p.pdf
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/078264.htm
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X2331346
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174326.html
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New on the net
* Six Canadian universities have launched TAPoR (Text-Analysis Portal for
Research) to serve scholars who study electronic texts. The portal will
disseminate electronic texts produced in Canada and offer software to
facilitate their analysis. TAPoR is funded by the six universities and the
largest grant ($1.6 million US) the Canadian government has ever given to a
project in the Humanities (but the smallest award given this year by
Canada's Foundation for Innovation). TAPoR will be one of the world's
largest free text databases. It will contain stories in aboriginal
Canadian languages, transcribed oral history, old English texts from all
English-speaking countries, and other rare texts.
TAPoR home page
http://huco.ualberta.ca/Tapor/
Some news stories about TAPoR
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/02/2002020802t.htm
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G3881266
* The UK Data Archive at the University of Sussex has officially launched
Qualidata, "a national service for the acquisition, dissemination and
re-use of social sciences qualitative research data". The site has been
online in a beta form since October 2000 while building its collection of
datasets.
http://www.qualidata.essex.ac.uk/
(Thanks to the Manchester Metropolitan University Library.)
* The LATINO Project from Mexico's Colima University now hosts 114 free
online bibliographic databases from libraries in Spain and 14 countries in
Latin America and the Caribbean. The project is funded by UNESCO.
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/news/2002/020207_latino.shtml
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) has just launched a set of online
tutorials to help internet users in different academic fields hone their
skills at finding and evaluating information. (PS: It's more work to have
separate tutorials for separate fields, but this is the right
approach. Discovery and evaluation are both, for different reasons,
discipline-specific.)
http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/
* Planet Publish is a new web site for electronic publishing
professionals. By focusing on the technology of epublishing, it is equally
relevant to commercial and non-commercial epublishers. The site includes
news, reviews, a discussion forum, and a compendium of tools organized by type.
http://www.planetpublish.com
* The ALA Office for Information Technology Policy is running an email
tutorial on Licensing Essentials for Library Professionals. It will be
taught by Lesley Ellen Harris.
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0202/msg00023.html
Lesley Ellen Harris and her work on copyright law
http://www.copyrightlaws.com/index2.html
* A report on the January 20 NISO/BISG conference on Archiving Electronic
Publications is now online at the NISO web site. The report includes links
to the major presentations at the conference.
http://www.niso.org/presentations/niso-bisg-rpt.html
* Users of the Open eBook Publication Structure now have their own
discussion forum.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OEBPS-Tech/
(Thanks to Planet eBook.)
* The Dvorak Game Company has a new online game: The Copyright Fight
Deck. "The first player to control 70% of Humanity's written works wins
the game." The full deck of cards is on display at the web site, where you
can also print them for playing. There are cards on copyright, copyleft,
lawyers, national security, book burning, Sonny Bono, and many others.
http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/cardlist.cgi?copyrightfight
(Thanks to LIS News.)
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Share your thoughts
* The EU's Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS)
provides free online access to EU-funded research. It oversees FP5 and its
many FOS and FOS-related programs. CORDIS is looking for experts to
evaluate proposals. If you're willing to serve, fill out this web form.
http://candidature.cordis.lu/expert-evaluators/
(Thanks to El.pub Weekly.)
* A research team at Oxford's Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy
is collecting self-imposed Codes of Conduct used by any kind organization
for the regulation of online information. The codes could concern
copyright, access, censorship, deletion, hate speech, filtering, or other
topics. If your organization uses a code of self-regulation, register it
with the researchers through this web form.
http://www.selfregulation.info
* NSF and JISC are jointly funding a series of partnerships between US and
UK institutions to develop digital resources for the classroom. The
project will fund about four partnerships for three years at about £500,000
per team per year. If your institution would like to participate and needs
a partner, fill out the project's web form.
http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/nsfjiscmatch.html
* Rory Litwin writes the Library Juice newsletter and owns the libr.org
domain name. He is offering space on his server to "small organizations of
librarians who are working in [the] struggle to defend the social
good". If your group needs space, contact Rory.
http://www.libr.org/
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In other publications
* In a February 10 story in the _San Francisco Chronicle_, Tanya Schevitz
writes about the downside of online research, especially by
students: plagiarism, neglect of older sources, an attitude that what
isn't free online isn't worth reading, and indifference to the distinction
between peer-reviewed literature and self-publishing. She even knows about
the death of Ellen Roche at Johns Hopkins (see FOSN for 8/23/01). She
quotes Stanford chemist Barry Trost, who says that online journals are most
useful when you know precisely what you want and search for it. Print
journals are best for interdisciplinary topics where it's important to put
yourself in the right vicinity for serendipity and read what catches your
eye. (PS: Trost is right that there's a difference, but the difference is
not large. He underestimates the power of hyperlinks to produce serendipity.)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F1A42476
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* In a February 7 story, Reuters reports that book publishers are finding
that free online chapters help sell books. Amazon's "Look Inside" program,
which offers free online sample pages and chapters of a growing number of
books (FOSN 10/19/01) is only one example of the trend. (PS: This is a
good trend, but how far will publishers generalize from the evidence of
sales benefits? Will publishers admit that fair use is in their interest,
and not just in the interest of readers? Will they go as far as the
National Academies Press, which provides free online access to the full
text of every book it publishes?)
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/02/07/books-online.htm
(From LIS News.)
* In the February 5 _Boston Globe_ Robert Weisman interviews Google CEO
Eric Schmidt. Schmidt says that Google's future is to search all the
world's information. "It's not all the world's information currently
available on the Web, it's all of the world's information." You might
think that this requires putting all the world's information online free of
charge. But not quite. "Maybe you'd have to pay for it in some way, we
haven't figured it out yet." Of course an archive could license its
contents to Google, which would in turn charge users to search it. But
remember that "maybe".
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/business/Eric_Schmidt+.shtml
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* In a February 5 story in the _BBC News_, Alfred Hermida reports an
interesting turning of the tables in Sri Lanka, where computers and
internet access are scarce. Instead of listening to the radio on the web,
Sri Lankans listen to the web on the radio. For an hour every day, Sri
Lankan radio announcers read web pages on the air. Radio staff and
volunteer experts (including physicians) find clear and reliable pages on
topics suggested by listeners.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I13B2356
(From LIS News.)
* In the February 5 _Planet eBook_, Sam Vaknin gives a useful overview of
DOI's, including multiple resolution, the new DOI-EB (ebook) standard, and
their implications for DRM technology and ecommerce.
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=281&nl
* In a January 29 posting to arXiv, Carl Lagoze and 14 co-authors describe
the core components of the NSDL architecture, focusing on how the
architecture supports multiple layers of interoperability (see FOSN for
1/23/02). In a January 30 posting, David Fulker and Greg Janée describe
the technical scope and functional model of the NSDL architecture. NSDL is
the National SMETE Digital Library (SMETE = Science, Mathematics,
Engineering and Technology Education), a very large free online archive of
science now under construction by the NSF.
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0201025 (Lagoze et al.)
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0201027 (Fulker and Janée)
(Thanks to the Scout Report.)
* The December/January issue of _Against the Grain_ is devoted to
ebooks. Only the table of contents is free online.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I5CA2186
* In a recent article in _The Craft_, William Bostock argues that
electronic journals will have a more significant role in academic life when
they can overcome concerns about their quality, visibility, and continuity
(persistence).
http://thecraft.icaap.org/content/2001/bostock/bostock.html
* In a recent article in _The Craft_, Timothy McGettigan argues that it is
author inertia, not journal inadequacy, that keeps more scholars from
submitting their articles to electronic journals. One lesson he draws is
that the FOS movement is better off recruiting young scholars who
understand the advantages of open access and stop wasting energy trying to
convert those who resist, "especially those well-situated within the print
publishing hierarchy".
http://thecraft.icaap.org/content/2001/mcgettigan.html
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Following up
* Edward Felten and the EFF have decided not to appeal the dismissal of
their case by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As a result, no court is
now considering whether the portions of the DMCA that apparently prohibit
Felten from publishing his research on copy protection violate the First
Amendment. Felten's decision in based on assurances from the recording
industry, the federal government, and the federal court that the DMCA does
not apply to scientists who study encryption and security. The Justice
Department has said in writing that scientists who study circumvention
technologies, and publish their results, are not violating the DMCA
anti-circumvention clause and will not be prosecuted.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/Felten_v_RIAA/20020206_eff_felten_pr.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50272,00.html
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174284.html
* In FOSN for 1/23/02, I wrote about a two-tiered approach to the ban on
hate speech proposed for adoption by the Council of Europe. Because it is
aimed at cross-border communications on the internet, and because the
two-tiers appeal to countries whose free speech rules do not allow the
direct prohibition of hate speech, it is an insidious threat to online
communications that might offend. Now the Computer & Commications Industry
Association (CCIA) has told Colin Powell and John Ashcroft the same thing,
and urged them to keep this new protocol from undermining free speech by
Americans.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174285.html
(Thanks to GigaLaw.)
Also see this open letter to the Council of Europe from 32 civil liberties
organizations including the ACLU, EFF, and Human Rights Watch. The letter
asks the Council to release the latest draft of the protocol for public
discussion.
http://www.gilc.org/speech/coe_hatespeech_letter.html
* The Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments
would require participating nations to enforce one another's legal
judgments (see FOSN for 7/3/01, 7/10/01). The purpose is to let copyright
enforcement catch up with the border-crossing internet. But one effect
will be to let countries enforce their censorship judgments abroad as
well. The negotiating conference has just posted three RTF documents to
the web to bring observers up to date on the state of the drafting process.
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/hague/hague16feb2002-bureaurefects.rtf
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/hague/hague17feb2002-ah-internet.rtf
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/hague/hague18Feb2002-ah-choiceofcourt.rtf
(Thanks to BNA's Internet Law News.)
* One reason Dmitry Sklyarov wrote his infamous software to bypass copy
protection on Adobe ebooks was to allow consumers to make personal
back-ups. (There were other reasons.) Now it turns out that the Adobe
eBook Reader has a back-up feature that not only creates back-ups but also
allows them to be restored to a different computer. Here are the instructions.
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=279&nl
* If you're interested in how the Russian press has covered the
Elcomsoft/Sklyarov case, see this article from the _Moscow Times_,
reprinted at _PlanetPDF_.
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=1892
* British Telephone is still in court trying to enforce its patent on the
hyperlink (see FOSN for 12/5/01). BT has started by suing Prodigy, the
oldest U.S. ISP. If BT wins, it will sue other ISPs for a portion of the
revenue "they have enjoyed through the use of that intellectual
property". The patent would be invalid if anyone can produce "prior art"
showing the same technology in use before BT hit upon the idea in the 1970s
(and received its patent in 1989). An army of patent-hating internet
activists have systematically searched for prior art and come up with some
plausible contenders, including a 1968 film of Douglas Engelbart
demonstrating what seems to be a hyperlink. In Monday's hearing, the
judges were very skeptical of BT's claim.
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/248517p-2346045c.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50356,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50361,00.html
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/2650919.htm
* IP-tracking software can identify the nation, and sometimes the city, of
most web users. I argued in FOSN for 11/16/01 that as it improved, this
software would reduce technical and political barriers to cross-border
censorship. For example, France could ask Yahoo to identify which visitors
to certain Yahoo auctions were from France and block those pages to those
visitors. One hope for free surfing is anonymizing software like
JunkBusters or ZeroKnowledge. Until now, another was joining a huge
multi-national ISP like AOL, which showed all users to be from
Virginia. Now Quova's GeoPoint and DigitalEnvoy's NetActuity can identify
the nation of AOL users. Moreover, they can tell when users are using
anonymizing software, even if can't identify their global location, but
this is enough for some providers to block access. One implication for
scholarship: it's getting easier for China to "protect" Chinese readers
from histories of Tiananman Square, and for any nation to control what its
citizens can see even on pages served from other nations. Of course the
censoring nation has to get the cooperation of the hosting nation. But
hosting nations can no longer say that compliance is technically
impossible. So the decision will turn on policy, not technology. In many
nations, deference to the sovereignty of other nations is a stronger policy
than the freedom to put content on the internet that might offend others.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-836138.html
* In the discussion forum this week, there are threads on the Derk Haank
interview in _Information Today_ and my interpretation of it, and on the
use of copyleft in science.
FOS discussion forum
http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum/read
(Anyone may read; only subscribers may post; subscription is free.)
----------
Catching up (old news I should have discovered earlier)
* In my round-up of reviews of the news of 2001, I overlooked M.J. Rose's
review of the ebook news of 2001.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,49297,00.html
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* Society for Scholarly Publishing, Top Management Roundtable. Successful
Publishing in the Global Environment.
http://sspnet.org/public/articles/index.cfm?cat=45
Washington, D.C., February 13-14
* ICSTI Seminar on Digital Preservation of the Record of Science
http://www.alpsp.org/meetdb/searchresdet.cfm?ID=222
Paris, February 14-15
* Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics
http://www.cic.ipn.mx/cicling/2002/
Mexico City, February 17-23
* Wissensmanagement im universitären Bereich
http://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/ags/ag1/wisman01/
February 19-20
* Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems
http://foiks.massey.ac.nz/
Schloß Salzau, February 19-23
* Digital Libraries and Copyright
http://www.asis.org/Chapters/michap/events.htm
Lansing, Michigan, February 20
* Fifth International Publishers Association Copyright Conference
http://www.ipa-uie.org/ipa/AccraCoverpage.html
Accra, Ghana, February 20-22
* Integrating @ Internet Speed: Strategies for the Content Community
[conference on reference linking]
http://www.pa.utulsa.edu/nfais/Conf2002/anco2002highlights.htm
Philadelphia, February 24-27
* Getting your message across: How learned societies and other
organizations can influence public and government opinion
http://www.alpsp.org/s250202.htm
London, February 25
* Electronic Journals --Solutions in Sight?
http://www.subscription-agents.org/conference/200202/index.html
London, February 25-26
* [Public lecture], Will Thomas and Ed Ayers, "The Next Generation of
Digital Scholarship: An Experiment in Form
http://www.neh.gov/news/ehumanities.html
Washington, D.C., February 27
* Meeting of the Digital Preservation Coalition
http://www.onlinepublishingnews.com/htm/n20020204.047633.htm
London, February 27
* A Symposium on the Research Value of Printed Materials in the Digital Age
http://www.lib.umd.edu/TSD/PRES/symposium.html
College Park, Maryland, March 1
* International Spring School on the Digital Library and E-publishing for
Science and Technology
http://cwis.kub.nl/~ticer/spring02/index.htm
Geneva, March 3-8
* Search Engine Strategies
http://seminars.internet.com/sew/spring02/index.html
Boston, March 4-5
* Redefining [Digital] Preservation (ARL and the University of Michigan)
http://www.lib.umich.edu/conferences/preservation/
Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 7-8
* Towards an Information Society for All
http://www.britishcouncil.de/e/infoexch/berlin.htm
Berlin, March 8-9
* 17th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. Special tracks on Database and
Digital Library Technologies; Electronic Books for Teaching and Learning;
and Information Access and Retrieval
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2002/Tracks.htm
Madrid, March 10-14
* Digitization for Cultural Heritage Professionals: An Intensive Program
http://www.ils.unc.edu/DCHP/
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 10-15
* EUSDIC Spring Meeting. E-Content: Divide or Rule
http://www.eusidic.org/Paris2002Spring%20Meeting.htm
Paris, March 11-12
* Knowledge Technologies Conference 2002
http://www.knowledgetechnologies.net/
Seattle, March 11-13
* Computers in Libraries 2002
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2002/default.htm
Washington D.C., March 13-15
* International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data
http://www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2002/JADT/welcome.htm
St. Malo, March 13-15
* The Electronic Publishers Coalition (EPC) conference on ebooks and
epublishing (obscurely titled, Electronically Published Internet
Connection, or EPIC)
http://www.epccentral.org/epic.html
Seattle, March 14-16
* Digital Resources and International Information Exchange: East-West
http://www.iliac.org/seminar/sem1.html
March 15 (Washington DC), 18 (Flushing NY), 20 (Stamford CT)
* Internet Librarian International 2002
http://www.internet-librarian.com/index.html
London, March 18-20
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Institute of Mueum and Library Services. Building Digital Communities
http://webwise.mse.jhu.edu/
Baltimore, March 20-22
* Advanced Licensing Workshop
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/advlic.html
Dallas, March 20-22
* Electronic Publishing Strategy
http://www.alpsp.org/tEPS220302.htm
London, March 22
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
Cyberspace. OAI, March 26. OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the
future, May 29.
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
San Francisco, March 25-26; Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC,
September 23-24; Chicago, Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/ECIR02/
Glasgow, March 25-27
* e-Content: Discovering and Delivering Value
http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html
Toronto, March 25-27
* New Developments in Digital Libraries
http://www.iceis.org/workshops/nddl/nddl-cfp.htm
Ciudad Real, Spain, April 2-3
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Copyright Management in Higher Education: Ownership, Access and Control
http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/copy_manage2002/
Adelphi, Maryland, April 4-5
* Global Knowledge Partnership Annual Meeting
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F21C3456
Addis Ababa, April 4-5
* International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~srimani/itcc2002/cfp.html
Las Vegas, April 8-10
* NetLab and Friends: 10 Years of Digital Library Development
http://www.lub.lu.se/netlab/conf/
Lund, April 10-12
* E-Content 2002 (on ebooks)
http://litc.sbu.ac.uk/econtent/index.html
London, April 11
* International Learned Journals Seminar: We Can't Go On Like This: The
Future of Journals
http://www.alpsp.org/s120402.htm
London, April 12
* SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/
Arlington, Virginia, April 11-13
* Creating access to information: EBLIDA workshop on getting a better deal
from your information licences
http://www.eblida.org/conferences/licensing/licensing.htm
The Hague, April 12
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
http://www.cfp2002.org/
San Francisco, April 16-19
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
----------
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Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
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