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FOS Newsletter, 5/6/02 (Part 1)
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Peter Suber
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May 06, 2002 13:22 PDT
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
May 6, 2002
==========
The first time I tried to mail this issue, it bounced. At 60 KB, it was
too large for Topica to handle. It's not the largest issue I've mailed, so
I suspect that Topica imposed a size limitation on mailings at the same
time that it forced its newsletters to carry ads. I apologize for the
inconvenience of mailing this issue in two parts. It seems that I have no
choice.
==========
* I'll be in Washington D.C. on May 10 to speak on the Budapest Open Access
Initiative. The occasion is the "Protecting the Information Commons"
conference sponsored by Public Knowledge and the New America
Foundation. As a result, the next issue of the newsletter will be delayed
by a few days.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?K20932BC
* I'm still investigating a handful of possible new hosts for the FOS
Newsletter and discussion forum. Please forgive any ads that Topica may
insert into the newsletter before I finish picking a new host and making
the move.
----------
Open access helps the bottom line
On May 3, Jupiter Media Metrix released a study showing that users of P2P
music swapping software are more likely to buy priced music than other
music fans.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html
http://makeashorterlink.com/?L273321D
http://makeashorterlink.com/?M257531D
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52305,00.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/391708p-3110447c.html
* Postscript. It's important to remember that P2P music swapping is not
closely related to FOS. Most musicians copyright and price their music,
and don't consent to open access; free swapping violates their copyright
and violates their theory of how they can best make a living from their
art. By contrast, most scholars give away their articles and consent to
open access; free distribution increases their audience and the impact of
their research. In short, open access to music is harder to justify than
open access to scholarship. That's why it's significant when empirical
evidence shows that even musicians focused on the bottom line profit more
from allowing open access than from blocking it. We've seen open access
provide a net boost to sales again and again for scholarly books (see e.g.
FOSN for 4/12/01, 9/14/01). The Baen Free Library has documented it for
novels (FOSN for 4/22/02). The new Jupiter study shows it for music. When
the evidence sinks in, then even music and film executives should be able
to see the benefits of open access. Or, if not, then their stockholders
should remove them for missing an opportunity to maximize profit. When
they see that their threatened business model is actually inferior to a
model based on open access, they can back off their support for
anti-circumvention, copyright extension, and CBDTPA-mutilations of general
purpose computers. Perhaps even commercial publishers of scholarly
journals will get the message, and at least try open access experimentally.
It's also important to remember that FOS for peer-reviewed research
articles, and their preprints, is justified and economically sustainable
even if open access doesn't help the bottom line of profit-seeking artists
and publishers. But if open access did help the bottom-line of commercial
artists and publishers, then scientists and scholars would no longer have
to waste energy arguing that their corner of the publishing industry is an
exception to the general rule. They would no longer have to combat the
myth that preventing free copying is in the interest of all copyright
holders. If every sector of the publishing industry benefited from open
access, though for different reasons (research impact v. profit), then all
the sectors could collaborate in establishing the benefits and removing the
barriers to open access.
----------
Where are the DQA evaluation procedures?
The Data Quality Act (DQA) allows citizens and corporations to object that
information disseminated by federal agencies, or used by agencies in
rule-making, is inaccurate, incomplete, or otherwise inadequate (see FOSN
for 4/1/02). Each federal agency must develop its own procedure for
evaluating corrections submitted by the public. May 1 was the deadline for
agencies to put draft evaluation procedures on their web sites for public
comment. By July 1, agencies must submit their revised procedures to the
OMB for review. Final versions of the procedures must be in place by
October 1, when the public may start submitting corrections.
It's time to surf over to the web sites of the federal agencies most
relevant to your work, review their evaluation procedures, and submit
comments --if you can find them. I couldn't find draft evaluation
procedures for the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug
Administration, Department of Justice, Office of Homeland Security, U.S.
Copyright Office, or any other agency I tried.
The only draft procedure I've seen is for the Office of Science and
Technology, which advises the president on the implications of science and
technology for policy questions facing the nation.
http://ostp.gov/html/DataQuality.html
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)
Either a lot of agencies have missed the May 1 deadline, or a lot of
agencies are hiding their procedures from their own search engines and the
general public.
There are two reasons to be impatient and hold agencies to the
deadline. (1) The procedures will affect how easily disgruntled
corporations can manipulate the system to duck regulations they
dislike. (2) The federal government is one of the leading providers of FOS
in the United States. The agency procedures will affect when federally
published science, for example, will be revised or retracted. After the
DQA, scientific peer review is not the only quality-control procedure on
which federal dissemination depends. The DQA makes federal dissemination
depend on a layer of legal-political review. These two reasons show that
the stakes are high in producing evaluation procedures that favor objective
science and resist campaigns of lobbying and censorship disguised as
statistical quibbling. Agencies that have already missed the May 1
deadline should get on the ball. The public deserves every day of the
comment period.
DQA, full text of the statute (very short)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R1C124D9
Agency evaluation procedures must conform to guidelines laid down by the OMB
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/reproducible.html
* Postscript. Does anyone know a site collecting links to DQA evaluation
procedures or protesting that most federal agencies have apparently missed
the May 1 deadline?
----------
Advanced searching with Google variations
Google is the second-most used search engine for chemistry research by
professional chemists, after ChemWeb (see FOSN for 2/25/02,
4/22/02). Google's sorting algorithm and index size make it useful for
serious scientific research even in direct competition with searchable
databases dedicated to scientific content.
http://www.freepint.com/issues/040402.htm#feature
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=371
One of Google's smarter moves recently was to publish its API so that
programmers could build Google searching into their own programs. With a
few lines of code programmers can incorporate all the power of Google into
a program, and then with a few more lines tweak and vary this power to suit
their needs or visions. Some search innovations wouldn't work on their own
but would very well when added to the Google feature set. Some innovations
would work very well on their own but would work even better when applied
to Google's index of more then two billion continuously refreshed web pages.
Google's decision to open its API will trigger an explosion of creativity
in search technology. If you have a special searching need not met by
existing search engines, it's likely that someone's Google-variant will
soon meet your need. If not, you can take a whack at doing it
yourself. Here are some of the Google-variants now online.
Google email interface, from CapeClear.
http://capescience.capeclear.com/google/
(Send an email to <google [at] capeclear.com> with the search string in the
subject line. CapeClear software will send you back an email of the top 10
results.)
Google API Proximity Search (GAPS), from Staggernation
http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi
(Find keywords within 1, 2 or 3 words of one another.)
Google API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO)
http://www.staggernation.com/garbo/
(Enter a URL, get a collapsible outline either of related pages or of pages
linking to the URL.)
Google Web Search by Host (GWASH)
http://www.staggernation.com/gawsh/
(Organizes results in a collapsing outline by host. Within each host it
seems to sort by Google's page rank.)
Home grown Google variants cannot be commercial, and cannot query the index
more than 1,000 times a day. Since Google is willing to terminate service
to entire domains when a user from the domain sends automated queries to
the index, this suggests that Google will give developers using the API a
privilege that it doesn't give to other users. If you agree that
processing FOS as data can provide services above and beyond FOS itself
(FOSN for 4/8/02), investigate what the Google API makes possible.
http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen13
http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen7
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-883558.html?tag=cd_mh
Google's instructions for downloading and using its API
http://www.google.com/apis/
There will be endless Google variations as the word spreads, and I don't
plan to cover them all. After this list, which should stimulate your
imagination, I'll only cover new variations especially helpful to serious
scholarly research.
I haven't seen a page collecting links to Google variations. If you have,
let me know and I'll link to it here. Meantime, try one of these links to
find new variations.
ResearchBuzz by Tara Calashain
http://www.researchbuzz.com/index.shtml
(Tara tracks Google variations. I learned about the three Staggernation
variations above from ResearchBuzz.)
SearchDay by Chris Sherman
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/
(Chris also tracks Google variations as they appear.)
Google search for "google api"
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=google+api
* Postscript. This week AOL dropped Overture and adopted Google as its
default search engine. Overture invented the pay-for-rank business model
for search engines, which assumes that users are more interested in
shopping than research. Overture is the leading search engine with the
model, and Google is the leading search engine that has refused to adopt
it. From this point of view, the AOL decision is a victory for objective
searching over the commercial rigging of search results.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/ebusiness/02GOOG.html
----------
Developments
* The Open Society Institute (OSI) has announced a grant program in which
it will give $100,000 to help open-access journals publish research by
authors from 67 developing nations. The grants will defray the costs of
processing accepted articles for free online dissemination. Peer-reviewed,
open-access journals in any academic field are eligible to apply. This is
a pilot program "inspired by the principles of the Budapest Open Access
Initiative". Grants will be given in two waves. Applications for the
first wave are due by June 14, and for the second wave by September 9.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y25D521D
* On May 1, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)
published its manifesto, "Freedom of Access to Information, the Internet
and Libraries and Information Services". The manifesto calls for freedom
of expression, privacy and confidentiality of research, and internet access
without "any form of ideological, political or religious censorship [and
without] economic barriers". In case anyone thought the absence of
economic barriers meant affordable rather than free access, the statement
reiterates: library and internet access "should be without charge."
http://www.ifla.org/III/misc/im-e.htm
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) is now free of
charge. CHIN archives over 2 million collection records and 200,000 images
from Canadian cultural and natural history museums. It also hosts
information for collection professionals on creating and managing digital
content, intellectual property, and standards. At the same time that CHIN
dropped its access charges, it dropped the password gateway, enhanced its
web site, and added a search engine.
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/index.html
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/News/announcement.html
(Thanks to Klaus Graf.)
* The Gates Foundation has given OCLC a $9 million grant to build a
technical support portal for organizations (like public libraries) that
provide open access to knowledge and information. The portal will focus
"managing hardware and software, implementing advanced applications,
training staff and patrons, and delivering digital library services."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S384121D
(Thanks to LIS News.)
* The _Human Nature Review_ (HNR) has created a free, customizable Explorer
toolbar for searching online science and scholarship. It comes with codes
for a large number of searchable databases and instructions for adding new
ones on your own. Among the codes provided are those for PubMed,
CogPrints, the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, AnthroNet, Natural
Science Update, FindArticles, the Encylopedia Britannica, Noesis (which I
co-edit with Tony Beavers), and more than a dozen others. It also includes
a code for Scirus, which searches arXiv, BioMed Central, and all Elsevier
ejournals. Users can run searches on a single database or across a list of
databases.
http://human-nature.com/searchbar.html
* _Moxie_ is an online magazine for women that provides free access to all
its articles. It just started charging authors $10 per submission,
triggering a wave of author protests. Apparently the new author fees are
not designed to subsidize free online access but simply to cover the costs
of reading submissions, which are ballooning as _Moxie_ becomes more
popular. Fees for accepted articles are refunded. (PS: _Moxie_ isn't a
scholarly journal and its authors write for money, so their protests are
understandable. Still, this is an interesting variation on the theme of
upfront financing that scholarly journals might investigate. Which is
better, (1) to charge authors or their sponsors only for accepted papers,
or (2) to charge for all submissions and refund the fees paid on accepted
papers? The former is narrowly tailored to the costs of online
dissemination of accepted papers, but requires higher payments than would
be necessary if the costs were spread over all submissions. The latter
would reduce author/sponsor payments, but would discourage multiple
submissions. I see a difficult balance of pros and cons on each side.)
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52168,00.html
* David Bollier has just published _Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of
our Common Wealth_ (Routledge, 2002), a wide-ranging book on the enclosure
of the commons in every sector of the economy, including the privatization
of public knowledge and the enclosure of the academic commons (chapters 8
and 9). It's not free or online, but a description with TOC, reviews, and
links is free online. Bollier is a co-founder of Public Knowledge and
Director of the Information Commons Project at the New American Foundation.
http://www.silenttheft.com/
_Silent Theft_ is a book-length version of Bollier's long essay, "Private
Assets and Private Profits", which is free and online.
PDF ed. http://makeashorterlink.com/?B26A34BC
HTML ed. http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2F0627C
* A new eBook in the Wiley Interscience Series in Discrete Mathematics and
Optimization takes a step forward in helping ebooks realize the potential
of the digital medium. _Graph Theory and Geography_ by Sandra Arlinghaus,
William Arlinghaus, and Frank Hilary contains dynamic, interactive maps and
graphs. Users may mark and move portions of these graphs and see the
results in real time.
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=355&nl
* Soft Experience has released Catalogue 3.0, software to generate metadata
for documents in many common file formats and create HTML or XML reports
based on the results.
http://peccatte.karefil.com/Software/Catalogue/CatalogueENG.htm
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)
----------
New on the net
* The National Library of Australia has put online its report, "Guidelines
for the Creation of Content for Resource Discovery Metadata".
http://www.nla.gov.au/meta/metaguide.html
* The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has launched a free
online _WSIS Newsletter_. The first issue is now online. The WSIS is a
sequel to the UN's Millennium Declaration, which also inspired HINARI, one
of the largest FOS initiatives donating scholarly ejournal subscriptions to
developing nations. WSIS has a much broader mandate than FOS, but includes
FOS and bridging the digital divide among its concerns.
http://www.itu.int/wsis/news/news01.htm
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)
* The proceedings of the conference on "The Future of the Information
Revolution in Europe" (April 2001, Limelette, Belgium) are now online.
http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF172/
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)
----------
In other publications
* The May 6 issue of _FirstMonday_ is now online. It contains several
articles on digitizing museum collections for the web, and these two other
FOS-related articles:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/
Clifford Lynch, "Digital Collections, Digital Libraries and the
Digitization of Cultural Heritage Information"
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/lynch/index.html
Timothy W. Cole, "Creating a Framework of Guidance for Building Good
Digital Collections"
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/cole/index.html
* In the May 6 _Law.com_, Barry Bayer reviews PACER (Public Access to Court
Electronic Records), a low-cost searchable database of court
records. PACER charges $0.07 per screenful.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2E4211D
* In the May 4 _Business Week_, Jane Black interviews Lawrence Lessig on
his idea that Congress should enact compulsory licenses for copyrighted
digital content like music and films. Quoting Lessig: "The record labels
have launched lawsuits against every company that has a model for
distributing [music and entertainment] content they can't control. That
has sent a clear message to venture capitalists: Don't deploy a technology
that we don't approve of, or we will sue you into the Dark Ages. The
result is that the field has been left to dinosaurs." The dinosaurs have
persuaded Congress that we face the false dilemma between "perfect
protection or no protection" for digital content. "No one is seriously
arguing for no protection. They are arguing for a balance...."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X219520D
(Thanks to QuickLinks.)
* Dan Gillmor's May 4 column is devoted to the content industry's
opposition to deep linking and ad skipping. In both cases content
publishers are trying to control how people use their products, even when
it hurts their own bottom line. For example, a ban on deep linking would
eliminate most of the incoming links to a newspaper. Gillmor's
diagnosis: this is control for the sake of control, "paranoia, stupidity,
and greed" run amok. Congress has rolled over for content publishers
because it hasn't yet heard from the fed-up and long-suffering public.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R364241D
* In the May 3 _Chronicle of Higher Education_ Marshall Poe tells why he
didn't publish his latest book with a "good" print publisher, why he
published it himself on the web, and what steps he went through to do so.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i34/34b01501.htm
(Accessibly only to subscribers.)
Poe published a funnier version of the same story, which also happens to be
free online, in the December _JEP_ (FOSN for 12/5/01).
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/poe.html
* In the May 3 _NewsBytes_ William Jackson brings us up to date on the Net
Guard, the "National Guard for the Net" that will mobilize to repair
digital infrastructure damaged by acts of war or terrorism (FOSN for
12/5/01). Congress is considering Ron Wyden's bill to create the Net
Guard. A related bill, passed by the House and now in the Senate, would
give about a billion dollars to the NSF and NIST for research and education
on net security.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176353.html
* In the May 2 _New York Times_ David Pogue reviews free, shareware, and
commercial programs that not only convert text to speech, but convert the
audio file to MP3 format. The result is a bridge from written texts to the
P2P music-swapping and MP3 music-playing infrastructure. (PS: The
companies that hire actors to dictate books on tape will never record
serious academic titles beyond a thin set of classics. Software like this
is the best hope for a large library of free online audio scholarship. See
FOSN for 10/5/01.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/circuits/02STAT.html
* In the May 2 _BBC News_, Mark Ward describes how grid computing is
helping astronomers. Astrogrid is a unified front end to the many
astronomical archives and data sets now online, and a channel to cope with
the voluminous data generated by digital telescopes and other
instruments. For example, the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for
Astronomy (Vista) will generate 100 GB of data every day. Astrogrid makes
different archives and data sets interoperable through its own metadata
standard. The result is that astronomers have access to x-ray, radio,
magnetic, infra-red, and optical data on a given celestial object, even if
these data must be gathered from different online sources.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J45221EC
* In the May 1 _Library Journal_, Carol Tenopir gives advice to searchers
frustrated by the multiplicity of overlapping, non-interoperable,
searchable databases.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G4E5201D
* In the May _Information Today_ Paula Hane tells what is known of the rise
and fall of Prestige Factor (PF), a Toronto company with a new way to the
measure the impact of scholarly journals. Like ISI, PF measured the
frequency of citations, but unlike ISI, it only counted citations to
original research articles. In February ISI sued PF for violating its
intellectual property rights and in March PF went out of business,
apparently unable to bear the costs of defending itself in court.
http://www.infotoday.com/it/may02/hane1.htm
* In the May _Computers in Libraries_, George Pike gives an excellent
overview of how the licensing (rather than sale) of electronic content to
libraries increases administrative complexity and costs for libraries and
diminishes traditional rights to copy and lend.
http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may02/pike.htm
(Thanks to LibLicense.)
* In the April 29 _CableWorld_, Staci Kramer interviews Turner Broadcasting
CEO Jamie Kellner. Kellner asserts that skipping the commercials on
commercial TV is "theft". He allows that "there's a certain amount of
tolerance for going to the bathroom" but insists that "your contract with
the network when you get the show is [that] you're going to watch the
spots". Systematically skipping commercials is a violation of Turner's
intellectual property rights. (PS: I know this isn't FOS. But
ad-supported journals are one form of FOS and Kellner's fantasy may be
pointer to the future of ad-supported media. The lightning reflex to close
pop-up windows will be theft. The discipline to avert your eyes from
blinking text and keep reading will be theft. So the future of
ad-supported online media won't be pop-ups and blinking text. Perhaps it
will be like the scene from Clockwork Orange in which Alex is strapped into
a chair and steel clamps hold his eyelids open. But unlike Alex, we won't
be watching a deprogramming tape to dull our violent desires. We'll be
watching ads for hair dye, laxatives, and pick-up trucks. Unless someone
straps people like Kellner in the chair first.)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I4A812BC
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
Also see Ernest Miller's excellent retort to Kellner's position in _LawMeme_.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U2A654CC
* In the April 28 _Heise Online_, Stefan Krempl describes the Math-Net Page
initiative from the International Mathematics Union (IMU). A Math-Net Page
at a university math department web site hosts links to faculty and their
online papers in a standardized way that facilitates the collection of the
linked pages by special software run by the Math-Net portal. The goal is
to produce a free online archive of world mathematical literature, by
encouraging mathematicians to post their papers to their department sites
and encouraging departments to post Math-Net Pages. Krempl closes with a
summary of major FOS initiatives from arXiv and the Public Library of
Science to the Budapest Open Access Initiative. (The article is in German.)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-28.04.02-004/
(Thanks to QuickLinks.)
IMU press release on Math-Net Pages (in English, undated)
http://www.math-net.org/Math-Net-Press-Release.doc
IMU statement endorsing open access, May 2001 (in English)
http://elib.zib.de/IMU/IMU_Committees/call_authors.html
* Peru is considering a bill to require all government agencies to use
open-source software for all official purposes. The manager of Microsoft
Peru wrote a letter full of expostulation and FUD to Edgar David Villanueva
Nuñez, a member of the Peruvian Congress. Microsoft probably expected a
politician ignorant of technology policy issues, whose eyes glaze over
quickly when they come up, and eager to defer to the wealthy investor in
the local economy. But instead they found an informed and passionate
proponent of open source who understands the issues better than Microsoft
and as well as any open-source advocate who has ever written on these
issues. It would have been easy for Nuñez to pitch the Microsoft letter
into the trash. After all, you can't expect to convert Microsoft to open
source. But instead of pitching it, Nuñez wrote a lengthy public reply
(April 8) that devastates Microsoft's arguments with overwhelming detail
and patience. Imagine a U.S. Congressman writing such a long, articulate,
candid, courteous, detailed, informed, and persuasive open letter, let
alone a letter taking this side of the issue.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?M1D0250D
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
* In the April _Charleston Advisor_, Margaret Landsman argues that we need
a new model of ebooks that goes beyond subscription to purchase, beyond
pricing by FTE, and beyond "one book / one user". (In general, she thinks
ebrary is on the right track.) A new model for ebooks will benefit
readers, researchers, libraries, publishers, and libraries what wish to
become publishers.
http://charlestonco.com/features.cfm?id=85&type=ed
* The April issue of _Librarian's eBook Newsletter_ contains several
FOS-related articles:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/toc.htm
An interview with ebrary CEO Christopher Warnock
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/warnock.htm
Major collections of free online full-text books
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/free.htm
A bibliography of recent articles on ebooks
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/articles.htm
* In the April issue of the _Journal of the Medical Library Association_,
contains several FOS-related articles:
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=93
(Thanks to Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.)
Anamarija Rozic-Hristovski and two co-authors, "Users' information-seeking
behavior on a medical library Website"
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100766
Kathleen Bauer, "Cost analysis of a project to digitize classic articles in
neurosurgery"
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100769
(Highlights: "[F]ellows, students, and residents preferred electronic
journals, and faculty preferred print journals. Patrons used print journals
for reading articles and scanning contents; they employed electronic
journals for printing articles and checking references. Users considered
electronic journals easier to access and search than print journals; however,
they reported that print journals had higher quality text and figures.")
Nila A. Sathe and two co-authors, "Print versus electronic journals: a
preliminary investigation into the effect of journal format on research
processes"
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100770
Stéfan Darmoni and five co-authors, "CISMeF-patient: a French counterpart
to MEDLINEplus"
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100773
* CLIR and the Library of Congress have released their study, "Building a
National Strategy for Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving."
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/contents.html
Dale Flecker wrote the chapter on preserving digital journals.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/periodicals.html
* The Spring issue of the _Professional Scholarly Publishing [PSP]
Bulletin_ is now online. Among other things, it summarizes the proceedings
of the annual AAP PSP conference (February 11-13, Washington, D.C.).
http://www.pspcentral.org/bulletins/current_bulletin.pdf
* An undated document at the AAP's Professional Scholarly Publishing site
(undated but listed on the "What's New" page) describes the top 10 issues
on the minds of traditional or non-FOS scholarly publishers. All 10 are
worth reading, but #3 is about online access. Here are three of the five
bulleted points on online access: "(*) Glut of free information impacts
publishers directly by creating the misperception that information should
cost less. (*) Free access is not free of cost. (*) Ease of access is the
goal; immediate access increases user productivity."
http://www.pspcentral.org/committees/public_issues/hill_slowinski.doc
* In FOSN for 4/22/02, I cited the February issue of the _ARL Bimonthly
Report_ without a URL because the issue was not online at that time. But
it's online now. (While dated February, this issue appeared in
April.) The issue is devoted to open access and contains the following pieces:
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/index.html
Mary Case, "Promoting Open Access: Developing New Strategies for Managing
Copyright and Intellectual Property"
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/access.html
Peter Suber, "Where Does the Free Online Scholarship Movement Stand Today?"
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/scholar.html
(Reprint of my April editorial for _Cortex_.)
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (full statement and excerpts from its FAQ)
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boai.html
http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boaifaq.html
("The [BOAI] FAQ is one of the most usefully linked documents your [ARL]
editors have ever discovered on the Web.")
----------
The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the
Open Society Institute.
http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/
==========
This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848).
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Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS)
Newsletter<br>
May 6, 2002<br><br>
<br>
==========<br>
The first time I tried to mail this issue, it bounced. At 60 KB, it
was too large for Topica to handle. It's not the largest issue I've
mailed, so I suspect that Topica imposed a size limitation on mailings at
the same time that it forced its newsletters to carry ads. I
apologize for the inconvenience of mailing this issue in two parts.
It seems that I have no choice.<br>
==========<br><br>
* I'll be in Washington D.C. on May 10 to speak on the Budapest Open
Access Initiative. The occasion is the "Protecting the
Information Commons" conference sponsored by Public Knowledge and
the New America Foundation. As a result, the next issue of the
newsletter will be delayed by a few days. <br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?K20932BC" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?K20932BC</a><br><br>
* I'm still investigating a handful of possible new hosts for the FOS
Newsletter and discussion forum. Please forgive any ads that Topica
may insert into the newsletter before I finish picking a new host and
making the move.<br><br>
----------<br><br>
Open access helps the bottom line<br><br>
On May 3, Jupiter Media Metrix released a study showing that users of P2P
music swapping software are more likely to buy priced music than other
music fans. <br>
<a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html" eudora="autourl">http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898813.html</a><br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?L273321D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?L273321D</a><br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?M257531D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?M257531D</a><br>
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52305,00.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52305,00.html</a><br>
<a href="http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/391708p-3110447c.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/391708p-3110447c.html</a><br><br>
* Postscript. It's important to remember that P2P music swapping is
not closely related to FOS. Most musicians copyright and price
their music, and don't consent to open access; free swapping violates
their copyright and violates their theory of how they can best make a
living from their art. By contrast, most scholars give away their
articles and consent to open access; free distribution increases their
audience and the impact of their research. In short, open access to
music is harder to justify than open access to scholarship. That's
why it's significant when empirical evidence shows that even musicians
focused on the bottom line profit more from allowing open access than
from blocking it. We've seen open access provide a net boost to
sales again and again for scholarly books (see e.g. FOSN for 4/12/01,
9/14/01). The Baen Free Library has documented it for novels (FOSN
for 4/22/02). The new Jupiter study shows it for music. When
the evidence sinks in, then even music and film executives should be able
to see the benefits of open access. Or, if not, then their
stockholders should remove them for missing an opportunity to maximize
profit. When they see that their threatened business model is
actually inferior to a model based on open access, they can back off
their support for anti-circumvention, copyright extension, and
CBDTPA-mutilations of general purpose computers. Perhaps even
commercial publishers of scholarly journals will get the message, and at
least try open access experimentally.<br><br>
It's also important to remember that FOS for peer-reviewed research
articles, and their preprints, is justified and economically sustainable
even if open access doesn't help the bottom line of profit-seeking
artists and publishers. But if open access did help the bottom-line
of commercial artists and publishers, then scientists and scholars would
no longer have to waste energy arguing that their corner of the
publishing industry is an exception to the general rule. They would
no longer have to combat the myth that preventing free copying is in the
interest of all copyright holders. If every sector of the
publishing industry benefited from open access, though for different
reasons (research impact v. profit), then all the sectors could
collaborate in establishing the benefits and removing the barriers to
open access.<br><br>
----------<br><br>
Where are the DQA evaluation procedures?<br><br>
The Data Quality Act (DQA) allows citizens and corporations to object
that information disseminated by federal agencies, or used by agencies in
rule-making, is inaccurate, incomplete, or otherwise inadequate (see FOSN
for 4/1/02). Each federal agency must develop its own procedure for
evaluating corrections submitted by the public. May 1 was the
deadline for agencies to put draft evaluation procedures on their web
sites for public comment. By July 1, agencies must submit their
revised procedures to the OMB for review. Final versions of the
procedures must be in place by October 1, when the public may start
submitting corrections. <br><br>
It's time to surf over to the web sites of the federal agencies most
relevant to your work, review their evaluation procedures, and submit
comments --if you can find them. I couldn't find draft evaluation
procedures for the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug
Administration, Department of Justice, Office of Homeland Security, U.S.
Copyright Office, or any other agency I tried. <br><br>
The only draft procedure I've seen is for the Office of Science and
Technology, which advises the president on the implications of science
and technology for policy questions facing the nation.<br>
<a href="http://ostp.gov/html/DataQuality.html" eudora="autourl">http://ostp.gov/html/DataQuality.html</a><br>
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)<br><br>
Either a lot of agencies have missed the May 1 deadline, or a lot of
agencies are hiding their procedures from their own search engines and
the general public.<br><br>
There are two reasons to be impatient and hold agencies to the
deadline. (1) The procedures will affect how easily disgruntled
corporations can manipulate the system to duck regulations they
dislike. (2) The federal government is one of the leading providers
of FOS in the United States. The agency procedures will affect when
federally published science, for example, will be revised or
retracted. After the DQA, scientific peer review is not the only
quality-control procedure on which federal dissemination depends.
The DQA makes federal dissemination depend on a layer of legal-political
review. These two reasons show that the stakes are high in
producing evaluation procedures that favor objective science and resist
campaigns of lobbying and censorship disguised as statistical
quibbling. Agencies that have already missed the May 1 deadline
should get on the ball. The public deserves every day of the
comment period.<br><br>
DQA, full text of the statute (very short)<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?R1C124D9" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?R1C124D9</a><br><br>
Agency evaluation procedures must conform to guidelines laid down by the
OMB <br>
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/reproducible.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/reproducible.html</a><br><br>
* Postscript. Does anyone know a site collecting links to DQA
evaluation procedures or protesting that most federal agencies have
apparently missed the May 1 deadline?<br><br>
----------<br><br>
Advanced searching with Google variations<br><br>
Google is the second-most used search engine for chemistry research by
professional chemists, after ChemWeb (see FOSN for 2/25/02,
4/22/02). Google's sorting algorithm and index size make it useful
for serious scientific research even in direct competition with
searchable databases dedicated to scientific content. <br>
<a href="http://www.freepint.com/issues/040402.htm#feature" eudora="autourl">http://www.freepint.com/issues/040402.htm#feature</a><br>
<a href="http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=371" eudora="autourl">http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=371</a><br><br>
One of Google's smarter moves recently was to publish its API so that
programmers could build Google searching into their own programs.
With a few lines of code programmers can incorporate all the power of
Google into a program, and then with a few more lines tweak and vary this
power to suit their needs or visions. Some search innovations
wouldn't work on their own but would very well when added to the Google
feature set. Some innovations would work very well on their own but
would work even better when applied to Google's index of more then two
billion continuously refreshed web pages.<br><br>
Google's decision to open its API will trigger an explosion of creativity
in search technology. If you have a special searching need not met
by existing search engines, it's likely that someone's Google-variant
will soon meet your need. If not, you can take a whack at doing it
yourself. Here are some of the Google-variants now online.
<br><br>
Google email interface, from CapeClear.<br>
<a href="http://capescience.capeclear.com/google/" eudora="autourl">http://capescience.capeclear.com/google/</a><br>
(Send an email to <google [at] capeclear.com> with the search
string in the subject line. CapeClear software will send you back
an email of the top 10 results.)<br><br>
Google API Proximity Search (GAPS), from Staggernation<br>
<a href="http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi" eudora="autourl">http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi</a><br>
(Find keywords within 1, 2 or 3 words of one another.)<br><br>
Google API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO)<br>
<a href="http://www.staggernation.com/garbo/" eudora="autourl">http://www.staggernation.com/garbo/</a><br>
(Enter a URL, get a collapsible outline either of related pages or of
pages linking to the URL.)<br><br>
Google Web Search by Host (GWASH)<br>
<a href="http://www.staggernation.com/gawsh/" eudora="autourl">http://www.staggernation.com/gawsh/</a><br>
(Organizes results in a collapsing outline by host. Within each
host it seems to sort by Google's page rank.)<br><br>
Home grown Google variants cannot be commercial, and cannot query the
index more than 1,000 times a day. Since Google is willing to
terminate service to entire domains when a user from the domain sends
automated queries to the index, this suggests that Google will give
developers using the API a privilege that it doesn't give to other
users. If you agree that processing FOS as data can provide
services above and beyond FOS itself (FOSN for 4/8/02), investigate what
the Google API makes possible.<br>
<font color="#0000FF"><a href="http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen13" eudora="autourl">http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen13</a><br>
</font><a href="http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen7" eudora="autourl">http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen7</a><br>
<a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1023-883558.html?tag=cd_mh" eudora="autourl">http://news.com.com/2100-1023-883558.html?tag=cd_mh</a><br><br>
Google's instructions for downloading and using its API<br>
<a href="http://www.google.com/apis/" eudora="autourl">http://www.google.com/apis/</a><br><br>
There will be endless Google variations as the word spreads, and I don't
plan to cover them all. After this list, which should stimulate
your imagination, I'll only cover new variations especially helpful to
serious scholarly research.<br><br>
I haven't seen a page collecting links to Google variations. If you
have, let me know and I'll link to it here. Meantime, try one of
these links to find new variations.<br><br>
ResearchBuzz by Tara Calashain<br>
<a href="http://www.researchbuzz.com/index.shtml" eudora="autourl">http://www.researchbuzz.com/index.shtml</a><br>
(Tara tracks Google variations. I learned about the three
Staggernation variations above from ResearchBuzz.)<br><br>
SearchDay by Chris Sherman<br>
<a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/" eudora="autourl">http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/</a><br>
(Chris also tracks Google variations as they appear.)<br><br>
Google search for "google api"<br>
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&;q=google+api" eudora="autourl">http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=google+api</a><br><br>
* Postscript. This week AOL dropped Overture and adopted Google as
its default search engine. Overture invented the pay-for-rank
business model for search engines, which assumes that users are more
interested in shopping than research. Overture is the leading
search engine with the model, and Google is the leading search engine
that has refused to adopt it. From this point of view, the AOL
decision is a victory for objective searching over the commercial rigging
of search results.<br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/ebusiness/02GOOG.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/ebusiness/02GOOG.html</a><br><br>
----------<br><br>
Developments<br><br>
* The Open Society Institute (OSI) has announced a grant program in which
it will give $100,000 to help open-access journals publish research by
authors from 67 developing nations. The grants will defray the
costs of processing accepted articles for free online
dissemination. Peer-reviewed, open-access journals in any academic
field are eligible to apply. This is a pilot program "inspired
by the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative".
Grants will be given in two waves. Applications for the first wave
are due by June 14, and for the second wave by September 9.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y25D521D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y25D521D</a><br><br>
* On May 1, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)
published its manifesto, "Freedom of Access to Information, the
Internet and Libraries and Information Services". The
manifesto calls for freedom of expression, privacy and confidentiality of
research, and internet access without "any form of ideological,
political or religious censorship [and without] economic
barriers". In case anyone thought the absence of economic
barriers meant affordable rather than free access, the statement
reiterates: library and internet access "should be without
charge."<br>
<a href="http://www.ifla.org/III/misc/im-e.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.ifla.org/III/misc/im-e.htm</a><br>
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)<br><br>
* The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) is now free of
charge. CHIN archives over 2 million collection records and 200,000
images from Canadian cultural and natural history museums. It also
hosts information for collection professionals on creating and managing
digital content, intellectual property, and standards. At the same
time that CHIN dropped its access charges, it dropped the password
gateway, enhanced its web site, and added a search engine.<br>
<a href="http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/index.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/index.html</a><br>
<a href="http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/News/announcement.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/News/announcement.html</a><br>
(Thanks to Klaus Graf.)<br><br>
* The Gates Foundation has given OCLC a $9 million grant to build a
technical support portal for organizations (like public libraries) that
provide open access to knowledge and information. The portal will
focus "managing hardware and software, implementing advanced
applications, training staff and patrons, and delivering digital library
services."<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?S384121D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?S384121D</a><br>
(Thanks to LIS News.)<br><br>
* The _Human Nature Review_ (HNR) has created a free, customizable
Explorer toolbar for searching online science and scholarship. It
comes with codes for a large number of searchable databases and
instructions for adding new ones on your own. Among the codes
provided are those for PubMed, CogPrints, the MIT Encyclopedia of
Cognitive Science, AnthroNet, Natural Science Update, FindArticles, the
Encylopedia Britannica, Noesis (which I co-edit with Tony Beavers), and
more than a dozen others. It also includes a code for Scirus, which
searches arXiv, BioMed Central, and all Elsevier ejournals. Users
can run searches on a single database or across a list of
databases. <br>
<a href="http://human-nature.com/searchbar.html" eudora="autourl">http://human-nature.com/searchbar.html</a><br><br>
* _Moxie_ is an online magazine for women that provides free access to
all its articles. It just started charging authors $10 per
submission, triggering a wave of author protests. Apparently the
new author fees are not designed to subsidize free online access but
simply to cover the costs of reading submissions, which are ballooning as
_Moxie_ becomes more popular. Fees for accepted articles are
refunded. (PS: _Moxie_ isn't a scholarly journal and its
authors write for money, so their protests are understandable.
Still, this is an interesting variation on the theme of upfront financing
that scholarly journals might investigate. Which is better, (1) to
charge authors or their sponsors only for accepted papers, or (2) to
charge for all submissions and refund the fees paid on accepted
papers? The former is narrowly tailored to the costs of online
dissemination of accepted papers, but requires higher payments than would
be necessary if the costs were spread over all submissions. The
latter would reduce author/sponsor payments, but would discourage
multiple submissions. I see a difficult balance of pros and cons on
each side.)<br>
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52168,00.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52168,00.html</a>
<br><br>
* David Bollier has just published _Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth_ (Routledge, 2002), a wide-ranging book on the enclosure of the commons in every sector of the economy, including the privatization of public knowledge and the enclosure of the academic commons (chapters 8 and 9). It's not free or online, but a description with TOC, reviews, and links is free online. Bollier is a co-founder of Public Knowledge and Director of the Information Commons Project at the New American Foundation.<br>
<a href="http://www.silenttheft.com/" eudora="autourl">http://www.silenttheft.com/</a><br><br>
_Silent Theft_ is a book-length version of Bollier's long essay, "Private Assets and Private Profits", which is free and online.<br>
PDF ed. <a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?B26A34BC" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?B26A34BC</a><br>
HTML ed. <a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2F0627C" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2F0627C</a><br><br>
* A new eBook in the Wiley Interscience Series in Discrete Mathematics and Optimization takes a step forward in helping ebooks realize the potential of the digital medium. _Graph Theory and Geography_ by Sandra Arlinghaus, William Arlinghaus, and Frank Hilary contains dynamic, interactive maps and graphs. Users may mark and move portions of these graphs and see the results in real time.<br>
<a href="http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=355&;nl" eudora="autourl">http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=355&nl</a><br><br>
* Soft Experience has released Catalogue 3.0, software to generate metadata for documents in many common file formats and create HTML or XML reports based on the results.<br>
<a href="http://peccatte.karefil.com/Software/Catalogue/CatalogueENG.htm" eudora="autourl">http://peccatte.karefil.com/Software/Catalogue/CatalogueENG.htm</a><br>
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)<br><br>
----------<br><br>
New on the net<br><br>
* The National Library of Australia has put online its report, "Guidelines for the Creation of Content for Resource Discovery Metadata".<br>
<a href="http://www.nla.gov.au/meta/metaguide.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.nla.gov.au/meta/metaguide.html</a><br><br>
* The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has launched a free online _WSIS Newsletter_. The first issue is now online. The WSIS is a sequel to the UN's Millennium Declaration, which also inspired HINARI, one of the largest FOS initiatives donating scholarly ejournal subscriptions to developing nations. WSIS has a much broader mandate than FOS, but includes FOS and bridging the digital divide among its concerns.<br>
<a href="http://www.itu.int/wsis/news/news01.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.itu.int/wsis/news/news01.htm</a><br>
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)<br><br>
* The proceedings of the conference on "The Future of the Information Revolution in Europe" (April 2001, Limelette, Belgium) are now online.<br>
<a href="http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF172/" eudora="autourl">http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF172/</a><br>
(Thanks to EuroCrisNews.)<br><br>
----------<br><br>
In other publications<br><br>
* The May 6 issue of _FirstMonday_ is now online. It contains several articles on digitizing museum collections for the web, and these two other FOS-related articles:<br>
<a href="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/" eudora="autourl">http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/</a><br><br>
Clifford Lynch, "Digital Collections, Digital Libraries and the Digitization of Cultural Heritage Information"<br>
<a href="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/lynch/index.html" eudora="autourl">http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/lynch/index.html</a><br><br>
Timothy W. Cole, "Creating a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections"<br>
<a href="http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/cole/index.html" eudora="autourl">http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/cole/index.html</a><br><br>
* In the May 6 _Law.com_, Barry Bayer reviews PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), a low-cost searchable database of court records. PACER charges $0.07 per screenful.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2E4211D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2E4211D</a><br><br>
* In the May 4 _Business Week_, Jane Black interviews Lawrence Lessig on his idea that Congress should enact compulsory licenses for copyrighted digital content like music and films. Quoting Lessig: "The record labels have launched lawsuits against every company that has a model for distributing [music and entertainment] content they can't control. That has sent a clear message to venture capitalists: Don't deploy a technology that we don't approve of, or we will sue you into the Dark Ages. The result is that the field has been left to dinosaurs." The dinosaurs have persuaded Congress that we face the false dilemma between "perfect protection or no protection" for digital content. "No one is seriously arguing for no protection. They are arguing for a balance...." <br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?X219520D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?X219520D</a><br>
(Thanks to QuickLinks.)<br><br>
* Dan Gillmor's May 4 column is devoted to the content industry's opposition to deep linking and ad skipping. In both cases content publishers are trying to control how people use their products, even when it hurts their own bottom line. For example, a ban on deep linking would eliminate most of the incoming links to a newspaper. Gillmor's diagnosis: this is control for the sake of control, "paranoia, stupidity, and greed" run amok. Congress has rolled over for content publishers because it hasn't yet heard from the fed-up and long-suffering public.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?R364241D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?R364241D</a><br><br>
* In the May 3 _Chronicle of Higher Education_ Marshall Poe tells why he didn't publish his latest book with a "good" print publisher, why he published it himself on the web, and what steps he went through to do so.<br>
<a href="http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i34/34b01501.htm" eudora="autourl">http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i34/34b01501.htm</a><br>
(Accessibly only to subscribers.)<br><br>
Poe published a funnier version of the same story, which also happens to be free online, in the December _JEP_ (FOSN for 12/5/01).<br>
<a href="http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/poe.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-02/poe.html</a><br><br>
* In the May 3 _NewsBytes_ William Jackson brings us up to date on the Net Guard, the "National Guard for the Net" that will mobilize to repair digital infrastructure damaged by acts of war or terrorism (FOSN for 12/5/01). Congress is considering Ron Wyden's bill to create the Net Guard. A related bill, passed by the House and now in the Senate, would give about a billion dollars to the NSF and NIST for research and education on net security. <br>
<a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176353.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176353.html</a><br><br>
* In the May 2 _New York Times_ David Pogue reviews free, shareware, and commercial programs that not only convert text to speech, but convert the audio file to MP3 format. The result is a bridge from written texts to the P2P music-swapping and MP3 music-playing infrastructure. (PS: The companies that hire actors to dictate books on tape will never record serious academic titles beyond a thin set of classics. Software like this is the best hope for a large library of free online audio scholarship. See FOSN for 10/5/01.)<br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/circuits/02STAT.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/technology/circuits/02STAT.html</a><br><br>
* In the May 2 _BBC News_, Mark Ward describes how grid computing is helping astronomers. Astrogrid is a unified front end to the many astronomical archives and data sets now online, and a channel to cope with the voluminous data generated by digital telescopes and other instruments. For example, the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (Vista) will generate 100 GB of data every day. Astrogrid makes different archives and data sets interoperable through its own metadata standard. The result is that astronomers have access to x-ray, radio, magnetic, infra-red, and optical data on a given celestial object, even if these data must be gathered from different online sources.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?J45221EC" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?J45221EC</a><br><br>
* In the May 1 _Library Journal_, Carol Tenopir gives advice to searchers frustrated by the multiplicity of overlapping, non-interoperable, searchable databases.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?G4E5201D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?G4E5201D</a><br><br>
* In the May _Information Today_ Paula Hane tells what is known of the rise and fall of Prestige Factor (PF), a Toronto company with a new way to the measure the impact of scholarly journals. Like ISI, PF measured the frequency of citations, but unlike ISI, it only counted citations to original research articles. In February ISI sued PF for violating its intellectual property rights and in March PF went out of business, apparently unable to bear the costs of defending itself in court.<br>
<a href="http://www.infotoday.com/it/may02/hane1.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.infotoday.com/it/may02/hane1.htm</a><br><br>
* In the May _Computers in Libraries_, George Pike gives an excellent overview of how the licensing (rather than sale) of electronic content to libraries increases administrative complexity and costs for libraries and diminishes traditional rights to copy and lend.<br>
<a href="http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may02/pike.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may02/pike.htm</a><br>
(Thanks to LibLicense.)<br><br>
* In the April 29 _CableWorld_, Staci Kramer interviews Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner. Kellner asserts that skipping the commercials on commercial TV is "theft". He allows that "there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom" but insists that "your contract with the network when you get the show is [that] you're going to watch the spots". Systematically skipping commercials is a violation of Turner's intellectual property rights. (PS: I know this isn't FOS. But ad-supported journals are one form of FOS and Kellner's fantasy may be pointer to the future of ad-supported media. The lightning reflex to close pop-up windows will be theft. The discipline to avert your eyes from blinking text and keep reading will be theft. So the future of ad-supported online media won't be pop-ups and blinking text. Perhaps it will be like the scene from Clockwork Orange in which Alex is strapped into a chair and steel clamps hold his eyelids open. But unlike Alex, we won't be watching a deprogramming tape to dull our violent desires. We'll be watching ads for hair dye, laxatives, and pick-up trucks. Unless someone straps people like Kellner in the chair first.)<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?I4A812BC" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?I4A812BC</a><br>
(Thanks to C-FIT.)<br><br>
Also see Ernest Miller's excellent retort to Kellner's position in _LawMeme_.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?U2A654CC" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?U2A654CC</a><br><br>
* In the April 28 _Heise Online_, Stefan Krempl describes the Math-Net Page initiative from the International Mathematics Union (IMU). A Math-Net Page at a university math department web site hosts links to faculty and their online papers in a standardized way that facilitates the collection of the linked pages by special software run by the Math-Net portal. The goal is to produce a free online archive of world mathematical literature, by encouraging mathematicians to post their papers to their department sites and encouraging departments to post Math-Net Pages. Krempl closes with a summary of major FOS initiatives from arXiv and the Public Library of Science to the Budapest Open Access Initiative. (The article is in German.)<br>
<a href="http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-28.04.02-004/" eudora="autourl">http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-28.04.02-004/</a><br>
(Thanks to QuickLinks.)<br><br>
IMU press release on Math-Net Pages (in English, undated)<br>
<a href="http://www.math-net.org/Math-Net-Press-Release.doc" eudora="autourl">http://www.math-net.org/Math-Net-Press-Release.doc</a><br><br>
IMU statement endorsing open access, May 2001 (in English)<br>
<a href="http://elib.zib.de/IMU/IMU_Committees/call_authors.html" eudora="autourl">http://elib.zib.de/IMU/IMU_Committees/call_authors.html</a><br><br>
* Peru is considering a bill to require all government agencies to use open-source software for all official purposes. The manager of Microsoft Peru wrote a letter full of expostulation and FUD to Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, a member of the Peruvian Congress. Microsoft probably expected a politician ignorant of technology policy issues, whose eyes glaze over quickly when they come up, and eager to defer to the wealthy investor in the local economy. But instead they found an informed and passionate proponent of open source who understands the issues better than Microsoft and as well as any open-source advocate who has ever written on these issues. It would have been easy for Nuñez to pitch the Microsoft letter into the trash. After all, you can't expect to convert Microsoft to open source. But instead of pitching it, Nuñez wrote a lengthy public reply (April 8) that devastates Microsoft's arguments with overwhelming detail and patience. Imagine a U.S. Congressman writing such a long, articulate, candid, courteous, detailed, informed, and persuasive open letter, let alone a letter taking this side of the issue.<br>
<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?M1D0250D" eudora="autourl">http://makeashorterlink.com/?M1D0250D</a><br>
(Thanks to C-FIT.)<br><br>
* In the April _Charleston Advisor_, Margaret Landsman argues that we need a new model of ebooks that goes beyond subscription to purchase, beyond pricing by FTE, and beyond "one book / one user". (In general, she thinks ebrary is on the right track.) A new model for ebooks will benefit readers, researchers, libraries, publishers, and libraries what wish to become publishers.<br>
<a href="http://charlestonco.com/features.cfm?id=85&;type=ed" eudora="autourl">http://charlestonco.com/features.cfm?id=85&type=ed</a><br><br>
* The April issue of _Librarian's eBook Newsletter_ contains several FOS-related articles:<br>
<a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/toc.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/toc.htm</a><br><br>
An interview with ebrary CEO Christopher Warnock<br>
<a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/warnock.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/warnock.htm</a><br><br>
Major collections of free online full-text books<br>
<a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/free.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/free.htm</a><br><br>
A bibliography of recent articles on ebooks<br>
<a href="http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/articles.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.lib.rochester.edu/main/ebooks/newsletter2-4/articles.htm</a><br><br>
* In the April issue of the _Journal of the Medical Library Association_, contains several FOS-related articles:<br>
<a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=93" eudora="autourl">http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=93</a><br>
(Thanks to Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.)<br><br>
Anamarija Rozic-Hristovski and two co-authors, "Users' information-seeking behavior on a medical library Website"<br>
<a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100766" eudora="autourl">http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100766</a><br><br>
Kathleen Bauer, "Cost analysis of a project to digitize classic articles in neurosurgery"<br>
<a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100769" eudora="autourl">http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100769</a><br>
(Highlights: "[F]ellows, students, and residents preferred electronic<br>
journals, and faculty preferred print journals. Patrons used print journals<br>
for reading articles and scanning contents; they employed electronic<br>
journals for printing articles and checking references. Users considered<br>
electronic journals easier to access and search than print journals; however,<br>
they reported that print journals had higher quality text and figures.")<br><br>
Nila A. Sathe and two co-authors, "Print versus electronic journals: a preliminary investigation into the effect of journal format on research processes"<br>
<a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100770" eudora="autourl">http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100770</a><br><br>
Stéfan Darmoni and five co-authors, "CISMeF-patient: a French counterpart to MEDLINEplus"<br>
<a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100773" eudora="autourl">http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=100773</a><br><br>
* CLIR and the Library of Congress have released their study, "Building a National Strategy for Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving."<br>
<a href="http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/contents.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/contents.html</a><br><br>
Dale Flecker wrote the chapter on preserving digital journals.<br>
<a href="http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/periodicals.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub106/periodicals.html</a><br><br>
* The Spring issue of the _Professional Scholarly Publishing [PSP] Bulletin_ is now online. Among other things, it summarizes the proceedings of the annual AAP PSP conference (February 11-13, Washington, D.C.).<br>
<a href="http://www.pspcentral.org/bulletins/current_bulletin.pdf" eudora="autourl">http://www.pspcentral.org/bulletins/current_bulletin.pdf</a><br><br>
* An undated document at the AAP's Professional Scholarly Publishing site (undated but listed on the "What's New" page) describes the top 10 issues on the minds of traditional or non-FOS scholarly publishers. All 10 are worth reading, but #3 is about online access. Here are three of the five bulleted points on online access: "(*) Glut of free information impacts publishers directly by creating the misperception that information should cost less. (*) Free access is not free of cost. (*) Ease of access is the goal; immediate access increases user productivity."<br>
<a href="http://www.pspcentral.org/committees/public_issues/hill_slowinski.doc" eudora="autourl">http://www.pspcentral.org/committees/public_issues/hill_slowinski.doc</a><br><br>
* In FOSN for 4/22/02, I cited the February issue of the _ARL Bimonthly Report_ without a URL because the issue was not online at that time. But it's online now. (While dated February, this issue appeared in April.) The issue is devoted to open access and contains the following pieces:<br>
<a href="http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/index.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/index.html</a><br><br>
Mary Case, "Promoting Open Access: Developing New Strategies for Managing Copyright and Intellectual Property"<br>
<a href="http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/access.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/access.html</a><br><br>
Peter Suber, "Where Does the Free Online Scholarship Movement Stand Today?"<br>
<a href="http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/scholar.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/scholar.html</a><br>
(Reprint of my April editorial for _Cortex_.)<br><br>
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (full statement and excerpts from its FAQ)<br>
<a href="http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boai.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boai.html</a><br>
<a href="http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boaifaq.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.arl.org/newsltr/220/boaifaq.html</a><br>
("The [BOAI] FAQ is one of the most usefully linked documents your [ARL] editors have ever discovered on the Web.")<br><br>
----------<br><br>
The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute.<br>
<a href="http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/" eudora="autourl">http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/</a><br><br>
==========<br><br>
This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848).<br><br>
Please feel free to forward any issue of the newsletter to interested colleagues. If you are reading a forwarded copy of this issue, you may subscribe by signing up at the FOS home page. <br><br>
FOS home page, general information, subscriptions, editorial position<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm</a><br><br>
FOS Newsletter, subscriptions, back issues<br>
<a href="http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos" eudora="autourl">http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos</a><br><br>
FOS Discussion Forum, subscriptions, postings<br>
<a href="http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum" eudora="autourl">http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum</a><br><br>
Guide to the FOS Movement<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm</a><br><br>
Sources for the FOS Newsletter<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/sources.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/sources.htm</a><br><br>
Peter Suber<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters" eudora="autourl">http://www.earlham.edu/~peters</a><br><br>
Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber<br>
<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm" eudora="autourl">http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm</a><br><br>
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