Happy Open Access Week!

This week is "Open Access Week".

About the OA movement

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

Open Access is the principle that all research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it’s gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers throw their weight behind it.

The Open Access philosophy was firmly articulated in 2002, when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was introduced. It quickly took root in the scientific and medical communities because it offered an alternative route to research literature that was frequently closed off behind costly subscription barriers.

Now Open Access is on a roll. Recent Funder Mandates — including that of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (the world’s largest research funder), which now requires that all their funded research be placed in an openly accessible database, and Harvard University — have further strengthened the prospects for Open Access to all research.

Scientific American is under new management

For now, Penrose will keep a subscription to Scientific American, even though the price went up 750% in one year (2009 to 2010). Nature Publishing Group is now the publisher, and they really jacked the price up on it. I will be watching print use of this in 2010. We do have electronic access to the magazine as well.

For more information, take a look at this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Scientific American is probably the nation's most venerable source of science news written for a general audience. The Nature group, which took over the magazine this year, proposes to charge $299 for a 2010 print subscription-up from $39.95-and as much as $1,500 for an annual license for online access-up from $1,000 - depending on how big the institution is.

Former Chancellor Dan Ritchie takes a rap...

Former DU Chancellor Dan Ritchie raps about a new blog at the DCPA. He makes "it hip and funny so the kids will like it!"



Thanks to Let's Go DU for finding this.