Category Archives: Open access

AcaWiki launches: free summaries of academic papers

Posted on 8 October 2009 by Gavin Baker

As I reported at Open Access News, AcaWiki launched yesterday. The idea is free (gratis, libre), editable (wiki) summaries of academic papers. These summaries might be useful to scan during a literature review or when studying for a class, or … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Creative Commons, Education, Open access, Open education, Politics, Publishing, Science | Leave a comment

Funding a transition to OA

Posted on 16 September 2009 by Gavin Baker

As I mentioned in my last post, a group of American universities has signed an agreement to finance open access journals. The previous post alluded to my criticisms of the compact and I’ll flesh them out here. It’s a big … Continue reading →

Posted in Open access | Leave a comment

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

Posted on 15 September 2009 by Gavin Baker

Harvard and 4 other universities did something neat recently: they agreed, in principle, to help finance open access publishing. Of course, the devil’s in the details (more on that in a future post), not least of which is that, at … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Open access, Publishing | 3 Comments

Science Next book release in DC

Posted on 26 April 2009 by Gavin Baker

Science Next, an anthology of essays from Science Progress, was released this month by Bellevue Literary Press. The anthology includes my essay on the NIH Public Access Policy, “Public Science”. The Center for American Progress will be hosting a release … Continue reading →

Posted in DC, Open access, Personal, Science | Leave a comment

Unchaining the library

Posted on 21 April 2009 by Gavin Baker

Browsing Wikipedia today, I found a page with an intriguing title: chained library: A chained library is a library where the books are attached to their bookcase by a chain, which is sufficiently long to allow the books to be … Continue reading →

Posted in Libraries, Open access | Leave a comment

Another Tax Day without access to taxpayer-funded research

Posted on 15 April 2009 by Gavin Baker

Today is Tax Day in America, and I’m headed to the post office to pay my dues to Uncle Sam (at the last minute, of course). What do I get for my money? Well, I get free access online to … Continue reading →

Posted in Open access | Leave a comment

Guest post on 1 year of NIH open access

Posted on 8 April 2009 by Gavin Baker

The NIH Public Access Policy took effect on April 7, 2008. I have a guest post at Science Progress looking at the policy after a year in implementation.

Posted in Academia, Open access, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science | Leave a comment

Why haven’t more research funders and institutions adopted self-archiving mandates? (Or: “Build it first, open it later”)

Posted on 27 March 2009 by Gavin Baker

Recently, I came across this quote from Rep. Mike Honda: Instead of databases becoming available as a result of Freedom Of Information Act requests, government officials should be required to justify why any public data should not be freely available … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Open access | Leave a comment