June 26, 2012

The HOAP Update list is designed to share monthly updates, conversations, and information about the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP. This is the first update of these monthly updates. It is presented in wiki format; future updates will be made available via the links to list's public archives.

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Publications and Related Research

• PUBLICATIONS FROM MIT PRESS: MIT Press recently published the Kindle edition of HOAP Director Peter Suber’s newest work, Open Access, as part of their Essential Knowledge Series. They will roll out a dozen other digital formats over the course of the summer; a print edition is expected in mid-July. An anthology of some of Peter’s articles on OA from the past ten years will also come out in early 2013. Both books will themselves be OA one year after publication.
  • Peter Suber, Open Access, MIT Press
  • Updates to the book's text can be found on its [wiki page].
• DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS: Two doctoral students, Haswira Nor Mohamad Hashim and Heather Morrison, are currently writing dissertations on OA, for which Peter is serving as an external examiner. Hashim is pursuing a degree from Queensland University of Technology in Australia, while Morrison is pursuing a degree from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

Events and Public Policy

• WHITE HOUSE PETITION: HOAP helped muster signatures for a White House petition calling for a federal OA policy that requires “the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form.” According to the petition site’s rules, any petition that collects 25,000 signatures in less than 30 days receives an official response from the Obama administration; the petition reached that mark in just 14 days of its posting. The petition was created by Access2Research, a group of Open Access advocates that includes SPARC’s Executive Director, Heather Joseph, and former Berkman Assistant Director, John Wilbanks. We’re awaiting the White House response!
  • Read and sign the White House petition
• WORLD BANK LAUNCHES OA POLICY: In April 2012, the World Bank announced that it will implement a new Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products, effective July 1, 2012. According to a World Bank press release, “the new policy builds on recent efforts to increase access to information at the World Bank and to make its research as widely available as possible...the Bank launched [today] a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.” The policy will effectively make World Bank research freely available online without charge or restrictions via the Open Knowledge Repository. Peter Suber participated in a panel that discussed the World Bank’s new OA policy and global development at the May 21, 2012 launch event.
  • The World Bank, “Bank Publications and Research Now Easier to Access, Reuse”
  • The World Bank, “World Bank Open Access Policy for Formal Publications”
  • The World Bank, “What the World Bank’s Open Access Policy Means for Development” (video)