In diesem Jahr finden die Open-Access-Tage zum sechsten Mal statt. Vom 26. bis 27. September 2012 widmet sich die Konferenz den Chancen und Herausforderungen des offenen Zugangs zu wissenschaftlicher Information. Gastgeberin ist die Universität Wien. Veranstaltet wird die Konferenz von der Informationsplattform open-access.net und ihren Partnerorganisationen.

I got an interesting email a couple of days ago from Robin Wilson: It’s an important question. Before I try to answer it, let me make it clear that I have no qualifications whatsoever to comment on this subject. I am an extremely junior researcher — not even a postdoc, I have an honorary position. I have never been an editor of any journal, nor on any publication committee.

I sent this letter to Wiley today, in response to their announcement of elective open access being available in 81% of their journals.

Der Senat der Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) hat heute unter dem Titel “Die digitale Transformation weiter gestalten – Der Beitrag der DFG zu einer innovativen Informationsinfrastruktur für die Forschung” (PDF)  ein Positionspapier zur strategischen Weiterentwicklung von Informationsinfrastrukturen für die Forschung verabschiedet.

A couple of news items from the last few days show encouraging signs that Wiley, unlike certain other academic publishers, is taking steps to move in an open-access direction. First, there was the announcement four days ago that they have created a new role within the company specifically to lead their open access efforts. The lucky recipient is Rachel Burley, whose previous job title was Publisher” and who is now Director of Open Access.

As you’ll know from all the recent AMNH basement (and YPM gallery) photos, Matt and I spent last week in New York (with a day-trip to New Haven). The week immediately before that, I spent in Boston with Index Data, my day-job employers. Both weeks were fantastic — lots of fun and very productive.

Just a link this time. Richard Smith was the editor of the British Medical Journal until 2004, and at one point he was chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. He is currently director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative, and an unpaid professor at both Warwick University and Imperial College London. He’s a pretty big hitter by any standards. Does he have the access to research that he needs?

Langsam aber sicher passiert etwas in der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlich geprägten Verlagslandschaft in Deutschland. Nachdem De Gruyter im Januar durch den Kauf von Versita 230 Open-Access-Zeitschriften erworben hat, gab die Verlagsgruppe Oldenbourg heute eine Kooperation mit dem Open-Access-Verlag Copernicus Publications bekannt.

The report of the Working Group chaired by Dame Janet Finch about Expanding Access to Published Research Findings has been published. This recommends a programme of action to enable more people to read and use the publications arising from research. Better, faster communication of research results will bring benefits for public services and for economic growth.

Just noticed that BioStor now has just over 70,000 articles extracted from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. This number is a little "soft" as there are some duplicates in the database that I need to clean out, but it's a nice sounding number.