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In light of the challenge and promise currently facing scholarly publishing’s move to digital models of greater openness, this paper offers a point of historical reflection on an earlier era of concern over sustainable access to learned works. It reports on a period of great turmoil in publishing that ran from the end of British book licensing in 1695, which unleashed a great wave of print piracy and sedition, to the legal remedy afforded by the Statute of Anne 1710, which introduced what we now think of as modern copyright law. The paper begins with John Locke’s lobbying of Parliament to end the effrontery of press censorship and monopoly maintained by the three-decade old Licensing Act of 1662. The scholar-friendly legal reforms of this act that Locke proposed in the 1690s were not taken up by Parliament when it allowed the act to expire in 1695. However, six years after Locke’s death in 1704, his and others’ proposed reforms were to find a place in the Statute of Anne 1710. This legislation was the first to vest authors with an exclusive, limited-term right to print copies of their work, while also protecting the access rights of scholars and the public to these and other works. I argue that the history of the statute reveals how the age of copyright began with striking a fine legislative balance between the interests of learning and those of commercial publishing, while also offering further insight into Locke’s influential work on property rights and limits. My hope is that this portrayal of Locke’s relatively effective political intervention as scholar-activist and public defender of learning in relation to the subsequent Statute of Anne might inspire and lend weight to the academic community’s current grappling with the growing commercial dominance of scholarly publishing.

This study assesses the extent and nature of open access scholarly publishing in Brazil, one of the world’s leaders in providing universal access to its research and scholarship. It utilizes Brazil’s Qualis journal evaluation system, along with other relevant data bases to address the association between scholarly quality and open access in the Brazilian context. Through cross tabulation among these various data sets, it is possible to arrive at a reasonably accurate picture of journals, systems, ratings, and disciplines. The study establishes reliable measures and counts of Brazilian scholarly publications, the proportion and types of open access, and journals ratings and by disciplinary field. It finds that the better the Brazilian journal, the more likely it is to be open access. It also finds that Qualis ranks Brazilian journals lower overall than the international journals in which Brazilian authors publish, most notably in the field of the biological sciences. The study concludes with a consideration of the policy implications for building on the country’s global leadership in open access to strengthen the quality of its global contribution to knowledge.

Through funding agency and publisher policies, an increasing proportion of the health sciences literature is being made open access. Such an increase in access raises questions about the awareness and potential utilization of this literature by those working in health fields.A sample of physicians (N=336) and public health non-governmental organization (NGO) staff (N=92) were provided with relatively complete access to the research literature indexed in PubMed, as well as access to the point-of-care service UpToDate, for up to one year, with their usage monitored through the tracking of web-log data. The physicians also participated in a one-month trial of relatively complete or limited access.The study found that participants' research interests were not satisfied by article abstracts alone nor, in the case of the physicians, by a clinical summary service such as UpToDate. On average, a third of the physicians viewed research a little more frequently than once a week, while two-thirds of the public health NGO staff viewed more than three articles a week. Those articles were published since the 2008 adoption of the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as prior to 2008 and during the maximum 12-month embargo period. A portion of the articles in each period was already open access, but complete access encouraged a viewing of more research articles.Those working in health fields will utilize more research in the course of their work as a result of (a) increasing open access to research, (b) improving awareness of and preparation for this access, and (c) adjusting public and open access policies to maximize the extent of potential access, through reduction in embargo periods and access to pre-policy literature.

Background We propose the creation of a journal transparency tool (JTT), which will allow users to obtain information about a given scholarly journal’s operations and policies. We are obtaining preferences from different stakeholders to inform the development of this tool. This study aimed to identify the publishing community’s preferences for the JTT. Methods We conducted a modified three-round Delphi survey. Representatives from publishing houses and journal publishers were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. The first two Delphi rounds involved an online survey with items about JTT metrics and user features. During the third round, participants discussed and voted on JTT metric items that did not reach consensus after round 2 within a virtual consensus meeting. We defined consensus as 80% agreement to include or exclude an item in the JTT. Results Eighty-six participants completed the round 1 survey, and 43 participants (50% of round 1) completed the round 2 survey. In both rounds, respondents voted on JTT user feature and JTT metric item preferences and answered open-ended survey questions regarding the JTT. In round 3, a total of 21 participants discussed and voted on JTT metric items that did not reach consensus after round 2 during an online consensus group meeting. Fifteen out of 30 JTT metric items and none of the four JTT user feature items reached the 80% consensus threshold after all rounds of voting. Analysis of the round 3 online consensus group transcript resulted in two themes: ‘factors impacting support for JTT metrics’ and ‘suggestions for user clarity.’ Conclusions Participants suggested that the publishing community’s primary concerns for a JTT are to ensure that the tool is relevant, user-friendly, accessible, and equitable. The outcomes of this research will contribute to developing and refining the tool in accordance with publishing preferences.

O artigo procura desvendar o novo impacto educacional que pode causar políticas de identidade e multiculturalismo, argumentando que é preciso prover a nova abordagem com a compreensão da forma como categorias de peso como cultura, raça e nação vêm sendo construídas. Para tanto, recorre à posição filosófica de Simone Weil, a qual defende a necessidade de partir das "raízes" para aprender a conhecer as qualidades éticas da categoria da identidade. Contrapõe-se, nesse sentido, à política de identidade de Taylor, que busca reconciliar o individualismo liberal com os direitos coletivos e que informa as iniciativas multiculturais e anti-racistas de duas secretarias de educação de províncias canadenses. Revê ainda as críticas ao multiculturalismo de Bissoondath e Schlesinger, expondo a posição dos autores sobre nacionalismo ético. Finalmente admite: por mais obscura que possa ser a prioridade educacional dada à descoberta dos processos políticos, incluindo-se a própria escolarização, ela confere força e significância pessoal a importantes aspectos da identidade.

A presentation given at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference in Toronto, Ontario, on February 4, 2011.

Abstract Throughout this article we argue that many scholars and scientific systems in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) share the ethical and epistemological motivations about the importance of increasing the "public presence" of academic research and lay out that many scholars and that many scholars and scientific systems in LAC are well positioned to take advantage of the increasing information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and of the growing open access (OA) movement so that the research produced within the region is circulated and shared broadly. The existence of Latin American examples to Willinsky's (2006) ten flavours of OA to journal articles are seen as an indication that OA has taken hold in the region. Keywords Open Access (OA); Latin America and the Caribbean; Information and Communication Technologies (ICT); knowledge dissemination; Scholarly Communication Resumo Argumenta-se neste artigo que muitos acadêmicos e sistemas científicos na América Latina e no Caribe compartilham motivações éticas e epistemológicas a respeito da importância de se aumentar a "presença pública" da pesquisa acadêmica e que muitos deles estão bem posicionados para se valer da crescente infra-estrutura de tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC)e dos movimentos de Acesso Livre (AL) para que a ciência produzida na região circule e se compartilhe amplamente. A existência de exemplos latino-americanos para a classificação dos dez modelos de Willinsky para artigos de periódicos é vista como indicação de que o AL já se instalou na região. Palavras-chave Acesso Livre (AL); América Latina e Caribe; Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC); difusão do conhecimento; comunicação acadêmica

Introduction. The founding of a new open access journal is described in terms of its use of the open source software Open Journal Systems, its contribution to a new field of inquiry and its ability to operate on a zero budget in terms of regular expenses. Method. A case study method is deployed describing the circumstances of the journal's founding and current manner of publishing. Analysis. The use of online and open source software, as well as a global team of volunteers is presented as the basis of sustaining an open access approach to publishing. Results. The journal has been able to operate with a zero dollar operating budget over the course of its first six issues and is in a position to continue in this manner. Conclusion. . A strong commitment to the principles of developing a new field of inquiry committed to global issues of access to knowledge, in combination with open source and Internet technologies, has lowered the barriers to the exercise of academic freedom on a modest, but nonetheless global scale.

In addressing the question of how new technologies can improve the public quality and presence of academic research, this article reports on the current online use of research by policymakers. Interviews with a sample of 25 Canadian policymakers at the federal level were conducted, looking at the specific role that online research has begun to play in their work, and what frustrations they face in using this research. The study found widespread use of online research, increasing the consultation of this source in policy analysis and formation. The principal issues remain those of access, indexing and credibility, with policymakers restricting themselves in large part to open access sources. Still, online research is proving a counterforce to policymakers' reliance on a small number of academic consultants as gatekeepers and sources for research. What is needed, it becomes clear, is investigations into whether innovative well-indexed systems that integrate a range of academic and non-academic resources might increase the political impact of research in the social sciences and education.