Scholarly Communication at Texas A&M

The Oberlin College General Faculty unanimously endorsed on November 18 a resolution to make their scholarly articles openly accessible on the Internet. As a result of the measure, the rich scholarly output of the Oberlin faculty will become available to a much broader national and international audience. The Oberlin resolution is similar to policies passed at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Kansas, and Trinity University. (more…)

Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act to ensure free
online access to federally funded research results

Washington, DC – “For America to obtain an optimal return on our
investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as
broadly as possible,” is the message that forty one Nobel Prize-
winning scientists in medicine, physics, and chemistry gave to
Congress in an open letter delivered yesterday. The letter marks the
fourth time in five years that leading scientists have called on
Congress to ensure free, timely access to the results of federally
funded research – this time asking leaders to support the Federal
Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S.1373). (more…)

Harvard, Yale, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Oregon Health & Science University, and Boston University will release a statement today that will guide how drugs developed by scientists at the schools are licensed to companies. The six schools committed to a statement that calls on the institutions to “make ‘vigorous efforts’ to promote global access to drugs through licensing strategies.” An international student group called Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, supported by the New York-based Ford Foundation, has been asking schools for about seven years to help broaden access to drugs. Students at Harvard organized protests and gathered more than 1,000 signatures on a petition urging Harvard to adopt licensing measures which would increase access to medicines in poor countries. (more…)

Announced yesterday, the Utah State University Press will merge with the University’s Merrill-Cazier Library. Utah State is the latest in a growing number of university press and library partnerships and outright mergers. For example, the University of Michigan Press reorganized as an academic unit within the library in March 2009.  (more…)