Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News) One of the claims made by traditional publishers is that the peer review process might be harmed if open access business models and practices were adopted. But as this editorial in the BMJ shows, peer review is too important to be left to publishers to manage. Formal training and [...]

The Right to Preserve: The Rights Issues of Digital Preservation The flip side of moving to digital collections. They are far more useful in the present but what about the future?

The Observer | Business | Black arts of the science mags How’s this for a winning publishing formula? A university funds scientific research; the research is turned into a paper by an author, who pays a colour illustration and reprint charge – say, £1,000 – and surrenders the copyright for the privilege of publishing his [...]

Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News) Nowick and Jenda summarize library responses to the crisis in scholarly publishing costs and cite what they deem most useful approaches. They point how unsustainable costs limit scientists’ access to each other’s work. Library and scholar educational efforts, such as informing scholars about copyright alternatives and principles outlined in, [...]

Comcast cutting off spam zombies Internet service provider Comcast Corp. is cutting off Internet service for some customers whose Windows computers are being used to relay spam messages, according to a company spokeswoman. The biggest problem with infected machines seems to be that the owners don’t know their infected and most of the unlucky recipients [...]

TechnoBiblio: CAN-SPAM PUT TO THE TEST An ISP in California is taking a spammer to court claiming they forged header information and neglected to include contact info in about 100 email messages they sent through its service.

New Seattle Central Library is on the cutting edge of technological advances Libraries have always been in the information business, but technology has expanded the definition of what “information” means — and exploded the list of what people expected from their libraries even just 18 years ago, when Central got its first computer. (It was [...]

Serials Crisis: Up and Out of the Library There is increasing solidarity among the libraries whose budgets are in the middle of the crisis, the faculties whose members contribute the content, and the university administrators who wind up paying the bills. They are taking action to regain control over the millions they spend on content, [...]

Open Access News:Canadian Supreme Court rules for plaintiff in copyright case The Canadian Supreme Court upheld the appeal of the Law Society of Upper Canada which was sued by several legal publishers for having photocopiers in its research library and maintaining a photocopy distribution service “in person, by mail or by facsimile transmission” for the [...]