Institutional Repositories & Mandated Open Access in the U.S.?

Hard to believe, and it may take some time before we fully understand the meaning here. But this is exciting news. I first saw this on the Chronicle news blog (be sure to read the comments being posted as they reveal that there is a lot of confusion still over what exactly this means). Then a colleague sent me this New York Times article. If you're interested in this topic, more on this can be found at SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. SPARC, is an excellent resource for keeping up on this topic. Developed by the Association of Research Libraries, it's an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Those new to Open Access may want to check out Peter Suber's Overview.

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration - Open Education For All

Please read and consider signing the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. The quote below describes what has transpired amid the growing open-access, open-source and Web 2.0 movements over the last few years. And, in my opinion and hopefully many others, why the time is now for such a declaration.

The expanding global collection of open educational resources has created fertile ground for this effort. These resources include openly licensed course materials, lesson plans, textbooks, games, software and other materials that support teaching and learning. They contribute to making education more accessible, especially where money for learning materials is scarce. They also nourish the kind of participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation that rapidly changing knowledge societies need.

You may be asking why this is so important, bottom line is this:
"Most importantly, we have an opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world through freely available, high-quality, locally relevant educational and learning opportunities."

The declaration lists three strategies to increase the reach and impact of open educational resources. I hope educators everywhere will understand the importance and commit to the pursuit and promotion of open education.

Senators Support Open-Access Measure

From the Chronicle's Wired Campus article, October 2007The Senate passed HR 3043. The measure included language requiring all researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health to submit their final manuscripts to a free online archive:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

The Open-Access Movement is important to all and I believe it's a movement in which librarians should be major advocates. How might we go about furthering this movement within our institutions? What about open-access of all scholarly research?