Rowland Institute Library Blog

Today the Public Library of Science released its second journal, PLoS
Medicine.  the journal is open to all via the website. 
Authors and/or their institutions pay the publication fees.  
The PLoS also has foundation support.  The first issues of PLoS
Biology garnered considerable attention for their original research and
it will be interesting to see if the new journal has a similar
impact.  (Source: Open Access News)

(Sources: Open Access News, PAMNET-L)

George Porter of Caltech writes an extensive commentary on the fleating
nature of online journals, citing several horrific examples of when a
journal ceases publication and the publisher does not deign to maintain
the electronic archive (he also mentions a few instances of publishers
following good practice and maintaining backfiles if a journal has
ceased or changed publishers, etc.)  He also highlights the LOCKSS
(Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) project, praises the publishers who
are participating, and chides the holdouts for their
fecklessness. 

According to Harnad et al, self-archiving works. Open access articles
are cited from 2.5 to 5 times as much as subscription-restricted
articles, according to their study.  The “green” refers to a
publisher’s “green light” for the author to self-archive a paper in
some form, which may at least be available to some researchers, if not
the “gold,” which is open access from the time of publication. 
(Source; Georgia State Libraries Issues in Scholarly Communication)

a checklist …

.. but they are a little late entering into this, while it is
welcome.  AIP did it two years ago…  The Virtual Journals
provide an easier approach… And why not throw their weight into RSS,
especially since Phys Rev Lett and others add new articles daily? 

Well, it will help for now….

Harvard users follow this link. 
Topics covered include microfluidic systems for bioterror discovery,
integrated microfluidic and lab-on-chip devices, flow and heat
kinetics, others .

nanotechweb.org, a service of the Institute of Physics (IoP), features a digest of the latest papers in nanotechnology, including their journals and publications from APS, Kluwer, Elsevier and other publishers. Links to abstracts are available and full text (restricted to subscribers). The entries are listed according to the date they were added to the page.

Three articles in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education present the arguments for and against open access journals, digging into the question of subscription versus author-charging, and really including a wide range of voices (researchers, OA advocates, commercial publishers, societies and viewpoints.) A live colloquy takes place on Thursday at 1PM, featuring Peter Suber of Earlham College, creator of Open Access News.

American Journal of Physics features a review of physics books for the general public, citing and commenting on texts from a variety of topics.