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 LITA Membership LITA Committees Legislation & Regulation Committee LegReg Newsgram November 2 2005
LegReg Irregular Newsgram 11/2/2005in this newsgram:1. BUSINESS GROUPS WANT TO LIMIT PATRIOT ACT 1-----BUSINESS GROUPS WANT TO LIMIT PATRIOT ACT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Patriot-Act-Business.html -- Some of the nation's most powerful business groups are splitting with the Bush administration over whether to restrict the anti-terror USA Patriot Act. The business groups complained to Congress on Wednesday that the Patriot Act makes it too easy for the government to get confidential business records. That put them at odds with one of President Bush's top priorities -- the unfettered extension of the law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 2-----REPORT ADDRESSES SUSTAINABILITY OF DATABASES
A new report from a National Science Board task force calls on the federal government to implement a clear and focused strategy to ensure that growing collections of information in databases remain accessible and easy to use in the coming years. The report argues that the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has financed many technological developments in recent years, has not crafted policies and strategies that consider and address the range of technologies for storing data. The report praises the improvements that have been made to systems that collect various types of material in digital form and make those materials widely available online, but it says the need is "urgent" for a strategy to guarantee the viability of those materials. The concern, according to the report, is that as technology platforms continue to evolve, some digital content could be left in the lurch, unable to be accessed by newer systems. The report makes a number of recommendations for the NSF, including coordinating efforts between data storage and users of those data, promoting effective training, and supporting efforts to educate "a sufficient number of high-quality data scientists" to manage such systems. Inside Higher Ed, 13 October 2005 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/13/digital 3-----WE'VE NOT SEEN THE LAST OF THE COPYRIGHT CLASS ACTION
"The case derived from the Tasini lawsuit (New York Times Co., Inc., et al. v. Tasini et al.) has been variously called The Copyright Class Action and In Re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation (MDL No. 1379)." 4-----INSURANCE FOR USE OF OPEN SOURCE:
Using open source software exposes organizations to a number of risks not typically encountered with proprietary software, and a group of companies is now offering policies to address that risk. Kiln Risk Solutions, which is a division of Lloyd's of London, is working with Miller Insurance Services and Open Source Risk Management to provide coverage for the kinds of claims that have been seen in recent years over open source technologies. Claims concern issues such as copyright, whether proprietary code is included in an open source application, and failure to meet the terms of open source licenses. Linux operating systems, for example, fall under something known as the General Public License, and organizations using Linux must follow the terms of that license. In some cases, the new policies being offered for open source might cover the costs of bringing code into compliance with applicable licenses. ZDNet, 31 October 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5924112.html 5-----MIT & NOKIA FORM RESEARCH LAB:
MIT and Nokia announced a venture to create a joint research lab, to be called the Nokia Research Center Cambridge. The lab is part of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and researchers there will study "the state of the art in mobile computing and communications," according to a statement from the two organizations. Specifically, researchers will focus on low-power hardware and user interfaces, in particular those that are based on speech. More broadly, the center will address questions concerning software architecture, wireless technologies, and methods of managing information. The center will comprise about 20 researchers from each of the two organizations and will be directed by James Hicks of the Nokia Research Center. The Register, 28 October 2005 6-----KEY OPEN ACCESS CONCEPTS
An excerpt from the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (OAB) that provides a brief overview of OA concepts is now available in HTML-tagged format. Additional links have been added, and old links checked and updated. As part of the OAB, it is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. http://www.escholarlypub.com/oab/keyoaconcepts.htm 7-----BIOMED CENTRAL RESPONDS TO ALPSP'S STUDY 'THE FACTS ABOUT OPEN ACCESS'
BioMed Central welcomes objective research into open access publishing. Unfortunately, however, the report published by ALPSP this week ("The Facts about Open Access") contains significant factual inaccuracies. We also disagree with many of the reports interpretations and conclusions. The two most serious problems with the report are that it inaccurately describes the peer review process operated by BioMed Central's journals, and it also draws unjustified conclusions concerning the long-term sustainability of open access journals. The overview of the report incorrectly states that BioMed Central does not operate external peer review on most of its journals. In fact, all of BioMed Central's journals operate full peer review using external peer reviewers. Full peer review is a condition of the inclusion of articles in NIH's PubMed Central, in which all 140+ of the journals published by BioMed Central are archived. The study groups BioMed Central together with Internet Scientific Publications (ISP) as a cohort, and indicates that this was done because over half of the responding open access journals were from these two publishers. ISP and BioMed Central have little in common as publishers, and so the conclusions drawn about BioMed Central by looking at this cohort are not meaningful and are often misleading. For example, the BioMed Central/ISP group of journals is reported to offer online manuscript submission on a lower percentage of journals than other journal groups. The report picks up on this as a surprising finding, suggesting implicitly that open access journals are lagging behind in this regard. In fact, BioMed Central offers online submission of manuscripts on every one of its journals. Not only that, but BioMed Central's manuscript submission system is widely praised by authors, many of whom tell us that it is the best online submission system they have used. ALPSP Chief Executive Sally Morris comments in her introduction to the report that "Over 40% of the Open Access journals are not yet covering their costs and, unlike subscription journals, there is no reason why the passage of time - evidenced in increasing submissions, quality or impact - should actually change that". She goes on to suggest that this calls into question the sustainability of the open access publishing model. The suggestion that the economics of open access journals are unlikely to improve over time is not supported by the evidence in the report, and runs strongly counter to BioMed Central's direct experience. According to BioMed Central Publisher, Dr Matthew Cockerill, "The fact that many open access journals currently operate at a loss is simply a sign that these are early days. There is every reason to think that the passage of time will profoundly improve the ability of open access journals to cover their costs. Between September 2004 and September 2005, for example, the journal BMC Bioinformatics almost trebled the number of submissions it received. It also increased its article processing charge during that same time period. Both factors have helped move BioMed Central much closer to overall profitability, and this progress is continuing." Further evidence for a promising future for open access journals is given in the study's findings on revenue expectations and trends. 92% of open access journals were meeting or exceeding revenue expectations, in comparison to 91% of AAMC journals, 83% of ALPSP journals and 76% of surveyed HighWire journals. Similarly, the study finds that revenues from the last fiscal year to the current fiscal year are "trending upward" for 71% of 209 surveyed open-access journals, compared to between 27% and 67% of subscription-based publishers that were surveyed. Dr Cockerill continues,
Scholarly publishing is viable only because it is paid for and supported by the research community, out of the funding (often public funding) which that community receives. Whether a model is financially viable comes down, in the long run, to a couple of simple questions: Can the community afford the overall costs, and is the service provided worth the money? In terms of open access, the answer to these questions is increasingly clear. Wellcome is the UK's largest biomedical research charity, spending £400 million a year. The work it funds results in around 3,500 articles being published each year. Wellcome's research predicts that the overall cost to the science community of OA publishing will be, if anything, significantly less than the costs of the current publishing model. If the open access model can deliver greater access to research, at a lower cost to funders than the existing model, then it is clearly sustainable." ENDS For more information or to arrange an interview, contact:
About BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/)
Further information
Wellcome Trust:
Wellcome Trust open access policy information: 7-----Z39.19 NOW PUBLISHED:
The final version of ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 has been completed and published on the NISO website. You will find it listed on the approved and published standards page: http://www.niso.org/standards/ or you can access it from the direct download URL: http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-19-2005.pdf A print version will be available for purchase in the near future. ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - 2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies Equivalent international standard: ISO 2788 Abstract: Presents guidelines and conventions for the contents, display, construction, testing, maintenance, and management of monolingual controlled vocabularies. It focuses on controlled vocabularies that are used for the representation of content objects in knowledge organization systems including lists, synonym rings, taxonomies, and thesauri. 8-----HIGHER EDUCATION RESPONDS TO CALEA ORDER
The higher education community is preparing several responses to an order by the Federal Communications Commission to extend the provisions of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to Internet service providers, including institutions of higher education, libraries, and municipalities that provide Internet access. The order would require covered entities to configure their networks to allow law enforcement officials--with the authority of a court order--to tap into data streams remotely. Currently, such taps typically require the assistance of network personnel. Making networks compliant with the new regulations would in most cases require significant investment in new switches and routers, and higher education officials contend that the expense would not be justified by the number of taps placed on their networks. By some accounts, U.S. colleges and universities would incur costs of at least $7 billion to redesign their networks. Those seeking an exception from CALEA for education noted that in 2003, just 12 of nearly 1,500 wiretap orders were issued for computer networks. representatives of higher education are working on responses including appeals, possible lawsuits, and negotiations with federal officials. Higher education officials said that the objection is not with providing appropriate assistance to law enforcement but that lower-cost solutions would provide the needed capability without placing a large financial burden on colleges and universities and their students. New York Times, 23 October 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html 9-----CONGRESS DEMANDS LIMITS ON "SENSITIVE SECUTIY INFORMATION"
In a conference report on the 2006 Homeland Security Appropriations Act, Congress instructed the Department of Homeland Security to create clearer and more consistent procedures for determining what documents are to be considered "sensitive security information," or SSI. While such documents are unclassified, they are still withheld as being too sensitive to release publicly. Among the documents considered SSI are airport security plans, specifications for screening devices, and vulnerability studies. However, in recent years, the category has expanded to include "security directives" and any "other information" within an agency's discretion. For instance, Transportation Security Administration employees have cited SSI to refuse to tell airline passengers why they were being searched. The Congressional report sought to curb the proliferation of SSI in areas that should be in the public domain. The report requires each office within Homeland Security to have a specific official who will designate documents as SSI. Congress also requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to give the titles of all SSI documents to Congress in an annual report. This July, EPIC won a battle with the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration over SSI designations. A federal court found that government agencies cannot withhold information simply by designating it SSI, without any further description. Though federal agencies "are not required to describe the withheld portions in so much detail that it reveals the sensitive security information itself," the court said they are required to "provide a more adequate description" to explain why material is not made public. EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to force DHS, TSA and the FBI to release documents detailing the agencies' efforts to obtain airline passenger information. Though the court found that the FBI had conducted an adequate search for documents, and TSA and DHS had properly withheld some material, the court ordered DHS and TSA to provide more detailed justification for numerous withholdings. Excerpts from the Conference Report: Full text of the Conference Report on the 2006 Homeland Security Act: Opinion in EPIC FOIA Case (pdf): 10-----MORE HINTS POINT TO IDENTITY OF CONNECTICUT LIBRARY
The American Library Association (ALA) has filed a court brief in the ongoing wrangling over a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that prevents organizations under investigation from publicly speaking about the investigation. Under the terms of that law, federal authorities had sought information from a Connecticut library group, which has been forced to keep its identity secret. An article in the New York Times, though, said the Library Connection Inc., of Windsor, Conn., is the probable target of the investigation. According to the ALA's brief, because the Library Connection has refused to confirm or deny the story in the Times, it is clear that the speculation is correct. Further, because the identity has been guessed, keeping the group from speaking about the investigation is pointless, according to the brief. The brief states: "If the reporting is accurate, the information the government seeks to suppress has already been revealed, and the gag order serves no interest but that of silencing a citizen." Last month a judge ordered that the gag order be lifted, but an appeals court has reimposed the gag order pending its review of the case. Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 October 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005100601t.htm 11-----INTERNATIONAL CALENDAR OF INFORMATION SCIENCE CONFERENCES
International Calendar of Information Science Conferences: http://icisc.neasist.org/ ... includes conferences around the world (including USA) ranging topically from librarianship to information technology. |
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