April 2008: Based on travels to all ten UC campuses and interviews with more than 100 faculty members and administrators, a new report Publishing Needs and Opportunities at the University of California "examines current publishing activities within the UC system" in and environment that is "under pressure from a number of forces, including the escalating cost of scientific journals, cutbacks in monograph publication on the part of many publishers, and opportunities for new kinds of publishing created by digital technologies."

The report recommends a number of steps for the University of California including the establishment of a university publishing program and a systemwide discussion of traditional notions of peer review as it relates to nontraditional publishing. The report was co-authored by Catherine Candee, Director of Publishing and Strategic Initiative, California Digital Library and Lynne Withey, Director of the University of California Press.

Read coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education (4/4/08) (UC access only).

SCOAP³: Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics hosted a meeting at UC Berkeley on February 29, 2008 to explain how it hopes to make published research in high energy physics freely available to anyone on the web. The webcast of the US focal meeting is now available.

Please join us for a faculty conversation about scholarly communication:

• Date: Monday, April 14
• Tiime: 2:00 - 3:00 pm
• Location: Seaborg Room, Faculty Club
  

In the last few weeks, scholarly communication issues at Berkeley and nationally have made headlines:

• The Vice Chancellor for Research and the University Librarian announce the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) which provides subsidies for authors who wish to make their research publications freely available to the public. 
  
• President Bush signs into law appropriations bill (HR 2764) which includes a groundbreaking open access mandate that will provide public access to NIH-funded research findings.
• Harvard Arts and Sciences faculty vote unanimously to adopt an open access mandate for its faculty members’ research publications.
• UC Berkeley hosts the SCOAP3 U.S. focal group meeting to explore how to dramatically reshape the funding and access models for peer-reviewed journals in high energy physics.

Join your colleagues for a conversation about what these recent headlines portend for the future of scholarly communication both here at Berkeley and within the University of California as a whole. Professors Mike Eisen (Molecular & Cell Biology), Nick Jewell (Public Health) and Randy Schekman (Molecular & Cell Biology) will share their thoughts. University Librarian Tom Leonard will moderate.

This event is co-sponsored by the Academic Senate Library Committee, The Library, the Librarian's Association of the University of California, Berkeley (LAUC-B) and the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE).

In order to support NIH-funded researchers at the University of California, William T. Tucker, the Executive Director of the UC Office of Research Administration and Technology Transfer has written a Letter to Publishers (PDF).

When submitting an article to a journal for possible publication, UC authors should attach a copy of this letter along with their manuscript. This letter ensures University of California support for author compliance with the NIH mandate.

 For more informatiion see:

• Hot topics: NIH mandate  

Read more about the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) in the February 29 edition of the Berkeleyan:

• Keeping the fruits of knowledge within reach: the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative explores alternatives to traditional publishing models
  

"At a time when budget-strapped university libraries nationwide are struggling to keep pace with rising subscription costs for scholarly publications, Berkeley is exploring alternative routes to the unfettered pursuit of knowledge."