Rollins Adopts Open Access Policy

I am delighted to be able to tell you that I have just come from an Arts & Sciences Faculty Meeting at which the faculty unanimously voted to adopt an open access policy for faculty publications. I have attached the policy. We have signed up with Bepress to host the repository, the first iteration (certainly not ready for prime time, but you get the picture) is accessible at Rollins Scholarship Online.

We were advised to find a "faculty advocate" and in fact found two excellent ones -- Thom Moore, Physics professor, Chair of the A&S Professional Standards Committee and Director of the Rollins Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Program, and Claire Strom, History Professor and Editor of the journal Agricultural History.

They did a great job.

Coyle's InFormation: DOJ: "A Bridge Too Far"

A thoughtful reaction to the Department of Justice's filing on the Google Book Search Settlement. Coyle's InFormation: DOJ: "A Bridge Too Far"

What do faculty at elite institutions think is the future of scholarly communication?

This report, Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines, from the Center for Studies in Higher Education of the UC system is interesting, though it is important to note that the 160 interviewees mostly came from elite research universities. So they obviously have a dog in this fight.

This is akin to asking the abbots of the great medieval monasteries and the most literary aristocrats in the second half of the 15th century what the future of scholarly communication would be. Better to ask the inky scholar working in the back of the print shop down in the city.