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The landscape of scholarly communications is transforming into an Open Access environment. Policies are being set by national funding agencies and universities, among others. This session will present an overview of major policy issues, the academic (teaching faculty) perspective on open access publishing and self-archiving and what it all means in the real-world university (library) environment. Delivered at Canadian Library Association Conference, June 16, 2006, Ottawa, Ontario (Canada)

Open access to scientific literature gives new possibilities to authors and their published work can now be available to everyone free of charge. There is always another option i.e. old model with all its known obstacles. In 2004 Springer offered a model called "Open choice" and other publishres have done similar changes to their policies so that author can choose a model for publishing her/his work. Role of information specialists in a new world is not only to inform end users but also to inform authors, institutions, sponsors with all acpects of open access publishing and to ensure that more and more of scholar literature is published under OA principles. A little counttry, such as Croatia, can benefit financialy as well.

The attitudes and behaviours of academics from different disciplines towards depositing their work in institutional repositories are compared. This is achieved through the use of a survey strategy, and by examination of the contents of a twenty-five UK institutional repositories. The survey targets humanities academics, and the data is compared to that from previous surveys focusing on scientific, technical and medical (STM) disciplines. The number of humanities documents in institutional repositories is currently far lower than that in STM disciplines. Awareness of Open Access amongst humanities academics is also low. However they perceive many advantages to depositing their work in institutional repositories, especially for the reader, not for themselves. Around two-thirds of respondents would deposit work in institutional repositories, despite having several concerns. Those who would not deposit work in this way perceive the same disadvantages: potential for plagiarism, the apprehension of interfering with publishing their work elsewhere, and the fragility of online means of dissemination. Increased depositing in institutional repositories in the future depends on encouraging authors of the advantages of doing so, not only to others but also to themselves. At this early stage of development understanding the attitudes of academics in different disciplines is crucial.

The "serial pricing crisis" that has hit the Scholarly Communication system generated a great deal of initiatives and projects designed to transform radically the ways in which knowledge circulates. The first reaction to this crisis was new forms of cooperation between libraries which led to the creation of consortia for the shared purchasing of electronic resources. The academic community, resorting to sustainable electronic Publishing and Open Access to scientific literature, then sought new channels of communication able to satisfy the demand for widespread and rapid circulation of ideas and research findings. Open models of scientific communication achieved by the two strategies of "Open Access Publishing" and "Open Access Self-Archiving" represent an innovative approach that is capable of guaranteeing the dissemination of research literature. Some Open Access Journals, a new generation of freely accessible electronic periodicals, are already acclaimed. However, the affordability of their business model and their financial and other repercussions has generated a lively debate that still rages within the international community involved in the evolution of new models of Scholarly Communication.

This presentation explores the status of open access policy developments internationally, and particularly in Canada, as of April 2007. While open access resources are substantial, and growing rapidly, the primary issue for open access archives (institutional repositories) is content acquisition, and few researchers fully understand open access, illustrating an ongoing need for policy. Open access policy initiatives are happening around the world. Sherpa Juliet lists more than 20 funding agency policies, from at least 10 countries. More than half the policies are by medical research funders. ROARMAP lists at least 40 institutional policies from at least 12 countries. Many more policy initiatives are in the works, such as the European Commission and the U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act. In Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council adopted open access in principle in 2004, and recently initiated an Aid to Open Access Journals program, a one-year bridge program for SSHRC subsidized journals. Genome Canada has a strong open access policy for both published research results and data. Policy development is underway at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the International Development Research Centre, and the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance. Part of the "Beyond Limits : Building Open Access Collections" Preconference sessions of the 2007 British Columbia Library Association Conference entitled "Beyond 20/20 : Envisioning the Future".

This paper describes the methodology and analysis for the management of research data in the area of ​​Health Sciences.

This is short report in Italian of the conference Berlin 3 Open Access: Progress in Implementing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities held in Southampton, February 28- March 1 2005

The CERN Workshop on Scholarly Innovations (OAI4) included about 30 participants from a variety of open access related backgrounds. Some were involved in institutional repositories at various stages, from mature repositories with mandated self-archiving policies to new or planned repositories. There was much interest in copyright issues, and the more experienced group members felt that the approach appreciated most by faculty was assistance in negotiating their rights with publishers, for example using the standard authors' addendum developed by SPARC U.S. Some participants were from the subject repository community (E-LIS, PubMed). Potential differences of viewpoint between the two approaches were identified, but seen as superficial differences which could be overcome. A representative from a funding agency suggested that the funding agency monies for open access charges could perhaps be leveraged to free up funds for non-funded researchers. The author concludes with an afterthought along these lines, that is, if publishers are receiving revenues from processing fees for funded researchers, subscription fees should decrease; these funds could then be diverted to a fund to pay for further processing fees.

Open Access means aims to remove restrictions that exist on the access to articles and knowledge to the world-wide scholarly community, in particular to those in developing countries. Scientists in these countries still have difficulty in publishing their work due to the lack of access to the network, to their institutional economic difficulties or to the lack of awareness of available Open Access solutions. The visibility, usage and impact of researchers' own findings can increase with Open Access, as does their power to find, access and use the work of others. This book aims to guide the scientific community on the requirements of Open Access, and the plethora of low-cost solutions available. A compendium of selected literature on Open Access is presented to increase the awareness of the potential of open publishing in general. The book also aims to encourage decision makers in academia and research centers to adopt institutional and regional Open Access Journals and Archives to make their own scientific results public and fully searchable on the Internet.

Supervisor: Dr. Giovanni Michetti. Co-examiner: Dr. Gabriele Mazzitelli. This work aims to redefine the URBS (Roman Union of Specialized Libraries) website architecture, following three steps: analysis of the documentation about the creation of websites and library portals, with specific attention to interoperabilty (chapters 1 and 2); analysis of actual URBS website (chapter 3); new URBS website project (chapter 4). Starting from the discussions about OPACs and portals, and paying attention to the Minerva Project Manual and to the guidelines to accessibility and usability, the new URBS website should be developed into a fully functional integrated portal to give to its users a set of added value services.