As we mentioned last week, California has introduced AB 609, the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act. The bill, sponsored by Assembly Member Brian Nestande, would require that research articles funded through California tax dollars be made available online for free no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. A letter from the University of California may have prompted the Assembly to modify the text of the draft bill to extend the embargo to 12 months (instead of six), and to include a provision exempting the University of California and California State University from the state agencies that must comply with the legislation, if enacted.

A group of organizations (including Creative Commons) sent a letter to Assembly Member Nestande thanking him for introducing the bill. The letter urged the Assembly to considering strengthening the proposed law by including reuse rights language, such as through the adoption of open licenses:

We encourage you to consider strengthening this legislation by including a provision to ensure that manuscripts reporting on state-funded research be made fully usable by the public. To fully unlock the value of the information contained in these digital articles, they should be made available in formats and under licensing terms that permit users to read, downloaded, search, compute on, data mine or analyze for any lawful purpose.

It also asked for the original 6 month embargo to be reinstated:

Additionally, while we would strongly prefer that these articles be made available to the public immediately upon publication, we would support the inclusion of an embargo period as originally proposed of no longer than six months.

A hearing in the Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review is scheduled for May 1 in Sacramento.

California residents can support the legislation by sending a message to representatives at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access site. More information on the bill is available on the SPARC website.

California icon by Christopher Scott, from the Noun Project, under CC BY.
Unlock icon by J. Ali, from the Noun Project, Public Domain.

And just last month, the House of Lords completed a consultation period which has generated some misinformation about how the CC BY license operates. So, in order to clarify some of these misconceptions, Creative Commons and Creative Commons UK submitted a joint response to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to set the record straight.

We’ve pulled together some clarifications to some of the uncertainty lobbed at the CC BY license provision in the Open Access Policy. Some of the reasons given that CC BY should not be retained include:

• it would promote “misuse of research or would cause authors to “lose control of their work”
• third party rights negotiations for content that authors wish to include within an openly licensed article would prove too difficult
• open licensing provides less protection against plagiarism
• CC BY is not widely used in OA publishing
• authors should choose licensing conditions, not funders

These claims are confusing, misguided, or not backed up by evidence. We offer our responses and support here.

Next week, Creative Commons will be joining individuals, institutions, and publishers all over the world in celebrating Open Access Week. Find out where you can find Creative Commons and its affiliates during OA Week, and share your own OA events in the comments.

Open Access Week 2012 Kickoff Webcast

On Monday, CC founding board member Michael Carroll will be speaking at the open access week kickoff event hosted by SPARC and the World Bank.

Webinar: Creative Commons and the Future of Open Access

On Tuesday, CC education technology and policy coordinator Greg Grossmeier will be speaking about CC licensing for open access publishing in a webinar hosted by the University of Northern Colorado Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

Open Data and Open Access Panel

If you’re in Northern California on Wednesday, join CC policy and data manager Timothy Vollmer, UC Davis university librarian and CC Science advisor MacKenzie Smith, and California Digital Library’s Carly Strasser for a discussion on advancements in open access and open data at UC Davis.

CC New Zealand Guest Blog Series

Courtesy of CC Aotearoa New Zealand, here’s a great collection of perspectives from thought leaders on the open access landscape in New Zealand.

Connecting the Dots Between Open Access and Open Educational Resources

Watch an archived discussion hosted by SPARC, with CC director of global learning Cable Green and Student Public Interest Research Groups’ Nicole Allen.

New Open Access Resources

Open Access Wikipedia Challenge
In this new School of Open challenge, learn how to reuse open access content to improve a Wikipedia article.

HowOpenIsIt?
PLOS, SPARC, and OASPA have just released the first iteration of a great reference guide for understanding open access standards. Timothy recently wrote about the guide for the PLOS blog.

Good Practices for University Open-Access Policies
Our friends at the Harvard Open Access Project have written a new guide for universities considering OA policies.