A sincere word of thanks to Peter Suber, and some quick tips for open access fans
I can’t remember exactly when I started following Open Access News, the most important source of news for everything open access, from literature to public sector information. I can say for sure that it was long before OAN became a blog (that is, one with feeds and more-than-weekly updates). I remember IOSA.it being covered on OAN as a Good things evolve over time and this one makes no exception: Open Access News, starting from last week, has been “superseded” by the already running Open Access Tracking Project. This means basically that most “retweets” like links to relevant breaking news from academia or governments will take their way in Connotea. OAN will continue to exist, but with a low volume — I’m sure this will mean in-depth discussion of major issues or advancements. In Suber’s words:
OATP is more comprehensive than a large blog because it is crowdsourced and distributes the labor to all who want to take part. It's leaner than a large blog because most of its news alerts are just citations, links, and brief descriptions.
The mere fact that one single person can’t follow alone the entire flow of news about Open Access is great, by the way. So, to make a long story short:
- thanks, thanks a lot to Peter Suber and Gavin Baker for their restless work during these past years
- go to http://www.connotea.org/tag/oa.new and subscribe to the newsfeed (incidentally, please note that most of the content there is submitted daily by Peter Suber himself)
- (optional, but recommended) get yourself an account on Connotea and start tagging relevant open access news
- don't forget to check out also http://www.connotea.org/tag/oa.archaeology and maybe share news about open access at your lab, department, university, company or office
- finally, when you see that the oa.* prefix can be used for anything, look for your country, field of study/work, etc