UC libraries launch tool to help achieve open access; Berkeley Library News, March 21, 2018

Berkeley Library News; UC libraries launch tool to help achieve open access

"To help address this problem, the scholarly community has been working toward achieving open access, helping to unlock this wealth of information by making it free to everyone, everywhere. But after nearly 20 years of work, much of the world’s scholarly information is still not as available as it could be — only 15 percent of journal articles, for example, are openly accessible at the time of publication.

Today, to accelerate toward free readership for all, the University of California Libraries published Pathways to Open Access, a toolkit for campuses and research institutions to help make more knowledge openly available...

The UC campus libraries look to be leaders in reforming scholarly publishing and making universal open access a reality. The UC Berkeley Library already supports many open access initiatives, and the institution has signed the OA2020 Expression of Interest, declaring its intention to repurpose funds toward open access publishing. To do that on a greater scale means working collaborating with a variety of partners, including other UC campuses. In recognition of this fact, the UC libraries formed a working group in August to analyze open access funding scenarios and strategies, to help equip UC campuses to make informed decisions about their own paths to help make research openly available."

CRISPR Patent Ruling: 3 Different Takes; KQED, February 23, 2017

Lindsey Hoshaw, KQED; 

CRISPR Patent Ruling: 3 Different Takes

"The Feb. 15 ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office let Berkeley’s rival–the Broad Institute jointly owned by Harvard and MIT–keep its existing patents issued in 2014. UC Berkeley has yet to say whether or not it will appeal...

So what’s next? Only Berkeley knows; the university has said it will “carefully consider all options.”

Science journalists are abuzz about what this means for biotech. Here’s a sampling of what they’re saying:"

Why the CRISPR patent verdict isn’t the end of the story; Nature, February 17, 2017

Heidi Ledford, Nature; 

Why the CRISPR patent verdict isn’t the end of the story

"The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a key verdict this week in the battle over the intellectual property rights to the potentially lucrative gene-editing technique CRISPR–Cas9.

It ruled that the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in Cambridge could keep its patents on using CRISPR–Cas9 in eukaryotic cells. That was a blow to the University of California in Berkeley, which had filed its own patents and had hoped to have the Broad’s thrown out."

5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals; Wired Campus, 5/14/09

Ben Terris via Wired Campus; 5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals:

"In an effort to support alternatives to traditional scholarly publishing, five major research universities announced their joint commitment to open-access journals on Monday.

The institutions—Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley—signed a compact agreeing to the “timely establishment” of mechanisms for providing financial support for free open-access journals."

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Five-Major-Research/8042/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en