European Space Agency announced an Open Access policy

Jennie Rose Halperin | Yesterday, the European Space Agency announced an Open Access policy for images and data under a Creative Commons BY-SA license. ESA has made various moves toward making data and images more open in the past, but this announcement is a major milestone for the organization’s commitment to openness.

Previously, ESA released individual images under Creative Commons licenses, but this organizational shift marks a substantial change in the way that ESA shares with the world. The choice of CC BY-SA clears ESA’s content for use in larger repositories like Wikipedia (and Wikimedia Commons), as well as by any individual member of the public. It also reaffirms the organization’s commitment to widely sharing open data and imagery across the web.  Read full article on the Creative Commons

Science journals permit open-access publishing for Gates Foundation scholars

Nature | If research funders demand open-access publishing, will subscription journals acquiesce? An announcement today by the publisher of Science suggests they will — as long as that funder is as influential as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The global health charity, based in Seattle, Washington, has partnered with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in a year-long agreement to “expand access to high-quality scientific publishing”. This means that Gates-funded research can be published on open-access (OA) terms in Science and four other AAAS journals.

“This is the first time AAAS is offering open-access publishing for Science and the subscription-based sister journals,” says Meagan Phelan, a spokesperson for AAAS in Washington DC.
Read full article on the Nature