May 5, 2008
Rockefeller U. Press Gives Away Copyright on Journal Articles
It may be a first for scientific journals that are not published under an open-access philosophy: Rockefeller University Press has announced that it will allow authors to retain copyright to the papers they publish in its three journals.
Under the new policy, instead of giving up their copyrights to the journals, authors will now provide the journals with licenses to publish their papers. The authors may reuse their work any way they like, as long as they provide attribution to the journals. Six months after publication, third parties may use and redistribute the papers under a Creative Commons license.
The press places one thing off-limits: creating Web sites that mirror the contents of a journal within six months of its publication. The press hopes to retain subscribers because of that six-month delay.
In the world of scientific publishing, the three journals — The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, and The Journal of General Physiology — may be unique in that they are maintaining subscription access but are giving up copyright. Many open-access scientific journals also allow authors to keep copyright. —Lila Guterman
Posted on Monday May 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [3]April 21, 2008
Announcement: Co-Author of Best Seller on Professor's 'Last Lecture' to Speak at Chronicle Event
Randy Pausch, a 47-year-old computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who in 2006 received a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, has become a media sensation with the publication of the book version of the inspirational “last lecture” that he delivered at the university last year.
The book is a how-to guide to living, and to leaving life gracefully. It mixes decidedly practical advice with moving stories about what it’s like to go through each day knowing it’s one of your last.
The co-author of the book, Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal columnist, will be a featured speaker at The Chronicle’s Executive Leadership Forum this June. Mr. Zaslow will discuss what happens when you bring heart, humor, and passion to the classroom, and what the reaction to the best-selling book says about the future of teaching.
For the complete program and more information about registering for the forum at a special rate that expires April 28, go to http://chronicle.com/leadershipforum/program.htm
Posted on Monday April 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]April 16, 2008
Publishers Sue Georgia State U. for Copyright Infringement
Three scholarly publishers — Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and SAGE Publications — sued George State University in federal court on Tuesday, alleging “systematic, widespread, and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works.”
The complaint focuses on course reading materials that are digitally distributed through “a variety of online systems and outlets” run by Georgia State.
The publishers allege that Georgia State has “facilitated, enabled, encouraged, and induced professors” to use those systems to distribute “many, if not all, of the assigned readings for a course” in a manner that far exceeds fair use.
University officials have so far declined to comment on the allegations, according to The New York Times, which reported on the lawsuit this morning.
E-reserves and other digital means of distributing copyrighted material have become an increasingly sore subject for publishers. In a statement supporting the publishers’ action, the Association of American University Presses noted that electronic distribution of books and journals “has become a significant problem for university presses, who depend upon the income due them to continue to publish the specialized scholarly books required to educate students and to advance university research.”
The Association of American Publishers also supports the lawsuit. —Jennifer Howard
Posted on Wednesday April 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [13]March 13, 2008
Dying Professor, Famous for His Last Lecture, Testifies Before Congress
Washington — Randy Pausch held up an 8-by-10 picture of his three children and his wife — who, he noted, will soon be his widow — as he testified before a U.S. House appropriations subcommittee this afternoon, urging lawmakers to provide more money for research on pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of its Entertainment Technology Center, is fighting the terminal disease and said doctors don’t expect him to make it through the year. Testifying on behalf of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, he wore a purple bracelet and purple tie, the group’s symbols.
The professor described to the lawmakers on the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies how he became an accidental celebrity last year by giving an inspirational “last lecture” that has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. He says he is trying to use that fame to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer, a disease on which little medical progress has been made in the past 30 years.
“We don’t have a Michael J. Fox” to speak for pancreatic cancer “because people die too fast,” said Mr. Pausch, referring to the actor who has been a powerful advocate for Parkinson’s disease since his diagnosis. Those who get pancreatic cancer are “dead within a year, 75 percent of the time,” he said.
“Pancreatic cancer is a disease that I think we can beat, but it’s going to take more continued courage and funding from our government,” he said in closing.
He almost didn’t make it to the hearing. On Monday he was hospitalized for complications from his chemotherapy treatment. He described himself as “more wobbly today than I thought I would be” during an interview after his testimony.
“Let’s face it,” he said, explaining his determination to make the trip and testify. “The only way you get funding is to rattle a lot of cages.” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Thursday March 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [16]March 10, 2008
A Professor Urges You to Celebrate 'Rewire Your Life Day'
What are you doing at your computer? A professor who studies the balance between work and life has declared today a holiday from precisely that constant electronic communication.
That’s right, this is “Rewire Your Life Day,” says Ellen Ernst Kossek, a professor of human-resource management and organizational behavior at Michigan State University. She’s not checking e-mail today. Her cellphone is switched off. And she went out to lunch with a colleague from another department who, until today, she’d known only via electronic correspondence.
She did, however, pick up her office telephone this afternoon. “It’s a symbol,” she says, when asked whether talking on the phone violates the premise of her newly declared holiday. In other words, it’s pretty much impossible to be completely off the grid on a workday. But perhaps people can do better at not jumping around so much among communication channels for just one day a year.
“I’m worried that nobody will do it a whole day,” says Ms. Kossek, noting that she’s thinking of calling for an “Unplugged Hour” next time. Meanwhile, she’s open to other names for the holiday at hand: Maybe “Unplugged Day”? What about “Face-to-Face Day”?
“I’d like people across the country to think of what we can do across campuses” to popularize the choice of one day a year to take some kind of digital reprieve, she says.
Will one day off really matter in this hectic life? “I’ve done a lot of research on recovery — it’s important to have vacations and downtime,” says Ms. Kossek. “You come back to work, and you’re more refreshed.”
She doesn’t sound refreshed herself, though. She sounds nervous about all the e-mail and cellphone calls she’s missing. “I’m going to try to stay off until tomorrow morning, I don’t know if I can make it,” she says. “Maybe I should have put an ‘away’ message: ‘I’m not checking my e-mail today.’”
Asked whether that undermines her own holiday, she says such pressure is part of the point: “It’s an issues for campuses — the pace with which you’re expected to respond to an e-mail from students. We need to have new social rules for how to communicate.” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday March 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [14]March 9, 2008
Arizona Community-College District Is Accused of Misusing Federal Grant Funds
A former electronic-library project administrator with Arizona’s largest community-college district has accused the boss who fired her last fall of misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money that was designated for the library project, according to the East Valley Tribune, a Phoenix-area newspaper.
The Tribune reported, citing e-mail records, that the National Science Foundation was investigating the former employee’s complaint. A spokeswoman for the federal science agency, however, would neither confirm nor deny that it had undertaken such an inquiry.
The complaint relates to a $1.7-million grant the Maricopa County Community College District received from the NSF in 2005 for its Advanced Technology Education Center. A visiting review committee found the center’s progress “insufficient” on key projects in 2006, the newspaper said. The center’s director, Michael Lesiecki, fired the employee, Kim Grady, in September 2007.
Ms. Grady complained to the NSF that Mr. Lesiecki was using the library grant to pay for other activities of the center, the newspaper reported, and complained separately to the district that the money she had expected to receive from the grant was short by as much as $200,000 every month.
Mr. Lesiecki and other college officials did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. If the NSF money was misused, the college could be at risk of losing millions of federal grant dollars. The district has hired an outside firm to conduct an investigation of its own, the newspaper said. —Charles Huckabee
Posted on Sunday March 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]February 25, 2008
6 Months After His Last Lecture, a Dying Professor Continues to Dream Big
Some six months ago, doctors told Randy Pausch that he had about three months of good health left, until the pancreatic cancer in his body started to drain the life from him more aggressively. But this past weekend, Mr. Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of its Entertainment Technology Center, sent an e-mail message to friends and family members saying that he is beating the odds and remains in relatively good health.
Mr. Pausch became an unexpected celebrity after he gave an inspirational “last lecture” at the university that hundreds of thousands of people have watched online.
The talk, called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” was meant to recap the professor’s many achievements and provide some advice along the way. It did that, and it has also led Mr. Pausch to achieve a few more dreams, as he has documented on a blog that he has run since he received the cancer diagnosis. Here are a few of them:
- Mr. Pausch wrote a book based on the talk, with the help of Jeffrey Zaslow of The Wall Street Journal, by dictating stories and ideas to Mr. Zaslow via cellphone during a daily bike ride. (The publisher, Hyperion Books, reportedly paid $6.7-million for the right to publish the book.) The book is expected to come out in early April.
- He flew to Los Angeles to appear as an extra in the new Star Trek film, after getting an unexpected e-mail invitation to do so from the film’s director, J.J. Abrams. He said he was donating his acting pay to charity.
- He traveled to Washington to try to persuade U.S. senators to pass legislation giving more money for research on pancreatic cancer.
“This won’t last forever (the doctors measure ‘winning’ this game in months, not years),” Mr. Pausch wrote in his e-mail message. “But I’ll take every day I can get!” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday February 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [21]February 22, 2008
Blackboard Wins Patent-Infringement Case Against Rival Courseware Provider
A federal jury in Texas ruled this afternoon in favor of Blackboard Inc., the nation’s leading online provider of course-management software, in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn Inc.
Blackboard sued the smaller Canadian-based company in 2006, asserting that it had infringed a patent that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had granted Blackboard that year. As a result, the larger company said, Desire2Learn had taken away customers that should have been Blackboard’s.
Desire2Learn, which has its headquarters in Kitchener, Ontario, argued that Blackboard’s patent was invalid and should never have been granted in the first place. Lawyers for the company said that Blackboard officials were aware of similar technology, or what’s known as “prior art,” that existed before it filed its patent application, and that the company had failed to divulge that information to the patent office.
The jury, which began deliberating just before noon on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Lufkin, Tex., announced its verdict this afternoon. The case has been closely watched by campus-technology officials, many of whom feared that a win by Blackboard could stifle innovation and leave colleges and course-management software providers vulnerable to more legal challenges by Blackboard. —Katherine Mangan
Posted on Friday February 22, 2008 | Permalink | CommentFebruary 15, 2008
Extra Equipment Boosts Cellphone Service at Northern Illinois U. After Shooting
Verizon worked with officials at Northern Illinois University yesterday to bring in two trucks full of equipment to try to handle a burst of cellphone calls on and around the campus. Many circuits were busy yesterday as students called home to say they were safe after a gunman opened fire in a classroom.
The cellphone trucks are known as COWs, for Cellular antennas on Wheels. Walter L. Czerniak, associate vice president for information-technology services at Northern Illinois, said the trucks were to arrive on the campus this morning. The plan was for one to be used immediately, and for the second to be activated if necessary.
Each truck can support an additional 250 to 500 simultaneous cellphone calls, Mr. Czerniak said. He did not know whether other cellphone companies had added equipment as well, but he said that Verizon had a close relationship with Northern Illinois because it has a contract with the state university system to provide telephone service to the campus.
Even though the immediate danger has passed, Mr. Czerniak said, the campus is still seeing an increase in cellphone call volume today. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Friday February 15, 2008 | Permalink | CommentWill Lawrence Lessig Run for Congress?
Technology blogs are abuzz today about the possibility that Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, will run for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives previously held by Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who died this week.
Mr. Lessig is well regarded by many legal and cyberspace scholars for his writings and speeches advocating that the U.S. legal system change to support the sharing of ideas and cultural and scientific works.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford, noted on his blog today that Mr. Lessig had registered the domain name Change-Congress.com. And Jonathan Palfrey Jr., a law professor at Harvard University, has set up a “Draft Lessig for Congress” page on Facebook, the social-networking site. A special election for Mr. Lantos’s seat will be held on April 8. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Friday February 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comment
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