Today, October 14th, 2008, is Open Access Day which I discovered the University of Alberta library promotes thanks to Erika.
The Canadian libraries supporting OAD are listed on the Open Access Day 2008 wiki. I love the U of Calgary comment, “We’re considering options but will definitely mark the day.” U of Alberta, by contrast has a number of initiatives including a Open Access blog and a We Support Open Access (PDF) poster.
Of particular interest is the SPARC Author’s Addendum which is a form for author’s to fill out to assert their copyright when signing agreements with publishers. It basically adds an addendum to whatever agreement you are signing that asserts that you retain copyright and that you retain the right to reproduce the article for non-commercial purposes. It is a nice little “tool”. Now we need one like that for graduate students when they are signing the Theses Canada license. What would it assert?