Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

Announcing New LSN Partners in Publishing Journals

UTRECHT LAW REVIEW
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Utrecht-Law-Review.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Utrecht-Law-Review

The Utrecht Law Review is an electronic open-access journal which aims to offer an international scientific platform for cross-border legal research. In the first place, this concerns research in which the boundaries of the classic branches of the law (private law, criminal law, constitutional and administrative law, European and public international law) are crossed and connections are made between these areas of the law, amongst others from a comparative law perspective. In addition, the journal welcomes research in which classic law is brought face to face with not strictly legal disciplines such as economics, political sciences and public administration science. The Utrecht Law Review is not a specialist journal. Each year, in January, a general issue appears including contributions on a variety of (legal) topics. In June, a special issue appears on a specific theme which is based on one of the research programmes at the Utrecht School of Law.

The Editorial Board consists of renowned and young researchers, representing the various disciplines at the Utrecht School of Law, and one student member. Academic quality and the international character of the journal are guaranteed by the Scientific Council, which consists of national and foreign experts in all branches of legal science. All academic articles that are submitted are subjected to anonymous peer review.

POTCHEFSTROOM ELECTRONIC LAW JOURNAL
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Potchefstroom-Electronic-Law.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Potchefstroom-Electronic-Law

PER publishes contributions relevant to Development in the South African Constitutional State, also in a comparative context. Contributions in four languages (English, Afrikaans, Dutch and German) are accepted, although most articles, and all summaries, appear in English. This open access electronic journal is the first of its kind in South Africa and first appeared in 1998. The journal maintains stringent peer review procedures. PER is published by the Faculty of Law of the North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, assisted by a long list of external referees from reputable institutions in various countries. The editors are Professors Francois Venter, Christa Rautenbach and Anel du Plessis and the editorial board consists of legal scholars all over the globe.

REVIEW OF EUROPEAN & ADMINISTRATIVE LAW (REALAW)
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/REALaw.html

Review of European Administrative Law (REALaw) is a scholarly peer reviewed law journal, published twice a year (online and in print), in the English language edited at the Department of Administrative Law and Public Administration of the University of Groningen and the Institute of Constitutional and Administrative Law and the Europa Instituut of Utrecht University. Review of European Administrative Law provides a forum for the discussion of issues in the development of European administrative law. The journal aims to cover all aspects of European administrative law, reflecting the role of the European Union, the role of domestic legal orders and their mutual relation and influence.

The editorial board consists of Prof. J.H. Jans, Prof. A. Prechal, Prof. R.J.G.M. Widdershoven, Dr. K.J. de Graaf (managing editor) and associate editors: Dr. A. Tollenaar (book reviews), Dr. A.P.W. Duijkersloot (case law). The editorial board is assisted by an Advisory Board of well known specialists in the field: J.-B. Auby, Paris; Ch.W. Backes, Maastricht; T. Barkhuysen, Leyden C. Boch, Edinburgh; R. Caranta, Turin; M. Dougan, Liverpool; X. Groussot, Lund; Ch.J. Hilson, Reading; H. Hofmann, Luxembourg; J. Komarek, Oxford/Prague; M. Kuennecke, Hull; M.C. Plaza Martin, Toledo; J. Prinssen, Antwerp; W. den Ouden, Leyden; M. Ruffert, Jena; E. Steyger, Amsterdam; P. Wenneras, Oslo; G. Winter, Bremen.

In the November 2002 Open Archives Forum’s Interim Review of Organisational Issues, a concern was raised about Europe’s role in adopting Open Archives Initiative’s (OAI) protocols and standards because of “the preponderance of U.S. members, and the dependence on U.S. sources of funding for the OAI.”  This concern appears to have been met head on as the European Union has taken the OAI baton and is running full speed with it.

The EU has established the Digital Repository Infrastructures Vision for European Research (DRIVER) “whose vision and primary objective is to create a cohesive, robust and flexible, pan-European infrastructure for digital repositories, offering sophisticated services and functionalities for researchers, administrators and the general public.”  DRIVER’s search portal contains documents “harvested’ from over 200 institutional repositories from 23 European countries in 25 languages. DRIVER is a large scale project that is funded by the European Commission under the auspices of the “Research Infrastructure” unit.  This collaborative and coordinated effort is an impressive one and appears to be lacking in the US.

In a paper written by Christopher Armbruster from the Max Planck Society, he states that this will give the EU a “competitive advantage” over the US:

“Strategy in the US is not as comprehensive as in the EU… Although innovation has occurred in the US (besides the repositories mentioned, JSTOR and ARTSTOR are also significant central solutions), the present situation is characterized by a lack of coordination and a multitude of solutions that make it difficult for anyone outside the cartel of participating institutions to launch new services. For the EU, this situation allows for the opportunity to increase its competitive advantage by coordinating and implementing a distribution of functions that enables more innovation to happen faster.” (A European Model for the Digital Publishing of Scientific Information?, p. 12)

While Kansas University became the first US public University to join Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and others in adopting an OA policy, the question still remains if adopting OA policies and OAI protocols is enough to make the content readily available. As quoted in a previous post, “a huge challenge facing researchers today is gathering research that is now available from so many different sources. ‘Library silos aren’t much better than publisher silos,’ [Geoffrey Bilder commented during this year’s Society for Scholarly publishing meeting.]”  Although all OA through University repositories are OAI-compliant, there is still a lack of an united infrastructure in most countries to aggregate this data. In addition, there remains a question of who would fund such an infrastructure.

I guess the proof that Europe is taking the lead globally is in the OA pudding. Columbia University’s Economics’ Department joined a collection of European repositories, NEEO. When asked to comment on Columbia’s joining NEEO, Patricia Renfro, Deputy University Librarian of Columbia University, had this to say:

“A goal for NEEO and its related Nereus consortium is indeed to increase access to European research in economics, but the invitation to Columbia to join represented a decision to extend the scope of the group and of its developing product, Economists Online, worldwide. Nereus will be inviting other US institutions to join and to contribute to EO and already has one Australian member, Monash University.

Columbia has already found it very rewarding to be part of this innovative initiative and to have an opportunity to work with European colleagues who are exploring the harvesting of local institutional repositories into a subject-based resource. Economists Online will further expose full text Open Access economics content that we are adding to Columbia’s institutional repository, Academic Commons.”

SSRN supports OA, and I think it provides real value to the scholarly community, but have been concerned about making Open Access more Accessible. DRIVER and NEEO are exciting efforts in this very exciting area. I hope they continue to expand and spur others on to join them.