Another week of big waves out on the blogs and Twitter…

The rumble about open access, the proposed Research Works Act and a growing boycott of Elsevier by some academics continues in a few related items: As Journal Boycott Grows, Elsevier Defends Its Practices, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education (via @Mandosally); KraftyLibrarian asks if a boycott of Elsevier can really be successful in the biomedical field in Elsevier Boycott, My Thoughts; and in a post that  begins with Monty Python but is serious, David Dobbs asks, Is the Open Science Revolution for Real?

The NY Times reported on the Uproar as Komen Foundation Cuts Money to Planned Parenthood and the Atlantic said Top Susan G. Komen Official Resigned Over Planned Parenthood Cave-in. Now, after a week of impassioned public debate, Komen has reversed its decision.

There are proposals in both houses for legislative changes to the FDA.  Here are reports on how increased funding could speed discovery and approval of new drugs and ease drug shortages.

And just for fun this week, a fifth grader has discovered a new molecule and been published and there is a free collection of silhouettes of organisms called PhyloPic!

Some topics getting buzz this week:

The debate on Avastin and breast cancer may have been rekindled by new studies.

The NY Times ArtsBeat covered a great example of innovation and the public use of digital library collections, which resulted in New York Public Library’s Stereogranimator, do-it-yourself 3D historical images!

Google’s announcement that it is putting 60 of its services under a single privacy policy and sharing data between them generated some buzz. This Washington Post/Bloomberg piece covers what is happening and how to close your account, while over at Scholarly Kitchen there is an interesting post asking The End of the Salad Days-Where is Google Headed Next?

Talk of the Research Works Act continues…an item by Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses Who gets to see published research?, and the Modern Language Association (both a publisher and membership organization) released this letter.

ARL Policy Notes posted why the Association of Research Libraries’ new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries is different from all the other recommendations out there.

It was a wild week out there…

• PIPA and SOPA are currently on hold, but there was a lot of activity this week…some thoughts on the dynamics behind SOPA from Harvard Business Review (via @SteveLoGiudice), Eagledawg’s post on 2012…”the era of evil congressional acronyms” and some clever open science supporters over in the UK have created this post about SOPA and RWA.
• Over at the Scientific American blog network, a publishing scientist asks how realistic calls for a boycott of closed/for-profit publishers are
• NY Times Science Tuesday featured a piece on the open science movement
• One of many items on Apple’s new textbooks plan to move textbook usage further into the digital era