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Experiences with an IR from an Indian business school
Gayatri Doctor and Smitha Ramachandran, DSpace@IBSA: knowledge sharing in a management institute, VINE, January 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
Purpose � Management Institutions in India are being ranked by various surveys, which give importance to parameters like placements, brand value and intellectual capital. Intellectual capital of a Management Institute is the published scholarly material of its faculty consisting of of articles, journal papers published, case studies, books compiled, etc. Use of technologies like Institutional Repositories for capturing the intellectual capital and enabling knowledge sharing in academic institutions especially in developing countries like India are emerging. The purpose of this paper is to describe a survey conducted to ascertain different considerations for implementing an institutional repository and the creation of the pilot Institutional Repository at the ICFAI Business School, Ahmedabad using the Open Source DSpace Institutional Repository Software. OA and FOSS in digital libraries
M. Krishnamurthy, Open access, open source and digital libraries: A current trend in university libraries around the world, Program: electronic library and information systems, January 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
Purpose � The purpose of this paper is to describe the open access and open source movement in the digital library world.
Sevim McCutcheon, et al., Morphing metadata: maximizing access to electronic theses and dissertations, Library Hi Tech, January 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
Purpose � This paper aims to describe work at Kent State University Libraries and Media Services to promote and devise electronic thesis and dissertation (ETD) storage at OhioLINK's ETD Center, to find efficient methods to represent these unique scholarly materials within the library's catalog, and to foster the establishment of state-wide library catalog standards for ETDs. Capturing output with an IR at a business school in India
Gayatri Doctor, Capturing intellectual capital with an institutional repository at a business school in India, Library Hi Tech, January 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
Purpose � Digital repositories are emerging technologies for knowledge sharing and management in academic institutions. Digital repositories collect, store, preserve, index and share the intellectual capital of faculty and research staff, namely their scholarly publications and teaching material. In a developing country like India, capturing this intellectual capital is becoming important and unavoidable for business schools. Creation of a digital archive for scholarly and teaching material is a growing requirement and is feasible assuming faculties use digital resources for their creation and are ready to share them. The paper aims to discuss a survey conducted and a pilot implementation of an institutional repository at the Icfai Business School (Business School Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India), Ahmedabad, India. Citation impact of OA journals
Nana Turk, Citation impact of Open Access journals, New Library World, January/February 2008. Only the abstract is free online, at least so far:
Purpose � This literature review aims to provide a synthesis of available key information about the citation impact of Open Access journals in LIS and science in general. Citation impact is defined as a surrogate measure of citation counts.
Scott Karp, Forget Disintermediation, Focus On Open Data Exchange, Publishing 2.0, April 12, 2008. A meditation on disintermediation on the web (say that five times fast), with implications for OA.
Heather Piwowar, Why study Data Sharing? (+ why share your data), DBMI Colloquium (University of Pittsburgh, March 28, 2008). Slides with notes for the presentation.
Graham Steel has collected a list of blog posts participating in OA Week last week. Peter previously blogged the idea.
JISC funds 2 OAI-ORE experiments
JISC has announced funding for two projects to test the Open Archives Initiative Object Re-Use and Exchange specification. The end date for funding is July 31, 2008. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)
Open notebook science and libraries
Jean-Claude Bradley has posted his audio, slides, and screencast of his presentation on open notebook science and libraries for Heather Morrison's class at the University of British Columbia on April 2, 2008. (Thanks to Heather Morrison.)
Greater Western Library Alliance has joined the CERN SCOAP3 project. Update (7/11/08). Correction: In April 2008, the GWLA merely endorsed and expressed support for SCOAP3. However, on July 11, 2008, it joined SCOAP3. UKPMC has also released the results of a user survey it launched in January 2008. Excerpt:
UKPMC has released a report by Alma Swan on UKPMC Workshop (London, February 4, 2008). Excerpt:
The report also summarizes the talks by Matt Cockerill, Timo Hannay, Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann, and Sophia Ananiadou, and the discussions within the three workshop sessions.
The UKSG has posted some notes on Bill Hubbard's breakout session, Managing research outputs - embedding repositories into institutional research processes, at the UKSG 2008 Annual Conference and Exhibition (Torquay, April 7-9, 2008). Excerpt:
The slides from Hubbard's presentation are now online. Also see the UKSG notes on Toby Green's session, How to make your IR effective as a publishing platform for grey literature, an account of the IR at the OECD. Notes and slides from other sessions are still being posted. Some will be OA-related. Hprints, the Nordic arts and humanities e-print archive, has now officially launched. (Thanks to H-Net and Klaus Graf.) From the site:
And from the announcement:
Comment. Note that the hprints submission policy mentions discipline (any field within the humanities) and readiness ("could in principle be accepted for publication in a scientific journal"), but not institutional affiliation or nationality. That makes it a universal repository for the humanities ("open to all humanities scholars world-wide"), which is new and significant. For background, see my past posts on hprints. Update (4/20/08). Klaus Graf has learned that hprints will accept articles in any language, confirming its universality. (Thanks, Klaus.) The end of the toll-access journal Steven Schwartz, The end of the scholarly journal, Campus Review, April 8, 2008. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.) Schwartz is the Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University. Only the first two sentences are free online, at least so far:
From the body of the article:
Update. An abridged version of the text is OA on Schwartz's blog. EU research ministers retreat from OA Ministers seek new vision for European Research Area, Euractiv, April 16, 2008. (Thanks to Alma Swan.)
Note that the "free flow of knowledge" is not elaborated to include (or exclude) OA. Also see the draft summary of the meeting:
Here the "free movement of knowledge" means the free movement of people and nothing more. Comment. In February 2008 it was already clear that the Council was limiting the "free movement of knowledge" (a.k.a. "the fifth freedom") to the movement of people and giving no thought to OA even for publicly-funded research. See my comments at the time. However, in March 2008, the prime ministers of the member states took a stronger stand and explicitly included OA in the "free movement of knowledge". See my comments at the time. Now it appears that half-measures (and the publishing lobby) have prevailed. Update (4/21/08). In posts today on the AmSci OA Forum, Napoleon Miradon and Frederick Friend argue that my take on the EU position is too pessimistic. I hope they're right and gladly point OAN readers to their arguments. CERN has created a web page to track the fund-raising progress of the SCOAP3 project. Open source and open access philosophy From the philosophy blog at Macquarie University:
The submissions page puts it slightly differently: "Any entries relating to Open Source Philosophy and/or Open Access Philosophy are especially welcome."
More OA connections in the Georgia State case E-Reserves Suit Raises Risks, Questions, Library Journal Academic Newswire, April 17, 2008. Excerpt:
Kevin Smith, Trying to sue State U, Scholarly Communications @ Duke, April 16, 2008. Excerpt:
Mass digitization at the U of California The California Digital Library has created a web page on its Mass Digitization Projects. (Thanks to Charles Bailey and Klaus Graf.) Excerpt:
See this question from the page's FAQ:
Comment. Observe the openness of the Open Content Alliance. What is the OA percentage of new articles? Bo-Christer Björk, Annikki Roos, and Mari Lauri, Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via different Open Access options, preprint of a paper to be presented at ElPub 2008, Open Scholarship: Authority, Community and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0 (Toronto, June 25-27, 2008). Abstract:
Comment. This is the most careful estimate of this important number I've seen to date. If it could be recomputed every year, we'd have a valuable new perspective on the annual growth of OA. New OA journal of plastic surgery ePlasty is a new peer-reviewed, no-fee OA journal of plastic surgery. It's a redesigned, renamed successor to the Journal of Burns and Wounds, whose seven-year backfile is being converted to OA for hosting at the ePlasty web site. ePlasty avoids publication fees because all its expenses are covered by grants and industry sponsors. More on the Georgia State lawsuit Here are some good comments connecting the Georgia State case to OA. From Les Carr:
From Mike Carroll:
Wanted: new Executive Director for the OCA The Open Content Alliance is looking for a new Executive Director. PS: This is one of the best OA-related jobs I've seen come open in a long time. 9/11 overreaction has stifled access to science Jonathan Pfeiffer, The Halfway House Between Science and Secrets: An Interview With Bruce Schneier on Science and Security, Science Progress, March 19, 2008. (Thanks to FGI.) Excerpt:
PS: I discuss similar issues, and even an earlier report on the same topic by the National Research Council, in a September 2005 article, Reflections on 9/11, four years later. More on SCImago Journal Rank, an OA impact measurement Matthew E. Falagas and three co-authors, Comparison of SCImago journal rank indicator with journal impact factor, FASEB Journal, April 11, 2008. Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
OA for Muslim scientific history Editorial: Muslim Heritage, Arab News, April 15, 2008. Excerpt:
More on OA to the primary sources of law Graham Greenleaf, Philip Chung and Andrew Mowbray, Emerging Global Networks for Free Access to Law: WorldLII’s Strategies 2002-2005, SCRIPT-ed, 5, 1 (2008). Excerpt:
Comment. The same authors published an article with the same title (minus the "2002-2005") in the Journal of Electronic Resources in Law Libraries, vol. 1, no. 1 (2006). The journal has since been discontinued and the original URL for the article has died. But see my blogged version of the abstract. Chris Eldredge, Professors sign on to open-access textbooks, The Daily Bruin, April 17, 2008. Excerpt:
More on libraries and open data Stuart MacDonald, Libraries in the Converging Worlds of Open Data, E-Research, and Web 2.0, Online, March/April, 2008. (Thanks to Glen Newton.) Only this abstract is free online, at least so far:
More on the OA mandate at the NIH Peter Suber, An open access mandate for the National Institutes of Health, Open Medicine, April 16, 2008. Also PDF. Excerpt:
PS: This table is based on the most common misconceptions I'd heard in the first month after the policy's adoption. Now I'd add at least one more. Fiction: The policy requires deposit at the end of the embargo period. Fact: The policy requires deposit immediately upon acceptance for publication. Update (4/27/08). Ruth Lewis and Cathy Sarli, both from Washington University, independently sent me the same addition. (Thanks Ruth and Cathy.) In my own words:
The Georgia State case and the rise of OERs John Mark Ockerbloom, Coursepack sharing: An idea whose time has come? Everybody's Libraries, April 16, 2008. Excerpt:
Comments
Are digital course packs fair use? Katie Hafner, Publishers Sue Georgia State on Digital Reading Matter, New York Times, April 16, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. This is not about OA, so I won't be covering the case in detail. It's about TA and the fair use of TA literature. But there are several reasons why I wanted to cover the first appearance of what will clearly be an important case. (1) I want to set myself up to blog future twists and turns, or commentary, with strong OA connections. (2) The case may show how far photocopying precedents will be applied to digitization cases. (3) The case could change or clarify fair use for non-commercial educational purposes. Any such change or clarification would affect fair use for TA literature, but also fair use for free online literature that had removed price barriers but not permission barriers. (4) It may show the weight of the first fair-use factor ("the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes") relative to the fourth ("the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work"), or in short, the relative weight of university interests and publisher interests. How consistently do repositories share material? A new funding announcement from JISC:
Podcast on the Open Humanities Press Sigi Jottkandt and Gary Hall spoke about the Open Humanities Press Monday at the University of California, Irvine. A podcast of their talk is now online. Update. Sigi adds by email (quoted with permission):
How libraries can support open data Fiona Bradley, A database of data, Semantic Library, April 16, 2008. Excerpt:
eIFL tries to balance copyright and access to knowledge eIFL has written a report on the first global eIFL-IP conference, Advocacy for Access to Knowledge: copyright and libraries (Istanbul, April 4-5, 2008). Excerpt:
More on OA to publicly-funded research in Canada The British Columbia Library Association (BCLA) has released its April 13 comments to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, to aid the committee's inquiry into federally funded research performed by universities. (Thanks to Heather Morrison.) Excerpt:
Data exchange among disparate repositories ECS developers win $5000 repository challenge, a press release from the University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), April 15, 2008. Excerpt:
Comment. Congratulations to Tarrant, Brody, and O'Steen. I look forward to the day when institutional repositories can harvest full-texts and metadata from disciplinary repositories and vice versa. That will greatly reduce the temperature on the question where researchers initially deposit their work (and where universities and funders require them to deposit their work), and greatly increase the security of deposits (on the LOCKSS principle). Thanks to ORE and the tools developed by the Southampton-Oxford team, this day is not far off. Update. Also see Stevan Harnad's comments:
Open textbooks for community colleges Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources is a new blog, launched in February 2008. (Thanks to The Cite.) From the about page:
Survey on open data in evolutionary biology Here's a survey on open data due today. Sorry I didn't notice it earlier. (Thanks to Mario.) From the survey introduction:
The MakeTextbooksAffordable campaign has released the Open Textbooks Statement to Make Textbooks Affordable. From today's announcement:
PS: It's not too late to sign on to the statement. Lee C. Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born, Periodicals Price Survey 2008: Embracing Openness, Library Journal, April 15, 2008. The latest installment in the superb series of annual reports on journal prices and the state of OA (2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003...). Van Orsdel is the Dean of University Libraries at Grand Valley State University, and Kathleen Born is Director of the Academic Division at EBSCO Information Services. Excerpt:
The new titles page at the Directory of Open Access Journals now allows users to sort the list by date added or journal name, and to view only the titles added between a given pair of dates. This will make it much easier to track the growth of the index, track the growth of OA journals overall, and spread the word about new titles. (Many thanks to all at the DOAJ.) OA policy at Sweden's University College of Boras Sweden's University College of Borås has adopted an OA policy encouraging faculty to deposit their journal articles in the institutional repository, Borås Academic Digital Archive (BADA). (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.) From the version of the policy on deposit in ROARMAP:
Update. Also see Stevan Harnad's comments on the Borås policy:
Public comments on the EC green paper In September 2007, the European Commission released the preliminary results of the public comments on its green paper, The European Research Area: New Perspectives (April 2007). It has now released the final results (April 2, 2008). (Thanks to the INIST Libre Accès blog.) Excerpt:
Comment. As I said when the preliminary results came out last fall,
More on the Canadian OA movement Last week Dean Giustini blogged Part I of a projected two-part history of the Canadian OA movement. This week, instead of blogging Part II, he made the two parts into a single wiki entry (in the UBC Health Library Wiki) where anyone can help enlarge and improve it.
The following journals were added to the Directory of Open Access Journals in the past week (or so).
How the internet is changing anthropology
Owen Wiltshire, Sharing knowledge: how the internet is fueling change in anthropology, another anthro blog, April 11, 2008.
Eve Gray, The state of the nation 2008 - belatedly, Gray Area, April 8, 2008. An overview of some activities on OA and open education in South Africa.
PLoS ONE rankings in Faculty of 1000
Niyaz Ahmed, PLoS ONE�s strides at the Faculty-of-1000-Biology, Niyaz Ahmed's Blog, April 11, 2008. (Thanks to Bora Zivkovic.)
... Faculty of 1000 Biology is a web based, authoritative, next generation literature awareness tool. Run by the Medicine reports Limited (UK), it is a revolutionary online research service that comprehensively and systematically highlights and reviews path-breaking papers based on the recommendations of a faculty of well over 2300 selected leading researchers ("Faculty Members"). This service is run by scientists for scientists and provides �a rapidly updated consensus map of the important papers and trends across biology�. ...Niyaz Ahmed, Latest PLoS ONE evaluation at Faculty of 1000, Niyaz Ahmed's Blog, April 14, 2008. ... On an average about 5% of PLoSONE articles are evaluated on the Faculty of 1000 at a given time, which roughly means a fourth position in terms of number of evaluations, after Science (~17% of the published articles evaluated), Nature (~15% of the published articles evaluated) and PNAS(~15% of the published articles evaluated). ... How to text-mine PubMedCentral
The ChemSpider blog contains a post, dated April 6, reacting to the question by Peter Murray-Rust about the ability to conduct automated information extraction from PubMedCentral.
OA databases of pharmaceutical info
Vikas Anand Saharan, Important Free Access Databases, Pharmaceutical Sciences Open Access Resources, April 11, 2008. A list of links with descriptions.
Duke UP to collaborate on Project Euclid
Cornell University Library and Duke University Press Announce Partnership, press release, April 11, 2008.
... Cornell University Library and Duke University Press today announced that they have established a joint venture to expand and enhance the services of Project Euclid, the premier online information community for mathematics and statistics resources from independent publishers.
Rufus Pollock, Open Data Going Mainstream?, Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog, April 10, 2008.
Harold Varmus NPR interview online
The interview with Harold Varmus, former National Institutes of Health director and chairman of the Public Library of Science's board of directors, on National Public Radio's Science Friday, is now online. See also commentary from evolgen, Donna Wentworth at Science Commons, and Grumpator.
A comment to bloggers. I do my best to credit blog posts by the author's real name. However, if you blog under a psuedonym and don't make it easy to find your actual name, I may not. Unless you want me to attribute your writings to your silly Internet handle, you should include your name somewhere prominent (if not on every page, on the "About" or "Contact" page).
Erik Ringmar, Liberate and disseminate, Times Higher Education, April 10, 2008. (Thanks to Colin Steele.)
... I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me). ... OA breast cancer journal celebrates 10th anniversary
Breast Cancer Research, an OA journal published by BioMed Central, celebrated its 10th anniversary at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on April 12, 2008. See the press release.
EC lays down EURAB, launches ERAB European Commission nominates high-level advisory group on research and science, a press release from the EC, April 11, 2008.
Comments
Milestone for Protein Data Bank The OA Protein Data Bank has reached the milestone of archiving 50,000 molecular structures. More detail in Wednesday's press release from Rutgers University:
Official launch of Queensland IR The University of Queensland has officially launched its institutional repository, UQ eSPACE. From Friday's announcement:
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