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OA journals from SUNY Cortland The State University of New York at Cortland is launching its second and third online journals, one in sociology and one in disability studies and special education. Yesterday's press release doesn't say whether the journals will be OA or TA, but because Cortland's first online journal, Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies, is OA, I'm guessing that next two will also be OA. OA repository for technology enhanced learning TeLearn is the first OA repository dedicated to research in the field of technology enhanced learning (TEL). It's hosted by Kaleidoscope, the EU-funded project to promote TEL research. For more information, see the TeLearn FAQ or the Kaleidoscope "about" page. (Thanks to the INIST Libre Acc�s blog.)
Traffic data from an OA journal Tom Wilson has posted traffic data from the last 11 volumes of his OA journal, Information Research, and makes this observation: Probably the most interesting point is the way in which papers in the early volumes continue to attract hits - if you want your work to be used, publish in an open access electronic journal! Benkler on OA publishing and global development Olav Anders �vreb� has posted an interview with Yochai Benkler to his blog, December 29, 2006. Excerpt:
Whether to make OA laws searchable in Guam Simon Chester, Free Public Access to Legal Information? Slaw, December 26, 2006. Excerpt:
I've omitted the text of the bill that would permit Guam's compiler of laws to add a search engine. Comment. It's hard to believe the premise here: the laws of Guam are already OA, and the only question is whether to add a search engine. A private company objects that a public search engine would put it out of business. Where does one even begin? First, the need to know the law is not limited to professional lawyers. Second, even lawyers need open access and searchability, and providing it benefits everyone. Third, private-sector companies have an understandable private interest in protecting their revenue, even at the expense of the public interest, but government agencies are charged to put the public interest first. Fourth, if adding a search engine to an existing online public resource, for a one-time cost of $1,000, would really endanger a private-sector company, then the company should already be looking for another line of work. Even without Guam's public investment, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft might index the laws tomorrow, or a citizen might do so with a Google custom search engine. Trying to keep OA information hard to find is a poor business model and an even worse public policy. Ben Vershbow, scholarpedia: sharpening the wiki for expert results, if:book, December 27, 2006. Excerpt:
Citations trump other game-theoretic incentives for OA Stevan Harnad, The Name Game: Names Get In Our Way, Open Access Archivangelism, December 28, 2006. This is a comment on the article I excerpted in my previous post. Excerpt: In "Quantum Game Theory and Open Access Publishing," Hanauske et al (2006) try to use game-theoretic modeling -- pitting "author-reputation" (in the form of citations) against "journal-reputation" -- to show that authors will inevitably switch from "traditional publishing" to "open access publishing." This would be a welcome conclusion if Hanauske et al's underlying assumptions and their definition of OA publishing had been valid. But the article defines "Green OA" as self-archiving in an Institutional Repository, "Gold OA" as publishing in an OA journal, and "OA Publishing" as a "third option," with self-archiving in Arxiv (a Central Repository) as its prime example. In reality, of course, self-archiving in Arxiv is not OA publishing at all, but simply another example of OA self-archiving (Green OA). Hence the assumption that "OA Publishing" (in this incorrect sense) pits "author-reputation" (citations) game-theoretically against "journal-reputation" (with citations eventually winning) is invalid too. The correct conclusion, requiring no game-theoretic modeling at all, is that OA will inevitably win over non-OA eventually (especially once accelerated by Green OA self-archiving mandates), simply because more citations are better than fewer citations. Nothing to do with OA publishing (Gold OA) in particular, which also benefits from more citations, nor with traditional publishing, which likewise benefits from more citations.... OA strategy and quantum game theory Matthias Hanauske, Steffen Bernius, and Berndt Dugall, Quantum Game Theory and Open Access Publishing, a preprint, self-archived in arXiv December 24, 2006. (Thanks to Stevan Harnad.)
From the conclusion:
Comment. I'm having trouble translating this technical result into street-level recommendations for OA strategy. Quantum game theory allows the "entanglement" of different player strategies, just as quantum theory allows the entanglement of different particle wave functions. But in street terms, what does it mean for two scholars to have entangled strategies and what variables affect the degree of entanglement? I can guess, but I'd rather know what the authors had in mind. If you can help, please drop me a line or post a note to our discussion forum. Donat Agosti, 'Free' access to research should not be limited, SciDev.Net, December 28, 2006. Excerpt:
More on SPARC's comment to the ARC draft OA policy Stevan Harnad, On SPARC's Advice to the Australian Research Council, Open Access Archivangelism, December 25, 2006.
Stevan Harnad, OA Progress in France, Open Access Archivangelism, December 25, 2006. Excerpt:
An anonymous blogger at Collectivate is excited about the prospect of reading OA journals on portable ebook readers. Update on Google-Michigan book scanning Jenny Rode, Book-scanning agreement works for U-M, Ann Arbor News, December 24, 2006. Excerpt:
Tony Beavers has launched the beta of Noesis 4.0, a search engine for OA philosophy. From the announcement:
From the "about" page:
Comment. I'm proud to disclose that I'm an editorial consultant for Noesis 4.0, was co-editor of previous versions of Noesis, and was general editor of Hippias (one of Noesis' ancestor projects). Noesis 4.0 is a simple and powerful way to approach the problem of discipline-limited search (hence, the problems of information overload and false positives) and one of the most systematic scholarly adaptations of Google Custom Search. I can praise Noesis openly because I've already divulged my lack of objectivity and because the lion's share of the credit goes to Tony Beavers, not to me. But the point of my disclosure is that you shouldn't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. |