LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Open Access interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:08:40 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/netbib/DFxV/~3/458546730/ do.it.online weist auf eine Studie hin, nach der sich freie Inhalte, seien es open source oder open access, durchaus mit Geschäftsmodellen der “klassischen” Medienindustrie verbinden lassen. (Source: netbib weblog) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:20:43 +0100 674529 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/458563310/ do.it.online weist auf eine Studie hin, nach der sich freie Inhalte, seien es open source oder open access, durchaus mit Geschäftsmodellen der “klassischen” Medienindustrie verbinden lassen. (Source: netbib weblog) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:20:43 +0100 674508 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/netbib/DFxV/~3/458154546/ Ein langer Name für ein notwendiges Ziel. Damit in Europa nicht in den einzelnen Staaten getrennt sondern gemeinsam länderübergreifend die Interessen der Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft an der Nutzung von Information vertreten werden können, wurde diese Vereinigung gegründet. Ein ausführlicher Bericht ist auf heise.de zu finden. (Source: netbib weblog) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:35:46 +0100 674533 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/458163525/ Ein langer Name für ein notwendiges Ziel. Damit in Europa nicht in den einzelnen Staaten getrennt sondern gemeinsam länderübergreifend die Interessen der Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft an der Nutzung von Information vertreten werden können, wurde diese Vereinigung gegründet. Ein ausführlicher Bericht ist auf heise.de zu finden. (Source: netbib weblog) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:35:46 +0100 674271 http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/mt/science/archives/2008/11/free_access_to.html The Royal Society publishes seven journals, covering the breadth of the biological and physical sciences, as well as the history and philosophy of science. All science published in the journals is subject to stringent peer-review. The archive is free to access until 1 February 2009. (Source: BU Science Library Blog) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674441 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/458065925/blog-notes-on-charleston-conference.html Molly Keener has posted notes on OA Exposed!, a panel at the Charleston Conference (Charleston, November 5-8, 2008). (Source: Open Access News) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674265 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/458069950/jmir-gets-funded-by-canadas-sshrc.html Gunther Eysenbach announced that the OA Journal of Medical Internet Research has received a $90,000 (CAN) grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. ... Only 4 years ago, at the last SSHRC competition, JMIR was discouraged to submit a proposal, because it was an Open Access journal - 4 years ago, SSHRC did not consider to fund journals with no "subscribers" (the number of paying subscribers was seen as a quality criterion for an academic journal). ... (Source: Open Access News) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674264 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/458089297/archive-of-documents-about-virginia.html The Prevail Archive is an OA collection of official documents related to the the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. The archive is the result of a volunteer student effort to scan documents released under Virginia's Freedom of Information Act. (Thanks to the Chronicle of Higher Education.) See also our past post on the April 16 Archive, another OA archive about the events. (Source: Open Access News) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674263 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/458117750/sit-ins-for-oa.html From a transcript of Lawrence Lessig's keynote at the Students for Free Culture Conference (Berkeley, October 11-12, 2008): ... I think the obvious, low-hanging-fruit fight for the Students for Free Culture movement right now is to start having sit-ins in universities where they don’t adopt Open Access publishing rules. It’s ridiculous that scholars publish articles in journals that then charge 5, 10, 15 thousand dollars for people around the world to get access to it. I mean it’s no problem for Stanford or for Berkeley or for Harvard, but the developing world cannot get access to this stuff easily because of these extraordinarily idiotic 20th Century restrictions on access to knowledge. ... (Source: Open Access News) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674262 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/458126813/another-platform-for-open-design.html Thingiverse is a new site for sharing designs for physical objects. All downloads are gratis, and the site includes integration for various open licenses. (Thanks to Creative Commons.) See also our past post on SomeRightsReserved, a similar site. (Source: Open Access News) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674261 http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/2008/11/18/the-ad-dressing-of-rats/ (with apologies to TS Eliot) Not all repository-rats are as difficult or irascible as I am. We are, I will venture to say, a tough crowd to speak to, though. What I know about us, based on observation, is that we tend to be on the one hand ruthlessly practical, on the other remarkably attuned to our environment. I myself am more the former than the latter, but in all honesty, it’s the latter group of rats who tend to be more successful. We are also a group of people that has had a lot of ideas that turned out to be wrongheaded shoved at us, and a lot of smack talked about and to us. Moreover, those of us who have been in this business awhile are a bruised, beaten crew, and we are cynical in direct proportion to our scars. That makes us a tough crowd. Herewith, some suggestions for avoiding the biggest pratfalls in talking to us. Know what we do and respect its difficulty. Breaking this dictum seems to be particularly common among career academics, and it may be part and parcel of academia’s general disdain for librarians. Nonetheless, the successful rat-whisperer knows something about the lifecycle, care and feeding, and behavior patterns of the common repository-rat. We know when you lack clue. We do not appreciate it. We are, however, a fairly approachable species. If you don’t know what we do and why it’s hard, ask before you speak, please. Or, you know, read something like Palmer et al. Understand our environment. There is a lot about open access in general and IRs in particular that’s just plain weird. I am constantly gobsmacked, caught utterly by surprise, by things that go on in this arena. That said, a lot of what goes on can be reasoned about from available evidence, and a number of us engage in this reasoning regularly. Peter Suber, of course, is an honorary repository-rat in this regard. ... Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:35:46 +0100 674438 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digizen/~3/sDdIqSs4euk/ “Sharism: A mind revolution” es un ensayo de Issac Mao en donde  discute el principio de que  mientras menos compartes, menos poder tienes. Mao presenta el “sharism” como el “Espíritu de la Edad de la Web 2.0” y como la filosofía que transformara el mundo en un gran Cerebro (Mente) Social. Yo no veo otro camino  para mi desarrollo profesional y personal que compartir lo que aprendo y produzco.  Al compartir soy feliz y me conecto con otros. El “sharism” es sin duda la revolución psico-social que necesitamos urgentemente. Y hoy más que nunca es fácil y gratuito compartir  nuestro conocimiento, luchas e inquietudes con otros utilizando el software social.(Vía) Technorati Tags: Open Access Etiquetas: Acceso abierto, Open Access, Open Access Entradas relacionadas Declaración de Ciudad del Cabo para la Educación Abierta (0) Todas las escuelas rusas usarán software libre (3) Escuela de Educación de Stanford vota a favor del acceso abierto (0) Logo declaración recursos educativos abiertos (2) Declaración de Mayagüez en apoyo al uso de recursos educativos abiertos (8) (Source: DigiZen: Un blogfesor aprendiendo) Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:40:24 +0100 674111 http://freegovinfo.info/node/2153 Do you ever worry about funding for your library? Have you ever thought about how to get a grant to help your library? Do you wonder about how you might attract grant funding to a library in the age of Google and the Web? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, I recommend the article Digital Infrastructure and Public Interest by Vince Stehle, in Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Fall 2008. (I posted a link to this article a few days ago but, after John referred to it in his 66 Days to Government Information Liberation post, I wanted to follow up a bit and mention why I think the Stehle article is important for libraries. This also gives me an opportunity to contribute some more to the excellent discussion that John is facilitating about Government Information Liberation.) Stehle is a program director at the Surdna Foundation, which makes grants in the areas of environment, community revitalization, effective citizenry, the arts, and the nonprofit sector, and he was writing for Grantmakers in the Arts Reader. In addressing his audience of grantmakers, foundations, and people who support non-profits he says that there is an opportunity and even "an imperative" for foundations to support non-commercial work and help build "a public interest infrastructure" that will "promote the free exchange of knowledge over the Internet." In specifically emphasizing the need for non-commercial support he says that we cannot rely on the private sector to operate in the broad public interest except as that interest translates into profit: "While there are billions of dollars in Silicon Valley venture firms seeking to invest in the next Google, Facebook, or YouTube, there is no equivalent capital pool available for investment in the expansion of social enterprises operating in the public interest. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:48:35 +0100 674001 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/457358208/we-hebben-het-zeepje-al-lang-geleden.html Ik begin een beetje de pee in te krijgen over de hele discussie rondom OCLC, bibliografische data, Worldcat, Library Thing en Open Library.Er is die ene discussie, over die ene catalogus voor ons allemaal. Dan is er die andere discussie, over het gewijzigd beleid van OCLC.Ik vind ze prachtig, die centrale vehikels. Wie 'm ook bouwt: als er een nationale digitale bibliotheek komt kan ik dat alleen maar toejuichen. Als die maar open is, gratis en onbeperkt te gebruiken, en natuurlijk vrij van licenties en andere middeleeuwse waanzin. Kom ook maar meteen door met een Europese moedercatalogus: uitstekend! Een mondiale vader? Schitterend!Maar er broeit iets, er knelt iets. Mensen die er meer verstand van hebben dan ik laten er geen twijfel over bestaan: het gaat allemaal om het grote geld. Dat zou me niet mogen verbazen en daarom ook niet teleurstellen maar het loopt helaas anders. Ik ben daar wel degelijk teleurgesteld over. We liggen te sterven en discussiëren nog steeds over ons bestaansrecht en de zin van het leven. Allemachtig.Maar terug naar die discussie over OCLC. Ik ben dol op Worldcat. Ik zie er zoveel potentie in. Maar als ik een paar reacties lees kan ik weinig anders dan aannemen dat de critici gelijk hebben. Het zijn niet de minsten. Dat Aaron Swartz in de aanval gaat wil ik nog wel met een korrel zout nemen; het gaat tenslotte om zijn kindje. Maar het artikel op Stefano's Linotype brengt me toch behoorlijk van mijn stuk. De petitie ook.En dan lees ik ook nog even een vlijmscherp artikel in Library Journal: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love OCLC, van the Annoyed Librarian. Een fragmentje:Let's face it, librarians are suckers. They pay actual money to get a "master's" degree in librarianship that they then use to find low-paying jobs in which they go out of their way to help people who often as not treat them badly. Not exactly a testament to cleverness, if you ask me. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:11:00 +0100 674101 http://www.slaw.ca/2008/11/18/colonial-despatches-online/ The University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre has put its archive of Colonial Despatches (The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871) online: This project aims to digitize and publish online a complete archive of the correspondence covering the period from 1846 leading to the founding of Vancouver Island in 1849, the founding of British Columbia in 1858, the annexation of Vancouver Island by British Columbia in 1866, and up to the incorporation of B.C. into the Canadian Federation in 1871. The online archive consists of three parts, a collection of photographed original documents, a collection of transcriptions of some of those documents, and historical and explanatory material. Largely the result of research by the original editor, Dr. James Hendrickson, the archive is still a work in progress. But what a work! I cannot speak too highly of the way in which these crucial documents are presented, footnoted and cross-referenced. The layout and site design is beautiful and clear; and the use of (JavaScript) side notes on the transcribed pages is very helpful indeed. All in all, this is a model of what an online archive ought to strive for. There are many ways to get into the archive, but just to get you started I’ve linked the above image to the photographed document from which it came, and there you will find a link to the transcription of that document. By the way, the addressee of the despatch, as you see here, is the Edward Bulwer Lytton who penned the infamous “it was a dark and stormy night” — along with 24 novels and 3 plays. (Source: Slaw) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:57:19 +0100 674246 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457331849/oa-to-60-years-of-j-of-polynesian.html The Journal of the Polynesian Society has provided OA to the first 60 years of its 100+ year backrun. (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674071 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457346441/oa-to-geo-coded-biodiversity.html Today's Nepal News has a report on conference, Linking Geodata with Biodiversity Information in the Himalayas (Kathmandu, November 15-16, 2008).  Excerpt: A two-day workshop "Linking Geodata with Biodiversity Information in the Himalayas" organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Global Mountain Biodiversity Programme (GMBA) concluded on Sunday (Nov 16) with a call to create a mountain biodiversity information network in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region for mutual benefit and trans boundary cooperation.... ICIMOD and GMBA shared their experiences in developing GIS-enabled biodiversity portals as a gateway for biodiversity information and demonstrated the benefit of geo-referenced biodiversity data for integrated analysis and spatial visualisation of biodiversity information in relation to climate, land use, physiography, and other important parameters. The workshop participants deliberated on ways of improving the biodiversity database at the national and local levels, the need for standardisation and harmonisation for data exchange, and providing a way to facilitate easy and open access to geo-coded biodiversity information.... (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674070 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457357212/more-on-quality-of-oa-journals.html Matthew Elbeck and Jean Mandernach, Expanding the value of scholarly, open access e-journals, Library & Information Science Research, December 2008.  Neither the text nor an abstract is free online, at least so far, but the journal does offer a TOC (with each link pointing to a pay-per-view screen): 1. Accessing OA e-journals 2. Measuring journal quality 3. Alternative measures of journal quality 3.1. Shortcomings of quality indicators for e-journals 4. Online versus terrestrial article quality 5. The pivotal role of article quality 6. Designing a solution to strengthen e-article quality 6.1. A method to expand scholarly e-article quality 7. Author/s contribution 8. Reviewers' contribution 9. Readers' contribution 10. Advantages References (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674069 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457360687/twidox-repository-now-in-private-beta.html Twidox launches private beta, CC blog, November 17, 2008.  Excerpt: Twidox, “a free, user generated online library of ‘quality’ documents,” launched their private beta today. The “private” beta can be accessed with a beta-code, which virtually anyone can obtain by registering. For readers of this blog, you can simply type in the beta-code “creativecommons” to check out Twidox. Twidox is a content repository where anyone can upload and publish their work under a Creative Commons license, donate it to the public domain, or retain “all rights reserved” copyright. They have built in CC licensing, so you can easily tag your resources under the license of your choosing. Twidox’s focus is on: academic papers and articles research material professional and industry specific documents coursework and dissertations data and statistics... Twidox...“[does] not see [other OA repositories] as competitors.” They state that “Rather than trying to compete with organisations such as the ‘Max-Planck Institute’ and ‘Frauenhofer Institute’, for example, we see them as potential co-operation partners and welcome partnerships.” They also differ from other content repositories in that they are working to [gather] content on a wider scale by collaborating with various European organizations, versus simply hosting individually contributed materials. So far, Twidox is working with the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking and also their Office on Drugs and Crime. Twidox was founded by Nicholas and Daniel MacGowan von Holstein and Jan Deppe. The idea for Twidox began in a university when they began “discussing the difficulty of searching for relevant quality documents for research purposes (access to knowledge). ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674068 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457384403/oa-v-commercialization-of-research-in.html Bernard Lane, No gags in new rules for CSIRO, The Australian, November 19, 2008.  Excerpt: The federal Government has promised not to "interfere improperly" in the scholarly work of the CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation], but new charters for public research agencies also warn scientists not to trespass on the politicians' policy turf. Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr said it was the first time that the liberties and duties of these agencies had been set out in charter form.... The CSIRO charter endorses "open communication and dissemination of the findings of research" as a general principle, but makes this subject to contractual arrangements or other legal or moral obligations. The Government defers to its agencies as independent managers of research dissemination, allowing them to strike a balance between open access to knowledge and commercial exploitation of research results.... Asked about the tension between open access and commercialisation, Senator Carr said: "I have a preference for encouraging the highest levels possible of open access (but) there are some commercial implications in terms of IP that we are still examining (for the innovation white paper)." Broadly similar charters have been signed with the CSIRO, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. PS:  Also see Colin Steele's February 2007 argument for OA at CSIRO. (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674067 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457384402/comparing-publication-lag-at-oa-and-ta.html Peng Dong, Marie Loh, and Adrian Mondry, Publication lag in biomedical journals varies due to the periodical's publishing model, Scientometrics, November 2006.  Only the abstract and page one are free online, at least so far: Abstract:   Research manuscripts face various time lags from initial submission to final publication in a scientific periodical. Three publishing models compete for the market. Professional publishing houses publish in print and/or online in a “reader-pays” model, or follow the open access model of “author-pays”, while a number of periodicals are bound to learned societies. The present study aims to compare the three business models of publishing, with regards to publication speed. 28 topically similar biomedical journals were compared. Open access journals have a publication lag comparable to journals published by traditional publishers. Manuscript submitted to and accepted in either of these two types of periodicals are available to the reader much faster than manuscripts published in journals with strong ties to specialized learned societies. Comments I won't comment on the overall argument, since I don't have access to the article.  But even the abstract shows that the authors presuppose that all OA journals charge publication fees when, in fact, most charge no fees at all. Here are some comments from Charlie Mayor, who was able to read the piece: ...Though their method is marred by small sample sizes in the open access group, time from receipt to publication online compared well between traditional-publication and OA articles. Nature Publishing Group titles were selected as representative of the traditional model. However, I would have liked to have seen data for other titles - Nature publishes every week and is the biggest academic journal in the world.  It may not be entirely typical in its editing processes and timeliness. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674066 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457389204/anticipating-scoap3-epl-converts-to-no.html Another journal to offer Open Access while waiting for SCOAP3, an announcement from CERN's SCOAP3 project, November 18, 2008.  Excerpt: Europhysics Letters announced that it will "offer open access free of charge to all authors submitting experimental and theoretical letters in [the subjects of] 'Physics of Elementary Particles and Fields' and 'Nuclear Physics'[,] two research areas focussing on the High-Energy Physics community". EPL is published under the scientific policy and control of the European Physical Society by EDP Sciences, IOP Publishing and the Italian Physical Society (SIF) for a partnership of 17 European physical societies. With this offer, EPL joins Springer's European Physical Journal C, which offers Open Access free of charges for all articles in experimental High-Energy Physics, and Elsevier's Physics Letters B and Nuclear Physics B, which will publish Open Access without any author fees the first articles describing the physics results of the LHC. Some other Open Access options in HEP are those of SISSA/IOPP, where libraries of institutions active in HEP can have a yearly institutional membership and provide Open Access to all articles produced by their scientists; APS, where authors can pay fees to make their articles Open Access through the free to read scheme; and full Open Access journals such as the New Journal of Physics and PhysMath Central Physics A, supported by author fees. Those steps signify the engagement of publishers towards Open Access in HEP, which is the ultimate scope of the SCOAP3 initiative. SCOAP3 target is universal and sustainable Open Access for all articles in the discipline without any direct financial burden for scientists nor additional costs for libraries. From the EPL announcement: ...EPL is delighted to offer open access free of charge to all authors submitting experimental and theoretical letters in PACS codes 10 and 20. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674065 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457482005/creative-commons-annual-drive.html A letter from Lawrence Lessig, CC blog, November 17, 2008.  Excerpt: ...I’m writing today to ask you to think again about one of those projects that will always be important to me — Creative Commons. We’re in the middle of our annual drive. The success of this drive is essential to our ability to run. The vast majority of CC’s supporters, including of course its Board, and current CEO, are volunteers. But the organization depends upon a small number of wildly underpaid staffers, as well as modest infrastructure to keep the system alive. This is a tough year to ask for support, I know. All of us are facing difficult decisions about what we can really afford to do.... Whatever you can give is important.... Please support Creative Commons today. Comment.  I don't run ads, but I do have opinions and make recommendations.  And I recommend CC.  It's a non-profit that needs your support and will use your money well.  Many non-profits directly support OA, such as the ATA, and when more of them have annual drives I'll recommend more of them for your annual consideration.  But this year CC is alone in the field, and very worthy.  Please give what you can.  I did. (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674064 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457487611/more-on-self-selection-and-oa-impact.html Patrick Gaule and Nicolas Maystre, Getting cited: does open access help? CEMI Working Paper, November 12, 2008.  (Thanks to Phil Davis.) Abstract:   We reexamine the widely held belief that free availability of scientific articles increases the number of citations they receive. Since open access is relatively more attractive to authors of higher quality papers, regressing citations on open access and other controls yields upward-biased estimates. Using an instrumental variable approach, we find no significant effect of open access. Instead, self-selection of higher quality articles into open access explains at least part of the observed open access citation advantage. (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674063 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457523404/preliminary-approval-of-google.html Larry Neumeister, NY judge tentatively OKs Google copyright deal, Associated Press, November 17, 2008.  (Thanks to Charles Bailey.)  Excerpt: A judge has tentatively approved a settlement of lawsuits between Google and book authors and publishers that may put millions of out-of-print texts online. The settlement was announced by Google and the publishing industry in October. Final court approval is still needed. Federal Judge John Sprizzo in Manhattan gave initial approval Friday. His order was put in the public record on Monday. Sprizzo set a June hearing date for a final settlement and hearing to decide if the deal is fair, reasonable and adequate.... Comments I'm a little surprised, in part because there are many serious objections to the settlement (alongside many serious endorsements), and in part because the settlement is so large and complicated that I would not have thought a judge could read it with the care required for a preliminary judgment, and weigh up its vast array of pros and cons, this soon after its release.  The settlement was released on October 28, and Judge Sprizzo files his preliminary approval on November 15, just 19 days later. See my own comments on the settlement and my four collections of comments by others (1, 2, 3, and 4). (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674062 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457533196/more-on-helping-researchers-understand.html Jennifer Howard, For Advice on Publishing in the Digital World, Scholars Turn to Campus Libraries, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 21, 2008 (accessible only to subscribers).  Excerpt: "Rapidly changing" is the term most often used these days to describe the landscape of scholarly communication. Scholars have to clear new and higher hurdles as they bump up against copyright and fair-use issues, open-access mandates, and a baffling array of publication and dissemination models. How much of his own published work can a scholar post on a personal Web site without raising his publisher's ire? How much of someone else's work can he use in his course pack without trampling on fair use and risking a fine or legal action? How does a researcher upload her work to her institution's repository, and are there consequences if she opts out? Those are just some of the questions that professors may find themselves tripping over. Where can researchers find a guide to lead them through this 21st-century obstacle course? The library, of course. More institutions are creating or beefing up offices and programs in scholarly communication or hiring librarians with expertise in copyright and intellectual property.... [Harvard's Stuard Shieber] told The Chronicle that just about all of Harvard's dozen or so faculties are considering open-access policies. "Each school has its own characteristics, and the policies need to be responsive to the differences among the schools," he says. "The process has to be faculty-based and consensual. But the [Office of Scholarly Communication] can help by advising and serving as a source for information." Ambitions don't stop there. Mr. Shieber expects the office to evolve as "a laboratory for expanding and evolving scholarly communication practices. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674061 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457671935/oclc-fighting-oa-to-bibliographic-data.html There's been a dust-up lately over a policy change announced by the Online Computer Library Center for the terms of use for WorldCat, the union catalog of bibliographic records contributed by OCLC member libraries. It's disputed whether OCLC provides OA to the full WorldCat data: Open Library's Aaron Swartz says it doesn't; OCLC's Karen Calhoun says it does. The new Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records supercedes the earlier Guidelines for the Use and Transfer of OCLC-Derived Records, last revised in the pre-Web era. (Karen Coyle points out that the Guidelines were themselves a response to an earlier attempt by OCLC to claim copyright in WorldCat records. The new policy avoids the term copyright, but does make an oblique reference to "the intellectual property rights [in WorldCat or WorldCat Records]".) The new policy is slated to go into effect in February 2009. Aside from the name change (from "guidelines" to "policy", implying enforceability), key points of the new policy include prohibitions on commercial or "unreasonable" use. (An earlier version of the policy also required attribution to OCLC in each record re-used; in the latest version, the attribution requirement has been weakened to a recommendation.) The "reasonableness" standard is summarized as: Use must not discourage the contribution of bibliographic and holdings data to WorldCat or substantially replicate the function, purpose, and/or size of WorldCat. The restriction has drawn the ire of Open Library, which is building an OA bibliographic catalog. (In a blog post, Open Library's Aaron Swartz also claims that OCLC has "been trying to kill [Open Library] from the beginning -- threatening its funders with lawsuits, insulting it in the press, and putting pressure on member libraries not to cooperate. ... Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674060 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/457684950/blog-notes-on-sparc-repositories.html Some blog notes on the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting (Baltimore, November 17-18, 2008): Dorothea Salo: Professional schizophrenia, John Wilbanks keynote, In which I happily eat crow Marcus Banks: Brief Notes, Innovation Fair (Source: Open Access News) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 674059 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/13253 Hey WebLib: We are looking for a few additional librarians to join our conversation, Open Everything: A Conversation on Openness, Access and Transparency in Madison, Wisconsin, on Saturday, 6 December 2008 from 10am to 5pm. I think Open Everything is an idea worth spreading. And, I'm hoping that some members of the WebLib group who live in the Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago-Minneapolis areas agree. If you are interested in the diversity of ideas and information behind the Open Everything movement, especially as it spreads from open access issues of libraries to open source software, to open government, and creative commons for renewing public domain and providing better legal support for being more open to even how intellectual property law is responding to 'open' and Obama's more transparent and accountable government calls (now hopefully mandates). There's a global conversation about art, science, public domain, and spirit of 'open'. Some come join it. Open Everything: Madison is a roundtable discussion on th (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673901 http://www.slaw.ca/2008/11/17/east-of-eagan-again/ Bucking the trends of the global free access to law movement, our friends in Eagan have unveiled an ambitious interface to Chinese law. We’re back to East of Eagan: More than 300,000 laws and regulations Cases from the Supreme Court and provincial, local, and special courts Current Awareness Via Email with the latest legal developments compiled from 120+ online sources Digests of the law for 32 topics - 9 available in English The press release is dutifully gleeful in recounting research pain points. “Prior to the launch of Westlaw China, we surveyed attorneys and law students in China and in the U.S. to determine the pain points for legal research in Chinese law,” said Stephen Yao, chief executive officer, Westlaw China. “This customer-centric approach, along with our own knowledge of the Chinese legal system, was used to develop Westlaw China. More and more western businesses have operations in China and the law firms that represent them are now growing their presence in China as well. This gives Westlaw the opportunity to be the single credible source of legal information relating to the practice of law in China.” Westlaw’s blog features interviews with Stephen Yao and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Paul Anderson, a frequent visitor to China, who appears unworried by the West-judiciary controversy. (Source: Slaw) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:20:11 +0100 674249 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/2008/11/17/new-issue-of-hardin-scholarly-communication-news-available-now/ The November 2008 issue of Hardin Scholarly Communication News is available at http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/. Topics this month include author’s rights, copyright, open access and more! (Source: Hardin News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:47:09 +0100 673486 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/2008/11/17/hardin-scholarly-communication-news-november-2008/ A Newsletter for the Health Sciences Campus at the University of Iowa November 2008 | Issue 3.08 Hardin Scholarly Communication News brings together a variety of topics that affect the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new developments, open access and alternative publishing models in the health sciences. This newsletter aims to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu. Table of Contents: Congress’s copyright fight puts open access science in peril Open Access: it’s “just good science” Health Commons - changing the way basic science is translated to help human health Scientific publishing might create a winner’s curse Does online access change citation practices? Publisher-Author Agreements and the NIH Public Access Policy Read publisher policies on copyright, and more… Author’s Rights, Tout de Suite In Boost for NIH Policy, Major Autism Research Organization Mandates Public Access Medical Wiki Backed by Prominent Colleges Will Go Live by Year’s End (Source: Hardin Scholarly Communication News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:32:35 +0100 673476 http://pintini.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/11/17/d-lib-magazine-nov-dec-08.html Au sommaire, notamment, du dernier n° de D-Lib Magazine (vol. 14, n° 11/12, nov.-déc. 08):Edito:- Evolution in the Area of Digital Scholarly CommunicationCommentaire:- The Future of Repositories?Over the past few years, repositories have been created as a product intended to foster dissemination of scholarly works, a shared objective for most academic institutions. Because of this, repositories have grown at a rapid pace over the past decade, with the software trinity of EPrints, DSpace and Fedora leading the field. The openness and willingness of these repository systems to evolve has greatly increased the ability of repositories to disseminate scholarly works; however, the repository community is still in its infancy, and further change as a holistic community is required to support both the users of the systems (institutions) and the users of the resources within the systems (scholars).Articles:- Repository to Repository Transfer of Enriched Archival Information PackagesResponsibility for digital preservation must be distributed among many heterogeneous, geographically dispersed repositories. It must be possible for materials archived in one repository to be exported to and ingested by a second repository without loss of authenticity, digital provenance, or other vital preservation information. Several research and demonstration projects have focused on identifying issues in the exchange of information packages and defining transfer formats. In the TIPR (Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories) project recently funded by the IMLS, partners Cornell University, New York University and the Florida Center for Library Automation will take this research to the next level. TIPR will continue to test and refine the transfer mechanism while beginning to address the semantic issues of repository-to-repository transfer. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:31:00 +0100 673664 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/2008/11/17/congresss-copyright-fight-puts-open-access-science-in-peril/ By John Timmer | Published: September 16, 2008, Ars Technica News Desk Backlash against open access In recent years, scientific publishing has changed profoundly as the Internet simplified access to the scientific journals that once required a trip to a university library. That ease of access has caused many to question why commercial publishers are able to dictate the terms by which publicly funded research is made available to the public that paid for it. Open access proponents won a big victory when Congress voted to compel the National Institutes of Health to set a policy of hosting copies of the text of all publications produced by research it funds, a policy that has taken effect this year. Now, it appears that the publishing industry may be trying to get Congress to introduce legislation that will reverse its earlier decision under the guise of strengthening copyright protections. Under existing law, the products of federally funded research belong to the scientists that perform it and institutions that host them. Academic journals have traditionally had researchers transfer the copyright of publications resulting from this research to the journals. The current NIH policy requires that authors they fund reserve the right to place the text and images of their publication in an NIH database hosted at PubMed Central (PMC). To protect commercial publishers, papers submitted to PMC are not made accessible until a year after publication, and are not required to include the formatting and integration of images performed by the publisher. This one-year limit is longer than that required by other governments and private funding bodies such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Wellcome Trust. Many publishers have embraced this policy, and allow the fully formatted paper to be made available, sometimes after a shorter embargo. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:29:01 +0100 673477 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/2008/11/17/open-access-its-just-good-science/ Carmeron Neylon is at School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton as Lecturer in Chemical Biology.  Read about his dedication open access to scientific research. Cameron Neylon, Where does Open Access stop and ‘just doing good science’ begin?, Science in the open, October 14, 2008. I had been getting puzzled for a while as to why I was being characterised as an ‘Open Access’ advocate. … This came to a head recently when I was being interviewed for a piece on Open Access. We kept coming round to the question of what it was that motivated me to be ’such a strong’ advocate of open access publication. I must have a very strong motivation to have such strong views surely? And I found myself thinking that I didn’t. I wasn’t that motivated about open access per se. It took some thinking and going back over where I had come from to realise that this was because of where I was coming from. … The debate [about OA] has placed, or perhaps re-placed, right at the centre of the discussion of how we should do science, the importance of the quality of communication. It has re-stated the principle of placing the claims that you make, and the evidence that supports them, in the open for criticism by anyone with the expertise to judge, regardless of where they are based or who is funding them. And it has made crystal clear where the deficiencies in that communication process lie and exposed the creeping tendency of publication over the past few decades to become more an exercise in point scoring than communication. There remains much work to be done across a wide range of areas but the fact that we can now look at taking those challenges on is due in no small part to the work of those who have advocated Open Access from its difficult beginnings to today’s success. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:28:44 +0100 673478 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/2008/11/17/scientific-publishing-might-create-a-winners-curse/ By John Timmer, Published: October 13, 2008, Ars Technica News Desk Scientific publishing may be having some difficulty as a business model, but there are also plenty of questions regarding how well it functions from a scientific perspective. Scientifically, the function of publishing is to get accurate, reproducible information and its interpretations into the hands of the scientific community, and there has always been some debate about whether the peer review and impact factor-driven world of publishing is the optimal way to achieve it. A paper that was published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine has now examined scientific publishing using economic concepts and concluded that the way things are done now is inevitably problematic. The paper makes what may be its most tenuous claim up front: scientific information can be treated as a commodity. It may be really difficult to put a monetary value on this commodity, but it’s clear that lots of groups—fellow scientists, policy makers, commercial entities—want access to high-quality scientific data. The publishers act as intermediaries in this process, determining what research will grace their pages and attracting “buyers” of the information in the form of subscribers. The authors argue that this situation makes the publishers, as they try to attract the hottest research to their pages, in a position analogous to bidders at an auction, and the authors analogous to sellers. This is where the economic model comes in. Auction bidders are prone to suffering a “winner’s curse,” where the true value of an item is probably closer to an average of the bids, which means that the winner (the highest bidder) probably offered too much for it. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:27:48 +0100 673480 http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/scholar/2008/11/17/read-publisher-policies-on-copyright-and-more/ SHERPA, a consortium of UK libraries, investigates issues in the future of scholarly communication. It is developing open-access institutional repositories in universities to facilitate the rapid and efficient worldwide dissemination of research. SHERPA has several resources for authors to use: RoMEO: Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher’s copyright transfer agreement.  Additionally, you will find many sample publication agreements on this site. Publishers allowing the deposition of their published version/PDF in Institutional Repositories. There is often a question about the use of the publishers own PDF version of research articles and whether these can be archived. It is often believed that all publishers prohibit the use of their own PDF: in fact the situation is very different. Use this site to find out what you can do with your article post-publication. Publishers’ paid open access options often allow authors to immediately deposit their articles in open access repositories upon payment of a fee. The same publishers may also allow authors to deposit after an embargo period without payment of a fee. Use this site to find out if a publisher has an OA option, and the cost. (Source: Hardin Scholarly Communication News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:26:12 +0100 673483 http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/2008/11/17/john-wilbanks-keynote-sparc-digital-repositories-2008/ (My live notes from the John Wilbanks keynote.) John Wilbanks i.a.n.a.r.e. “I am not a repository expert.” “I almost said that I am not a repository rat.” gets his information from Mellon and JISC reports, and links seen on blogs “especially Caveat Lector.” “why is there a disconnect between planning to share and actual sharing?” Disruptive processes can’t be planned in advance; planned innovation is slow. Digital publishing is just “a bigger earhorn” because we’re still thinking that the way to communicate is through writing papers. We’ve made that better, faster, and cheaper, but the process is basically the same; boil it down to 8.5×11 pages. Process change comes more slowly than product change. So why is it hard to get this content? Why don’t faculty see the light? - stable systems are resistant to change on multiple levels. No one thing will make people wake up; there are interlocking barriers to change. One such barrier is copyright, which locks up the container of the facts, not the facts… but it really locks up that container! So we’ve moved to leasing materials, not owning them; and licensing makes it harder to unlock those facts from their containers. No indexing allowed; no adding hyperlinks. Rights clearance is a pain! It is a block preventing process disruption. We haven’t provided enough incentive, enough “universal solvents,” to remove these blocks. Now we’re even seeing copyright applied to databases (e.g. ChemSpider). What do the ideas behind CC mean, as they propagate into the scholarly realm? The rights problems are going to get MORE, not LESS complex; forcing IRs to focus exclusively on the peer-reviewed research ignores the library’s role as repository for lots of stuff. This complexifies rights issues. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:01:28 +0100 673470 http://bibliotheque20.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/opacmetamoteur-en-open-source/ Vu chez pintini XC Catalog est un projet Open Source visant à proposer une interface unique permettant d’interroger simultanément diverses bases de données. Il est conçu par et pour les bibliothèques. Il est censé s’interfacer à tout type de standard bibliothéconomique : MARC, OAI, FRBR, DC… La deuxième phase vient d’être lancée. Sortie prévue : mi2009… Si certains se sentent les reins assez solides pour rejoindre l’équipe…        (Source: Des Bibliothèques 2.0) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:57:53 +0100 674237 http://vivabibliotecaviva.blogspot.com/2008/11/3-conferncia-sobre-o-acesso-livre-ao.html Universidade do Minho - Braga 15 e 16 de Dezembro de 2008 | Anfiteatro B1, CPII - Campus Gualtar Na sequência do sucesso das conferências anteriores (realizadas em Maio de 2005 e Novembro de 2006), a 3ª Conferência sobre o Acesso Livre ao Conhecimento visa aprofundar o conhecimento, a reflexão o debate e a troca de experiências sobre o Acesso Livre.A 3ª Conferência OA está também integrada num importante projecto nacional, o projecto Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto, cujos resultados serão aí apresentados.Contando com a participação de vários proeminentes protagonistas e representantes de algumas importantes organizações relacionadas com o Open Access, a conferência visa reunir dirigentes universitários, investigadores e académicos, bibliotecários, gestores de repositórios e outros interessados nesta temática.Entre outros, o programa da conferência incluirá os seguintes temas: - Políticas de Open Access - Repositórios institucionais - Open Science e Open Data - Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal Rede Social da ConfOA08 - uma excelente forma para informar outros colegas que irá participar na conferência, quais são as suas áreas de interesse, mas sobretudo para dialogar e interagir com outros participantes ANTES da conferência começar.Fonte: Universidade do MinhoVivam as bibliotecas vivas. (Source: viva biblioteca viva) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:57:00 +0100 673656 http://jobs.nasig.org/?p=571 The Electronic Resources Cataloging Unit is one of three units within the newly created Electronic Resources Development Section of the Technical Services Division at the University of Michigan Library. This unit provides and maintains access via records in the local integrated library system (Aleph) and the SFX knowledge base to electronic journals and monographs, online databases, Web sites, and non-Web based remote electronic resources. Access is provided for titles in subscription packages, individually subscribed titles, and open access titles identified for addition to the collection by selectors. In collaboration with the Data Loads and Development Unit, the Electronic Resources Cataloging Unit works with vendors to acquire and load MARC record sets for electronic books and journals in online collections. As needed, the unit’s staff members assist in resolving access and coverage problems associated with the Aleph and SFX records created for electronic resources. Under the direction of the Head of the Electronic Resources Cataloging Unit, the duties and responsibilities of this position are to: Independently catalog electronic resources in all subjects and in all Western European languages; Create or edit bibliographic records for all types of electronic resources according to nationally and locally established procedures; Assist in the maintenance required to ensure ongoing access to the library’s cataloged electronic resources; Participate in batch loading records for collections of online journals and electronic books; Assist in training staff to catalog and maintain access to electronic resources; Contribute to reviewing, developing, and writing local procedures and documentation; Investigate and resolve problems referred to the unit; Participate in unit, division, and library-wide committees, task forces, projects, and other collaborative initiatives. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:48:19 +0100 673847 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/zcGn/~3/455947775/if-only-tale-marketing-wont-resolve.html I had a very interesting conversation with a group of librarians last week that has spurred me to write a post I'd been thinking about for a quite awhile. There's a line that I hear over and over again that drives me crazy: "Libraries need to market more. If only people knew what we had they'd use us."I hear this ALL the time. Librarians say it a lot and the statement is usually followed by an example of how the librarian had shown a patron how to use a database followed by comments of how that patron loved it. Forget about the fact that they are still calling people "patrons" (another pet peeve of mine) but they are missing the whole point - most people know what we have and either they don't want it or they just don't want it from us. Consider the idea that it would be far more powerful to realign our image and reassess our products to meet the needs of our customers than to create a multimillion dollar marketing campaign.1. Realign our imageWe all know when people buy things they are feeding their self image and reinforcing who they are. The same goes for when they join groups, support organizations and even use their local library. We also know the image of libraries has not changed much over the years. Pretty much people think libraries are quiet places to study or read that lend books and movies, provide free access to computers and are great places for little kids and seniors. People who use libraries may see us differently but even our members might agree with parts of that general description. That leaves the question of what kind of self fulfilling feelings do we offer our members? Do people feel smarter, more connected or cooler by using a library? Or do they feel poor, down on their luck, nerdy, old? Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever that feeling is, it is the driving force behind the desire to use the library. Sure anyone might need to use it but who WANTS to use the library, who FEELS BETTER because they visit us ... ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673965 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456143889/ireland-digital-humanities-observatory.html The EU Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) has launched the Irish Digital Humanities Observatory.  From the DHO site: ...The DHO has in a few short months begun to effectively establish its presence and deliver on its pledge to become a knowledge resource providing outreach and education on a broad range of digital humanities topics. As a digital repository it positioning itself to provide data management, curation, and discovery services supporting long-term access to, and greater exploitation of, digital resources in the creation of new models, methodologies, and paradigms for 21st century scholarship. Activities of the DHO include organising the very successful first Digital Humanities Summer School in Ireland; a series of internationally-recognised speakers during its autumn speaker series; and delivering workshops on topics including digital project management, text encoding, and digital imaging. Over the coming months the DHO will launch a community-focused web portal and Database of Research and Projects in Ireland (DRAPIer). DRAPIer will help to raise the visibility of digital humanities projects throught the island and connect researchers and resources in the humanities in Ireland and throughout the world. An article about the DHO by Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times Science Editor, appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday 23 October.... According to the Irish Times article cited above, some of the DHO contents will be TA, but "a growing amount of this material is being made freely available to the public over the internet." (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673619 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456148627/open-knowledge-definition-now-in-greek.html The Open Knowledge Definition has been translated into Greek. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673618 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456148626/new-oa-journal-of-wetlands.html The Journal of Wetlands Ecology is a new peer-reviewed OA journal from the Wetland Friends of Nepal.  (Thanks to Otterman speaks.)  The inaugural issue now online. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673617 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456154562/test-driving-repository-deposits-with.html Stuart Lewis reports that the SWORD 2 project has launched a test repository.  Excerpt: Have you ever wanted to try out SWORD, but don’t yet have a repository that supports it? As part of the JISC funded ‘SWORD 2? project, we have now made available a test DSpace repository.... If you’ve not used SWORD before, and want to give it a go, here’s what you’ll need to [take the following 6 steps].... You’ll have seen from going through this process that a really good client is needed to make SWORD easy to use by all users....Clients need to be user friendly, work in the way that users expect them to, and work in the environments that users want them to. The Microsoft Office SWORD deposit tool is a good first example of this. Watch out for the launch of a new easier to use and more fully featured SWORD deposit client that also deals with the packaging issue in the next 24 hours whilst I’m at the SPARC digital repositories meeting. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673616 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456186812/oa-as-reparation.html Ancestry.co.uk now hosts an OA database of Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834.  There's an unusual story here, reported by Ligali.org: A campaign to get free community access to the register of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean has borne fruit after the intervention of petitioner Martin Booth, community worker Arthur Torrington and over 9000 supporters. Several months ago the [UK] Prime Minister rejected a petition to “Give African descendants free access to slavery records” arguing that the original versions of these records are available for anyone to go and see, free of charge, at The National Archives’ reading rooms in Kew. In response, Arthur Torrington, secretary of the Equiano Society and the Windrush Foundation wrote a letter to the government stating; “Free online access may be regarded as a form of reparation for the cruelty and injustice by the British in the era of African enslavement. Saying that the government considered that free access “would incur significant cost” highlights the disregard for the hurt felt by our ancestors and their descendants at the hands of the British. Your statement ignores the many billions of pounds (£) earned by British traders/traffickers who relied on the forced labour of African prisoners. This country’s wealth was built on that labour.” The website requires users to register with its American parent company [Ancestry.com] that owns the data but after that access is free.... Comments The Ligali story says that the data are owned by Ancestry.com.  But I don't understand that.  The data must be in the public domain, and it appears that the original paper documents are in the custody of the UK National Archives.  I can't tell in what sense Ancestry.com has an ownership claim here, although I can understand why it might require registration in exchange for hosting the files. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673615 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456270095/more-on-data-sharing-in-biomedicine.html Heather A. Piwowar and Wendy Chapman, Identifying data sharing in biomedical literature, AIMA Annual Symposium Proceedings, November 2008.  Since the 2008 proceedings are not yet online (OA or TA) at the AIMA web site, I'm linking to the abstract at PubMed. Abstract:   Many policies and projects now encourage investigators to share their raw research data with other scientists. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of these initiatives because data can be shared in such a variety of mechanisms and locations. We propose a novel approach to finding shared datasets: using NLP techniques to identify declarations of dataset sharing within the full text of primary research articles. Using regular expression patterns and machine learning algorithms on open access biomedical literature, our system was able to identify 61% of articles with shared datasets with 80% precision. A simpler version of our classifier achieved higher recall (86%), though lower precision (49%). We believe our results demonstrate the feasibility of this approach and hope to inspire further study of dataset retrieval techniques and policy evaluation.  PS:  See our blog post linking to two OA versions of the preprint. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673614 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456278998/bioline-seeks-members-and-sponsors.html Bioline International has launched a membership and sponsorship program.  From today's announcement: Currently, the world’s research knowledge base is incomplete. Research carried out in the developing world is little known and under-used. A joint initiative between the Centre for Environmental Research Information in Brazil and the University of Toronto Scarborough, Bioline International has as its main goal the global exchange of essential research information published in developing countries, thereby improving the South to North and South to South flow of research knowledge. To this end, it is launching a major drive towards sustainability by inviting international Membership and Sponsorship by organizations and individuals supporting its aims. Bioline currently provides access to 70 journals from 15 countries published in the developing world. Subject areas focus on issues of global importance, including medical research, emerging infectious diseases, global public health, climate change, food security and biodiversity. In 2007, a further 70 new journals applied to join Bioline International in order to take advantage of open access to their publications. These publishers have taken note of the greatly increased usage of existing journals on the system  3.5 million full text downloads were recorded in 2007. In order to meet this high demand for Bioline’s services, Bioline must now establish a long-term, sustainable funding model which includes support from the worldwide community. “ Too often we think of scientific knowledge and the developing countries in terms of what ‘we’ can do for  ‘them’, ” says Lynn Copeland, Dean of Library Services and University Librarian, Simon Fraser University Library, Canada. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673613 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456318270/protesting-us-bishops-decision-to.html Jeffrey Tucker, A Serious Issue on the Revised Grail Psalter, New Liturgical Movement, November 16, 2008.  Excerpt: Last week, CNS [Catholic News Service] reported that the USCCB [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] has voted in favor of incorporating into the English translation of the Mass the "Revised Grail Psalter," and there is speculation that this translation will become the universal Psalter in the English-speaking world.... [A comment on Tucker's blog pointed out] the emerging problem: The copyright on the new psalter is held jointly by the Conception Abbey and The Grail. GIA Publications, Inc., is proud to serve as the worldwide agent and pledges to administer the rights in an efficient and impartial manner. The first publication of the new text will occur in the form of a book containing the complete text and will be available as soon as the formal imprimatur is received. Think of what this means. A private, commercial publisher --whose budget and financial dealings is entirely hidden from public view because it is said to be a religious nonprofit-- has struck a deal with another huge institution that has the power to mandate the text that all Catholics in the United States use at Mass. This private publisher will control the rights to use the text, charging whatever price they deem suitable and preventing independent composers from setting the Psalms for Mass.... [I]t is not too early to raise alarm bells about what this new-found power of GIA could portend. 2. All money to pay the royalty fees will be paid by Catholic parishes and other publishers, which raises barriers to entry into the market and gives a monopolistic privilege to GIA over everyone else. The money paid for these royalties comes directly out of the pockets of faithful Catholics in the pews, who will be charged money just for the privilege of singing the Psalms.... 4. ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673612 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456450133/more-on-oa-to-crs-reports.html Shirl Kennedy, Resources of the Week: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others, ResourceShelf, November 17, 2008. Regarding the public availability of Congressional Research Service reports…maybe the situation will be different in the new administration. Maybe these valuable, taxpayer-funded documents will finally be posted online by the Congressional Research Service as they are issued. In our opinion, there is no logical reason for the hoop-jumping necessary to pry these things loose from the CRS. Granted, access is a lot better than it used to be, thanks to the tireless efforts of various academic and nonprofit organizations to corral as many of these reports as possible and make them freely available online. ... The sheer volume of government information now available online is amazing, and has made life infinitely easier not only for researchers, but for the average citizen. We have not yet heard a compelling reason why the Congressional Research Service — a division of the Library of Congress — remains a black hole. This Washington Post story, from February 2007, blames “a wall erected by lawmakers” who regard the agency “as an extension of” their own staff. We’re not buying that excuse. Equivalent agencies in other countries routinely place their reports online: [links to reports by various parliamentary research services from around the world] ... See also our past posts on OA to CRS reports. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673611 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456487714/journal-issue-on-neuroscience.html A special issue of Neuroinformatics is dedicated to the Neuroscience Information Framework, an NIH project to develop a framework for identifying and locating neuroscience resources. The theme issue is OA. See also the press release on the theme issue. (Thanks to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.) We previously posted an article from the issue, on Textpresso for Neuroscience. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673610 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456507719/journal-issue-on-very-large-digital.html The International Journal on Digital Libraries has a special issue on very large digital libraries. See especially these articles: J. Cousins, et al., Uncovering cultural heritage through collaboration (only an abstract is OA, at least so far) W. Ryan Richardson, et al., Knowledge discovery in digital libraries of electronic theses and dissertations: an NDLTD case study (only an abstract is OA, at least so far) Herbert Van de Sompel, et al., The aDORe federation architecture: digital repositories at scale (see also this OA self-archived version) (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673609 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456507718/voting-for-best-oa-content-in.html The blog Savage Minds is now accepting votes for the best OA content in anthropology, with categories for best blog, best journal, and best digital miscellany. (We previously posted the call for nominations.) Winners will be announced at the American Anthropological Association conference this weekend. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673608 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456521909/more-blog-notes-on-berlin-6-conference.html Cornelius Puschmann has posted a round-up of blog notes on the Berlin 6 Conference (Düsseldorf, November 11-13, 2008). See especially the posts by Kaitlin Thaney (which we posted previously), Cornelius Puschmann, Mark Liberman, and Robert Forkel. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673607 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456537112/intro-video-to-dspace.html DSpace has released a brief introductory video to its repository software. See the November 5 announcement. (Thanks to Charles Bailey.) (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673606 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456537111/oa-discussion-list-at-u-toronto-school.html Open Access @ OISE is a discussion list for students, faculty, and staff at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Thanks to Stian Haklev, who notes: ... To me personally, a long-term goal might be an institutional mandate, similar to what the Arts and Sciences at Harvard, and the Faculty of Education at Stanford, have come up with. ... (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673605 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456546263/case-study-in-open-notebook-science.html Jean-Claude Bradley, From ONS to Peer Review: our JoVE Article is Published, Useful Chemistry, November 13, 2008. Our article "Optimization of the Ugi Reaction Using Parallel Synthesis and Automated Liquid Handling" is now published on the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). I am very pleased with this because it showcases some interesting approaches to communicate science that were not possible not so long ago. First, and foremost, this demonstrates that lab notebook pages and blog posts can be used to support claims made in a peer reviewed article. ... When providing a reference for a melting point or spectrum, nothing is more relevant that the lab notebook page where the specific batch of product was obtained and characterized. Second, we have demonstrated that it is possible carry out research under Open Notebook Science conditions, write an article openly on a wiki, post it on a pre-print server (like Nature Precedings) and finally publish it in an peer reviewed journal. ... Third, this is a good example of the use of video to enhance the communication of a protocol for a chemical reaction. ... Finally, JoVE is an example of an Open Access journal with some Web2.0 capabilities, like the ability to leave comments and label them as agreeing or disagreeing with the authors. The final article can now also serve as a location for continuing the scientific conversation. (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673604 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456570250/oa-for-health-researchers-in-developing.html Joanna Adcock and Edward Fottrell, The North-South information highway: case studies of publication access among health researchers in resource-poor countries, Global Health Action, November 13, 2008. (Thanks to Peter Byass.) Abstract: ... More than half of the respondents (n=12, 52%) expressed dissatisfaction with their access to print and online journals, directly relating this to inadequate university and research budgets. ... [Barriers to publishing in a peer-reviewed journal included] insufficient access to existing information on the research subject. Thirteen respondents (56%) were opposed to the author-pays model of publishing. Seventeen respondents (78%) stated that they would be unwilling or unable to pay a fee to publish their work, although 4 of these individuals stated that they would be willing to publish in an author-pays journal if their employer or funder paid the fees. ... The impact of new open-access initiatives on [the lack of access to up-to-date literature] will be an important outcome measure of their overall effectiveness. ... Current open-access and aid-based initiatives are invaluable and have undoubtedly improved access to information. However, based on views expressed by study respondents, the author-pays model of open access appears to fall short of successfully overcoming unidirectional information flow. ... Further investigation into the knowledge and attitudes of academics from resource-poor settings in relation to open-access and author-pays models is important ... Whatever the cause, however, there is a danger that this unwillingness or inability to pay to publish may perpetuate the imbalance of a North to South information flow, in that academics in resource-poor countries are still not contributing to academic literature ... ... Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673603 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/456570248/novdec-issue-of-d-lib.html The November/December 2008 issue of D-Lib is now available. See especially these articles: Andreas Aschenbrenner, et al., The Future of Repositories? Patterns for (Cross-)Repository Architectures Priscilla Caplan, Repository to Repository Transfer of Enriched Archival Information Packages Peter A. Zuber, A Study of Institutional Repository Holdings by Academic Discipline (Source: Open Access News) Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673602 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2008/11/16/news-briefs-34/ News Briefs + CEOs take on Social Media (BusinessWeek) + Boulder library to drop VHS tapes + Virginia Tech’s Text-Message Alert System Partly Failed During False Alarm (Wired Campus/Chronicle of Higher Education) + October 2008 issue of Ariadne now available + Scientific Commons adds graphs of repository deposits (Open Access News) + National Center for Atmospheric Research begins fivefold expansion of scientific data storage (Government Computer News) (Source: ResourceShelf) Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:12:14 +0100 673223 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2008/11/15/maelstrom-over-metadata/ Maelstrom Over Metadata A debate is carrying on in the undercurrents of the academic Web, pitting those who defend libraries’ core mission of open access against the membership organization that collects and operates a massive online catalog on which many of them rely. … In an attempt to protect WorldCat and the resources needed to keep it running, while making it sufficiently accessible to its members, OCLC announced a policy change that would have placed a notice in each record to the effect that it is governed by the WorldCat terms contained in an accompanying Web address — terms that could presumably change over time. Libraries would also be encouraged to add the text to a specific field within each of their own records that originated from WorldCat. Some bloggers interpreted the change as a power grab, an attempt to block libraries from using records for purposes that could conflict with OCLC’s goals. For example, some libraries are considering using their records to generate revenue to support their own growing operations, and that could fall into OCLC’s “commercial use” prohibition. Print-on-demand services, which make use of WorldCat records, could be affected; so could planned “discovery” interfaces that span dozens of libraries. Source: Inside Higher Ed (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:26:48 +0100 672972 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2008/11/15/nei-releases-complete-data-from-age-related-eye-disease-study/ NEI Releases Complete Data from Age-Related Eye Disease Study The National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announces the release of more than 10 years of data collected during the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS), which looked at the progression of age-related macular degeneration and age-related cataract in 4,757 adults aged 55 to 80. Researchers around the world can apply for access to this complete set of medical history records and clinical trial results as well as select genetic information to gain a better understanding of two complicated vision conditions that affect aging adults. … The public, open-access AREDS data can be viewed on the dbGaP website at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/study.cgi?study_id=phs000001.v2.p1. Researchers can find a link to the application for controlled access to individual-level data on the same site. Source: National Eye Institute (NEI) (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:04:43 +0100 672976 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digizen/~3/454086996/ Mediante la herramienta de UserVoice hemos abierto un foro para estimular el compartir ideas y sugerencias para transformar el sistema educativo de Puerto Rico. El sistema le permite a los usuarios votar por las ideas y comentar las mismas. Por el momento lo hemos llamado EduPR.  Un sistema similar está siendo utilizado por Barak Obama para fomentar el que las personas compartan  recomendaciones que debe considerar el próximo Chief Technology Officer. Aproveché y utilicé mis diez votos para apoyar todo lo relacionado al principio de acceso abierto. Esta actitud de permitir la participación directa del pueblo es fundamental para aprovechar la sabiduría y el conocimiento de las personas que son afectadas directamente por los cambios que se implementan. Te invitamos a subscribirte a EduPR y a contribuir con tus ideas al futuro de la educación en Puerto Rico. Technorati Tags: Open Access Etiquetas: Enseñanza, Open Access, Open Access Entradas relacionadas Facultad de Artes y Ciencias de Harvard vota a favor del acceso abierto (0) Webi: Directorio de freeware y aplicaciones de código abierto (1) Módulo 6: Recursos educativos abiertos por disciplina (0) Voices of open access (0) Webibliografia sobre el movimiento de acceso abierto (0) (Source: DigiZen: Un blogfesor aprendiendo) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:37:37 +0100 673022 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/453971811/repositories-worldwide.html Repositories Worldwide "brings together the recent DSpace, EPrints and Fedora news releases, the latest repository-relevant personal postings from individual and project blogs, as well as recent postings on two of the key repository agendas - Open Access and Data Curation." (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:08:37 +0100 673034 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/netbib/DFxV/~3/453969278/ Mit der Frage, ob es wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften 2.0 gibt, befasste sich am vergangenen Dienstag eine Diskussionsrunde in Madrid. Auch in Spanien läuft in wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften die Diskussion über kooperative Modelle der Qualitätssicherung im Publikationsprozess und Open Access. Eine “2.0″ Zeitschrift ist mehr als eine Zeitschrift, die 2.0 Methoden und Ansätze nutzt. Via EPI - El profesional de la información (Source: netbib weblog) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:02:52 +0100 673530 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NetbibWeblog/~3/453979638/ Mit der Frage, ob es wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften 2.0 gibt, befasste sicham vergangenen Dienstag eine Diskussionsrunde in Madrid. Auch in Spanien läuft in wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften die Diskussino über kooperative Modelle der Qualitätssicherung im Publikationsprozess und Open Access. Eine “2.0″ Zeitschrift ist mehr als eine Zeitschrift, die 2.0 Methoden und Ansätze nutzt. Via EPI - El profesional de la información (Source: netbib weblog) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:02:52 +0100 673075 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453987386/recommend-oa-to-obama-new-chief.html ObamaCTO is a new site for recommending ideas to Obama's CTO and voting on the ideas submitted by others.  (It's independent of the Obama transition team.) I just submitted this idea:  Require open access for publicly-funded research Require open access to the results of non-classified research funded by taxpayers. Extend the exemplary policy now in place at the NIH to all federal agencies. Unfortunately I can't give you a deep link.  But if you search for "open access" you'll find it.  Because it was added fairly late in the game, it doesn't have nearly as many votes as the other ideas.  But with your help, we can change that. Update.  I'm happy to say that I was wrong.  Here's the deep link to my submission.  (Thanks to Joe Dunckley.)  Now go vote! (Source: Open Access News) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673073 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/454289119/genome-sequencing-company-shares-data.html Helicos Launches Open Access Web Site With Microbial Genome Data, press release, November 14, 2008. (Thanks to MarketWatch.) Helicos BioSciences Corporation today announced the launch of the HeliSphere Technology Center, an open access Web site for sharing Helicos data sets and bioinformatics software tools. ... [The] site showcases single molecule sequence reads from whole genome resequencing and digital gene expression runs using the Helicos Genetic Analysis System. The first sample datasets released include whole genome sequences of the microbes Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Rhodobacter sphaeroides, sequenced with consensus accuracies greater than 99.995%. Each sample dataset, containing between six and 12 million aligned reads, was generated from one channel of a 50-channel run on the HeliScope Single Molecule Sequencer. ... Data from a number of exciting sequencing projects currently underway will be posted on the HeliSphere Technology Center Web site on a regular basis. ... (Source: Open Access News) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673072 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/454300924/scientific-commons-adds-graphs-of.html Scientific Commons has added timeplots of deposit activity for the repositories it indexes. See, for example, the graphs for E-LIS or PubMed Central. See the blog post by Lars Kirchhoff for details. See also the similar graphs provided by the Registry of Open Access Repositories. (Source: Open Access News) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673071 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/454300923/indian-newspaper-on-oa-day.html Sane Bhagyashree and Gole Bhakti, Mahitichi mukta upalabdhata, Sakaal, October 14, 2008; self-archived November 13, 2008. (In Marathi.) English abstract: 14th October is celebrated as first "Open Access Day". The article explains what is open access and how it affects users and libraries. See also our past posts on Open Access Day. (Source: Open Access News) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673070 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/454311778/october-issue-of-ariadne.html The October 2008 issue of Ariadne is now available. Some articles relevant to OA: Rob Davies, Europeana: An Infrastructure for Adding Local Content Leo Waaijers, Copyright Angst, Lust for Prestige and Cost Control: What Institutions Can Do to Ease Open Access R. John Robertson, et al., A Bug's Life?: How Metaphors from Ecology Can Articulate the Messy Details of Repository Interactions Sally Rumsey and Ben O'Steen, OAI-ORE, PRESERV2 and Digital Preservation (Source: Open Access News) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673069 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Digitization101/~3/454186947/for-new-yorkers-budget-cuts-to-further.html Earlier this week, I posted about the legislative session at the New York Library Association Annual Conference. On Wednesday, Governor Paterson announced proposed additional cuts in the current NYS budget. The proposal includes an additional $20 million cut in library aid, on top of the cuts that have already been made. If this is adopted, library aid will have been cut 22% this year. (It should be noted that libraries in NYS are already underfunded.) This reportedly will roll-back state funding for libraries to the level in 1993 (15 years ago). This is occurring when library use is increasing (due to the recession) and cost of library resources continues to increase. As has been repeated many times recently, libraries provide free access to information, but libraries are not free. There is a cost to running them and ensuring that they are meeting the needs of their patrons.And while we might think that this cut will impact only public libraries, keep in mind that many non-public libraries in the state rely on resources that are made available to all New Yorkers. This cut will impact knowledge-seeker in the State.For more information on the proposed cut and its impact, go to the NYLA web site.BTW many digitization programs receive funding through local and national grants. Are budgets tighten, we should expect that the amount of grants funds available for these programs will tighten, too.Technorati tags: Regents, New York State, NYS, RAC, NYLA2008This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. (Source: Digitization 101) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673068 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GovernmentNewsForMontana/~3/454266888/2008-world-energy-outlook.html From the Associated Press: "More than a trillion dollars in annual investments to find new fossil fuels will be needed for the next two decades to avoid an energy crisis that could choke the global economy, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday."The International Energy Agency (IEA) released the 2008 edition of the World Energy Outlook this week. The IEA site provides free access to the executive summary of the report, fact sheets, and sample graphs.The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is another good source for energy projections and forecasts.Source: Porretto, J., and Wardell, J., AP (13 Nov. 2008). "Energy agency warns of impending supply crunch." Google News. (Source: Government News for Montana) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673027 http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2008/11/for-new-yorkers-budget-cuts-to-further.html Earlier this week, I posted about the legislative session at the New York Library Association Annual Conference. On Wednesday, Governor Paterson announced proposed additional cuts in the current NYS budget. The proposal includes an additional $20 million cut in library aid, on top of the cuts that have already been made. If this is adopted, library aid will have been cut 22% this year. (It should be noted that libraries in NYS are already underfunded.) This reportedly will roll-back state funding for libraries to the level in 1993 (15 years ago). This is occurring when library use is increasing (due to the recession) and cost of library resources continues to increase. As has been repeated many times recently, libraries provide free access to information, but libraries are not free. There is a cost to running them and ensuring that they are meeting the needs of their patrons.And while we might think that this cut will impact only public libraries, keep in mind that many non-public libraries in the state rely on resources that are made available to all New Yorkers. This cut will impact knowledge-seeker in the State.For more information on the proposed cut and its impact, go to the NYLA web site.BTW many digitization programs receive funding through local and national grants. Are budgets tighten, we should expect that the amount of grants funds available for these programs will tighten, too.Technorati tags: Regents, New York State, NYS, RAC, NYLA2008This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. (Source: Digitization 101) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672936 http://www.libology.com/blog/2008/11/14/the-library-and-the-bazaar.html The Library and the Bazaar is an essay by Greer Hauptman that discusses copyright options, libraries, and the freedom to read. Of note is his argument that with greater control being exerted by publishers over access to content (think e-journals) it becomes important to recognize how critical access to information is to the library’s mission.  Now think about this in terms of e-books where we might be ten years from now. found via Open Access News (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:37:56 +0100 672773 http://infobib.de/blog/2008/11/14/e-lis-mit-e-prints-30/ E-LIS - the open archive for Library and Information Science wird vom 17. bis zum 21. November nicht zur Verfügung stehen, da ein Upgrade der Repository-Software E-Prints ansteht. Unter den Features von E-prints 3.0 wird u.a. aufgelistet: Time saving deposits Import data from other repositories and services Autocomplete-as-you-type for fast data entry Gerade Verbesserungen für Autoren sind dringend notwendig gewesen. Wie das ungefähr aussehen wird, kann man auf dem Demo-Server ausprobieren. Die Nachricht ging über verschiedene Mailinglisten, aber auf der E-Lis-Seite selbst kann ich keinen Hinweis entdecken. Share This (Source: Infobib) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:08:20 +0100 672797 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/452829007/directory-of-open-access-journals_14.html Aspeers : Emerging Voices in American StudiesAfrican Journal of Accounting, Economics, Finance and Banking ResearchLatin-American Journal of Physics EducationPolítica & Sociedade : Revista de Sociologia Política (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:07:34 +0100 672540 http://www.infotogo.com/users/index.asp?RSS=32075 "OASPA offers a forum for bringing together the entire community of Open Access journal publishers. Our mission is to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal publishers globally in al... (Source: Info To Go: Navigating the Internet) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:05:00 +0100 672275 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/452719300/een-niet-al-te-diepe-duik-in-deepdyve.html Daniëlle onderstreepte het gisteren ook maar weer eens: de informatiebehoefte van onze klanten verandert in hoog tempo. De behoefte aan verdieping neemt af.Nu ik erover nadenk besef ik weer even dat ik zelf ook niet ontkom aan de vervlakking. Als ik bijvoorbeeld kijk naar mijn zoekmachinegebruik moet ik onderkennen dat ik in het afgelopen jaar eigenlijk alleen maar gebruik heb gemaakt van Google. Voorheen combineerde ik dat nog wel met machines als Scirus, Alltheweb en Ask.com, maar het afgelopen jaar is dat er niet meer van gekomen. Dat heeft niet alleen te maken met gemakzucht en de tevredenheid over Google: het komt ook voort uit het feit dat ik me beroepsmatig minder met speurvragen bezighoud dan voorheen. Die speurvragen sluipen heel geleidelijk uit het takenpakket maar het is ook duidelijk waarneembaar dat klanten steeds minder vaak een beroep doen op je zoekvaardigheden. Ze zoeken zelf wel of gaan gewoon minder diep.Toen ik begin deze week op de nieuwe zoekmachine DeepDyve stuitte leek het me gezien het bovenstaande wel een goed idee om weer eens te experimenteren met een alternatieve zoekmachine. Het is altijd een soort van spannend om het diepe web van nabij te mogen aanschouwen.Ik heb de machine 5 kansen gegeven. Zocht natuurlijk even op 'Zeeuwse Bibliotheek' en constateerde dat ik maar een treffer kreeg: het Wikipedia-lemma. Toen ik overschakelde naar Engelse zoektermen werd het niet veel beter. Wikipedia wederom, een paar nieuwsresultaten en een paar niet-relevante treffers uit Open Access Databanken. Zoekend op wetenschappelijke termen kreeg ik al meer relevants in beeld maar die informatie is alleen interessant als je, uhm, wetenschapper bent.Helemaal eerlijk is het niet, zo'n beperkte test, maar dat is hoe het gaat, anno 2008. Ik ben nu alweer klaar met deze machine. Er zijn al zoveel alternatieven. Er is al zoveel input. ... Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:47:00 +0100 672569 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AginfoBlogFromIaald/~3/453919514/ileias-repository-on-sustainable.html At yesterday's informal meeting on 'Making Agricultural Information Available and Accessible,'Wilma Roem explained how the LEISA repository of ILEIA and its 6 partner organizations works to make accessible the practical information on sustainable agriculture they have created in the past 25 years. Through the www.leisa.info website, they make accessible a repository of 4100 full text multilingual articles from the journals published by the network partners (located in different parts of the world). This is both the recent ‘born digital’ material as well as older content that has been ‘re-born digital’ through digitization.Their repository contains full text documents in PDF and html formats; they encourage translation and re-use of the content, they recently introduced RSS feeds on different topics, and the whole system is OAI compliant.In early 2008, ILEIA did a review of the websites. This revealed a mass of good content that was not as visible as it could be. To address this, some of the new tools they introduced were:• Google analytics – to better understand visitors and trends• Google site map – to better expose the content to Google’s search engines• Social bookmarking with delicious• RSS feeds• A new and improved search pageView Wilma's presentation:Listen to Wilma speaking on the LEISA portal earlier in 2008.More from the 13 November meetingStory by Peter Ballantyne (Source: AgInfo News from IAALD) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 673408 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453407377/more-recommendations-on-openness-for.html Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress, report, November 2008. The report is endorsed by a number of groups and individuals, who were convened by OMB Watch and OpenTheGovernment.org. The [Chief Technology Officer] should ensure that agencies create websites that use open source software and distribute data in open formats that are accessible to all search engines. [The Office of Management and Budget] should direct agencies to actively make all their online resources searchable by major public search engines and available in open formats. ... The president should direct agencies to minimize the use of copyright claims on government-sponsored materials and include a statement on websites establishing that in the absence of expressed copyright agency-produced materials are copyright free. While there is no legal obligation for a government agency to provide a notice that no legal copyright exists on its materials, such a statement would help clarify the ability of the public to freely share and reuse government provided information. ... Contractors, grantees, and other government consultants are not considered government employees for purposes of copyright. ... When a copyrighted work is transferred to the U.S. government, the government becomes the copyright owner, and the work retains its copyright protection. The government should minimize the copyright claims it allows for materials produced under contract with federal agencies. ... The next administration should create incentives to convert government documents to no-fee, electronic, publicly available documents. Currently, private companies enter into non-competed agreements with agencies – often Memoranda of Understanding that are not public – and create subscription/charge-based access to public records that they have digitized at “no cost” to the government. ... Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672599 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453421388/list-of-oa-writings-in-film-studies.html Catherine Grant, on the Film Studies For Free blog, has posted a list of OA writings in film studies; see also the accompanying explanation. (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672598 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453444444/portal-for-repository-news.html Les Carr has launched a new site, Repositories Worldwide, to aggregate news about repositories. See also the announcement email. (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672597 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453461418/uk-ordnance-survey-pushes-back-against.html The Free Our Data blog reported on November 12 that the Ordnance Survey, the UK's mapping agency, has been contacting local agencies instructing them not to re-use any data derived from the Ordnance Survey (for instance, no Google Maps mashups). (Thanks to Glyn Moody.) The news comes on the heels of the Show Us A Better Way competition, which asked Britons for their ideas on how to re-use public sector information. See also our past posts on the Ordnance Survey or the Free Our Data campaign. (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672596 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453461417/4-italian-papers-on-oa.html Maria Cassella recently self-archived 4 of papers on OA. Each is in Italian with an English abstract: Open access e ricerca scientifica: il caso dei National Institutes of Health USA Le collezioni del secondo millennio. Spunti di riflessione dal 10. Fiesole Collection development Retreat Come cambia il ruolo dei bibliotecari. Il caso dei depositi istituzionali Berlin 5 e oltre. Il mondo dell'Open Access si incontra a Padova (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672595 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453465662/essay-on-open-content-and-libraries.html Greer L. Hauptman, The Library and the Bazaar: Open Content and Libraries, essay for a class at San Jose State University, self-archived November 12, 2008. This essay will consider new copyright models in libraries, and how libraries can and should modify their own systems to promote and provide access to open content. It focuses on the reasoning behind supporting new models and methods of distribution, especially with regards to open licenses like Creative Commons, and the resources and systems libraries have developed to provide access to open licensed work. The paper examines the current roles libraries take in promoting Creative Commons and Open Access, and possible future roles, as well as how libraries organize and share open access works and develop relationships with others producing or developing content. (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672594 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earlham/dGCQ/~3/453465661/libraries-and-oer.html Nan L. Singh, The Librarian As Essential Key to Connecting Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy in the Academic World, essay for a class at San Jose State University, self-archived November 12, 2008. Abstract: The librarian today, caught up in the growing sea of information, is challenged to rise up and give meaningful direction to the information seeker. The digital divide question goes deeper than the simple description of the problem that pits those who have access to technology against those who don’t. The parameters of the divide must be explored in depth in order to begin to close the divide. The librarian holds key possibilities for helping to close this divide and bridge the gap. This paper will focus on the contributions that Open Educational Resources movement can make towards the development of information literacy from yet another angle, the contribution of the librarian. New opportunities for more effective collaboration between librarians, students and instructors can promote greater engagement of the student, resulting in mastery of the literacy challenges presented by the changing world of technology. The educational climate is experiencing a paradigm shift that is familiar territory to the librarian. The librarian as a key initiator in connecting patrons with resources is in a unique position to give leadership to the Open movement, which includes Open Educational Resources, Open Access and Open Source. This paper will explore the contribution the librarian brings to OER and the Open movement. (Source: Open Access News) Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100 672593 http://pintini.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/11/13/ariadne-oct-08.html Au sommaire, notamment, du dernier n° d'Ariadne (n° 57, octobre 08):Articles:- Copyright Angst, Lust for Prestige and Cost Control: What Institutions Can Do to Ease Open AccessLeo Waaijers writes about copyright, prestige and cost control in the world of open access while in two appendices Bas Savenije and Michel Wesseling compare the costs of open access publishing and subscriptions/licences for their respective institutions.- Implementing e-Legal Deposit: A British Library PerspectiveRonald Milne and John Tuck summarise progress towards implementation of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 which extended provision to non-print materials. Particular reference is made to the British Library.- A Bug's Life?: How Metaphors from Ecology Can Articulate the Messy Details of Repository InteractionsR. John Robertson, Mahendra Mahey and Phil Barker introduce work investigating an alternative model of repository and service interaction.- OAI-ORE, PRESERV2 and Digital PreservationSally Rumsey and Ben O'Steen describe OAI-ORE and how it can contribute to digital preservation activities.Comptes-rendus:- Embedding Web Preservation Strategies Within Your InstitutionChristopher Eddie reports on the third one-day workshop of the JISC-PoWR (Preservation of Web Resources) Project held at the University of Manchester on 12 September 2008.- iPRES 2008Frances Boyle and Adam Farquhar report on the two-day international conference which was the fifth in the series on digital preservation of digital objects held at the British Library, on 29 – 30 September 2008.Critique d'ouvrage:- Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web ServicesRalph LeVan looks at a comprehensive work on how to consume and repurpose Web services. (Source: pintiniblog) Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:31:00 +0100 672737 http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/opensearch-and-unapi-enrichs-cataloges.html SeeAlso: A Simple Linkserver Protocol by Jakob Voss appears in Ariadne no. 57 (October 2008)In recent years the principle of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown increasingly important in digital library systems. More and more core functionalities are becoming available in the form of Web-based, standardised services which can be combined dynamically to operate across a broader environment [1]. Standard APIs for searching (SRU [2] [3], OpenSearch [4]), harvesting and syndication (OAI-OMH [5], ATOM [6]), copying (unAPI [7] [8]), publishing, editing (AtomPub [9], Jangle [10], SRU Update [11]), and more basic library operations, either already exist or are being developed.The creation of the SeeAlso linkserver protocol was occasioned by the need to enrich title views in library catalogues of the German Common Library Network (GBV) with links to additional information. However, instead of integrating those links into title records and tailoring the presentation to our specific OPAC software, we decided to create a general linkserver Web service. (Source: Catalogablog) Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:23:00 +0100 672051 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/451904484/ Version 2.81 of the Greenstone digital library software has been released. Here's an excerpt from the home page that describes Greenstone: Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See the Greenstone Fact Sheet for a more detailed description of the system. (Source: DigitalKoans) Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:48:33 +0100 672402 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/451734301/genome-medicine.html "Genome Medicine is an online peer-reviewed journal which publishes open access research articles of outstanding quality in all areas of medicine studied from a genomic or post-genomic perspective. The journal will have a special focus on the latest technologies and findings that have an impact on the understanding and management of human health and disease. In addition to publishing high-quality research, Genome Medicine serves the international research community as a forum for the discussion and critical review of information about all areas of medicine informed by genomic research" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:59:04 +0100 672147 http://urfistinfo.blogs.com/urfist_info/2008/11/lancement-du-si.html Communiqué de presse : "Le consortium COUPERIN lance un site web dédié aux archives ouvertes pour l’enseignement supérieur et la recherche. Le site « Les archives ouvertes pour les établissements d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche » s’adresse à l’ensemble des enseignants-chercheurs et des établissements d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche qui souhaitent s’associer aux initiatives d’archives ouvertes et plus largement à l’Open Access. Il s’adresse également à tout acteur de la publication scientifique, notamment les éditeurs. Ces pages se veulent résolument simples, concrètes, pratiques, fonctionnelles, et comportent de nombreux liens vers d’autres ressources en matière d’archives ouvertes ; elles offrent des outils et des conseils afin de favoriser la mise en œuvre du libre accès, soit de manière individuelle, soit à l’échelle d’un établissement ; elles s’enrichiront par la suite de nouveaux documents et d’une sélection d’actualités, en complément du site archives-ouvertes.fr, issu du projet national initié en 2006. Ces pages ont été élaborées par un groupe réunissant des chercheurs, des informaticiens, des professionnels de l’information et de la documentation venus de plus de trente universités, grandes écoles, organismes de recherche membres du consortium Couperin." (Source: Urfist Info) Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100