I've just published my Dec. 31, 2005 update of The Dramatic Growth of Open Access, along with my predictions for 2006.
In brief, many areas of OA are continuing to show extremely rapid growth - about 40% in less than a year for DOAJ and institutional repositories listed in OAIster, for example. Other areas, such as articles included in an OAIster search, are showing a slightly lower growth rate, still more than 25% in less than a year, however.
For 2006, my predictions are continuing high growth in open access journals and repositories, with the growth rate for articles accelerating later in 2006 when the impact of mandates and increased awareness begins to be felt.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
UBC Google Scholar Blog
Dean Guistini maintains a UBC Google Scholar Blog - to observe, document and comment on the evolution of search in medicine. Looks to me like OA medicine, from the user's perspective. Thanks to Dean Guistini for his comment on OA Librarian.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Digital Preservation
Digital preservation issues have become more prominent in 2005. A recent deposit, "The Preservation of Digital Content" by Michele Cloonan and Shelby Sanett published in Portal: Libraries and the Academy (Vol. 5 (2), April 2005), focuses on preserving authentic records in electronic systems. Below are relevant excerpts about the study origins, methods used, major finding and future work:
Origins: "The study emanated from the authors work on the Preservation Task Force of the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) project. This article incorporates the findings of a survey and individual key-informant interviews conducted from August 2001 through February 2003, round 2 of a larger 3-part study."
Methods: This was a mixed methods qualitative study with eight survey participants and 18 interviewees in round two, representing participants in North America, Europe, and Australia (here's the list of institutions surveyed and the key informants who participated). The research instruments can also be viewed online:
Questionnaire on Preservation Strategies for Electronic Records: Round 2 and Questions for Key Informants.
Major Finding: "We particularly note that there is not as yet a consensus on a single preservation strategy. Should we expect it or want it? We suggest that an area of further research might be an exploration of several forms of preservation strategies within one project - a suite-of-tools approach. It may be that one type of preservation strategy is more effective for particular types of records than another, or a particular type of preservation strategy may be more cost-effective to use than another for a particular institutions needs. At some point, we as a community must find answers to these challenges and take the opportunity to compare the performance of various preservation strategies and their costs across types of records as an institution would have to do in order to make choices appropriate to its operations and mission. In an ideal world, the pragmatism of the survey respondents and the broad perspectives of the key informants should function to support each others efforts. This may become the next step toward taking research closer to real-world applications, which, after all, is the heart of issues we have explored."
Future Work: "In round 3 we are taking a close look at strategies employed at two of the institutions surveyed. Cloonan is conducting a case study at WGBH in Boston that is focusing on the development of the Universal Preservation Format (UPF). Sanett is studying the processes for managing and preserving electronic records at the National Archives of Australia."
Michele Cloonan has written about all areas of the preservation field, from conservation treatments to the preservation of digital media. A world-renowned researcher and scholar in preservation, Michele, who is Dean and Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College explains, "Over the years I have tried to address both technical and social aspects of preservation. Right now I'm working on the social aspects, again. I'm working on a book with the working title, Monumental Preservation. A version of chapter 1 appeared in American Libraries in September 2004." (subscription required)
Origins: "The study emanated from the authors work on the Preservation Task Force of the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) project. This article incorporates the findings of a survey and individual key-informant interviews conducted from August 2001 through February 2003, round 2 of a larger 3-part study."
Methods: This was a mixed methods qualitative study with eight survey participants and 18 interviewees in round two, representing participants in North America, Europe, and Australia (here's the list of institutions surveyed and the key informants who participated). The research instruments can also be viewed online:
Questionnaire on Preservation Strategies for Electronic Records: Round 2 and Questions for Key Informants.
Major Finding: "We particularly note that there is not as yet a consensus on a single preservation strategy. Should we expect it or want it? We suggest that an area of further research might be an exploration of several forms of preservation strategies within one project - a suite-of-tools approach. It may be that one type of preservation strategy is more effective for particular types of records than another, or a particular type of preservation strategy may be more cost-effective to use than another for a particular institutions needs. At some point, we as a community must find answers to these challenges and take the opportunity to compare the performance of various preservation strategies and their costs across types of records as an institution would have to do in order to make choices appropriate to its operations and mission. In an ideal world, the pragmatism of the survey respondents and the broad perspectives of the key informants should function to support each others efforts. This may become the next step toward taking research closer to real-world applications, which, after all, is the heart of issues we have explored."
Future Work: "In round 3 we are taking a close look at strategies employed at two of the institutions surveyed. Cloonan is conducting a case study at WGBH in Boston that is focusing on the development of the Universal Preservation Format (UPF). Sanett is studying the processes for managing and preserving electronic records at the National Archives of Australia."
Michele Cloonan has written about all areas of the preservation field, from conservation treatments to the preservation of digital media. A world-renowned researcher and scholar in preservation, Michele, who is Dean and Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College explains, "Over the years I have tried to address both technical and social aspects of preservation. Right now I'm working on the social aspects, again. I'm working on a book with the working title, Monumental Preservation. A version of chapter 1 appeared in American Libraries in September 2004." (subscription required)
Friday, December 23, 2005
Michael Eisen's Open Science Blog
Public Library of Science co-founder Michael Eisen has a new open access blog, the Open Science Blog. The first article, Fight Intelligent Design - Publish in PLoS!, talks about the importance for academics to bridge the growing gap between the scientific community and the public.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News
Creative Commons Needs Financial Support
According to a recent posting on the SPARC Open Access Forum, the Creative Commons needs financial support from individual donors in order to retain its US tax-exempt status. To date, foundations have provided the bulk of support; donors need to become more diverse.
The Commons fights against draconian copyright laws in the digital age. OA Librarian operates under a Commons license, which means that redistribution of its content is easy and free.
Please consider making a contribution to the Creative Commons by December 31. SixApart, a blogging company, is matching all donations. Thank you for your consideration, and happy holidays.
The Commons fights against draconian copyright laws in the digital age. OA Librarian operates under a Commons license, which means that redistribution of its content is easy and free.
Please consider making a contribution to the Creative Commons by December 31. SixApart, a blogging company, is matching all donations. Thank you for your consideration, and happy holidays.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Seventh International Conference on Grey Literature
On December 5-6, 2005, the Seventh International Conference on Grey Literature took place in Nancy, France. This year's theme was "Open Access to Grey Resources." The conference program and schedule are available online.
In the print environment, grey literature is material that is, "Produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers." This definition was produced by the Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature, in 1999. The New York Academy of Medicine has developed an introduction to grey literature, and produces a quarterly Grey Literature Report.
The traditional barrier to access for grey literature is that it can be difficult to identify; oftentimes these materials are available at no charge to people who know about them. The barrier to electronic peer-reviewed scientific articles, in recent years, has been cost. They are easy to identify but can be hard to obtain, which is a principal reason why the open access movement has developed.
In the electronic world, much grey literature is available online but is still not readily accessible by searching standard databases. This conference explored the convergence between the open access movement and the movement to increase awareness of grey literature in the electronic age. The spring 2006 issue of The Grey Journal will feature a statement about the open access movement, for which I will serve as a reviewer. We are living in an exciting time in which the primary goal is increasing access to all types of resources, grey and non-grey alike.
In the print environment, grey literature is material that is, "Produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers." This definition was produced by the Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature, in 1999. The New York Academy of Medicine has developed an introduction to grey literature, and produces a quarterly Grey Literature Report.
The traditional barrier to access for grey literature is that it can be difficult to identify; oftentimes these materials are available at no charge to people who know about them. The barrier to electronic peer-reviewed scientific articles, in recent years, has been cost. They are easy to identify but can be hard to obtain, which is a principal reason why the open access movement has developed.
In the electronic world, much grey literature is available online but is still not readily accessible by searching standard databases. This conference explored the convergence between the open access movement and the movement to increase awareness of grey literature in the electronic age. The spring 2006 issue of The Grey Journal will feature a statement about the open access movement, for which I will serve as a reviewer. We are living in an exciting time in which the primary goal is increasing access to all types of resources, grey and non-grey alike.
Library Groups Applaud CURES Bill as Speeding Access to Vital Biomedical Research
The American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association have issued a Press Release praising the CURES Bill, which would greatly strengthen the NIH Public Access Policy.
Peter Suber has posted a helpful Excerpt on Open Access News. Here is the portion explaining what the bill is designed to do:
Among the requirements of the bill is the establishment of free public access to articles stemming from research funded by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Under the proposed legislation, articles published in a peer-reviewed journal would be required to be made publicly available within months via NIH's popular PubMed Central online digital archive. The groups note that although some final electronic manuscripts are made available now on PubMed, many are not—and delays in posting research on PubMed sometimes stall public access to important articles for up to a year. "Depriving researchers and members of the public of the findings of research funded by taxpayers is not only wrong, it can also slow down the discovery of new and improved treatment for diseases," said Miriam Nisbet, a spokesperson for the library coalition.
Peter Suber has posted a helpful Excerpt on Open Access News. Here is the portion explaining what the bill is designed to do:
Among the requirements of the bill is the establishment of free public access to articles stemming from research funded by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Under the proposed legislation, articles published in a peer-reviewed journal would be required to be made publicly available within months via NIH's popular PubMed Central online digital archive. The groups note that although some final electronic manuscripts are made available now on PubMed, many are not—and delays in posting research on PubMed sometimes stall public access to important articles for up to a year. "Depriving researchers and members of the public of the findings of research funded by taxpayers is not only wrong, it can also slow down the discovery of new and improved treatment for diseases," said Miriam Nisbet, a spokesperson for the library coalition.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Google Librarian News
According to Google's newly launched Google Librarian News, librarians and google share the same mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. The first article explains how google ranks results. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Imma Subirats Coll
Imagine training and coordinating the efforts of an all-volunteer editorial team for an open archives, consisting of over 60 editors from 40 countries, managing documents in over 20 languages, in addition to being the editor for Spain. This is just one of the volunteer tasks that E-LIS Founder and Coordinator Imma Subirats Coll has taken on. Imma is also a member of the DoIS, or Documents in Information Science, team.
A 2001 grad from the Faculty of Information Science of the University of Barcelona, Imma works as a Librarian for the Government of Catalonia. In addition to her work on E-LIS and DoIS, Imma has also published a number of journal articles, conference presentations and poster sessions, and given invited talks; all self-archived, of course. A list of Imma’s works can be found at http://openlib.org/home/subirats/papers.html - or, try a search in E-LIS or DoIS. For anyone interested in the history of library and science e-print archives, De Robbio, Antonella and Subirats Coll, Imma (2005) E-LIS : an international open archive towards building open digital libraries. High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine(11/2005), is a good place to start.
I first met Imma at the First Workshop on E-Prints on Library and Information Science, October 22, 2005, at CERN, where she presented a session on managing the expansion of E-LIS. As a new E-LIS Editor for Canada, I can vouch for Imma’s patience with training and welcoming the new editors!
A few open access advocates have been described as “tireless”, and this adjective certainly fits Imma, too. For everything that you do, Imma – thank you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
A 2001 grad from the Faculty of Information Science of the University of Barcelona, Imma works as a Librarian for the Government of Catalonia. In addition to her work on E-LIS and DoIS, Imma has also published a number of journal articles, conference presentations and poster sessions, and given invited talks; all self-archived, of course. A list of Imma’s works can be found at http://openlib.org/home/subirats/papers.html - or, try a search in E-LIS or DoIS. For anyone interested in the history of library and science e-print archives, De Robbio, Antonella and Subirats Coll, Imma (2005) E-LIS : an international open archive towards building open digital libraries. High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine(11/2005), is a good place to start.
I first met Imma at the First Workshop on E-Prints on Library and Information Science, October 22, 2005, at CERN, where she presented a session on managing the expansion of E-LIS. As a new E-LIS Editor for Canada, I can vouch for Imma’s patience with training and welcoming the new editors!
A few open access advocates have been described as “tireless”, and this adjective certainly fits Imma, too. For everything that you do, Imma – thank you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
SHERPA Christmas card & flickr
Here is a SHERPA Christmas card. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
For open source sharable pictures - for the holidays, or any occasion: check out Flickr.
For open source sharable pictures - for the holidays, or any occasion: check out Flickr.
OA project for LIS indexing student?
Here is an idea for an OA project which I would love to see an LIS student take on: create an index to Open Access News. This could be a popular tool! There is a lot of content there - perhaps this would be more suitable for group work?
Peter Suber Comment: Good idea, and I'll cooperate with anyone undertaking it. But if I may, here's an even better idea. Help me find a free or donated search engine better than the one I'm using now. I use the WebSideStory (formerly Atomz) free engine, which doesn't support Boolean searches or date filters. See it on the blog sidebar or here. I've priced the WebSideStory premium engine and let's just say that it's out of my league.
From: Open Access News
Peter Suber Comment: Good idea, and I'll cooperate with anyone undertaking it. But if I may, here's an even better idea. Help me find a free or donated search engine better than the one I'm using now. I use the WebSideStory (formerly Atomz) free engine, which doesn't support Boolean searches or date filters. See it on the blog sidebar or here. I've priced the WebSideStory premium engine and let's just say that it's out of my league.
From: Open Access News
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Ray English Interview on Academic Commons
Academic Commons has published an interview with Ray English, Library Director at Oberlin College. Ray has been a member of the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition) Steering Committee and Chair of the ACRL Scholarly Communications Taskforce since the inception of both groups - definitely a key person in the open access movement from the library community!
Thanks to Peter Suber for his excellent summary of this article on Open Access News.
Thanks to Peter Suber for his excellent summary of this article on Open Access News.
CERN and Open Access
Since its creation in 1954, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, headquartered in Geneva), has supported the principles of open access to scientific information. A quick "open access" keyword search in E-LIS turned up this brief document (pdf format), deposited in June, 2005, entitled "Continuing CERN Action on Open Access." Here's the abstract from E-LIS:
"Open Access (OA) is an idea that would change the publishing landscape to bring benefits to all readers and authors. New publishing models based on electronic dissemination and OA are emerging. Active measures taken by CERN at this time could have an important impact on the wider adoption of OA principles."
"Open Access (OA) is an idea that would change the publishing landscape to bring benefits to all readers and authors. New publishing models based on electronic dissemination and OA are emerging. Active measures taken by CERN at this time could have an important impact on the wider adoption of OA principles."
iLumina
iLumina
iLumina is a digital library of sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science. It is designed to quickly and accurately connect users with the educational resources they need. These resources range in type from highly granular objects such as individual images and video clips to entire courses. Resources in iLumina are cataloged in the MARC and NSDL metadata formats, which capture both technical and education-specific information about each resource. iLumina contains thousands of educational resources and several virtual collections. Please feel free to contribute your own resources to iLumina by following the contribute link in the header. (from the ILumina web site).
Thanks to Gretchen Goertz
iLumina is a digital library of sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science. It is designed to quickly and accurately connect users with the educational resources they need. These resources range in type from highly granular objects such as individual images and video clips to entire courses. Resources in iLumina are cataloged in the MARC and NSDL metadata formats, which capture both technical and education-specific information about each resource. iLumina contains thousands of educational resources and several virtual collections. Please feel free to contribute your own resources to iLumina by following the contribute link in the header. (from the ILumina web site).
Thanks to Gretchen Goertz
Monday, December 12, 2005
Free index: In the First Person
As of September 2005, Alexander Street Press gave free access to In the First Person, a database that indexes letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives in English from around the world. More than one million pages, some with photographs, of editorially selected materials spanning 400 years: "Among these accounts, you'll find people in 1930 remember their conversations with Crazy Horse; a British nurse writing in 1945 upon hearing the news of Hitler’s suicide; [...] a firsthand account of a smallpox outbreak in Virginia in 1792; women columnists describing in the 1990s what it took to break into journalism."
And if your institution subscribes to the following Alexander Street databases, your users will be able to hyperlink directly to the full-text within:
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
Oral History Online
Black Thought and Culture
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
Women and Social Movements in the U.S.
North American Indian Biographical Database
Latino Literature
Libraries, museums, and archives will also be able to post primary materials to the site and suggest that specific links be indexed (a group of internal and external editors will moderate the process).
Even though this index is not an open access resource but rather a freely available resource over the web, it is deemed of general interest to the Library Community and deserves to be highlighted.
And if your institution subscribes to the following Alexander Street databases, your users will be able to hyperlink directly to the full-text within:
Libraries, museums, and archives will also be able to post primary materials to the site and suggest that specific links be indexed (a group of internal and external editors will moderate the process).
Even though this index is not an open access resource but rather a freely available resource over the web, it is deemed of general interest to the Library Community and deserves to be highlighted.
Version 60, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
Version 60 of Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is available - details on Digital Koans
Indian Journal of Dermatology: new OA Journal
Announcement about non-LIS journals is a bit outside the usual scope of OA Librarian, but I thought this one might be of interest. Medknow Publications is a fully open access publisher, based in India. The business model is interesting - no article submission or processing fee, as with all of Medknow's journals.
Published since 1955, Indian Journal of Dermatology is one of the oldest journals dedicated to this particular discipline. Since its inception, the Journal publishes information relating to skin, its ailments and the different modes of therapeutics. It also carries articles on Leprosy, STI and HIV/AIDS. This was the first Indian Dermatology Journal to be indexed in Index Medicus and the first to enter the Internet. The web version www.e-ijd.org was launched in November 2000 with abstracts of the published articles.
On 26th November 2005, during its Golden Jubilee celebrations (http://www.e-ijd.org/goldcon_2005.asp), a new website of the journal was launched with free access to the full text articles. The OA version of the journal has been brought by Medknow Publications (www.medknow.com). The journal will provide immediate free access to its content. Similar to all the journals published by Medknow, there will be no article submission or processing fee.
Published since 1955, Indian Journal of Dermatology is one of the oldest journals dedicated to this particular discipline. Since its inception, the Journal publishes information relating to skin, its ailments and the different modes of therapeutics. It also carries articles on Leprosy, STI and HIV/AIDS. This was the first Indian Dermatology Journal to be indexed in Index Medicus and the first to enter the Internet. The web version www.e-ijd.org was launched in November 2000 with abstracts of the published articles.
On 26th November 2005, during its Golden Jubilee celebrations (http://www.e-ijd.org/goldcon_2005.asp), a new website of the journal was launched with free access to the full text articles. The OA version of the journal has been brought by Medknow Publications (www.medknow.com). The journal will provide immediate free access to its content. Similar to all the journals published by Medknow, there will be no article submission or processing fee.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
A Research Agenda about Googling
Many in the library world have raised questions about Google (Sam Trosow, for example, on the digitization project). What else are folks doing? Phillipe Dumas suggests developing a research program about the phenomenon in a recent deposit into @rchiveSIC a French cross-institutional disciplinary open access archive for LIS. GOOGLE AU QUOTIDIEN : LE GOOGLING EN PERSPECTIVE is written in French but has an English summary: "The author first notes that Google, the trade mark, the project, the utilization - the "googling"- are social facts proven by the numbers - number of net surfers, of requests, of uses- and by the signs of adhesion - linguistics, economic, social. A socio linguistic analysis of the speeches of the persons in charge of Google and of users indicate that the social fact "googling" results in the emergence of a culture and a world community which shares it. They are supported by the language and also by the myths that were created and largely maintained by the owners the mark "Google Inc". The conclusion is that the current organization of the market of services on the Internet makes that Google Inc. is almost the only institution to know the population of the googlers. In order not to be subjected to this monopoly, however comfortable it is, the author proposes to develop a research program on the uses and users of Google."
I'm curious about what exactly a research program about Googling will look like. Will it include partial and non-users? As I've noted before non users are very interesting. What Dumas documents as marking and shaping of a culture about googling also reminds me of OCLC's search for a "library" brand in their latest Perspectives research report. About 3000 information consumers were questioned, presumably the general public, from various regions around the world, about information seeking habits and preferences. Some findings: 84% of all electronic information seeking begins with search engines; and the percentage who Completely agree that Google provides worthwhile information breaks down thus: 55% for all regions, 59% for Australia, Singapore and India, 56% for Canada, 51% for UK, and 54% for US (source: Appendix A - Supporting Data Tables, OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm).
I'm curious about what exactly a research program about Googling will look like. Will it include partial and non-users? As I've noted before non users are very interesting. What Dumas documents as marking and shaping of a culture about googling also reminds me of OCLC's search for a "library" brand in their latest Perspectives research report. About 3000 information consumers were questioned, presumably the general public, from various regions around the world, about information seeking habits and preferences. Some findings: 84% of all electronic information seeking begins with search engines; and the percentage who Completely agree that Google provides worthwhile information breaks down thus: 55% for all regions, 59% for Australia, Singapore and India, 56% for Canada, 51% for UK, and 54% for US (source: Appendix A - Supporting Data Tables, OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm).
Jan Szczepanski: collecting for the world
The Directory of Open Access Journals has a page for Special Thanks to the volunteer contributors of journal titles. One special contributor is Swedish OA Librarian Jan Szczepanski, who has the world's longest list of OA journal titles in the world that I'm aware of - as of the beginning of December 2005, 3,948 titles and 757 retrodigitized titles, for a total of 4,705.
Jan, in turn, recognizes the help of his many friends from around the world. Collecting and organizing all the bibliographic information to connect everyone with all the free e-journals is a major undertaking; something that no individual or single library could do individually - but we can do it, if we work together. More help is needed!
John Kjellberg has created a web page for links to Jan's lists of OA journals in Word, Excel, or Open Document Format.
Jan was kind enough to write me an e-mail about his work; even though this was not meant to be organized for formal publication, I liked it so much that it is posted below pretty much as it was written (with Jan's permission). Some highlights: after decades of experience in acquisitions in humanities and social sciences, Jan began collecting free e-journal titles in the late 1990's, inspired first by an important journal he could not purchase, then through a study which uncovered just how many free e-journals there are. From the beginning, Jan has been supplying his list of titles to DOAJ. In May 2005, Jan decided to go public with his own list, for several reasons: DOAJ is a bit slow at adding titles (no doubt due to the vetting process); the main focus of the open access movement is STM, so that many important OA developments in humanities and social sciences do not get as much attention; and, in the UK, misinformation about the extent of open access has been presented to the government, in relation to the RCUK position on open access.
In Jan's words:
Background 1998-2004
Do you remember the ads for Postmodern Culture in the early 90's? The journal was not available on paper! I wanted to buy this important journal but couldn't. I never forgot that.
In 1998 I made a study for the library on how many free e-journals existed and what was the worth. In the beginning of 1999 we presented a report. By we I mean some memberts of my staff at the Department of Humanities, where I was Head at the time: Gun Fridell, Gunnar Holmlund, Lise-Lotte Larsdotter and Martin Oxelqvist.
We made a study in two areas, music and philosophy. We found that the amount of free e-journals was impressive and of high quality, well worth collecting.
Since then I continued collecting free e-journals in the humanities. In January 2002 the library had created a local database for electronic journals and I started to put also the free e-journals there. At the end of 2002 I had included over 300. In December that year I checked the statistics. They had been used 7.500 times, that is 25 times in avarage. This was impressive so I continued collecting.
During 2003 I included 800 more living titles and 400 retrodigitalized titles. Now the statistics showed that free e-journals had been used 28.000 times in total, 18 times per title in average.
During 2004 I found 864 new titles to add and now I had totally 2.420. I got the impression that there were more titles than ever and it was very easy to find new nice titles. Now I included even journals in social sciences, geology and mathematics. The statistics figure had now risen to 50,051 and the average figure to 2,068. I was pleased with myself.
Mathematics was added just for fun. I wanted to get the feeling for the other side of scholarship. (I have read Snows book on the two cultures).
Everything exploded during 2005. In 2004, I had collected 2.400 titles I have now in the beginning of December 2005, 3.948 titles and 757 retrodigitized titles, totally 4.705.
The open access movement is not only STM-journals fighting commercial publishers it is also a very quiet but strong movement within the other culture, humanity and social sciences. They are not competing with commercial publishers because these journals have never been extremly expensive. They start new journals because the technology is there and they are used to writing and working for free and want to communicate and give the world the results of their work.
Peter Suber
In May 2005 I contacted Peter Suber because I wanted to help my journals to be better known and used and disseminated. Peter helped me. I had found out that it wasn't enough just to start up a free e-journal if nobody knows about it. So I thought, I will try to see to it that thousands of libraries all over the world will include them amongst their electronic Elsevier-titles.
Elsevier-Szczepanski
What is the difference between the commercial packages and my titles? One of the most important differences is that I have titles from all over the world and in many more languages. Small countries are represented, other continents. I have broken the anglo-american dominance! This feels good and right. And I have made humanities and social science free e-journals more visible. That gives also a good feeling. I have not earned a penny and for that I will get a reward in heaven.
I have a background in acquisitions. During twenty years I was personally responsible for that in the humanities and also for the social sciences during ten years. This means that nearly everyghing of foreign books and journals was collected by me. Now I can say that I collect for the whole world.
Jan Szczepanski's list of OA-journals
A collegue in University of Skövde, John Kjellberg, offered to make a
homepage after that people had problems with Peter Subers linking.
http://www.his.se/templates/vanligwebbsida1.aspx?id=20709
Why did I turn public? One of the reasons was that I thought DOAJ was working too slow. A bottle-neck! New titles were popping up daily and it's our duty as librarians to collect them and give them to our customers. The second reason was the UK government assertion that the open access movement had lost in momentum. There were wrong.
After three months I asked John Kjellberg if he could send me some statistics. 463 request had been made from the English page. 18 from US, 16 from Sweden,13 from Finland, 10 from Germany, 8 from Japan, Argentinga, Austria, Australia, 6 from France, Canada, Italy, Romania.
The Swedish page had 764 successful requests, 56 from Uppsala, 37 from my own library, 24 from the Royal Library and so on.
With the help of my friends
During the years I have got a lot of friends all over the world, USA, UK, France, Germany and Mexico. These friends are interested in collecting free e-journals. [Heather: Some of Jan's friends just might appear in future OA Librarian postings].
Things that make life worth living
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies http://www.jendajournal.com, creates "a global forum for African women scholars, analysts and activists to participate on an equal footing with their contemporaries worldwide in debates, exchanges of ideas, and the creation and documentation of knowledge." Though the journals were designed to take advantage of the bibliographical resources on the site. The integrated layout employ search functionality. At the left-hand side of the table of content page of each journal are links to the section containing a fairly deep Africa-focused bibliography, organized by topic.
Heather again: speaking of things that make life worth living, having friends like Jan Szczepanski is definitely on my list! Best wishes to Jan, his librarian-wife, and Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Jan, in turn, recognizes the help of his many friends from around the world. Collecting and organizing all the bibliographic information to connect everyone with all the free e-journals is a major undertaking; something that no individual or single library could do individually - but we can do it, if we work together. More help is needed!
John Kjellberg has created a web page for links to Jan's lists of OA journals in Word, Excel, or Open Document Format.
Jan was kind enough to write me an e-mail about his work; even though this was not meant to be organized for formal publication, I liked it so much that it is posted below pretty much as it was written (with Jan's permission). Some highlights: after decades of experience in acquisitions in humanities and social sciences, Jan began collecting free e-journal titles in the late 1990's, inspired first by an important journal he could not purchase, then through a study which uncovered just how many free e-journals there are. From the beginning, Jan has been supplying his list of titles to DOAJ. In May 2005, Jan decided to go public with his own list, for several reasons: DOAJ is a bit slow at adding titles (no doubt due to the vetting process); the main focus of the open access movement is STM, so that many important OA developments in humanities and social sciences do not get as much attention; and, in the UK, misinformation about the extent of open access has been presented to the government, in relation to the RCUK position on open access.
In Jan's words:
Background 1998-2004
Do you remember the ads for Postmodern Culture in the early 90's? The journal was not available on paper! I wanted to buy this important journal but couldn't. I never forgot that.
In 1998 I made a study for the library on how many free e-journals existed and what was the worth. In the beginning of 1999 we presented a report. By we I mean some memberts of my staff at the Department of Humanities, where I was Head at the time: Gun Fridell, Gunnar Holmlund, Lise-Lotte Larsdotter and Martin Oxelqvist.
We made a study in two areas, music and philosophy. We found that the amount of free e-journals was impressive and of high quality, well worth collecting.
Since then I continued collecting free e-journals in the humanities. In January 2002 the library had created a local database for electronic journals and I started to put also the free e-journals there. At the end of 2002 I had included over 300. In December that year I checked the statistics. They had been used 7.500 times, that is 25 times in avarage. This was impressive so I continued collecting.
During 2003 I included 800 more living titles and 400 retrodigitalized titles. Now the statistics showed that free e-journals had been used 28.000 times in total, 18 times per title in average.
During 2004 I found 864 new titles to add and now I had totally 2.420. I got the impression that there were more titles than ever and it was very easy to find new nice titles. Now I included even journals in social sciences, geology and mathematics. The statistics figure had now risen to 50,051 and the average figure to 2,068. I was pleased with myself.
Mathematics was added just for fun. I wanted to get the feeling for the other side of scholarship. (I have read Snows book on the two cultures).
Everything exploded during 2005. In 2004, I had collected 2.400 titles I have now in the beginning of December 2005, 3.948 titles and 757 retrodigitized titles, totally 4.705.
The open access movement is not only STM-journals fighting commercial publishers it is also a very quiet but strong movement within the other culture, humanity and social sciences. They are not competing with commercial publishers because these journals have never been extremly expensive. They start new journals because the technology is there and they are used to writing and working for free and want to communicate and give the world the results of their work.
Peter Suber
In May 2005 I contacted Peter Suber because I wanted to help my journals to be better known and used and disseminated. Peter helped me. I had found out that it wasn't enough just to start up a free e-journal if nobody knows about it. So I thought, I will try to see to it that thousands of libraries all over the world will include them amongst their electronic Elsevier-titles.
Elsevier-Szczepanski
What is the difference between the commercial packages and my titles? One of the most important differences is that I have titles from all over the world and in many more languages. Small countries are represented, other continents. I have broken the anglo-american dominance! This feels good and right. And I have made humanities and social science free e-journals more visible. That gives also a good feeling. I have not earned a penny and for that I will get a reward in heaven.
I have a background in acquisitions. During twenty years I was personally responsible for that in the humanities and also for the social sciences during ten years. This means that nearly everyghing of foreign books and journals was collected by me. Now I can say that I collect for the whole world.
Jan Szczepanski's list of OA-journals
A collegue in University of Skövde, John Kjellberg, offered to make a
homepage after that people had problems with Peter Subers linking.
http://www.his.se/templates/vanligwebbsida1.aspx?id=20709
Why did I turn public? One of the reasons was that I thought DOAJ was working too slow. A bottle-neck! New titles were popping up daily and it's our duty as librarians to collect them and give them to our customers. The second reason was the UK government assertion that the open access movement had lost in momentum. There were wrong.
After three months I asked John Kjellberg if he could send me some statistics. 463 request had been made from the English page. 18 from US, 16 from Sweden,13 from Finland, 10 from Germany, 8 from Japan, Argentinga, Austria, Australia, 6 from France, Canada, Italy, Romania.
The Swedish page had 764 successful requests, 56 from Uppsala, 37 from my own library, 24 from the Royal Library and so on.
With the help of my friends
During the years I have got a lot of friends all over the world, USA, UK, France, Germany and Mexico. These friends are interested in collecting free e-journals. [Heather: Some of Jan's friends just might appear in future OA Librarian postings].
Things that make life worth living
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies http://www.jendajournal.com, creates "a global forum for African women scholars, analysts and activists to participate on an equal footing with their contemporaries worldwide in debates, exchanges of ideas, and the creation and documentation of knowledge." Though the journals were designed to take advantage of the bibliographical resources on the site. The integrated layout employ search functionality. At the left-hand side of the table of content page of each journal are links to the section containing a fairly deep Africa-focused bibliography, organized by topic.
Heather again: speaking of things that make life worth living, having friends like Jan Szczepanski is definitely on my list! Best wishes to Jan, his librarian-wife, and Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Libre accès à l'information scientifique & technique...
Depuis avril 2003, l'Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INIST-CNRS) en France publie un blog sur le Libre accès à l'information scientifique & technique... conçu par des chercheurs pour les chercheurs. Le site fournit de l'information sur les archives ouvertes, les modèles de publication électronique, des études et analyses d'impact ainsi que des entrevues avec divers chercheurs, administrateurs et directeurs de départements dans le milieu de la recherche quant à leurs opinions au sujet du phénomène du libre accès à l'information. Contient également un glossaire qui définit les termes français utilisés dans le cadre du Libre Accès avec leur équivalent anglais.
**************************
Since April 2003, the Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INIST-CNRS) in France, has maintained its own weblog Libre accès à l'information scientifique & technique... about open access issues by researchers for researchers. The blog deals with open archives, electronic publishing models, studies on the impact of OA and also dedicates a section to interviews with researchers, research facilities administrators and department directors about their views and opinions regarding OA. There is also a useful glossary of OA terms and definitions in french with their english equivalents.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Latest Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog
The Dec. 5 edition of Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is available.
Rick Luce honoured for Open Access work
From Research Library News:
Rick Luce, Director of the LANL Research Library, has been honored by the Board of Directors of the Ibero-America Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) for his "support for the development of digital libraries in Latin America, and for your vision that resulted in the adoption of the Brazilian Declaration on Open Access in 2004."
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.
Rick Luce, Director of the LANL Research Library, has been honored by the Board of Directors of the Ibero-America Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) for his "support for the development of digital libraries in Latin America, and for your vision that resulted in the adoption of the Brazilian Declaration on Open Access in 2004."
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.
Open Access in Poland
New in E-LIS: Librarian Bozena Badnarek-Michalska discusses the state of open access in Poland: basically, like many other countries, struggling between a new opened attitude and a lack of education and financial commitment (at least, so far). One of the most successful projects to date is the Wielkopolska Digital Library, based on a work of a group of determined librarians (from both scientific and public libraries), information technologists and scientists from Poznan.
Bednarek-Michalska, Bozena (2005) Free Access to Information and Knowledge or Educational Exclusion? World’s Trends versus Poland. Bulletin EBIB 63(2).
Thanks to Imma Subbirats.
Bednarek-Michalska, Bozena (2005) Free Access to Information and Knowledge or Educational Exclusion? World’s Trends versus Poland. Bulletin EBIB 63(2).
Thanks to Imma Subbirats.
Citation Impact Bibliography Resource
If you're looking for evidence that open access increases citation impact, this bibliography of studies, courtesy of OpCit, the Open Citation Project - Reference Linking and Citation Analysis, is a great place to start. (The link is also provided in the Bibliographies section of the Resources bar to your right on this blog).
Thanks to Stevan Harnad for making me aware of this incredible resource.
Thanks to Stevan Harnad for making me aware of this incredible resource.
Open Letter from Fellows of the Royal Society
Forty-two Fellows of the Royal Society, including 5 Nobel Laureates, have signed an Open Letter expressing disappointment with the Royal Society's position, and supporting the RCUK move toward open access. The letter mentions strong backing of the RCUK proposal by librarians!
Excerpt:
As working scientists who support open access to published research, we believe that the Society should support RCUK's proposal, rather than oppose it. The proposed RCUK policy will ensure that the results of research funded by the Research Councils are made freely and rapidly available, maximizing their utility not only to the scholarly community in the United Kingdom and around the world, but also to practitioners (including doctors and nurses) and to the British public whose taxes largely support the research. The RCUK policy has strong backing from librarians and academics, and has received official support3 from Universities UK, the organization that represents UK university vice-chancellors and principals.
Thanks to Stevan Harnad, Peter Suber, and others.
Excerpt:
As working scientists who support open access to published research, we believe that the Society should support RCUK's proposal, rather than oppose it. The proposed RCUK policy will ensure that the results of research funded by the Research Councils are made freely and rapidly available, maximizing their utility not only to the scholarly community in the United Kingdom and around the world, but also to practitioners (including doctors and nurses) and to the British public whose taxes largely support the research. The RCUK policy has strong backing from librarians and academics, and has received official support3 from Universities UK, the organization that represents UK university vice-chancellors and principals.
Thanks to Stevan Harnad, Peter Suber, and others.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Open Access Provides a Forum That Can Save Lives
The following is from Peter Suber's Open Access News site. It is an excellent example of how the open access approach to publishing new medical research findings can help save lives:
Denys N. Wheatley, Cell biology as the basis of a better understanding of cancer, Cancer Cell International, November 30, 2005.
Denys N. Wheatley, Cell biology as the basis of a better understanding of cancer, Cancer Cell International, November 30, 2005.
Abstract: Clinicians will argue that cancer can only really receive the treatment that is needed through thorough understanding of medicine. However, even empirical approaches to therapy result in experimental analysis of the agencies involved on test cells, usually in culture. From the obverse perspective, cell biologists will argue that until we fully understand cell cycle regulation, tumour management will be too imprecise to make the best advances. A forum is needed whereby the fundamental studies on cells prior to, during and after transformation in vitro can be freely reported (open access) and discussed. The action of anticancer agents and cancer preventative substances can more easily be studied in vitro before the often excessive complexity of making similar studies in experimental and human cancers is tackled. Cancer Cell International is committed to providing such a forum. Ironically within a few months of launching this open access journal, Elsevier had much the same idea, and there one has to pay for the privilege of downloading vital papers in this biomedical field.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Views on the DASER-2 Summit, Dec. 2-4, 2005
Building on the success of the first DASER Summit, DASER-2 examined new issues and challenges related to digital archives and Science-Technology-Medicine (STM) publishing. The conference explored issues surrounding digital libraries, institutional repositories and open access publishing. such as:
- Impact of OA on the future of STM libraries;
- Institutional repository models: what works and what doesn't;
- Publisher-library collaboration strategies, now and in the near future;
- Institutional repository object issues--theses, datasets, learning objects, etc.;
- User needs and patterns related to digital libraries.
E-LIS Passes 3,000 Submissions
Over the weekend of November 26, 2005, the number of submissions to E-LIS, an open access archive for LIS documents, went over the 3,000 mark. As of writing (December 5, 2005), the total is 3017.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Library-related posts on OA News
From Open Access News:
New Book on Library Tech Covers Some OA Topics. On: Nancy Courtney (ed.), Technology for the Rest of Us : A Primer on Computer Technologies for the Low-Tech Librarian, Libraries Unlimited, 2005. From: LIS News
How Librarians Can Help On: Sarah Thomas, Advancing Scholarship Through Library Collaboration, in Eerland Kolding Nielson et al. (eds.), Advancing Scholarship Through Library Collaboration, in Die Innovative Bibliothek: Elmar Mittler zum 65. Geburtstag, Muenchen: K.G. Sur, 2005, pp. 67-75.
New Book on Library Tech Covers Some OA Topics. On: Nancy Courtney (ed.), Technology for the Rest of Us : A Primer on Computer Technologies for the Low-Tech Librarian, Libraries Unlimited, 2005. From: LIS News
How Librarians Can Help On: Sarah Thomas, Advancing Scholarship Through Library Collaboration, in Eerland Kolding Nielson et al. (eds.), Advancing Scholarship Through Library Collaboration, in Die Innovative Bibliothek: Elmar Mittler zum 65. Geburtstag, Muenchen: K.G. Sur, 2005, pp. 67-75.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
:: Culture Libre.ca ::
Olivier Charbonneau's blog (en français) :: Culture Libre.ca ::, occasionally deals with open access, and often with related issues such as digital copyright and the very new Information Commons Interest Group of the Canadian Library Association.
SPARC Open Access Newsletter: December Issue
The Dec. 2005 issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter is available. This issue takes a close look at the recent Working Group recommendation to strengthen the NIH public-access policy and the OA news coming out of the Tunis phase of WSIS. It also asks how the expanding web is like the expanding universe and how search engines and open access are like the gravity that may, or may not, hold it all together. The Top Stories section takes a brief look at milestones at several OA resources, a worldwide wave of new repository launches, new search developments that affect OA, the Royal Society position statement, and the rapidly
multiplying book-scanning projects. Thanks to Peter Suber.
multiplying book-scanning projects. Thanks to Peter Suber.
Four LIS Journals Added to DOAJ!
Four LIS journals have been added to DOAJ in the last 30 days - all published by library associations!
The Journal of the American Library Association's Map and Geography Round Table, Coordinates, Series A and Series B are new journals; articles are searchable at the article level in DOAJ.
medizin-bibliothek-information, has been published by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Medizinisches Bibliothekswesen since 2001 (in german).
Virginia Libraries has been published by the Virginia Library Association for many years. Full access to all the articles begins with Vol. 42: 1, 1996.
The Journal of the American Library Association's Map and Geography Round Table, Coordinates, Series A and Series B are new journals; articles are searchable at the article level in DOAJ.
medizin-bibliothek-information, has been published by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Medizinisches Bibliothekswesen since 2001 (in german).
Virginia Libraries has been published by the Virginia Library Association for many years. Full access to all the articles begins with Vol. 42: 1, 1996.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Selective Exposure
A theme we hope to pursue in this blog is to report briefly on current research/work in progress that is being uploaded into our open access archives. Especially those that are highly pertinent to libraries, librarians, and other information professionals. Here's our first research snippet.
Selective exposure, the tendency to avoid information that is inconsistent with one's beliefs and attitudes will be familiar to librarians and other information providers/researchers as an intervening variable in information seeking behaviors. Kelly Garrett, phd from the University of Michigan School of Information and now a research fellow at CRITO, University of California at Irvine, shares his research into selective exposure (does it exist?)in a talk titled Echo Chambers or Windows on the World? Partisan Selective Exposure and the Online News Environment. Findings from two projects about citizens' preferences with regard to political information show that "individuals' preference for support and their aversion to challenge are different. People (1) seek out sources that support their viewpoints; (2) are interested in news items with which they agree; and (3) use online sources to increase their repertoire of opinion-supporting arguments. They do not, however, systematically exclude exposure to other viewpoints. Ultimately, this research suggests that individuals value awareness of other perspectives, while simultaneously wanting to limit their contact with them." A streaming video is also available.
Selective exposure, the tendency to avoid information that is inconsistent with one's beliefs and attitudes will be familiar to librarians and other information providers/researchers as an intervening variable in information seeking behaviors. Kelly Garrett, phd from the University of Michigan School of Information and now a research fellow at CRITO, University of California at Irvine, shares his research into selective exposure (does it exist?)in a talk titled Echo Chambers or Windows on the World? Partisan Selective Exposure and the Online News Environment. Findings from two projects about citizens' preferences with regard to political information show that "individuals' preference for support and their aversion to challenge are different. People (1) seek out sources that support their viewpoints; (2) are interested in news items with which they agree; and (3) use online sources to increase their repertoire of opinion-supporting arguments. They do not, however, systematically exclude exposure to other viewpoints. Ultimately, this research suggests that individuals value awareness of other perspectives, while simultaneously wanting to limit their contact with them." A streaming video is also available.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
SPARC launches Open Access Programs website
Here's a very interesting (and particularly relevant for academic librarians) posting that appeared on Peter Suber's Open Access News blog today:
SPARC has launched Open Access Programs, "[a] resource for librarians and administrators creating events to promote open access among faculty members." From the site:
[T]his Web site will include details of conferences, seminars, brown-bag lunches, faculty meeting presentations, mailings, and every other form of outreach that you or your colleagues have found successful - or not. Your willingness to share what you have learned in creating educational programs will be a great help to other universities as they traverse the planning process. In addition to giving you the chance to review what others are up to, this site will ask you some basic questions about your Institutional Repository (IR) and any open access programs you have put in place. We invite you to contribute as much additional information as you like. The richer the detail, the easier it will be for others to build on your successes....[Y]ou may come back to edit it at any time.
(Peter adds: A great idea, long needed. Visit the site for helpful ideas and help others by adding your own ideas and experience.)
SPARC has launched Open Access Programs, "[a] resource for librarians and administrators creating events to promote open access among faculty members." From the site:
[T]his Web site will include details of conferences, seminars, brown-bag lunches, faculty meeting presentations, mailings, and every other form of outreach that you or your colleagues have found successful - or not. Your willingness to share what you have learned in creating educational programs will be a great help to other universities as they traverse the planning process. In addition to giving you the chance to review what others are up to, this site will ask you some basic questions about your Institutional Repository (IR) and any open access programs you have put in place. We invite you to contribute as much additional information as you like. The richer the detail, the easier it will be for others to build on your successes....[Y]ou may come back to edit it at any time.
(Peter adds: A great idea, long needed. Visit the site for helpful ideas and help others by adding your own ideas and experience.)
Thomson Scientific Announces Web Citation Index
Thomson Scientific Announces Web Citation Index - a tool to help us find that content in the repositories! Thanks to Michael McCully.
Eric Lease Morgan on OAI4
Eric Lease Morgan has blogged his experiences at the OAI4 Conference.
Summary:
CERN is an interesting place. Lot's of physicists walking around. If you walk fifty yards east you are in France. The conference was stimulating. It confirmed much of what I had already known. It provided an opportunity to reinforce existing knowledge and articulate current thinking. I strengthened a few relationships and established others. Most importantly, I learned about some of the challenges of creating and maintaining institutional repositories. The issues are not necessarily technical but rather social, legal, and political. I sincerely believe open access publishing through things like institutional repositories can supplement and enhance the scholarly communications process. The goal is not to remove traditional print publishing, but to increase the sphere of knowledge in the most effective means possible.
Thanks to the SPARC Open Access Forum
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Summary:
CERN is an interesting place. Lot's of physicists walking around. If you walk fifty yards east you are in France. The conference was stimulating. It confirmed much of what I had already known. It provided an opportunity to reinforce existing knowledge and articulate current thinking. I strengthened a few relationships and established others. Most importantly, I learned about some of the challenges of creating and maintaining institutional repositories. The issues are not necessarily technical but rather social, legal, and political. I sincerely believe open access publishing through things like institutional repositories can supplement and enhance the scholarly communications process. The goal is not to remove traditional print publishing, but to increase the sphere of knowledge in the most effective means possible.
Thanks to the SPARC Open Access Forum
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
EBSCO makes LISTA OA!
EBSCO has made Library Science & Information Technology Abstracts OA - on an ongoing basis! According to Sam Brooks, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, EBSCO Information Services, on ERIL-L today: Everyone can have access to it. It is an open access database. It is available at www.libraryresearch.com. If you want it added to the profile that contains your other EBSCOhost databases, please contact our technical support department at eptech@epnet.com. Thanks to Buddy Pennington from ERIL-L! - and kudos to EBSCO!
Introducing Charles W. Bailey Jr.
Charles W. Bailey, Jr. is the Assistant Dean for Digital Library Planning and Development at the University of Houston Libraries (Houston). From 1987-2003 he was the Assistant Dean for Systems at Houston. Over this same period Bailey has been a pioneer in the use of electronic media for the dissemination of electronic information.
In 1989, Bailey established PACS-L, an early mailing list about public access computers in libraries. This work led to Bailey's founding and editorship of the Public-Access Computer Systems Review, an open access journal, in 1990.
Bailey served as editor until 1996. At that time he began to produce the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, a compendium of "selected English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet." Bailey continues to update this bibliograohy every two weeks, and cumulates it periodically.
Within the past year Bailey has published two specialized bibliographies of timely topics. The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (2004) defines key concepts of open access and lists over 1,3o0 resources. The bibliography is 129 pages, and is open access. (Printed copies are also available for purchase from the Association of Research Libraries). In 2005, Bailey produced the Open Access Webliography with Adrian K. Ho.
Bailey has also compiled a bibliography about the Google Print (now Google Book Search) controversy, which was current as of October 2005. This bibliography was published in DigitalKoans, Bailey's latest initiative. DigitalKoans is a Weblog that features commentary on scholarly electronic publishing and digital culture.
Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr. for providing many valuable resources for librarians and other students of electronic publishing.
In 1989, Bailey established PACS-L, an early mailing list about public access computers in libraries. This work led to Bailey's founding and editorship of the Public-Access Computer Systems Review, an open access journal, in 1990.
Bailey served as editor until 1996. At that time he began to produce the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, a compendium of "selected English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet." Bailey continues to update this bibliograohy every two weeks, and cumulates it periodically.
Within the past year Bailey has published two specialized bibliographies of timely topics. The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (2004) defines key concepts of open access and lists over 1,3o0 resources. The bibliography is 129 pages, and is open access. (Printed copies are also available for purchase from the Association of Research Libraries). In 2005, Bailey produced the Open Access Webliography with Adrian K. Ho.
Bailey has also compiled a bibliography about the Google Print (now Google Book Search) controversy, which was current as of October 2005. This bibliography was published in DigitalKoans, Bailey's latest initiative. DigitalKoans is a Weblog that features commentary on scholarly electronic publishing and digital culture.
Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr. for providing many valuable resources for librarians and other students of electronic publishing.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Ranganathan & Open Access
Continuing to explore the link between SRR and "open access" I thought I should check and see for myself the context in which he used the term - was it really in the context of open stacks as I believed the LIS forum discussion on this topic to have ended? Alas, I don't have a copy of the book at hand, but here's what I've been able to confirm. The phrase "open access" occurs in the index of S.R. Ranganathan's book Five Laws of Library Science - you can check it yourself courtesy of Amazon.
It looks like SRR discusses open access in the context of four of the five laws - first, third, fourth and fifth. Other references about open access include: (open access and) Reference service, Disservice to, Economics of, In Sweden, Safeguards in. Open stacks doesn't appear in the index although stack architecture and stack-room do. I wonder if somebody who has access to the paper copy of the original edition or the expanded edition can clarify for us?
It looks like SRR discusses open access in the context of four of the five laws - first, third, fourth and fifth. Other references about open access include: (open access and) Reference service, Disservice to, Economics of, In Sweden, Safeguards in. Open stacks doesn't appear in the index although stack architecture and stack-room do. I wonder if somebody who has access to the paper copy of the original edition or the expanded edition can clarify for us?
Google Search Option for Creative Commons Licenses
The Creative Commons allows creators--authors, musicians, moviemakers--to provide more liberal rights to re-use their work than are provided in copyright law. It's a grassroots attempt to expand the public domain. OA Librarian operates under a Creative Commons license. While not every instance of a Creative Commons license provides complete open access, the Commons is a kindred spirit to the open access movement.
Google's advanced search mode allows you to search for content produced under various Creative Commons licenses. For the "Usage Rights" field, four search options correspond to various licenses: "free to use or share"; "free to use or share, even commercially"; "free to use share or modify"; and "free to use, share or modify, even commercially."
Further details about the Creative Commons license options are available here.
Google's advanced search mode allows you to search for content produced under various Creative Commons licenses. For the "Usage Rights" field, four search options correspond to various licenses: "free to use or share"; "free to use or share, even commercially"; "free to use share or modify"; and "free to use, share or modify, even commercially."
Further details about the Creative Commons license options are available here.
Open Access is not new!
Here is Anita Coleman's response to Anita Colemanon OA Librarian - from ACS Online:
I am flattered by Heather Morrison's description of dLIST and my activities in the OALibrarian blog - thank you!
Heather asks me to elaborate on how S.R. Ranganathan fits into the OA movement - she's referrring to the dLIST & dL-Harvest presentation I'd made in Sept. 2005 to the Library Student Organization here at the University of Arizona. In particular, the memorable slide that brings together pictures of J.D. Bernal, Stevan Harnad, and S.R.R. The picture of Ranganthan was included for a couple of different reasons.
One, around that time (Sept. 2005) a question had been posted to the LIS-Forum electronic discussion list about making Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science openly available. Not many libraries have copies and they are difficult to buy. The poster who was forwarding the request also wrote SRR "had preached open access and accessibility to information throughout his life" and so his books should be openly available. Subsequent discussions clarified that SRR had been advocating open stacks. Two, I also wanted to raise consciousness that the idea of open access is not new - the OA movement is new and the technologies to spur it and make it possible are new. But access to information has quite fundamentally been about opening access; little by little though it now seems. This is also where J.D. Bernal, controversial figure though he is, comes in. But I'll leave him as a teaser for a super duper reference librarian heroine to elaborate... :).
Does this help? Feel free to leave comments and questions by clicking on comments below and posting or attached to the OALibrarian post - thanks!
I am flattered by Heather Morrison's description of dLIST and my activities in the OALibrarian blog - thank you!
Heather asks me to elaborate on how S.R. Ranganathan fits into the OA movement - she's referrring to the dLIST & dL-Harvest presentation I'd made in Sept. 2005 to the Library Student Organization here at the University of Arizona. In particular, the memorable slide that brings together pictures of J.D. Bernal, Stevan Harnad, and S.R.R. The picture of Ranganthan was included for a couple of different reasons.
One, around that time (Sept. 2005) a question had been posted to the LIS-Forum electronic discussion list about making Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science openly available. Not many libraries have copies and they are difficult to buy. The poster who was forwarding the request also wrote SRR "had preached open access and accessibility to information throughout his life" and so his books should be openly available. Subsequent discussions clarified that SRR had been advocating open stacks. Two, I also wanted to raise consciousness that the idea of open access is not new - the OA movement is new and the technologies to spur it and make it possible are new. But access to information has quite fundamentally been about opening access; little by little though it now seems. This is also where J.D. Bernal, controversial figure though he is, comes in. But I'll leave him as a teaser for a super duper reference librarian heroine to elaborate... :).
Does this help? Feel free to leave comments and questions by clicking on comments below and posting or attached to the OALibrarian post - thanks!
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Latest Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog
The Nov. 21 edition of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is available, along with Charles Bailey's picks, on Digital Koans. Next update: Dec. 5.
OCA, Google Library Project
From Walt Crawford's perspective, the Open Content Alliance and Google Library Projects will NOT replace library catalogues, nor will they weaken libraries...for full details, check out the Dec. 2005 Cites and Insights. Thanks to OA News
Anita Coleman
What better way to join our friends in the U.S. in their Thanksgiving celebrations than by giving thanks for the driving force behind DLIST: Anita Coleman, just one of the very many American open access librarian leaders!
Anita's presentation DLIST and Dl-Harvest: Open Access for LIS: presentation Sept. 2005, outlines the history of DLIST and DL-Harvest, a metadata harvester providing cross-searching for 11 repositories. DLIST was started with a budget of $5000 for a server, and relies entirely on volunteer labor - including the labor of a number of Anita's students, graduate research assistants, and interns over the years. Anita also talks a little bit about the OA movement - some familiar figures - George Soros, Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad - and others, whose connection with the OA movement isn't quite so familiar for me. I'm intrigued that Anita lists S.R. Ranganathan, 1892 - 1972. Anita, care to elaborate?
DLIST has an international advisory board, which includes ALA President Michael Gorman. Did you know that Michael practices self-archiving? There are a couple of his articles in DLIST!
Anita, of course, self-archives her own work as well - a substantial body of it, as she serves as Assistant Professor, School of Information Resources & Library Science, University of Arizona. Recently, Anita released a survey instrument for a work in progress - the DLIST Survey 2005: Self-Archiving and Scholarly Communication Behaviors in LIS. This item was featured in the Nov. 26 Open Access News.
If you are a librarian and debating whether to self-archive - whether in DLIST, E-LIS, or your institutional repository: here is a thought. We librarians experience all the beneifts of self-archiving of every other discipline - enhanced impact, more citations - but, for us, there is another important reason to self-archive. That is, once those mandates come into play, our faculty will be looking for help to archive their own works - and what better way for us to gain experience, than by starting with our own works - or encouraging and helping friends!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Anita's presentation DLIST and Dl-Harvest: Open Access for LIS: presentation Sept. 2005, outlines the history of DLIST and DL-Harvest, a metadata harvester providing cross-searching for 11 repositories. DLIST was started with a budget of $5000 for a server, and relies entirely on volunteer labor - including the labor of a number of Anita's students, graduate research assistants, and interns over the years. Anita also talks a little bit about the OA movement - some familiar figures - George Soros, Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad - and others, whose connection with the OA movement isn't quite so familiar for me. I'm intrigued that Anita lists S.R. Ranganathan, 1892 - 1972. Anita, care to elaborate?
DLIST has an international advisory board, which includes ALA President Michael Gorman. Did you know that Michael practices self-archiving? There are a couple of his articles in DLIST!
Anita, of course, self-archives her own work as well - a substantial body of it, as she serves as Assistant Professor, School of Information Resources & Library Science, University of Arizona. Recently, Anita released a survey instrument for a work in progress - the DLIST Survey 2005: Self-Archiving and Scholarly Communication Behaviors in LIS. This item was featured in the Nov. 26 Open Access News.
If you are a librarian and debating whether to self-archive - whether in DLIST, E-LIS, or your institutional repository: here is a thought. We librarians experience all the beneifts of self-archiving of every other discipline - enhanced impact, more citations - but, for us, there is another important reason to self-archive. That is, once those mandates come into play, our faculty will be looking for help to archive their own works - and what better way for us to gain experience, than by starting with our own works - or encouraging and helping friends!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch
Have a look at this message posted on the Sci Tech Library Question blog.
It's about the PerX project that Roddy MacLeod is involved with that involves "Investigating Resource Discovery Issues in Engineering Digital Repositories."
It's about the PerX project that Roddy MacLeod is involved with that involves "Investigating Resource Discovery Issues in Engineering Digital Repositories."
Saturday, November 26, 2005
ACRLog and Open Access
ACRLog is the official blog of the Association of College & Research Libraries. Authored by a group of academic librarians, ACRLog aims to discuss the issues of the day in the field of academic librarianship. It has a category called "Scholarly Communications," which includes some posts about open access.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Metadata Librarian Job
This just in from Open Access News (thanks to Peter Suber).
The Texas A&M University Libraries are looking for a metadata librarian. Excerpt from the job ad:
[E]xperience with one or more of the following standards: Dublin Core, METS/MODS, OpenURL, OAI-PMH, TEI, or others. Experience with creation and/or management of digital objects in various text, image, sound, and/or video formats. Knowledge of institutional repositories and open access publishing....
The Texas A&M University Libraries are looking for a metadata librarian. Excerpt from the job ad:
[E]xperience with one or more of the following standards: Dublin Core, METS/MODS, OpenURL, OAI-PMH, TEI, or others. Experience with creation and/or management of digital objects in various text, image, sound, and/or video formats. Knowledge of institutional repositories and open access publishing....
Web Citation Index
World Information Review posted a news article today on Web Citation Index . Here's the first paragraph:
"Thomson Scientific is releasing a single tool for searching and accessing online open access content. The Web Citation Index (WCI) from the abstracting and indexing (A&I) specialist will become part of its ISI Web of Knowledge platform and connect together pre-print articles, institutional repositories and open access (OA) journals..."
Web Citation Index was first mentioned early last year. Here's a February 2004 press release from ISI announcing their collaboration with NEC Laboratories America on the product and an a news article on Web Citation Index from Information Today from a month later.
"Thomson Scientific is releasing a single tool for searching and accessing online open access content. The Web Citation Index (WCI) from the abstracting and indexing (A&I) specialist will become part of its ISI Web of Knowledge platform and connect together pre-print articles, institutional repositories and open access (OA) journals..."
Web Citation Index was first mentioned early last year. Here's a February 2004 press release from ISI announcing their collaboration with NEC Laboratories America on the product and an a news article on Web Citation Index from Information Today from a month later.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Urfist Info: Actualité des Sciences de l'Information
Urfist Info: Actualité des Sciences de l'Information. From Open Access News, Sunday Nov. 20:
Urfist is a network of French library schools dealing specifically with scientific and technical information. They host a good blog, Urfist Info, that frequently covers OA developments. Among the recent guest bloggers are Hélène Bosc (current), Olivier Ertzscheid, Hervé Le Crosnier, and Jean-Michel Salaün. (Thanks to Jean-Claude Guédon.)
Urfist is a network of French library schools dealing specifically with scientific and technical information. They host a good blog, Urfist Info, that frequently covers OA developments. Among the recent guest bloggers are Hélène Bosc (current), Olivier Ertzscheid, Hervé Le Crosnier, and Jean-Michel Salaün. (Thanks to Jean-Claude Guédon.)
Saturday, November 19, 2005
CARL Brief to SSHRC on Open Access
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has posted their brief to Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) on Open Access on their news page at:
http://www.carl-abrc.ca/new/new-e.html
http://www.carl-abrc.ca/new/new-e.html
Antonella de Robbio
There are many, many heroes and leaders in the open access movement, around the world, including many librarians. Indeed, there cannot be too many: for open access to succeed, we all need to share. We need advocates and implementers in every country, every university, every association, every funding agency - and more. With profuse apologies to the many heroes and leaders who have not yet received the recognition deserved, let us make a start by linking to our works, and making a few introductions.
At the recent OAI4 and first E-LIS workshop, it was my great pleasure to meet for the first time the dynamic, hard-working, brilliant - and very kind - Antonella de Robbio.
Antonella is the originator and current site manager of E-LIS, an open access archive for documents in Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related areas, based on GNU e-prints technology, and hosted by the AEPIC team on computers belonging to the CILEA group. Formed in 2003, E-LIS is the first international e-print server in this subject area. In two short years, E-LIS has grown to include a completely volunteer editorial team from 41 countries (so far), with at least one editor in each country. E-LIS now includes close to 3,000 documents, and usage is beginning to rise substantially, as reported by Andrew Waller the other day, as awareness of E-LIS begins to grow. Papers and presentations from the first Workshop on e-prints in Library and Information Science, October 22, 2005, are available.
As the Co-ordinating Manager at the Library System of the University of Padova, one of Antonella's roles is as a member of the Italian Open Access Group (remember the Messina Declaration? To quote a message by Antonella on the rclis list: "On November 4th-5th 2004 thirty-two Italian universities (more than 40% of the Italian universities) gathered in Messina, Sicilia (Italy) to sign the "Messina Declaration", and committed to sign the Berlin Declaration".
Antonella also coordinates the Working Group for the Implementation of E-prints archives at the University of Padua, and recently brought forward an Open Access resolution to UNESCO. Naturally, Antonella's writings can be found through an E-LIS search (81 documents as of today, in Italian and English - not bad at all for a '98 grad of the Master in Library Management program at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan).
Keep up the good work, Antonella! - and, may the rest of us have a fraction of your energy.
Watch for future articles on OA Librarian about other librarian OA leaders, including others on the E-LIS team, as well as DLIST's Anita Coleman. If you know someone whose work deserves to be highlighted, or if you would to see a link to your own work on OA Librarian, please contact one of the blog team members.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
At the recent OAI4 and first E-LIS workshop, it was my great pleasure to meet for the first time the dynamic, hard-working, brilliant - and very kind - Antonella de Robbio.
Antonella is the originator and current site manager of E-LIS, an open access archive for documents in Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related areas, based on GNU e-prints technology, and hosted by the AEPIC team on computers belonging to the CILEA group. Formed in 2003, E-LIS is the first international e-print server in this subject area. In two short years, E-LIS has grown to include a completely volunteer editorial team from 41 countries (so far), with at least one editor in each country. E-LIS now includes close to 3,000 documents, and usage is beginning to rise substantially, as reported by Andrew Waller the other day, as awareness of E-LIS begins to grow. Papers and presentations from the first Workshop on e-prints in Library and Information Science, October 22, 2005, are available.
As the Co-ordinating Manager at the Library System of the University of Padova, one of Antonella's roles is as a member of the Italian Open Access Group (remember the Messina Declaration? To quote a message by Antonella on the rclis list: "On November 4th-5th 2004 thirty-two Italian universities (more than 40% of the Italian universities) gathered in Messina, Sicilia (Italy) to sign the "Messina Declaration", and committed to sign the Berlin Declaration".
Antonella also coordinates the Working Group for the Implementation of E-prints archives at the University of Padua, and recently brought forward an Open Access resolution to UNESCO. Naturally, Antonella's writings can be found through an E-LIS search (81 documents as of today, in Italian and English - not bad at all for a '98 grad of the Master in Library Management program at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan).
Keep up the good work, Antonella! - and, may the rest of us have a fraction of your energy.
Watch for future articles on OA Librarian about other librarian OA leaders, including others on the E-LIS team, as well as DLIST's Anita Coleman. If you know someone whose work deserves to be highlighted, or if you would to see a link to your own work on OA Librarian, please contact one of the blog team members.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Lehigh Conference on the Future of Scientific Publishing
Links to presentations from the conference, Scientific Publishing: What Does the Future Hold?, held at Lehigh University November 12, 2005.
Presentations by librarians at this conference:
Christine M. Roysden and Brian Simboli, Lehigh University. Whose Electronic Library Is It, Anyway?
Julia Blixrud, SPARC. Advancing Open Access for the Public Good
Presentations by librarians at this conference:
Christine M. Roysden and Brian Simboli, Lehigh University. Whose Electronic Library Is It, Anyway?
Julia Blixrud, SPARC. Advancing Open Access for the Public Good
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Visits and hits on E-LIS and DLIST
The number of visits and hits on two library and information science open access repositories, E-LIS and DLIST have greatly increased over the past year. E-LIS experienced 135,861 visits and 1,176,937 hits as of Octber 2005, up from 33,864 visits and 287,390 hits a year ago; looking just at hits, this is a 210% increase over what had been accumulated by a year ago. The number of hits on DLIST is 112,728, up from 41,146 in February 2004. Simply, these tools are being used more and more.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Introducing Walt Crawford's "Cites & Insights"
In "Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large," a Web-distributed journal of libraries, policy, technology and media, started in December 2000 by Walt Crawford, there is frequently a section called Library Access to Scholarship, which includes: events and articles related to access, including Open Access, alternative publishing models, and institutional archives. There is just such a section in his November 2005, No. 12 issue, which you can read by clicking here.
Okay, but who is Walt Crawford? Walt Crawford is a senior analyst at RLG (The Research Libraries Group) in California, and has been a full-time professional in library automation since 1968, at RLG since 1979. He is currently lead designer for Eureka, RLG's end-user search service and OpenURL analyst (among other things).Crawford was president of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, in 1992/93.
To learn more about Walt Crawford, see his homepage.IFLA urges governments to promote OA
In the Alexandria Manifesto on Libraries, the Information Society in Action, IFLA "urges national, regional and local governments as well as international organisations to: (among other things) promote open access to information and address structural and other barriers to access...
Just in time for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, which starts tomorrow, in Tunis! If you're a librarian and haven't heard about WSIS - it's an international event very much worth following. The documents from Phase I had many nice things to say about libraries, and librarians!
Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News.
Just in time for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, which starts tomorrow, in Tunis! If you're a librarian and haven't heard about WSIS - it's an international event very much worth following. The documents from Phase I had many nice things to say about libraries, and librarians!
Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Reading without buying
Further to my post about John Willinsky's new book "The Access Principle", in the introduction of his book, John writes "I have published and circulated earlier versions of most of these chapters in open access journals and as e-prints on my Web site." So, if you want to get a read on the book without actually purchasing it, go the Public Knowledge Project website and scroll down the publications page to see John's articles.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: Call for Papers
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, a new, peer-reviewed, open access journal due to begin publication in Spring 2006, has just issued a first call for papers.
From the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice web site:
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal due to begin publication in the spring of 2006. The purpose of the journal is to provide a forum for librarians to discover research which can contribute to best-practice decision making. Published quarterly by Learning Services, University of Alberta, this journal will provide original research and feature articles in the area of evidence based library and information practice as well as critically appraised reviews of existing research (evidence summaries).
Call for Papers
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice seeks papers on all areas of this topic including:
EBL application
Qualitative and quantitative research
Management and Administration issues related to EBP
Research Tools (statistics, data collection methods, etc.)
Collaborative and InterProfessional EBP
Research education in library schools
Evidence-Based Practices from other disciplines applicable to EBL
Harnessing evidence to support new innovations
Developing and applying evidence based tools
Future prospects for the evidenced based information profession
Maximizing the value and impact of our information services
The deadline for submissions for the first issue is December 1st, 2005. Subsequent 2006 deadlines are March 1st, June 1st and September 1st. See the Submissions section for further information.
Thanks to the Canadian Library Association's Evidence Based Librarianship Interest Group list for the alert.
From the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice web site:
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal due to begin publication in the spring of 2006. The purpose of the journal is to provide a forum for librarians to discover research which can contribute to best-practice decision making. Published quarterly by Learning Services, University of Alberta, this journal will provide original research and feature articles in the area of evidence based library and information practice as well as critically appraised reviews of existing research (evidence summaries).
Call for Papers
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice seeks papers on all areas of this topic including:
EBL application
Qualitative and quantitative research
Management and Administration issues related to EBP
Research Tools (statistics, data collection methods, etc.)
Collaborative and InterProfessional EBP
Research education in library schools
Evidence-Based Practices from other disciplines applicable to EBL
Harnessing evidence to support new innovations
Developing and applying evidence based tools
Future prospects for the evidenced based information profession
Maximizing the value and impact of our information services
The deadline for submissions for the first issue is December 1st, 2005. Subsequent 2006 deadlines are March 1st, June 1st and September 1st. See the Submissions section for further information.
Thanks to the Canadian Library Association's Evidence Based Librarianship Interest Group list for the alert.
DLIST Funding Proposal: The Impact of Open Access on Library and Information Science
Cheryl Knott Malone and Anita Coleman, The Impact of Open Access on Library and Information Science, text of a funding proposal, self-archived November 10, 2005.
This funding proposal is for research to answer the deceptively simple question, to what extent does open access improve the impact of an article?
The abstract notes that usage of usage of DLIST has grown from 41,156 hits in February 2004 to 112,728 hits in January 2005 - a near tripling of usage, in less than a year.
Thanks to Open Access News, Friday, November 11, 2005, for the alert.
This funding proposal is for research to answer the deceptively simple question, to what extent does open access improve the impact of an article?
The abstract notes that usage of usage of DLIST has grown from 41,156 hits in February 2004 to 112,728 hits in January 2005 - a near tripling of usage, in less than a year.
Thanks to Open Access News, Friday, November 11, 2005, for the alert.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
This Book's a Keeper!
I just received a doorstep delivery (yes, I ordered it online from MIT Press) of John Willinsky's brand new book "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship." Besides the fact that I've already touted on this blog Professor Willinsky's talents as a speaker and his expertise on open access, the back cover of his book includes the following praise from the open access guru himself, Peter Suber:
"John Willinsky understands the way the Internet changes everything for scholarly communication and has written a clear and compelling defense of open access, both in principle and in practice. I recommend it especially for its treatment of copyright issues and the special situation of scholarly societies and developing countries."
I've just started reading this book, and while I suspect I will be sharing it with many people (OA advocates and otherwise), I'm quite sure it's a book I'll want to keep.
"John Willinsky understands the way the Internet changes everything for scholarly communication and has written a clear and compelling defense of open access, both in principle and in practice. I recommend it especially for its treatment of copyright issues and the special situation of scholarly societies and developing countries."
I've just started reading this book, and while I suspect I will be sharing it with many people (OA advocates and otherwise), I'm quite sure it's a book I'll want to keep.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Announcing...OA Librarian!
OA Librarian is a blog with two purposes.
The blog is designed to gather together major search sources for freely available information in library and information science. See the top right hand corner of the blog, which features links to the DOAJ LIS journal collection - 52 titles as of today, along with links to E-LIS and D-LIST, as well as key advocacy resources particularly relevant to libraries and librarians. The result is a combined pathfinder / news resource blog. The idea is to bookmark the page, for handy reference particularly to the free resources, a tool which will become of greater importance as the OA resources grow.
From my point of view, it is becoming more and more attractive to begin research with international resources such as DOAJ and E-LIS. I find that the results give me a much broader perspective than searching in a package including only articles in english, written by people whose background is very similar to mine. For LIS faculty, here is a thought: what about an assignment that actually requires the use of DOAJ and/or E-LIS, to take advantage of this broad, global perspective?
Postings are on topics relating to open access that are particularly relevant for libraries and librarians: comments on open access activities from our perspectives, thoughts about what librarians will be doing in an open access world, celebrations of OA library accomplishments and stories about OA advocate librarians.
OA Librarian is a team effort. Founding team members are Lesley Perkins, a recent graduate of UBC's SLAIS program, and member of the BCLA Information Policy Committee, Andrew Waller from the University of Calgary, who has done some co-writing and co-publishing on open access with me, and Marcus Banks from NYU, who is on the editorial board at the open access journal, Biomedical Digital Libraries. Marcus' own blog, Marcus' World, includes the journal-within-a-blog Politics With Perspective. Comments are welcome on OA Librarian, and there is room for more on the blog team, so if you would like to join, let one of us know! Or, if you have a single news item or resource to add, send it to one of the team members to blog.
The blog is designed to gather together major search sources for freely available information in library and information science. See the top right hand corner of the blog, which features links to the DOAJ LIS journal collection - 52 titles as of today, along with links to E-LIS and D-LIST, as well as key advocacy resources particularly relevant to libraries and librarians. The result is a combined pathfinder / news resource blog. The idea is to bookmark the page, for handy reference particularly to the free resources, a tool which will become of greater importance as the OA resources grow.
From my point of view, it is becoming more and more attractive to begin research with international resources such as DOAJ and E-LIS. I find that the results give me a much broader perspective than searching in a package including only articles in english, written by people whose background is very similar to mine. For LIS faculty, here is a thought: what about an assignment that actually requires the use of DOAJ and/or E-LIS, to take advantage of this broad, global perspective?
Postings are on topics relating to open access that are particularly relevant for libraries and librarians: comments on open access activities from our perspectives, thoughts about what librarians will be doing in an open access world, celebrations of OA library accomplishments and stories about OA advocate librarians.
OA Librarian is a team effort. Founding team members are Lesley Perkins, a recent graduate of UBC's SLAIS program, and member of the BCLA Information Policy Committee, Andrew Waller from the University of Calgary, who has done some co-writing and co-publishing on open access with me, and Marcus Banks from NYU, who is on the editorial board at the open access journal, Biomedical Digital Libraries. Marcus' own blog, Marcus' World, includes the journal-within-a-blog Politics With Perspective. Comments are welcome on OA Librarian, and there is room for more on the blog team, so if you would like to join, let one of us know! Or, if you have a single news item or resource to add, send it to one of the team members to blog.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
E-LIS, an OA Archive for LIS
E-LIS is a free, open access archive for Library and Information Science; a truly international endeavor, with an editorial team encompassing 39 countries, and 22 languages represented - at least so far.
The first E-LIS Workshop was held at CERN in Switzerland, on October 22, 2005. More information about the Workshop, and about E-LIS, can be found at: http://eprints.rclis.org/
Please consider helping to build E-LIS by submitting your own articles, conference proceedings, newspaper and magazine articles, and more practical tools such as tutorials and pathfinders!
The first E-LIS Workshop was held at CERN in Switzerland, on October 22, 2005. More information about the Workshop, and about E-LIS, can be found at: http://eprints.rclis.org/
Please consider helping to build E-LIS by submitting your own articles, conference proceedings, newspaper and magazine articles, and more practical tools such as tutorials and pathfinders!
UofT's Digital Repository
The Autumn 2005 (Vol. 33, No. 1) issue of the University of Toronto Magazine contains an article called "The Infinite Library", written by Devin Crawley, a librarian and writer in Ottawa. The article's introduction reads: "Researchers are welcoming Google's plan to digitize millions of books, but the implications for libraries are profound." Citing "the growing competition between academic libraries and major technology companies, such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon," Crawley talks about how UTL (U of T Libraries) is attempting to teach researchers that there are limits to searching Google Scholar (although Google's logo is front and centre on the UTL home page), and that UTL's resources are more specialized, in-depth and targeted to specific fields. Crawley reports that "over the long term UTL is thinking about new ways that digitized materials can be stored, packaged and delivered." Here is an excerpt:
"As UTL attempts to secure a role for itself in the Google Age, it's reconsidering its traditional reliance on publishers and vendors and beginning to act a little like a publisher itself. Last year, for example, the library developed T-Space, a university-wide digital repository that holds thousands of documents, including course materials and unpublished scholarship that would previously have fallen outside the library's mandate to collect. Modelled on a similar repository developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, T-Space lets students download specialized course materials and allows faculty to post papers and research findings in a public venue without first having to find a publisher."
You can read the article here.
"As UTL attempts to secure a role for itself in the Google Age, it's reconsidering its traditional reliance on publishers and vendors and beginning to act a little like a publisher itself. Last year, for example, the library developed T-Space, a university-wide digital repository that holds thousands of documents, including course materials and unpublished scholarship that would previously have fallen outside the library's mandate to collect. Modelled on a similar repository developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, T-Space lets students download specialized course materials and allows faculty to post papers and research findings in a public venue without first having to find a publisher."
You can read the article here.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Perspectives on OA: SSHRC and NRC Press
In September, Heather Morrison and I deposited in E-LIS (E-prints in Library and Information Science) an article we co-wrote summarizing a session called "Open Access, New Roles for Funders and Publishers?" that was held at the Canadian Library Association Conference in Calgary, AB, this past June. The session speakers were Cameron MacDonald, Director of Publishing at NRC Press, and David Moorman, Project Administrator and Senior Policy Advisor at SSHRC. It was an interesting session in which both speakers raised important points to think about. You can read our article here
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Willinsky on OA at VPL's "Who Own's Knowledge?" Series
At the VPL "Speak Up: Who Owns Knowledge?" Series session called "Open or Closed: Software and Information", held at the Hastings Branch last night (and which I attended), UBC Professor and Distinguished Scholar John Willinsky spoke,among other things, about the importance and advantages of open access for the public. An engaging and entertaining speaker, and of course, a well-recognized authority and expert on this topic, John summarized open access as "your right to know, particularly about research." John said he hoped to instill in the audience a "sense of entitlement and expectation." When asked what he recommends as ways to convince authors to publish OA, he said we (librarians) can appeal to authors on these 4 grounds:
1. Economically -- with OA we can distribute information much more cheaply
2. Legally -- copyright protects the author
3. Ethically -- OA fits with the human right to know
4. Vanity -- "It will make their mother prouder if more people know about their research!"
If you have an opportunity to hear John Willinsky speak about open access, take it!
1. Economically -- with OA we can distribute information much more cheaply
2. Legally -- copyright protects the author
3. Ethically -- OA fits with the human right to know
4. Vanity -- "It will make their mother prouder if more people know about their research!"
If you have an opportunity to hear John Willinsky speak about open access, take it!
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Table of Contents
Librarians
Hélène Bosc
The CERN Library Team
Anita Coleman
Imma Subirats Coll
Introducing Walt Crawford's "Cites and Insights"
Fatima Darries: Award-Winning South African OA Librarian
Antonella de Robbio
Ray English, or The Open Access Genie
Ray English Inteview on Academic Commons
Ray English named ACRL Academic / Research Librarian of the Year!
Librarian Ezra Shiloba Gbaje wins award for open access work
The IDRC Library and Marjorie Whalen: more library leadership in the open access movement
Thomas Krichel: a man with ideas - and drive!
Rima Kupryte
Rick Luce honoured for Open Access work
Ann Okerson: An Unauthorized Tribute
Naina Pandita and Open Access in India
Ajit Pyati: Open Source and Open Access in Libraries
George Porter, and the OA Slam Dunk
Ingegerd Rabow: OA Librarian Receives Honorary Doctorate!
Ranganathan & Open Access
Jan Szczepanski: Collecting for the World
Honorary OA Librarians
This section honors exceptional open access advocates who are not librarians, but friendly to librarians.
Peter Suber: Heart of the Open Access Movement
Peter Suber. Special Award: Non-Librarian Working for our Cause.
Poised for Change: Rick Johnson
John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project
Reader Caution: the Remainder of this Table of Contents post is no longer kept up; rather, this remains for historical purposes only.
LIS Open Access Journals
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: Call for Papers
Four LIS Journals added to DOAJ!
LIS Archives: About the Archives
Visits and Hits on E-LIS and DLIST
DLIST Funding Proposal
CLA Conference Article on OA Session in E-LIS
Promoting E-LIS
E-LIS Passes 3,000 Submissions
Open Archive: intellectual platform for developing countries
Turkish Articles are in E-LIS
LIS Archives: Research
OA Resources other than LIS
Free Index: In the First Person
iLumina (sharable teaching materials)
LIS Blogs & Other Resources Featuring OA
Urfist Info: Actualité des Sciences de l'Information
Announcing OA Librarian
ACRLog and Open Access
Citation Impact Bibliography Resource
Libre acces a la information scientifique & technique
Conferences & Presentations
Lehigh Conference on the Future of Scientific Publishing
Eric Lease Morgan on OAI4
Views on the DASER-2 Summit, Dec. 2-4, 2005
Library Associations
IFLA Urges Governments to Promote OA
CARL Brief to SSHRC on Open Access (Canadian Association of Research Libraries Brief to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Concerning Open Access.
Library Vendors and OA
EBSCO makes LISTA OA!
Thomson Scientific Announces Web Citation Index
Libraries & Institutional Repositories
UofT's T-Space Digital Repository
Commentary & General
John Willinsky at the "Speak Up! Who Owns Knowledge" Series
John Willinsky's New Book "The Access Principle"
Reading "The Access Principle"> Without Buying It
Metadata Librarian Job
OCA and Google Library Project
Latest scholarly electronic publishing weblog
SPARC launches Open Access Programs website
Open Access is Not New
Google Search Option for Creative Commons Licenses
Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch
Open Access Provides a Forum That Can Save Lives
:: Culture Libre.ca ::
Library-Related Posts on Open Access News
Open Letter from Fellows of the Royal Society
Open Access in Poland
Indian Journal of Dermatology: New OA Journal
CERN and Open Access
OA Project for LIS Indexing Student
SHERPA Christmas Card & Flickr
Google Librarian News
Library Groups applaud CURES Bill as Speeding Access to Vital Biomedical Research
Michael Eisen's Open Science Blog
UBC Google Scholar Blog
Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Update, and 2006 Predictions
Top Five 2005 Search Trends in Medicine - by Dean Giustini
January SPARC Open Access Newsletter
New OA Journal: Library as Publisher
Funding our Digital Future
Engineering Scholarly Communication Blog
Open Access and Libraries Preprint
Help Needed: Content Recruitment Strategies for IRs
Open Archive: Intellectual Platform for Developing Countries
A little more about the IRDC Open Archive
The author, the repository and the signature: OA promotional tip
The magic link! an easy way to promote OA
COPPUL Animated Tutorials Sharing Project
CLA Information Commons Interest Group Wiki
Open J-Gate
Canadian Public Domain Registry Launched
Towards a Continuum of Scholarship
U of Tennessee Libraries Launch an All-OA Academic Press
Open Access is Impossible without Findability
ASIST 2005: Sparking Synergies: Bringing Research and Practice Together
SPARC Futures: An Evolving Agenda
Bielefeld Conference Presentations in E-LIS
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: New OA LIS Journal
Open Access (OA) Medical Podcasting
Elsevier's Response to Depositing Article in E-LIS
PerX Project and 'Marketing' with Metadata
Marcus Banks Appointed Editor-in-Chief of Biomedical Digital Libraries
Biblios Now in DOAJ
UBC Library Hosts Two New OA Journals
April (2006) SPARC Open Access Newsletter
Is Hiring Davidoff as Interim Editor CMAJ's Last Chance?
Le biblioteche per la libertà d'accesso all'informazione
E-LIS OA News (April 9, 2006)
E-LIS on Laurie the Librarian's Blog
Does human health rely on open access?
Open Educational Resources
Stats Canada Electronic Documents at No Charge!
60th LIS Journal in DOAJ!
Seeing is believing
PPT for OA Presentation at BCLA
Free College English and Organic Chemistry Resources
Canadian Parliamentary Library: Beacon of Access
June 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter
Institutional Support Key Variable in Success of Open Access Publishing
Scholar's Copyright
dLIST Information Sciences Digital Archive Announces New Editors
Evidence Based Librarianship and Open Access
Now OA! 7th International Conference on Webometrics...
The Open Access Movement and Information for Development
Research Councils U.K. Open Access Position Announcement
Hélène Bosc
The CERN Library Team
Anita Coleman
Imma Subirats Coll
Introducing Walt Crawford's "Cites and Insights"
Fatima Darries: Award-Winning South African OA Librarian
Antonella de Robbio
Ray English, or The Open Access Genie
Ray English Inteview on Academic Commons
Ray English named ACRL Academic / Research Librarian of the Year!
Librarian Ezra Shiloba Gbaje wins award for open access work
The IDRC Library and Marjorie Whalen: more library leadership in the open access movement
Thomas Krichel: a man with ideas - and drive!
Rima Kupryte
Rick Luce honoured for Open Access work
Ann Okerson: An Unauthorized Tribute
Naina Pandita and Open Access in India
Ajit Pyati: Open Source and Open Access in Libraries
George Porter, and the OA Slam Dunk
Ingegerd Rabow: OA Librarian Receives Honorary Doctorate!
Ranganathan & Open Access
Jan Szczepanski: Collecting for the World
Honorary OA Librarians
This section honors exceptional open access advocates who are not librarians, but friendly to librarians.
Peter Suber: Heart of the Open Access Movement
Peter Suber. Special Award: Non-Librarian Working for our Cause.
Poised for Change: Rick Johnson
John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project
Reader Caution: the Remainder of this Table of Contents post is no longer kept up; rather, this remains for historical purposes only.
LIS Open Access Journals
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: Call for Papers
Four LIS Journals added to DOAJ!
LIS Archives: About the Archives
Visits and Hits on E-LIS and DLIST
DLIST Funding Proposal
CLA Conference Article on OA Session in E-LIS
Promoting E-LIS
E-LIS Passes 3,000 Submissions
Open Archive: intellectual platform for developing countries
Turkish Articles are in E-LIS
LIS Archives: Research
OA Resources other than LIS
Free Index: In the First Person
iLumina (sharable teaching materials)
LIS Blogs & Other Resources Featuring OA
Urfist Info: Actualité des Sciences de l'Information
Announcing OA Librarian
ACRLog and Open Access
Citation Impact Bibliography Resource
Libre acces a la information scientifique & technique
Conferences & Presentations
Lehigh Conference on the Future of Scientific Publishing
Eric Lease Morgan on OAI4
Views on the DASER-2 Summit, Dec. 2-4, 2005
Library Associations
IFLA Urges Governments to Promote OA
CARL Brief to SSHRC on Open Access (Canadian Association of Research Libraries Brief to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Concerning Open Access.
Library Vendors and OA
EBSCO makes LISTA OA!
Thomson Scientific Announces Web Citation Index
Libraries & Institutional Repositories
UofT's T-Space Digital Repository
Commentary & General
John Willinsky at the "Speak Up! Who Owns Knowledge" Series
John Willinsky's New Book "The Access Principle"
Reading "The Access Principle"> Without Buying It
Metadata Librarian Job
OCA and Google Library Project
Latest scholarly electronic publishing weblog
SPARC launches Open Access Programs website
Open Access is Not New
Google Search Option for Creative Commons Licenses
Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch
Open Access Provides a Forum That Can Save Lives
:: Culture Libre.ca ::
Library-Related Posts on Open Access News
Open Letter from Fellows of the Royal Society
Open Access in Poland
Indian Journal of Dermatology: New OA Journal
CERN and Open Access
OA Project for LIS Indexing Student
SHERPA Christmas Card & Flickr
Google Librarian News
Library Groups applaud CURES Bill as Speeding Access to Vital Biomedical Research
Michael Eisen's Open Science Blog
UBC Google Scholar Blog
Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Update, and 2006 Predictions
Top Five 2005 Search Trends in Medicine - by Dean Giustini
January SPARC Open Access Newsletter
New OA Journal: Library as Publisher
Funding our Digital Future
Engineering Scholarly Communication Blog
Open Access and Libraries Preprint
Help Needed: Content Recruitment Strategies for IRs
Open Archive: Intellectual Platform for Developing Countries
A little more about the IRDC Open Archive
The author, the repository and the signature: OA promotional tip
The magic link! an easy way to promote OA
COPPUL Animated Tutorials Sharing Project
CLA Information Commons Interest Group Wiki
Open J-Gate
Canadian Public Domain Registry Launched
Towards a Continuum of Scholarship
U of Tennessee Libraries Launch an All-OA Academic Press
Open Access is Impossible without Findability
ASIST 2005: Sparking Synergies: Bringing Research and Practice Together
SPARC Futures: An Evolving Agenda
Bielefeld Conference Presentations in E-LIS
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice: New OA LIS Journal
Open Access (OA) Medical Podcasting
Elsevier's Response to Depositing Article in E-LIS
PerX Project and 'Marketing' with Metadata
Marcus Banks Appointed Editor-in-Chief of Biomedical Digital Libraries
Biblios Now in DOAJ
UBC Library Hosts Two New OA Journals
April (2006) SPARC Open Access Newsletter
Is Hiring Davidoff as Interim Editor CMAJ's Last Chance?
Le biblioteche per la libertà d'accesso all'informazione
E-LIS OA News (April 9, 2006)
E-LIS on Laurie the Librarian's Blog
Does human health rely on open access?
Open Educational Resources
Stats Canada Electronic Documents at No Charge!
60th LIS Journal in DOAJ!
Seeing is believing
PPT for OA Presentation at BCLA
Free College English and Organic Chemistry Resources
Canadian Parliamentary Library: Beacon of Access
June 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter
Institutional Support Key Variable in Success of Open Access Publishing
Scholar's Copyright
dLIST Information Sciences Digital Archive Announces New Editors
Evidence Based Librarianship and Open Access
Now OA! 7th International Conference on Webometrics...
The Open Access Movement and Information for Development
Research Councils U.K. Open Access Position Announcement
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