Saturday, December 31, 2005

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Update, and 2006 Predictions

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.

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.
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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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

    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.

    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).

    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

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    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.
    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.
    Read two bloggers' views on DASER-2: Dorothea Salo and Christina Pikas.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.)

    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

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.