Electronic Publishing, Knowledge Sharing and Open Access: A New Environment for Political Science

In this article, we present an overview of the major changes occurring in electronic publishing, with a focus on open access. We shall argue that the notion itself of publication is undergoing a deep transformation, as it is no longer the monopoly of a limited number of specialised companies and institutions, but, through the web, it has become an option available to an infinite number of collective and individual actors.

URL : http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eps/journal/v9/n1s/abs/eps201035a.html

The Anatomy of an Electronic Discussion …

The Anatomy of an Electronic Discussion List for Librarians, KUTUP-L: Bibliometric and Content Analyses of Postings :

“Electronic discussion lists are widely used as a professional and scientific communication tool since late 1980s. Analysis of messages sent to discussion lists provides useful information on professional as well as scientific communication patterns. In this paper, we present the findings of a bibliometric analysis of some 20,000 messages sent to KUTUP‐L, an electronic discussion list for Turkish librarians, between 1994 and 2008. We test if the distributions of messages and their authors conform to Pareto, Price and Lotka laws. We then analyze the contents of 977 messages based on a stratified sample. Findings indicate that the number of messages sent to KUTUP‐L has increased over the years along with the number of authors. Two thirds (1,232) of about 1,900 list members posted at least one message to the list while the rest preferred to be so called “lurkers”. Some 35 authors posted almost half (49%) the messages while 20% of the authors posted 83% of all messages. The distribution of messages to authors conform to Price (“the square root of all authors would post half the messages”) and Pareto laws (so called “80/20 rule”), respectively. Of the 1,232 authors, one third (as opposed to 60% predicted by Lotka’s Law) sent only one message to the list. Results of content analysis show that 40% of messages sent to the list were off‐topic. Issues about or related with information management services (32%), library and information science (23%) and professional and scientific communication (19%) were discussed more often in the list. The intent analysis of the postings shows that three quarters of the messages were initiatory while the rest were reflexive. That’s to say that the majority of messages posted on KUTUP‐L to initiate a discussion did not seem to generate enough interest for others to reflect upon them by sending follow up messages, suggesting that professional and scientific communication taking place on KUTUP‐L on certain subjects can be characterized as more of a one‐way communication than a participatory one.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18727/

Digital Scholarly Publishing and Archiving Services by Academic Libraries: Case Study of the University of Patras

“During the last years, dramatic changes in the electronic publishing landscape have created new roles and changed the traditional ones. Presently, some libraries have capitalised on their experience and knowledge in information technology and electronic publishing to undertake such activities, while at the same time they spearhead the campaign for Open Access spreading within academic communities.

The Library & Information Centre (LIC) of the University of Patras (UoP), Greece, has been playing an active role in promoting Open Access (OA) in Greece. Since 2007, LIC has been experimenting with OA publishing practices and tools within the framework of various R&D projects. Two of the major results of these efforts are the ‘Pasithee’ e-publishing platform and the ‘Dexamene’ digital archive for Greek scholarly journals. Both platforms are based on OJS-Open Journal Systems e-publishing software. The two facilities were appropriately modified to meet the LIC’s publishing and archiving requirements respectively. Currently two journals are being hosted on each platform and all four are from the Humanities. The LIC is negotiating with more publishers and editorial teams to host their journals.
In this article we focus on:
1. technical and managerial key issues of the development and operation phases,
2. services and procedures,
3. the business model,
4. technological, procedural and legal issues and problems that were encountered when working together with publishers, editors and authors, and
5. future plans for improving and upgrading our e-publishing services into an integrated institutional platform to cover all kinds of publications and data types (monographs, conference proceedings, teaching material, bulletins, magazines etc.).

The article concludes with a succinct presentation of the Directory of Greek Digital Resources, a pilot infrastructure developed by the LIC which indexes and presents digital publishing initiatives in Greece and aims to become a formal registry of Greek scholarly resources in digital format.”

URL : Digital Scholarly Publishing and Archiving Services by Academic Libraries: Case Study of the University of Patras

Alternative URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/index.php/lq/article/view/7991