Characterising and Preserving Digital Repositories: File Format Profiles

Steve Hitchcock and David Tarrant show how file format profiles, the starting point for preservation plans and actions, can also be used to reveal the fingerprints of emerging types of institutional repositories.

URL : http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue66/hitchcock-tarrant/

Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy

Intellectual property law has long been justified on the belief that external incentives are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations that are easily copied.

This Essay argues that this foundational premise of the economic theory of intellectual property is wrong. Using recent advances in behavioral economics, psychology, and business-management studies, it is now possible to show that there are natural and intrinsic motivations that will cause technology and the arts to flourish even in the absence of externally supplied rewards, such as copyrights and patents.

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1746343

How to choose an free and open source in…

How to choose an free and open source integrated library system:

Purpose : This paper seeks to present the results of an analysis of 20 free and open source ILS platforms offered to the library community. These software platforms were subjected to a three-step analysis, whereby the results aim to assist librarians and decision makers in selecting an open source ILS, based on objective criteria.

Design/methodology/approach : The methodology applied involves three broad steps. The first step consists of evaluating all the available ILSs and keeping only those that qualify as truly open source or freely-licensed software. During this step, the correlation between the practices within the community and the terms associated with the free or open software license was measured. The second step involves evaluating the community behind each open source or free ILS project, according to a set of 40 criteria in order to determine the attractiveness and sustainability of each project. The third step entails subjecting the remaining ILSs to an analysis of almost 800 functions and features to determine which ILSs are most suited to the needs of libraries. The final score is used to identify strengths, weaknesses and differentiating or similar features of each ILS.

Findings : More than 20 open source ILSs were submitted to this methodology, but only three passed all the steps: Evergreen, Koha, and PMB. The main goal is not to identify the best open source ILS, but rather to highlight from which, of the batch of dozens of open source ILSs, librarians and decision makers can choose without worrying about how perennial or sustainable each open or free project is, as well as understanding which ILS provides them with the functionalities to meet the needs of their institutions.

Practical implications : This paper offers a basic model so that librarians and decision makers can make their own analysis and adapt it to the needs of their libraries.

Originality/value: This methodology meets the best practices in technology selection, with a multiple criteria decision analysis. It can also be easily adapted to the needs of all libraries.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15387

Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner…

Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner Countries :

“The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open access publishing. In the SOAP Symposium on 13 January 2011 in Berlin, the results of the SOAP Survey were made publicly available. “Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing” article is available in arXiv presenting preliminary analysis of the survey responses. To allow a maximal re-use of the information collected by this survey, the data were released under a CC0 waiver, so to allow libraries, publishers, funding agencies and academics to further analyse risks and opportunities, drivers and barriers, in the transition to open access publishing.

SURFfoundation made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in the Netherlands. Marnix van Berchum and Annemiek van der Kuil selected the questions and the selection should be considered as a first attempt to analyse the SOAP data for the Dutch situation. Further analysis could include different questions, and comparisons with other countries. SURFfoundation also invited others to make use of the SOAP data, to make their own analyses.

We followed the approach of the SURFfoundation and made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in 11 EIFL partner countries: Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine.”

URL : http://www.eifl.net/news/results-soap-survey-eifl-partner-countries

Open Access monographic publishing in th…

Open Access monographic publishing in the humanities :

“In recent years, it has become widely recognized that in the case of monographs, the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Academic publishers have been forced to become more selective in the books they publish, and authors, in particular young researchers and first time authors, have found it harder to find a press willing to publish their work. In response to the economic restraints of printed monographs, many publishers and academic institutes, in particular research libraries, have started to experiment with digital and Open Access publication of monographs.

OAPEN is the first international project to develop an Open Access model for publishers and stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN stands for Open Access Publishing in European Networks. It is a 30 month project co-funded by the European Union, to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).”

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/l6wg61l0mg6426w8/

Information access needs of satellite ca…

Information access needs of satellite campuses in Kenya – Can OER close the gap? The Case of Moi University Nairobi Campus :

“This case study was aimed at obtaining the experiences of faculty and students of Moi University, Nairobi Campus in accessing information resources for teaching, learning and research. The study examined background information regarding knowledge societies and the role of higher education in society. This was done with a view to exploring the potential of Open Educational Resources in enhancing access to teaching, learning and research information resources at the campus. The literature review focused on the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) and provided a critical examination of access to knowledge and learning materials in higher education. Evidently, little empirical studies have been conducted in Africa concerning OER. The Communities of Practice theory was adopted to inform the study with regard to learning experiences and their realization in communities. Online questionnaires and interviews were the principle data collection instruments. These were administered upon faculty, students and the librarian of Moi University, Nairobi campus. Furthermore, data was also gathered through interviews with OER experts from North America, Europe, and Africa. These experts provided vital information on the potential of OER in enhancing access to teaching, learning and research information resources to institutions such as the case for this study. The findings of the study revealed that the concept of OER was not clearly understood by the respondents and interviewees from the case institution. Respondents confused the concept of OER with other concepts like e-learning. Nevertheless, they signaled appreciation for access to open resources. In addition, it was evident that the faculty and students of this institution had insufficient access to resources. The library was not sufficiently stocked with information materials and facilities to cater for the growing population of the campus. The study recommends the adoption of more open educational practices through the creation of electronic institutional repositories that are open and searchable. Furthermore, the study suggests greater collaboration and sharing of resources and teaching practices among faculty within the campus and beyond. To achieve this, both faculty and students require information literacy skills. Finally, the study recommends that the librarians and information professionals be more proactive in identifying and bringing awareness to clients about available and relevant open resources.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15384

Multivariate approach to classify resear…

Multivariate approach to classify research institutes according to their outputs: the case of the CSIC’s institutes :

“This paper attempts to build a classification model according to the research products created by those institutes and hence to design specific evaluation processes. Several scientific input/output indicators belonging to 109 research institutes from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) were selected. A multidimensional approach was proposed to resume these indicators in various components. A clustering analysis was used to classify the institutes according to their scores with those components (principal component analysis). Moreover, the validity of the a priori classification was tested and the most discriminant variables were detected (linear discriminant analysis). Results show that there are three types of institutes according to their research outputs: Humanistic, Scientific and Technological. It is argue that these differences oblige to design more precise assessment exercises which focus on the particular results of each type of institute. We conclude that this method permits to build more precise research assessment exercises which consider the varied nature of the scientific activity.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15364