Impact of Open Access on stem cell research: An author co-citation analysis

We explore the impact of Open Access (OA) on stem cell research through a comparison of research reported in OA and in non-OA publications. Using an author co-citation analysis method, we find that (a) OA and non-OA publications cover similar major research areas in the stem cell field, but (b) a more diverse range of basic and medical research is reported in OA publications, while (c) biomedical technology areas appear biased towards non-OA publications.

It appears that OA helps maintain diversity of research in this highly interdisciplinary field, and hence contributes to a healthy balance of scientific advancement.
URL : http://conference.ifla.org/past-wlic/2010/155-strotmann-en.pdf

The creation of an information repository: a perspective from Mozambican higher education sector

Open Access Repositories are seen as an opportunity for knowledge exchange and scholarly communication, especially in a country like Mozambique, where the spread and access to information is still very poor and there are few journals where the researchers and academic staff can publish the results of their work.

Due to this situation, the common sense is that there is not research activity in the country, even in the higher education institutions. In order to change this vision and taking advantage of the technology available, a group of university librarians has decided that, even if they are few, it is possible to present the research results which have been still hidden within the walls of each university, by establishing a joint Open Access information repository.

The paper aims to describe the project of establishing an information repository in Mozambique, the implications of having a joint project, the challenges for getting contents, bearing in mind all the issues related to copyright, and also the inclusion of other institutions in the project.

Also, it looks at the impact of the repository in the academic and research community within the country and some strategies that have to be defined in order to increase the readership on the repository contents, either by Mozambican users, or from other parts of the world.

URL : http://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2010/138-issak-en.pdf

NOPR (NISCAIR online periodical repository): NISCAIR initiatives

The development of technology has brought enormous opportunity to bring the results of research primarily to all through digital communication – anyone, anywhere and anytime.

IT is playing an important role in today’s world and these technologies are meant to help the customers/clientele. To keep pace with the changing world, libraries are also using these technologies to upgrade themselves, improving services, reaching each and every corner and making available resource to reach its users and Institutional Repository is an emerging concept and playing an important role in preserving the intellectual capital of the academic and research institutions.

Now every institution wants to launch its IR and one such initiative is done by NISCAIR by launching NOPR.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/14487/

Science Dissemination using Open Access

The book is a compendium of selected literature on Open Access, both on the technical and organizational levels, and was written in an effort to guide the scientific community on the requirements of Open Access, and the plethora of low-cost solutions available.

The book also aims to encourage decision makers in academia and research centers to adopt institutional and regional Open Access Journals and Archives to make their own scientific results public and fully searchable on the Internet.

Discussions on open publishing via Academic Webcasting are also included. The book is an effort by ICTP-SDU (Italy) in collaboration with CERN (Switzerland) enabled by the support of INASP (UK).

URL : https://issuu.com/sdu-ictp/docs/openaccess