Local Transparency – A Practitioners Gui…

Local Transparency – A Practitioners Guide to Publishing New Contracts and Tenders Data

“This guide offers practical help to meet both immediate targets, and to adopt approaches that will add most value for local people and public services over the longer term. It therefore suggests how to meet the requirements for data publication by January 2011, but also offers help in opening up other public data. It describes:
• what data to publish
• how to publish this data online in an open format
• what to consider in publishing; including data protection and licensing
• how to make enable more constructive use of the data as Linked Data.”

URL : http://lgnewcontracts.readandcomment.com/files/2010/12/101122-New-Contracts-Data-Practitioners-Guide-V7.pdf

Visibility of the scientific production of the University of León (ULE), Spain

This study measured the international visibility of the ULE research output and the importance of the journals in which ULE researchers published their work, based on the references indexed in international databases (Scopus, WoS, Academic Search, Biosis, Biological Abstracts, PubMed, Francis and FSTA), from 1998 to 2006.

The total production between 1998-2006 was 2,317 documents (2,005 articles and 108 conference papers). ULE’s research in science and technology is more represented in databases than social sciences and humanities. An increasing presence of ULE research in international databases is observed.

High collaboration level among authors (groups of 4 – 5), but mainly internal within ULE (69.49%). More than 75% of the articles have been referenced in JCR (WoS) or SJR (Scopus). The coverage of journals in which ULE researchers published is higher in Scopus, but WoS indexed more papers.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19496/

Open Access repositories and journals fo…

Open Access repositories and journals for visibility: Implications for Malaysian libraries :

“This paper describes the growth of Open Access (OA) repositories and journals as reported by monitoring initiatives such as ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories), Open DOAR (Open Directory of Open Access Repositories), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Directory of Web Ranking of World Repositories by the Cybermetrics Laboratory in Spain and published literature. The performance of Malaysian OA repositories and journals is highlighted. The strength of OA channels in increasing visibility and citations are evidenced by research findings. It is proposed that libraries champion OA initiatives by making university or institutional governance aware; encouraging institutional journal publishers to adopt OA platform; collaborating with research groups to jumpstart OA institutional initiatives and to embed OA awareness into user and researcher education programmes. By actively involved, libraries will be free of permission, licensing and archiving barriers usually imposed in traditional publishing situation.”

URL : http://majlis.fsktm.um.edu.my/detail.asp?AID=960

Librarians’ role as change agents for i…

Librarians’ role as change agents for institutional repositories: A case of Malaysian academic libra :

“The primary reason for establishing an institutional repository is to increase the visibility of the institution’s research output by making it Open Access. Academic libraries are becoming very involved in managing electronic scholarly products and participating in the evolving scholarly communication process through institutional repositories. Although institutional repositories can make room for easier access to universities’ research output, unfortunately it is not fully developed in some academic institutions. The origin of this problem is that there are known instances where librarians in-charge of institutional repository are unaware of their roles, and are unskilled in implementing the institutional repository. This paper describes a study conducted on the roles of librarians in the deployment and content recruitment of institutional repositories in eight (8) universities in Malaysia. Sample for this study are librarians who are involved with the development and implementation of institutional repository in their respective universities. The study reveals that the act of collecting materials for depositing is mainly done by librarians rather than the authors and researchers. Providing training sessions, holding meetings in departments and faculties, and also linking of the institutional repository website from the university and faculties’ website have the highest rank in librarians’ approach to promote the institutional repository. The paper also discusses the process of depositing, motivation factors, roles, marketing and benefits of institutional repository that will have reference value for the librarians who desire to embark on an institutional repository.”

URL : http://majlis.fsktm.um.edu.my/detail.asp?AID=961

The size distribution of open access pub…

The size distribution of open access publishers: A problem for open access? :

“I stumbled across the question of publisher size while preparing for an earlier article. From the viewpoint of an economist, the size distribution of open access publishers looked inefficient. In this article I first explore reasons to be sceptical to a situation with a large number of small publishers. Then I go through the numbers from the Directory of Open Access Journals, also discussing problems inherent in the material. The results are then compared to similar data about toll access publishing. A conclusion is that, even though numbers may lack in exactitude, there seems to be a need for institutions to look at how they organize their publishing activities.”

URL : http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3208/2726

Open Licenses and Radical Shift in Digit…

Open Licenses and Radical Shift in Digital Content Distribution. :

“World Wide Web is becoming the most preferred location for academic community, librarians and other professionals for communication, content generation and transfer. They are extensively making use of web services such as blogs, podcast, wiki’s, digital libraries and institutional repositories for the transfer and access of information content in digital format. Text, images, audio and video in digitized format facilitate easy creation, transfer and duplication of information throughout networks. Reckless use and transfer of digital content through Internet invokes threats to copyright claims of commercial content creators. This situation force commercial publishers to make use of technology and law to ensure security and prevent unauthorized access of digital content.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19438/

Les carnets de recherche en ligne, espac…

Les carnets de recherche en ligne, espace d’une conversation scientifique décentrée :

“Le carnet de recherches produit un décentrement des lieux d’écriture vers des espaces moins codifiés et moins formels que les espaces de publication traditionnels, prenant ainsi le relais de formes plus volatiles et moins individuelles de conversation. Ce qui est en jeu est moins une économie de l’écriture que de la lecture. En jetant les bases d’une nouvelle relation au lectorat, le carnet de recherche offre l’opportunité de réinventer l’écriture scientifique autour du paradigme de la conversation, renouant ainsi avec une vieille tradition de débat scientifique, tout en se dotant d’une rhétorique adaptée au nouvel espace qui se met en place.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00439849/fr/