Challenges in Sustainable Open Source: A Case Study :
The Archivists’ Toolkit is a successful open source software package for archivists, originally developed with grant funding. The author, who formerly worked on the project at a participating institution, examines some of the challenges in making an open source project self-sustaining past grant funding. A consulting group hired by the project recommended that — like many successful open source projects — they rely on a collaborative volunteer community of users and developers. However, the project has had limited success fostering such a community. The author offers specific recommendations for the project going forward to gain market share and develop a collaborative user and development community, with more open governance.
URL : http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2493
A Principled Approach to Online Publicat…
A Principled Approach to Online Publication Listings and Scientific Resource Sharing :
The Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Psycholinguistics has developed a service to manage and present the scholarly output of their researchers. The PubMan database manages publication metadata and full-texts of publications published by their scholars. All relevant information regarding a researcher’s work is brought together in this database, including supplementary materials and links to the MPI database for primary research data. The PubMan metadata is harvested into the MPI website CMS (Plone). The system developed for the creation of the publication lists, allows the researcher to create a selection of the harvested data in a variety of formats.
URL : http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2520
Sciences et société en interaction sur Internet. Éléments pour une histoire de l’édition électronique en sciences humaines et sociales
Dans l’histoire des rapports complexes qu’entretiennent sciences et société, le développement des réseaux numériques constitue un moment stratégique, que ce soit au niveau de leur développement technique, ou des modifications que ce développement produit sur les formes de la communication scientifique.
Le cas particulier des sciences humaines et sociales met bien en évidence le rôle de médiation que les TIC jouent dans les relations entre sciences et société.
Feasibility Study on the AfricaConnect I…
Feasibility Study on the AfricaConnect Initiative :
To be able to fulfil their missions, African research and higher education institutions need access to the global research and education network infrastructure. Unlike their peers on other continents, most African institutions do currently not have such an access.
Within the partnership on Science and Technology, the African and European Union Commissions have
given highest priority to the AfricaConnect initiative as an early deliverable with the objective to support the African research and higher education institutions in their effort to get access to this resource, which is a requirement for the development of knowledge societies. An emerging terrestrial broadband communication infrastructure seems to offer opportunities for African institutions to join.
This one-year feasibility study for AfricaConnect, FEAST, was commissioned by EC late 2008 to explore
the feasibility of deploying a regional backbone connecting dedicated National Research and Education
Networks (NRENs) in Africa to each other and to their peers on other continents via GÉANT, the pan-
European research and education network backbone. The study has been carried out by KTH as main
contractor and DANTE and TERENA as subcontractors. The research leading up to the findings has been conducted via physical visits, workshops and email discussions involving policy makers, regulators, communication operators, infrastructure owners as well as faculty members, students and research and education network communities in about 30 African countries. Many of the contacts come from long-standing institutional and individual cooperation in the areas of research and education.
URL : http://www.feast-project.org/documents/FEAST-Final-Report-2010-03-22.pdf
Open access journal publishing in Ahmadu…
Open access journal publishing in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria :
Open Access has been identified as an initiative that can improve access and provide global visibility for research work conducted by researchers and scholars. This study examined scholarly publication, particularly open access journals in Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria. Survey research method was adopted for this study and purposive sampling technique was adopted to collect data using
questionnaire from twenty-one chief-editors of scholarly journals published in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. The study revealed, among others that only 2(9.5%) out of the 21(100%) of scholarly journals published in Ahmadu Bello University are open access journals. Lack of awareness of the potentials of open access journals, and concern over copyright issues are some of the challenges
identified by the study hindering the adoption and transition of closed journals to open access journals by publishers of scholarly journals in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. This study also highlights some of the strategies that can be adopted to promote open access journals amongst publishers of scholarly journals in Ahmadu Bello University and Nigeria at large.
URL : http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/138-gbaje-en.pdf
Open-Access-Fachrepositorien
OA-Fachrepositorien ist ein von der DFG gefördertes Projekt der Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz. Ziel ist eine Förderung der Sichtbarkeit und Nutzung der in institutionellen Repositorien zahlreich vorhandenen Dokumente durch eine an den Bedürfnissen der Wissenschaftler orientierte geeignete Einbindung in fachliche Repositorien und andere Zielsysteme, v.a. Fachdatenbanken, die von Fachwissenschaftlern als primäre Sucheinstiege verwendet werden.
URL : http://www.ub.uni-konstanz.de/bibliothek/projekte/open-access-fachrepositorien.html
Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is …
Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time : http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000375