Monthly Archives: May 2008

Science & technology online collaboration opportunities

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Here is a summary of some of the latest opportunities for scientists to share work online:

Source: Tenopir, Carol, et al., "Information with a Twist: Vendors keep the party going with Web 2.0",  Library Journal, May 15, 2008.
 
Elsevier:
1.  2collab — ” to support scientific collaboration and information filtering”
2. “Scirus Topic Pages — ” to facilitate scholarly discussion on specialized topics”
 
American Chemical Society:
1. “ACS Nanotation” is an online space in the new ACS journal Nano
2. Offers alerting services via Email or RSS feeds.
 
“Taylor & Francis added “NanoScienceWorks.org,” a free community portal for nanoscience researchers that enhances the NANOnetBASE database.”
Thomson Scientific:
1. “Journal Citation Forum” is an online discussion place for citation research methods.
2. Thomson Scientific will use the “Knowledge Dashboard” from Collexis to build a data mining  tool for Web of Knowledge.
 
IEEE is providing free access to high energy physics articles…otherwise they are keeping the same subscription model.
 
“JSTOR added links to cited references for those journals that are in the JSTOR collection and is adding links to references cited in journals that are outside the JSTOR collection.”

Open Access proposal at Harvard

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From The Chronical of Higher Education via Patty Gaspari-Bridges, Head of the Science Libraries, Princeton University: 

February 12, 2008

 

"Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement

Harvard University’s faculty this evening adopted a policy that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.  Peter Suber, an open-access activist with Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group in Washington, said on his blog that the new policy makes Harvard the first university in the United States to mandate open access to its faculty members’ research publications.  Stuart M. Shieber, a professor of computer science at Harvard, who proposed the policy to the faculty, said after the vote in a news release that the decision ‘should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated.’  The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of the article to the provost’s office, which will place it in an online repository.  The policy will allow Harvard authors to publish in any journal that permits posting online after publication. According to Mr.Suber, about two-thirds of pay-access journals allow such posting in online repositories. –Lila Guterman ‘

 copyright 2008 CHE (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Cal (Berkeley) to pay for authors to publish in Open Access journals

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"enews feature: Berkeley steps forward with bold initiative to pay authors’ open-access charges 

 

It’s one thing to say you support open-access publishing. It’s another to provide authors with a pot of money to actually pay for it. That’s what’s happening at the University of California Berkeley. In January, the university launched the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative, a pilot program co-sponsored by the University Librarian and the Vice Chancellor for Research to cover publication charges for open-access journals… "

 

From SPARC enews, May, 2008

 

To read more, or subscribe to the SPARC  (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) newsletter: http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.shtml 

Environmental Justice — new journal

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EarthHands.jpg

"Mary Ann Liebert brings out premier issue of Environmental Justice – 15 May 2008

Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., US, has announced the launch of a new journal – Environmental Justice. Dr. Sylvia Hood Washington of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal, the premier issue of which is available for free online at www.liebertpub.com/env.

A quarterly publication, Environmental Justice seeks to be the central forum for the research, debate, and discussion of the equitable treatment and involvement of all people, especially minority and low-income populations, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The journal aims to provide an intellectual forum that presents a balanced and objective assessment of environmental inequalities locally, nationally, and globally.

Environmental Justice explores the adverse and disparate environmental burden impacting marginalized populations and draws upon the expertise and perspectives of all parties involved in environmental justice struggles: communities, industry, academia, government, and nonprofit organisations. Legal challenges and lawsuits to ensure prevention of harmful policies, projects, and developments are within its purview. Also, the journal covers issues of compliance and enforcement, activism, and corrective actions."

Source:   Knowledgespeak Newsletter              

Canada’s National Research Council Sci-Tech article database

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"NRC-CISTI offers pay-per-article service for database – 14 May 2008
 
Canada-based National Research Council’s Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) has launched Discover, a suite of current and planned pay-per-article services. Discover is designed to allow any researcher to search a database of more than 20 million articles for free and pay by credit card to view and print those selected. No pre-registration, user name or password is required.

Each article costs C$12, plus publisher fees and applicable taxes. Users see the full and exact cost of items added to their shopping carts. Open access articles are available free of any charges. Articles from NRC-CISTI’s electronic collection (indicated with a green mouse symbol) are available for viewing immediately. Articles in the print collection (indicated with a red flying envelope symbol) must first be scanned, and users receive a link by e-mail when the article is ready to be viewed and printed. Access to all articles is for one view, one print. Access begins when the link is opened and ends when the link is closed. Users may not save the document to their desktop.

NRC-CISTI is planning to launch a free Discover Alerts service later in the year. This service will allow users to register to receive electronic notification of new articles based on search criteria or journal title. The alerts will be delivered either via e-mail or RSS feeds."  

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter
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This will be a service to keep in mind particularly when one is no longer connected to a university or company which provides easy and free document delivery.  While one is at Princeton University, do utilize our Document Delivery /Interlibrary Loan service  — a resource of which we are proud.  Of course, an individual on his own should have access through a public library.  The price of this new service  from CISTI seems very reasonable.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research

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Announcing the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research

  
The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a online, open access, peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary, academic journal, which engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. Web site: http://jvwr.org

Open Calls for Papers:

From 

Gerry McKiernan, Associate Professor

Science and Technology Librarian, Iowa State University Library

 

Nature.com wins ‘Oscars of the Internet’

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Nature Publishing Group has won a "Webby" for the "Best Science Website" for 2008.

Besides searching access to all of their journals, their website features the following: 

"Through Nature.com, users can access news and features from Nature News and visit Naturejobs, NPG’s careers information and science recruitment website. NPG launched Connotea, the document tagging and social bookmarking web site in 2003. Nature Network, NPG’s social networking service connects scientists at a global and local level. The success of the weekly Nature Podcast has led to the construction of NPG’s own in-house podcast studio. The site also hosts a number of NPG blogs, the preprint service Nature Precedings, and country-focussed portals such as Nature China and Nature India."

For more details about Nature.com and the Webbies, here is the item in Knowledgespeak Newsletter.

PubMed adding related review articles to specific articles

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News from the National Library of Medicine, from "NLM Technical Bulletin", May-June, 2008, No. 362:

Soon we are likely to encounter — in PubMed’s "AbstractPlus" format — related review articles listed by decreasing relevancy, in a box at the lower right.   Above at the right are related references.

For an illustration, see:

  *NLM Technical Bulletin, May-Jun 2008, Related Reviews Coming to AbstractPlus in PubMed
  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj08/mj08_related_reviews.html
 

PubMedCentral — Open Access journals increasing

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"40 new journals have been added to PubMedCentral in the last 60 
days!  Of these, 22 or more than half contribute content immediately, 
and an additional 6 make content available within the NIH 12-month 
timeline, for a total of 70% of these new journals facilitating 
compliance with the NIH policy."
From Heather Morrison, MLIS
"The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics"
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

Via Patty Gaspari-Bridges, Head of Science Libraries
 

 

Open Access Directory

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Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement
 
Boston, April 30, 2008.  Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching. 
 
The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists –for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal "declarations of independence"– and add more over time. 
 
The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access. 
 
The URL for the Open Access Directory is http://oad.simmons.edu . 
 
To contact us, email Athanasia Pontika, the Assistant Editor (OAD.contact@gmail.com), or the Editorial Board (OAD.editors@gmail.com).
 
The wiki is represented by an editorial board consisting of prominent figures in the open access movement. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College hosts and provides technical support to the OAD.

Source:  Patty Gaspari-Bridges & ScholComm, a listserv of the American Library Association