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First Author: a resource for scientists for publishing scientific research
by Sukhdev Singh 13 Apr '06

13 Apr '06

Friends, Just came to know about a site called First Author < http://www.firstauthor.org/index.html > . It is a resource for scientists dedicated to innovations in, and debates surrounding, publishing scientific research. It reports news from top journals, publishers, and funding and research bodies. New technologies for referencing, producing, and archiving scientific papers are reviewed here. Long-term debates in scientific writing such as peer review, impact factors, open access publishing, and intellectual property are also discussed. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC. http://openmed.nic.in

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Caseplace.org
by vimal kumar 13 Apr '06

13 Apr '06

Dear Professional, CasePlace.org is a free service of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program. CasePlace offers a wide range of business education materials in social impact management, sustainability and business ethics. The site contains cases and teaching notes, teaching modules, journal articles, course syllabi, books, conference announcements, current events and more. Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com --------------------------------- Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Dear Professional, CasePlace.org is a free service of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program. CasePlace offers a wide range of business education materials in social impact management, sustainability and business ethics. The site contains cases and teaching notes, teaching modules, journal articles, course syllabi, books, conference announcements, current events and more. Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/postman2/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/ev… PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.

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Trials is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal
by sandeep bhavsar 13 Apr '06

13 Apr '06

Trials http://www.trialsjournal.com/ Trials is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that will encompass all aspects of the performance and findings of randomized controlled trials. Trials will experiment with, and then refine, innovative approaches to improving communication about trials. They are keen to move beyond publishing traditional trial results articles (although these will be included). They believe this represents an exciting opportunity to advance the science and reporting of trials. Prior to 2006, Trials was published as Current Controlled Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine (CCTCVM). All published CCTCVM articles are available via the Trials website and citations to CCTCVM article URLs will continue to be supported. The impact factor shown relates to articles published in CCTCVM during 2003-4. Making all its content open access and not retaining copyright, Trials offers a way to make data both freely available and highly visible to trialists worldwide; this will benefit the impact of your publication among peers and society. The journal has unrestricted space and takes advantage of all the technical possibilities available for electronic publishing. To date, journals have focused on reporting the results of trials, with very little coverage of why and how they are conducted. Reports of trials have been restricted both by authors and editors - both parties often select only a subset of the outcomes measured, while the latter often impose word limits on the articles published making it difficult to communicate the lessons learnt from conducting the trial, let alone include adequate details of how the trial was conducted. The Internet offers both unlimited space and interactivity, and they are keen to harness these attributes. For instance, trialists will be able to provide the detail required to be a true scientific record and do more to make the article's message comprehensible to a variety of reader groups. They will also be able to communicate not only all outcome measures, as well as varying analyses and interpretations, but also in-depth descriptions of what they did and what they learnt. This sharing of direct experience is fundamental to improving the quality and conduct of trials worldwide. Thanks and Regards Sandeep Bhavsar Librarian Dr.V.N.Bedekar Institute of Research & Management Studies Thane (w) 400601 ------------------------------------------------------ Phone (Off) 25364492 25446554 Mobile 9870484626 email sandeep(a)vpmthane.org Website www.vpmthane.org ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail Trials http://www.trialsjournal.com/ http://www.trialsjournal.com/ Trials is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that will encompass all aspects of the performance and findings of randomized controlled trials. Trials will experiment with, and then refine, innovative approaches to improving communication about trials. They are keen to move beyond publishing traditional trial results articles (although these will be included). They believe this represents an exciting opportunity to advance the science and reporting of trials. Prior to 2006, Trials was published as Current Controlled Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine (CCTCVM). All published CCTCVM articles are available via the Trials website and citations to CCTCVM article URLs will continue to be supported. The impact factor shown relates to articles published in CCTCVM during 2003-4. Making all its content open access and not retaining copyright, Trials offers a way to make data both freely available and highly visible to trialists worldwide; this will benefit the impact of your publication among peers and society. The journal has unrestricted space and takes advantage of all the technical possibilities available for electronic publishing. To date, journals have focused on reporting the results of trials, with very little coverage of why and how they are conducted. Reports of trials have been restricted both by authors and editors - both parties often select only a subset of the outcomes measured, while the latter often impose word limits on the articles published making it difficult to communicate the lessons learnt from conducting the trial, let alone include adequate details of how the trial was conducted. The Internet offers both unlimited space and interactivity, and they are keen to harness these attributes. For instance, trialists will be able to provide the detail required to be a true scientific record and do more to make the article's message comprehensible to a variety of reader groups. They will also be able to communicate not only all outcome measures, as well as varying analyses and interpretations, but also in-depth descriptions of what they did and what they learnt. This sharing of direct experience is fundamental to improving the quality and conduct of trials worldwide. Thanks and Regards Sandeep Bhavsar Librarian Dr.V.N.Bedekar Institute of Research & Management Studies Thane (w) 400601 ------------------------------------------------------ Phone (Off) 25364492 25446554 Mobile 9870484626 email mailto:sandeep@vpmthane.org sandeep(a)vpmthane.org Website http://www.vpmthane.org/ www.vpmthane.org ----------------------------------------------------- http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/messenger/*http://uk.messen… Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/messenger/*http://uk.messen… calling worldwide with voicemail

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Microsoft Academic Search
by arun＠mssrf.res.in 13 Apr '06

13 Apr '06

Friends: "The scholarly organizations that have signed up to work with Microsoft on the new search tool [Microsoft Academic Search] include societies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics. Also cooperating are major publishers -- such as the Taylor & Francis Group, Blackwell Publishing, Elsevier, the Nature Publishing Group, and John Wiley & Sons -- and library organizations, including the British Library and OCLC Online Computer Library Center...." Major Indian publishers of research journals should sign up with Microsoft witout any delay. Especially those who publish open access journals (IASc, INSA, MedKnow, IISc, ICMR, Calcut Medical College, etc.). Being Indexed by Microsoft's new service and Google Scholar will give much greater visibility (and citability) to our journals. This is true especially for those journals which are not indexed by the Web of Science. Currently Microsoft Academic Search concentrates on computer science, electrical engineering and physics and it has indexed several million articles already. But soon the service will expand and cover other subjects. As it is competing with Google Scholar, and as both services are free of cost, it will be good for researchers. I am sure subscription-based abstracting and indexing services will start providing several free services very soon, just to be able to remain in business! Subbiah Arunachalam

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Librarians are insensitive to readers' owes.
by Padmanabha Vyasamoorthy 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Dear Friends Please read the following article. Why are some us - librarians - so very irresponsible and insenstive? Can something be do to sensitize librarians to be more service oriented? Vyasamoorthy, P ================== What are your bonafides? The Hindu Sunday 9th April 2006 Magazine section RANJIT LAL SOME weeks back, while trying to do some research for a book I was working on, I went to the library of the National Museum in New Delhi. The first thing I am shown is a notice that said something to the effect that only scholars and suchlike heavies were allowed to use the library. I decided to wait for the librarian and when she arrived, told her what my area of interest was, and if she could help. She looked me up and down and said, `But what are your bonefides?' Excuse me? The very fact that I was in that library asking for assistance on a particular subject would in any civilised country (and especially one with 5,000 years of erudite civilisation backing it up) and library, be considered more than enough for assistance to be forthcoming. "What do you mean?" I asked, struggling to come to terms with this monumental insult and inadequately indicating my notebook. "You can see I have a notebook and pen... " (just in case she had mistook it for a petrol can and lighter). She was after bigger things, Ph.Ds, M.Phils, letters of recommendation from Vice-chancellors, stuff like that. I see absolutely no reason why a citizen of this country (democracy, democracy, democracy, remember?) pursuing a subject of his or her interest needs a degree in order to use a library to do so. I told her that I was a member of the Teen Murti library and British Council... "Ah, but you pay there... Sorry." Never bothering to pause and think that if I'm ready to pay to be a member of a library I must genuinely be interested in the books and not in how comfortable the chairs are for a catnap. Anyway big deal — if they had any sense they would also charge people for daily use to ensure that they didn't use the place to catnap in or any such anti-national thing. But make the place available to those who want to use it — otherwise you are failing in your mandate and might as well shut down. I normally lose my temper once in about 10 years, and didn't want to use up my decade's quota there, so I walked out quickly. But it is precisely this attitude that has strangled us as a nation and people. What the hell was that librarian so afraid of? That I might acquire some deadly knowledge in that library by which I would become dictator of the world, and she would lose her job? God knows she was probably only doing what was in her brief but this stinks and how. If you are so afraid that people will misuse something that you prevent them from using it at all what is the justification for your existence in the first place? And why do I need any academic degree to prop me up? If they doubt my veracity (and why must I prove that anyway?) all they needed to do is to ask a few questions about exactly what I was interested in and looking for. (And would I have been in that museum and library in the first place if I had not been interested?) This whole attitude is based on the assumption that your motives are suspect and malafide — that you are up to no good — and must have "verification" or "authentication" and soon possibly beatification to certify that you are not (in this case) a book ripper or library napper or something as reprehensible. Which, no government really has any right to assume of its citizens. And to blankly deny access to knowledge in a library — in my book that is cardinal sin — and any society that goes in for that sort of thing is plunging hotfoot down the drain. Or was it just a manifestation of petty power? You know, that colonial hangover thing? Where the answer to every question or request is and must always be an unequivocal "no". You cannot do this, you cannot go there, you cannot see this, you cannot, cannot, cannot! Not because anything earth-shattering will happen if you do, but because it gives the pipsqueak given the authority to say no, the kicks which are the perks of his or her job. They tend to forget that we pay their salaries and overtimes and D.As and for their endless cups of tea. So what's my next course of action then if I still decide that I need the research and to look at that library? Well, the obvious one. Pull wires. Which, in a sense defeats the whole purpose because then I might as well have a Ph.D. Perhaps I should just tag one on after my name anyway... Make that a double! -- Dr P Vyasamoorthy, SENIORS (Society for Enriched Information of Relevance to Seniors), 30, Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500018 Phone 27846631

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GreenstoneWiki
by Sharad Jadhav 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Dear All, GreenstoneWiki (Greenstone Digital Library Software) is now available at http://greenstone.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GreenstoneWiki which comprises following information Greenstone FAQ Tutorial exercises Example collections Manuals Other documentation User contributed documentation Greenstone workshops Regards, Sharad Jadhav ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- National Insurance Academy 25,Balewadi, Baner Road, NIA PO, Pune 411 045 India http://www.niapune.com Email: sharad(a)niapune.com sharad7703(a)yahoo.co.in Phones: +91 20 27204066(D), 27204000/4444(Board) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket Yahoo! Messenger Mobile Stay in touch with your buddies all the time. Dear All, GreenstoneWiki (Greenstone Digital Library Software) is now available at http://greenstone.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GreenstoneWiki http://greenstone.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GreenstoneWiki which comprises following information Greenstone FAQ Tutorial exercises Example collections Manuals Other documentation User contributed documentation Greenstone workshops Regards, Sharad Jadhav ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- National Insurance Academy 25,Balewadi, Baner Road, NIA PO, Pune 411 045 India http://www.niapune.com/ http://www.niapune.com Email: mailto:sharad@niapune.com sharad(a)niapune.com mailto:sharad7703@yahoo.co.in sharad7703(a)yahoo.co.in Phones: +91 20 27204066(D), 27204000/4444(Board) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jiyo cricket on http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/in/mailcricket/*http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cric… Yahoo! India cricket http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/in/mailmobilemessenger/*http://in.mobile.yahoo.… Yahoo! Messenger Mobile Stay in touch with your buddies all the time.

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Openomy
by Mailing List Manager 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Date: 10 Apr 2006 10:07:22 -0000 From: moumita dey <deymoumita_78(a)rediffmail.com> Openomy is useful for storing information online.But pls tell us about its privacy/ security? regards Moumita Dey

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Indian universities should make their course ware open
by Subbiah Arunachalam 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Friends: The Open University in the UK is going to make available its course materials free on the Net. The vice chancellors of open universities in India may consider following this model. If we really want to usher in the knowledge revolution in India, we should think of such out-of-the-box solutions. The Open Course ware project of MIT and several other American, Chinese and Japanese universities are already very popular. The Internet and the Web have made it possible to do many things which we could not have done in the past. We should take advantage of the new technologies to the maximum extent possible. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------------------------------------ Open University to bring course content online 06 April 2006 The Open University will become the first institution in the UK to offer free course materials online to students and the wider public later this year. The university will select educational resources from all levels from access to postgraduate study and from a full range of subject themes, including arts and history, business and management, languages and science and nature. The material will be free to teachers and students studying in the UK and abroad, with the project following a long partnership with the BBC, which broadcasts the university's television programs. The material will not only be course or subject specific and students will also be able to access a range of study skills material to improve their research. In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) made nearly all of its course materials- including lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments- available online for free. The US institution now has material for 1250 of its courses online and expects to have all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses on the web by next year. The university plans to provide both educational material and a range of learning support, with one site aimed for learners, where material with suggested learning pathways will be offered. The second site will be mainly for course creators to encourage the sharing and re-use of materials. The Open University has more than 210,000 students studying courses this year, with around 40,000 studying outside the UK. The online project will start in October. Source: The Guardian Friends: The Open University in the UK is going to make available its course materials free on the Net. The vice chancellors of open universities in India may consider following this model. If we really want to usher in the knowledge revolution in India, we should think of such out-of-the-box solutions. The Open Course ware project of MIT and several other American, Chinese and Japanese universities are already very popular. The Internet and the Web have made it possible to do many things which we could not have done in the past. We should take advantage of the new technologies to the maximum extent possible. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------------------------------------ Open University to bring course content online 06 April 2006 The Open University will become the first institution in the UK to offer free course materials online to students and the wider public later this year. The university will select educational resources from all levels from access to postgraduate study and from a full range of subject themes, including arts and history, business and management, languages and science and nature. The material will be free to teachers and students studying in the UK and abroad, with the project following a long partnership with the BBC, which broadcasts the university's television programs. The material will not only be course or subject specific and students will also be able to access a range of study skills material to improve their research. In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) made nearly all of its course materials- including lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments- available online for free. The US institution now has material for 1250 of its courses online and expects to have all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses on the web by next year. The university plans to provide both educational material and a range of learning support, with one site aimed for learners, where material with suggested learning pathways will be offered. The second site will be mainly for course creators to encourage the sharing and re-use of materials. The Open University has more than 210,000 students studying courses this year, with around 40,000 studying outside the UK. The online project will start in October. Source: http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1728283,00.htm The Guardian

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EC report on sci publishing
by Subbiah Arunachalam 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

From Information Today Arun ------ European Commission Releases Key Scientific Publishing Report by Robin Peek April 10, 2006 - The European Commission has finally released its report on scientific publishing and now has firmly placed itself in the international discussion of where such publishing should go in the future. In June 2004, the European Commission began a study to examine the economic and technical evolution of scientific publishing in Europe. Originally the results were going to be made available in 2005, but the final report was released in January 2006. It was only made available to the public on March 31, 2006. The study was carried out by a consortium led by Mathias Dewatripont of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The study, undertaken by the directorate-general for research, sought to determine the conditions for "optimum" operation of the scientific sector and to assess how the Commission could help meet those conditions. European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said: "It is in all our interests to find a model for scientific publication that serves research excellence. We are ready to work with readers, authors, publishers, and funding bodies to develop such a model." It was not the intent of this study to replicate the "voluminous existing literature" but to focus upon the "state of the art." In the balance, this report does a good job of not hammering us over the head with things that are already well-known and well-reported. However, this is not a frothy report, and the analysis in this 100-page document is from an economic perspective. This report even tackled the thorny issue of long-term preservation, which is largely absent from many other discussions. The report acknowledged that much of the scientific research conducted in Europe is publicly funded and hence recommended that access to such research should be guaranteed. The report contains numerous recommendations; there are too many to be listed here. But some are noteworthy because they validate other proposals or offer new insights into mechanisms for guiding the future of scholarly research. The first recommendation is: "Guarantee public access to publicly-funded research shortly after publication." Note that the following actions could be taken at the European level: "Establish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives." Secondly, explore with Member States and with European research and academic associations whether and how such policies and open repositories could be implemented. Next, the report encouraged that there be a "level-playing field" so that different business models in publishing can compete fairly in the market. "It seems desirable to allow for experimentation and competition between various possible business models." The report noted that monies should be allocated to libraries to subscribe to reader or library-pay journals "but also to authors to pay for publication costs in author-pay journals, and to researchers in the reader-pay model." The report also recommended that ranking of journal quality be raised beyond "scientific quality, stritco sensu." While citation counts should remain the dominant criterion, "dimensions related to the quality of dissemination (self-archiving authorization, publisher archiving provisions, copyright provisions, abstracting and indexing services, reference linking, etc.) could be tracked explicitly and possibly valued by research funding bodies." Another recommendation is to guarantee perennial access to scholarly journal digital archives by promoting the creation of "not-for-profit long-term preservation archives which balance interests among publishers, libraries, and scholars." To this end, the report encourages an investigation into the feasibility/desirability of creating a European preservation organization that would be "JSTOR-like." The report recommended the promotion of pro-competitive pricing strategies, noting that the limited savings that libraries obtain for canceling subscriptions "does make it hard for newcomers to have access to library budgets." It is suggested that simple rules could be followed. For example, the "price of electronic access should not depend on the historical number of print subscriptions" but instead should be related to "transparent indicators, like usage or the number of faculty [and] students, as is the case for JSTOR." In addition, the development of electronic publications should be promoted by eliminating the "unfavorable tax treatment of electronic publications" by either reducing the VAT rate or introducing a tax refund. The differences in VAT rates applied to print versus electronic journals "induced a bias in the libraries' decisions to continue subscribing to print journals, along with the electronic version." The authors noted that the "higher rate applied to electronic delivery of information in Europe strongly affects European research institutions, especially when compared to other countries where electronic services are exempt from tax." Furthermore, public funding and public-private partnerships should be formed to create journal digital archives in areas when there is little commercial interest, such as in the social sciences and the humanities. The report also strongly favored the development of open access archives, noting that they provide "immediate, free, and maximal access to research results, whether published or not, to anyone with an Internet connection." And, those institutional repositories contribute to "raise the profile of the institutions, making their research output visible and accessible, and provide a potential research assessment tool." In turn, this enhanced visibility and accessibility "may lead to higher citation," noting that recent studies show that open access increases impact. However, there are concerns about the archival quality of the open access archives. Observing that the installation costs are low, the "maintenance costs are more difficult to plan, as they will vary with the number of records, and the long term preservation purposes." Specific actions at the European level to improve visibility include "establish[ing] a European policy mandating articles funded from European sources to be available in open access archives, for instance by mean of author's self-archiving." Also, there is a need to "specify standards that will insure that the archives are [accessible], interoperable, and have cross-searching facilities. In addition, set up a general European archive for researchers with access to a subject-based or institutional archive." The European Commission is keen to hear the views of all interested parties. It is therefore calling for reactions to the study and contributions on other issues linked to scientific publications. Contributions should be sent to rtd-scientific-publication(a)cec.eu.int by June 1, 2006. The study and its public feedback will be at the center of a conference on scientific publication to be held in autumn 2006. SINAPSE, the Web interface between the scientific community and Europe's policymakers, will also host a debate on the subject. (See the SINAPSE Web site at http://europa.eu.int/sinapse.) The study, entitled "Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe," is available for downloading at http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publicati…. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin Peek is associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College. She is also writes the Focus on Publishing column for Information Today. She can be reached at robin.peek(a)simmons.edu. From Information Today Arun ------ European Commission Releases Key Scientific Publishing Report by Robin Peek April 10, 2006 The European Commission has finally released its report on scientific publishing and now has firmly placed itself in the international discussion of where such publishing should go in the future. In June 2004, the European Commission began a study to examine the economic and technical evolution of scientific publishing in Europe. Originally the results were going to be made available in 2005, but the final report was released in January 2006. It was only made available to the public on March 31, 2006. The study was carried out by a consortium led by Mathias Dewatripont of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The study, undertaken by the directorate-general for research, sought to determine the conditions for optimum operation of the scientific sector and to assess how the Commission could help meet those conditions. European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik said: It is in all our interests to find a model for scientific publication that serves research excellence. We are ready to work with readers, authors, publishers, and funding bodies to develop such a model. It was not the intent of this study to replicate the voluminous existing literature but to focus upon the state of the art. In the balance, this report does a good job of not hammering us over the head with things that are already well-known and well-reported. However, this is not a frothy report, and the analysis in this 100-page document is from an economic perspective. This report even tackled the thorny issue of long-term preservation, which is largely absent from many other discussions. The report acknowledged that much of the scientific research conducted in Europe is publicly funded and hence recommended that access to such research should be guaranteed. The report contains numerous recommendations; there are too many to be listed here. But some are noteworthy because they validate other proposals or offer new insights into mechanisms for guiding the future of scholarly research. The first recommendation is: Guarantee public access to publicly-funded research shortly after publication. Note that the following actions could be taken at the European level: Establish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives. Secondly, explore with Member States and with European research and academic associations whether and how such policies and open repositories could be implemented. Next, the report encouraged that there be a level-playing field so that different business models in publishing can compete fairly in the market. It seems desirable to allow for experimentation and competition between various possible business models. The report noted that monies should be allocated to libraries to subscribe to reader or library-pay journals but also to authors to pay for publication costs in author-pay journals, and to researchers in the reader-pay model. The report also recommended that ranking of journal quality be raised beyond scientific quality, stritco sensu. While citation counts should remain the dominant criterion, dimensions related to the quality of dissemination (self-archiving authorization, publisher archiving provisions, copyright provisions, abstracting and indexing services, reference linking, etc.) could be tracked explicitly and possibly valued by research funding bodies. Another recommendation is to guarantee perennial access to scholarly journal digital archives by promoting the creation of not-for-profit long-term preservation archives which balance interests among publishers, libraries, and scholars. To this end, the report encourages an investigation into the feasibility/desirability of creating a European preservation organization that would be JSTOR-like. The report recommended the promotion of pro-competitive pricing strategies, noting that the limited savings that libraries obtain for canceling subscriptions does make it hard for newcomers to have access to library budgets. It is suggested that simple rules could be followed. For example, the price of electronic access should not depend on the historical number of print subscriptions but instead should be related to transparent indicators, like usage or the number of faculty [and] students, as is the case for JSTOR. In addition, the development of electronic publications should be promoted by eliminating the unfavorable tax treatment of electronic publications by either reducing the VAT rate or introducing a tax refund. The differences in VAT rates applied to print versus electronic journals induced a bias in the libraries decisions to continue subscribing to print journals, along with the electronic version. The authors noted that the higher rate applied to electronic delivery of information in Europe strongly affects European research institutions, especially when compared to other countries where electronic services are exempt from tax. Furthermore, public funding and public-private partnerships should be formed to create journal digital archives in areas when there is little commercial interest, such as in the social sciences and the humanities. The report also strongly favored the development of open access archives, noting that they provide immediate, free, and maximal access to research results, whether published or not, to anyone with an Internet connection. And, those institutional repositories contribute to raise the profile of the institutions, making their research output visible and accessible, and provide a potential research assessment tool. In turn, this enhanced visibility and accessibility may lead to higher citation, noting that recent studies show that open access increases impact. However, there are concerns about the archival quality of the open access archives. Observing that the installation costs are low, the maintenance costs are more difficult to plan, as they will vary with the number of records, and the long term preservation purposes. Specific actions at the European level to improve visibility include establish[ing] a European policy mandating articles funded from European sources to be available in open access archives, for instance by mean of authors self-archiving. Also, there is a need to specify standards that will insure that the archives are [accessible], interoperable, and have cross-searching facilities. In addition, set up a general European archive for researchers with access to a subject-based or institutional archive. The European Commission is keen to hear the views of all interested parties. It is therefore calling for reactions to the study and contributions on other issues linked to scientific publications. Contributions should be sent to rtd-scientific-publication(a)cec.eu.int by June 1, 2006. The study and its public feedback will be at the center of a conference on scientific publication to be held in autumn 2006. SINAPSE, the Web interface between the scientific community and Europes policymakers, will also host a debate on the subject. (See the SINAPSE Web site at http://europa.eu.int/sinapse http://europa.eu.int/sinapse .) The study, entitled Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe, is available for downloading at http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publicati… http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publicati… . Robin Peek is associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College. She is also writes the Focus on Publishing column for Information Today . She can be reached at mailto:robin.peek@simmons.edu robin.peek(a)simmons.edu .

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A LIBRI article on OA
by arun＠mssrf.res.in 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Friends: An article in LIBRI, Vol. 56, No. 1, March 2006 questions the value of OA to developing country scientists. Here is the abstract of the article, followed by my response. "The Other Side of the Coin for Open Access Publishing - A Developing Country View" by JENNIFER PAPIN-RAMCHARAN AND RICHARD A DAWE Abstract. This article presents the Open Access publishing experience of researchers in an academic research institution, in a developing country, Trinidad and Tobago, namely at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus. It considers UWI researchers' knowledge of Open Access, their access to the scholarly literature, Open Access Archives/Repositories at UWI and related issues of Research and Library funding and Information Communication Technology (ICT) Infrastructure/ Internet connectivity. The article concludes that whilst Open Access publishing yields some obvious and well-documented benefits for developing country researchers, including free access to research articles and increased impact and visibility of "published" Open Access articles, there are some disincentives that militate against developing country researchers fully contributing to the global body of knowledge via Open Access. It finds that Open Access Journals are beneficial for scholars who consume information but are of little benefit for developing country scholars wanting to publish in these journals because of the high cost of page charges. Inadequate and unreliable ICT infrastructure and Internet connectivity also often limit access to information. It concludes that because of technical, financial, human and infrastructural limitations, Open Access via the Green Road of self-archiving is also often not an option for developing country researchers. These researchers are therefore unable to reap the real benefits, of making their research Open Access, that of increased impact and visibility. This study is to develop and evaluate methods and instruments for assessing the usability of digital libraries. It discusses the dimensions of usability, what methods have been applied in evaluating usability of digital libraries, their applicability, and criteria. It is found in the study that there exists an interlocking relationship among effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. It provides operational criteria for effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and learnability. It discovers users' criteria on "ease of use," "organization of information," "terminology and labeling," "visual attractiveness," and "mistake recovery." Common causes of "user lostness" were found. "Click cost" was examined. Arun's response. 1. Not all OA journals charge author side publication fees. PLoS and BMC do charge author fees. But the majority of OA journals do not charge authors. Not a single Indian OA journal charges authors, for example. In most cases, even those journals which charge authors exempt authors from developing countries if the authors make a request to waive the fees. 2. There are technical problems - such as low bandwidths and high costs, I agree. But things are improving. Moore's law is making it possible to bring down the costs of both computers and connectivity. We have seen dramatic improvements in India in the past two decades. When I was in the university, people had to wait for years to get a telephone connection and even pay bribes! But Mr Sam Pitroda made it possible for us to have STD telephone booths in every town and most villages. The advent of many private players in the telecom sector and the independent telecom regulatory authority made it possible to bring down the costs of telephone calls. Mnay higher educational institutions and research labs have reasonable Internet access. Surely there is scope for improvement, but the situation is not bad. 3. What we need are people who will not throw up their hands when faced with even minor challenges. People who will work hard to achieve what they think is good for them. If OA is inherently goodfor science, scholarship and education in the developing world, then we should all work towards achieving it. We need people who can talk to their Ministers and policymakers about the need to adopt OA in a big way and explain why. We need people who can impress upon their governments the need to provide high bandwidth Internet access to higher education and research institutes. We need teachers and librarians who can take advantage of all that is good and available free on the Net such as the Open Course Ware (of MIT and other universities) and all the OAI-compliant archives. We need people who can motivate scientists and doctoral students to adopt the culture of OA in a big way. About a century ago USA was a large territory with no notable scientific achievement. By the Second World War the USA became a formidable powerhouse of scientific research. If USA can do it, the rest of us can do it too. Let us try. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]

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