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A Must Hear: BBC Radio 4: Open Access / Open Archives / Self-Archiving
by Gerry Mckiernan 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Colleagues/ BBC: "Publish or be Damned_ Perhaps The Most Important Overview/Review on Open Access / Open Archives / Self-Archiving) Ever [:-) With All the Key Players [Yep - All!] Run Time: ~ 38 Minutes Season's Greetings! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Open Librarian Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 gerrymck(a)iastate.edu P.S. Posted on liblicense-l [ http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0412/msg00151.html ] Thanks! Alison Macdonald ********************Peace******************************* This Tuesday evening [12-21], BBC's Radio 4 has aired a programme on the open access debate ... [snip] The programme will be repeated on Boxing Day (Sunday 26th at 5.00 pm ... ..., but it is also available, to all, on the web for a week (I'm not sure whether that's seven days from today, 21 Dec, or from Sunday, 26 Dec) at the following URL - look under _P_ for "Publish or be Damned_: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

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Congratulations to Prof. Chandrasekhar Rao, who joined as Dean, BRAOU
by Prof. N. Laxman Rao. 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

hello professional friends we all are proud of Prof Chandrasekhar Rao, who had been appointed as Dean, faculty of soc. sc, BRAOU. hardly very few LIS teaches were appointed as Deans. It is really great achievemet for Prof VCR. on behalf of my self, IATLIS and all othe professionals, i congratulate him and wich him all the success in his endeavours. probably u may be aware that he i also incharge of comper centre andfirs person to introduce courses through e-earning. all the best to Prof. VCR laxman rao --- chanrasekhar v <vcsra0(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Dear Professional colleagues, > Our University has appointed me as Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences. I > reported to the duty today. The Faculty of Social Sciences consists of > seven departments: economics, history, political science, public > administration, sociology, public relations and library & information > science. The appointment is for a period of three years. > > - Prof. V Chandrasekhar Rao > Head, Dept. of Lib & Inf Sci > Dr B R Ambedkar Open University > Prof. G Ram Reddy marg > Road No.46, Jubilee Hills, > Hyderabad - 500 033 > > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. ===== Prof.N.LAXMAN RAO, Dept.of Library & Information Science, Osmania University, HYDERABAD- 500 007 (INDIA) President, Indian Association of Teachers in Library and Information Science (IATLIS). Ph:+91-40-27171565 (res): +91-40- 27682290 (off) 9246547599 (Mobile) e:mail-- naglaxman(a)yahoo.com OR naglaxman(a)indiatimes.com ___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All
by Subbiah Gunasekaran 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Dear Memebers: Please read the article below. Thanks Guna ----------------------- Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All By Wade Roush January 2005 Wikipedia is the worlds newest, largest, most varied, most participatory, and most controversial encyclopedia. It is composed and edited entirely by volunteer netizens; as of November 2004, there were some 29,000 Wikipedians writing for it in 109 different languages. The sites massive archive, including 380,000 articles in English alone, puts even Britannica to shame. If you dont see an article addressing your passion for miniature-teapot collecting, dont fret. Just write one. Among Wikipedias many unusual aspects is that its cocreator, Larry Sanger, is a professional epistemologista philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge and who, like many before him, once questioned the possibility of knowing anything with certainty. Sanger says that as a bookish teenager growing up in Anchorage, AK, he decided to model himself after Descartes and become a devout doubter, believing only the things that he could directly perceive or that could be logically derived from what he perceived. These were the thoughts of a 17-year-old, smiles Sanger, whos now 36. But eventually, he says, he began to realize that some truths cannot be observed: If the very project of seeking the truth required that I assumed something, then I would assume that. This more pragmatic view sustained him through his college and graduate years as a philosophy student and even became the focus of his dissertation. But by that time, Sanger says, he was also becoming intrigued by the Internet and its possibilities as a publishing medium. And this convergence of interests helped him to realize that a newly invented type of website called a wikia forum that allows a user to add content...but also allows that content to be edited by any other user, to quote the Wikipedia definitioncould be used to assemble the contributions of thousands of amateurs into a reasonably truthful online encyclopedia. How? The subject of an encyclopedia is received knowledge, Sanger says, not absolute knowledge. The former, he says, consists of the sort of claims one can make in the form It is generally known that.... It could be false, but it could still be generally known, in the sense that people thought it was true. This idea underlay the nonbias policy that Sanger instituted for Nupedia, the expert-written online encyclopedia he was hired to edit in 2000. The policy says that contentious subjects should be described in a way that fairly represents every partys point of view. Wikipedia kept the policy when it spun off of Nupedia, and Sanger cites it as a main reason for the new sites success. Nonbias is a difficult ideal to live up to. Indeed, the most common complaint against Wikipedia is that it is unreliable; since anyone can publish or edit any article instantly, theres nothing except the diligence of other contributors to keep favoritism, misinformation, vandalism, or sheer stupidity out of the encyclopedias pages. But Wikipedias staff of volunteers is better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved, Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry is going to be instantly noticed and corrected. But theres a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeplythe fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in revert wars in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says hes afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedias quality. Sanger may be speaking from the heart. He left Wikipedia in 2002 when funding for his position ran out and no longer contributes, in part because of the lingering sting of some particularly nasty revert wars. He now lives in a suburb of Columbus, and lectures in the philosophy department at Ohio State University, his alma mater. To build a public encyclopedia, you dont need faith in the possibility of knowledge, he says. What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/forward30105.asp?trk=nl Dear Memebers: Please read the article below. Thanks Guna ----------------------- Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All By Wade Roush January 2005 Wikipedia is the worlds newest, largest, most varied, most participatory, and most controversial encyclopedia. It is composed and edited entirely by volunteer netizens; as of November 2004, there were some 29,000 Wikipedians writing for it in 109 different languages. The sites massive archive, including 380,000 articles in English alone, puts even Britannica to shame. If you dont see an article addressing your passion for miniature-teapot collecting, dont fret. Just write one. Among Wikipedias many unusual aspects is that its cocreator, Larry Sanger, is a professional epistemologista philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge and who, like many before him, once questioned the possibility of knowing anything with certainty. Sanger says that as a bookish teenager growing up in Anchorage, AK, he decided to model himself after Descartes and become a devout doubter, believing only the things that he could directly perceive or that could be logically derived from what he perceived. These were the thoughts of a 17-year-old, smiles Sanger, whos now 36. But eventually, he says, he began to realize that some truths cannot be observed: If the very project of seeking the truth required that I assumed something, then I would assume that. This more pragmatic view sustained him through his college and graduate years as a philosophy student and even became the focus of his dissertation. But by that time, Sanger says, he was also becoming intrigued by the Internet and its possibilities as a publishing medium. And this convergence of interests helped him to realize that a newly invented type of website called a wikia forum that allows a user to add content...but also allows that content to be edited by any other user, to quote the Wikipedia definitioncould be used to assemble the contributions of thousands of amateurs into a reasonably truthful online encyclopedia. How? The subject of an encyclopedia is received knowledge, Sanger says, not absolute knowledge. The former, he says, consists of the sort of claims one can make in the form It is generally known that.... It could be false, but it could still be generally known, in the sense that people thought it was true. This idea underlay the nonbias policy that Sanger instituted for Nupedia, the expert-written online encyclopedia he was hired to edit in 2000. The policy says that contentious subjects should be described in a way that fairly represents every partys point of view. Wikipedia kept the policy when it spun off of Nupedia, and Sanger cites it as a main reason for the new sites success. Nonbias is a difficult ideal to live up to. Indeed, the most common complaint against Wikipedia is that it is unreliable; since anyone can publish or edit any article instantly, theres nothing except the diligence of other contributors to keep favoritism, misinformation, vandalism, or sheer stupidity out of the encyclopedias pages. But Wikipedias staff of volunteers is better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved, Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry is going to be instantly noticed and corrected. But theres a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeplythe fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in revert wars in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says hes afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedias quality. Sanger may be speaking from the heart. He left Wikipedia in 2002 when funding for his position ran out and no longer contributes, in part because of the lingering sting of some particularly nasty revert wars. He now lives in a suburb of Columbus, and lectures in the philosophy department at Ohio State University, his alma mater. To build a public encyclopedia, you dont need faith in the possibility of knowledge, he says. What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/forward30105.asp?trk=nl http://clients.rediff.com/signature/track_sig.asp http://ads.rediff.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.cgi/www.rediffmail.com/inbo…

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Invitation for a Lecture
by Sangeeta Kaul, Network Manager, DELNET 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

DELNET Developing Library Network cordially invites you to the lecture on UNESCO : Communication & Information in Asia by Dr. Susanne Ornager Advisor for Communication & Information in Asia & Pacific, UNESCO on Monday, January 3, 2005 at 6:30 p.m. at India International Centre (Conference Room I) 40 Lodhi Estate, New Delhi-110003 Dr. Gulshan Rai Executive Director, ERNET India Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt. of India has kindly agreed to preside RSVP 24610802

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Re: library furniture supplier
by Indira Koneru 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Mr. Rajeev Sharma, U can capture pertinent information from the following link http://www.infolibrarian.com/sup.htm#furniture Indira Koneru (Faculty Associate) Dept. of Lib. Science ICFAI University 25, Nagarjuna Hills Hyderabad - 082. ----- Original Message ----- From: <lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> To: <lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 12:00 PM Subject: LIS-Forum Digest, Vol 21, Issue 24 > Send LIS-Forum mailing list submissions to > lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > > You can reach the person managing the list at > lis-forum-owner(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of LIS-Forum digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. library furniture supplier (Rajeev Sharma) > 2. Radio frequency info (Prafulla Chandra) > 3. Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004 > (Sanjay Kataria) > 4. Librarians exhorted to hone their skills (MLAI -2004 Report) > (JK Vijayakumar) > 5. ICSU Assessment Panel report on Scientific Data and > Information (Dr. T.B. Rajashekar) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:04:27 +0530 > From: "Rajeev Sharma" <bic.crpo(a)tcil.com> > Subject: [LIS-Forum] library furniture supplier > To: "LIS-FORUM" <lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> > Message-ID: <002c01c4e71e$bce9f1a0$f1ab9385@oracle> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Madam/ Sir > > Please give the addresses of library furniture supplier in Delhi and NCR. > > Thanks and Regards, > > Rajeev Kumar Sharma > > Officer - Information Services > Business Information Center > ------------------------------------------------------- > Transport Corporation of India Ltd. > TCI House, > 69, Institutional Area > Sector 32, Gurgaon > Haryana, 122001 > India > Tel: +91 124 2381603 to 607 Ext. 104 > Fax: +91 124 2381611 > Email: bic.crpo(a)tcil.com > Visit us at: www.grouptci.com > ------------------------------------------------------- >

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Virtual Information Centre
by Seshu Sripada 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Any Virtual Information Centre which gives information about Library Science related e-books for guest access. Seshu -----------------------SOFTPRO DISCLAIMER------------------------------ Information contained in this E-MAIL and any attachments are confidential being proprietary to SOFTPRO SYSTEMS is 'privileged' and 'confidential'. If you are not an intended or authorised recipient of this E-MAIL or have received it in error, You are notified that any use, copying or dissemination of the information contained in this E-MAIL in any manner whatsoever is strictly prohibited. Please delete it immediately and notify the sender by E-MAIL. In such a case reading, reproducing, printing or further dissemination of this E-MAIL is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. SOFTPRO SYSYTEMS does not REPRESENT or WARRANT that an attachment hereto is free from computer viruses or other defects. The opinions expressed in this E-MAIL and any ATTACHEMENTS may be those of the author and are not necessarily those of SOFTPRO SYSTEMS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Any Virtual Information Centre which gives information about Library Science related e-books for guest access. Seshu -----------------------SOFTPRO DISCLAIMER------------------------------ Information contained in this E-MAIL and any attachments are confidential being proprietary to SOFTPRO SYSTEMS is 'privileged' and 'confidential'. If you are not an intended or authorised recipient of this E-MAIL or have received it in error, You are notified that any use, copying or dissemination of the information contained in this E-MAIL in any manner whatsoever is strictly prohibited. Please delete it immediately and notify the sender by E-MAIL. In such a case reading, reproducing, printing or further dissemination of this E-MAIL is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. SOFTPRO SYSYTEMS does not REPRESENT or WARRANT that an attachment hereto is free from computer viruses or other defects. The opinions expressed in this E-MAIL and any ATTACHEMENTS may be those of the author and are not necessarily those of SOFTPRO SYSTEMS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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The future of rural computing and connectivity
by Subbiah Arunachalam 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Friends: The recent Forrester reporter on PC growth has made some interesting observations, especially relevant to those of us who are working with the rural poor. We need to pay attention to wireless technologies, Linux and other open source software, and low-cost rugged computers and communication devices. "The personal computer market in India will see a massive boom by 2010, according to a new report by Forrester Research. India, says the report, will add 80 million (8 crore) new PC users by 2010. Despite gaining prominence as a center for outsourcing, India today has one of the lowest adoption rates in the world. However, PC adoption will grow at a 37 per cent annual rate through the end of the decade." "Rural mass market -- It'll be a long-term challenge for the PC industry to attract this segment to the PC platform; they are likely to choose PC alternatives, such as smartphones. This group is rural, low-income, and very price-sensitive. They lack community infrastructure, funding, communications, and reliable power sources to support PC platforms." "The other important factor is the Windows versus Linux battle. The advantage goes to Linux, says Forrester. Establishing the Windows platform in these new markets will be an uphill battle. No Windows legacy in these markets means that local manufacturers can drive down prices by installing Linux instead." "The third factor is the battle between the wired and the wireless providers. Forrester says the advantage goes to wireless. Investments in landline networks outside major city centers won't pay off, so rural populations must wait for new wireless technologies like WiMAX and 3G GSM networks." Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]

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On open access - a recent article by a freelance science writer
by Subbiah Arunachalam 22 Dec '04

22 Dec '04

Friends: Here is an article from SLATE. Barbara and Leslie, we may enlist her as a cosignatory in our future articles! Regards. Arun http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/ medical examiner Health and medicine explained. Open Access Should scientific articles be available online and free to the public? By Amanda Schaffer Posted Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004, at 1:21 PM PT If you're like most Americans, chances are at some point you've searched online for medical or health-related information. In fact, of Americans with Internet access, more have used the Web to answer health-related queries (66 percent) than to check sports scores (43 percent), hunt for a job (42 percent), or find a date (9 percent), according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. There is clearly no shortage of medical and pseudomedical information available online. But some physicians and members of Congress have pointed out that much of the best literature, published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, is not immediately available for free to the public-and they have begun to argue that it should be. To the consternation of journal publishers-many of them not-for-profit associations that rely heavily on journal subscription fees for their revenue-the National Institutes of Health has thrown its considerable weight behind the notion of free access to biomedical research. In September, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni proposed that all NIH-funded scientists provide full-text copies of their research papers to PubMed Central, an online government archive, once these papers have been accepted (and thus vetted) by peer-reviewed journals; PubMed Central would then post the work, citing both the author and the journal where it first appeared, six months after publication. (The original plan called for immediate access but was mitigated in response to publishers' outcry.) The initiative is expected to cost roughly $2 million to $4 million per year, a small fraction of the NIH's total budget. As the NIH considers final guidelines, a vitriolic debate has erupted in the scientific community: How best to balance the needs of journal publishers against those of scientists, students, and members of the general public who would benefit from unfettered access? Increased access is a worthwhile enterprise. Highly accessible, electronic archives are simply too valuable to scientists-and, by extension, to the public who may eventually benefit from their work-not to establish and support as a matter of public policy. Scientists at large research universities have access to many journals, but increasingly there are gaps in library collections, and not all publications are easily searchable. The problem is of course even worse outside of major institutions and in countries other than the United States. A more robust public database would go a long way toward speeding and enhancing scientific work. (There is, in fact, precedent for this approach to biological data. Click here to read more.) The public would also benefit directly from greater access. True, not every hair-splitting research paper in, say, cell biology or biochemistry will be of interest to the populace at large. But for patients who have rare diseases or are considering controversial therapies, access to cutting-edge medical research may be vital-especially since new work is accruing so quickly that even the most assiduous general practitioners may have a hard time keeping abreast of it all. In addition, it doesn't make sense for journals to charge fees for access to primary research articles when that research is supported largely by public funding. Academic scientists, some backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public moneys, provide their findings and articles to most journals for free. Peer-reviewers, who perform the crucial quality-control work, also offer comments on research papers for no charge. In other words, journals receive what are in effect large subsidies from the rest of the scientific community, which in turn receives significant funding from taxpayers, through organizations such as the NIH. As a matter of basic fairness, members of the public who wish to read about this research should be able to do so without paying further charges. The movement for free online access to science research dates back as far as 1991, before most of us had even heard of the Internet. (Click here to read more.) In recent years, the project has gained considerable momentum. In 2000, Harold Varmus, then director the NIH, established PubMed Central; later that year, Varmus, along with biologists Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen, also founded the Public Library of Science, or PLoS, an advocacy organization dedicated to promoting open access. In an early effort to sway existing journals, Varmus and other key players tried to convince scientists not to publish in-or even to subscribe to-journals that did not provide articles to PubMed Central; over 30,000 scientists signed a letter in which they made this pledge. Not surprisingly, few adhered to it: With so much of a scientist's career resting on his or her publication in prestigious forums, few could afford to displease, let alone categorically abandon, the highly respected traditional journals. So, in an attempt to establish a competing venue-one that would attract the best scientists and demonstrate that open access could be compatible with very high quality-PLoS members decided to launch their own peer-reviewed journals. PLoS Biology appeared in October 2003, followed by PLoS Medicine in October 2004. PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine exemplify the philosophy of open access and thus differ from traditional forums such as JAMA, NEJM, and Science in several ways: 1) In addition to providing its content for immediate unrestricted use, PLoS allows authors to retain their copyrights-most magazines control copyrights and profit from any reprints-but requires them to sign a broad licensing agreement that allows their work to be reproduced as long as they are given proper credit through citation. (Scientists do not receive payments or royalties from article publications in either old-style or open-access journals.) 2) PLoS provides all content to PubMed Central. 3) PLoS relies on an alternate business model-instead of earning money through subscriptions and online access fees (a "subscriber-pays" model), PLoS charges authors or their funding agencies a publication fee of $1,500 (an "author-pays" model). Varmus argues that such payments can be folded into laboratory research budgets, and several major funding institutions, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, have agreed to supplement publication costs for their researchers. PLoS has also promised to waive fees for authors who are unable to pay. In theory at least, "author-pays" seems a viable economic model, according to a recent analysis by the Wellcome Trust. How have the PloS publications fared thus far? It's still hard to say, since the PLoS journals have had so little time to establish a track record of important or highly cited articles. Some researchers may doubt that work offered to the public for free will command the same respect as content people pay for. But if any journal is well-positioned for success, the PLoS vehicles are: Both have received plenty of media buzz, and Nobel Prize winners and other rock star scientists populate the PLoS board of directors. There are a few other publishers and journals that have adopted some elements of open access. But most traditional journals have resisted calls to post articles in PubMed Central, even with delays of six months. Only around 160 journals currently offer full-text articles through PubMed Central, out of the roughly 4,000 that are indexed annually by the National Library of Medicine. It would thus be virtually impossible for a scientist to build a first-rate career by publishing entirely in these forums, however sympathetic he or she might be to the goals of open access. (Some of the biggest names, such as JAMA, NEJM, and Science, have begun to make some content available for free on their own Web sites.) If the NIH decides to implement its proposed policy-and an announcement is expected sometime this month-the open-access movement will receive a crucial shot in the arm. Not only will many more articles be available through PubMed Central, but the call by advocates for faster free access (without the six-month delay) will likely grow louder. Some journal publishers will no doubt rethink their business strategies, in order to compensate for actual or expected revenue losses. Of course, it is hard not to sympathize with traditional journal publishers, who for years have been careful stewards of the scientific literature, editing articles and selecting scientists to participate in peer review. But the change would not necessarily mean their demise. Many scientists (and science writers) would likely still subscribe to publications like, say, Science and Nature, largely for the valuable extras they offer, such as news blurbs and research summaries published each week. Journals could continue to charge fees for these features, even while adopting open access policies for new research. This is a story, then, about adapting to the digital world: How should we harness its enormous possibilities while trying to reckon with vested interests that stand to lose in the transition? Ultimately, the potential benefits of open access, for both scientists and the public, are too significant not to pursue aggressively. At a time when technical material is accumulating more quickly than ever before, extensive online databases can help scientists do the most informed work possible. At a time, too, when patients are asked to participate much more actively in health care decision-making, better access to information is crucial. The NIH's proposed compromise, in which articles are posted to PubMed Central six months after publication, is a reasonable one. But it is only a first step toward a larger goal-namely, true open access, immediately upon publication, for as much scientific work as possible. Amanda Schaffer is a science writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Friends: Here is an article from SLATE. Barbara and Leslie, we may enlist her as a cosignatory in our future articles! Regards. Arun http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/ http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/ medical examiner Health and medicine explained. Open Access Should scientific articles be available online and free to the public? By Amanda Schaffer Posted Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004, at 1:21 PM PT If you're like most Americans, chances are at some point you've searched online for medical or health-related information. In fact, of Americans with Internet access, more have used the Web to answer health-related queries (66 percent) than to check sports scores (43 percent), hunt for a job (42 percent), or find a date (9 percent), according to the http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Activities_4.23.04.htm Pew Internet and American Life Project . There is clearly no shortage of medical and pseudomedical information available online. But some physicians and members of Congress have http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64389-2004Sep5?language=printer pointed out that much of the best literature, published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as the http://jama.ama-assn.org/ Journal of the American Medical Association and the http://content.nejm.org/current.shtml New England Journal of Medicine , is not immediately available for free to the publicand they have begun to argue that it should be. To the consternation of journal publishersmany of them not-for-profit associations that rely heavily on journal subscription fees for their revenuethe National Institutes of Health has thrown its considerable weight behind the notion of free access to biomedical research. In September, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni proposed that all NIH-funded scientists provide full-text copies of their research papers to http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/ PubMed Central , an online government archive, once these papers have been accepted (and thus vetted) by peer-reviewed journals; PubMed Central would then post the work, citing both the author and the journal where it first appeared, six months after publication. (The original plan called for immediate access but was mitigated in response to publishers' outcry.) The initiative is expected to cost roughly $2 million to $4 million per year, a small fraction of the NIH's total budget. As the NIH considers final guidelines, a vitriolic debate has erupted in the scientific community: How best to balance the needs of journal publishers against those of scientists, students, and members of the general public who would benefit from unfettered access? Increased access is a worthwhile enterprise. Highly accessible, electronic archives are simply too valuable to scientistsand, by extension, to the public who may eventually benefit from their worknot to establish and support as a matter of public policy. Scientists at large research universities have access to many journals, but increasingly there are gaps in library collections, and not all publications are easily searchable. The problem is of course even worse outside of major institutions and in countries other than the United States. A more robust public database would go a long way toward speeding and enhancing scientific work. (There is, in fact, precedent for this approach to biological data. Click [A] http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/sidebar/2111025/ here to read more.) The public would also benefit directly from greater access. True, not every hair-splitting research paper in, say, cell biology or biochemistry will be of interest to the populace at large. But for patients who have rare diseases or are considering controversial therapies, access to cutting-edge medical research may be vitalespecially since new work is accruing so quickly that even the most assiduous general practitioners may have a hard time keeping abreast of it all. In addition, it doesn't make sense for journals to charge fees for access to primary research articles when that research is supported largely by public funding. Academic scientists, some backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public moneys, provide their findings and articles to most journals for free. Peer-reviewers, who perform the crucial quality-control work, also offer comments on research papers for no charge. In other words, journals receive what are in effect large subsidies from the rest of the scientific community, which in turn receives significant funding from taxpayers, through organizations such as the NIH. As a matter of basic fairness, members of the public who wish to read about this research should be able to do so without paying further charges. The movement for free online access to science research dates back as far as 1991, before most of us had even heard of the Internet. (Click [A] http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/sidebar/2111026/ here to read more.) In recent years, the project has gained considerable momentum. In 2000, Harold Varmus, then director the NIH, established PubMed Central; later that year, Varmus, along with biologists Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen, also founded the http://www.plos.org/ Public Library of Science , or PLoS, an advocacy organization dedicated to promoting open access. In an early effort to sway existing journals, Varmus and other key players tried to convince scientists not to publish inor even to subscribe tojournals that did not provide articles to PubMed Central; over 30,000 scientists signed a letter in which they made this pledge. Not surprisingly, few adhered to it: With so much of a scientist's career resting on his or her publication in prestigious forums, few could afford to displease, let alone categorically abandon, the highly respected traditional journals. So, in an attempt to establish a competing venueone that would attract the best scientists and demonstrate that open access could be compatible with very high qualityPLoS members decided to launch their own peer-reviewed journals. http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=index-html&issn=1545-7885 PLoS Biology appeared in October 2003, followed by http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html&issn=1549-1676 PLoS Medicine in October 2004. PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine exemplify the philosophy of http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html open access and thus differ from traditional forums such as JAMA , NEJM , and Science in several ways: 1) In addition to providing its content for immediate unrestricted use, PLoS allows authors to retain their copyrightsmost magazines control copyrights and profit from any reprintsbut requires them to sign a broad http://www.plos.org/journals/license.html licensing agreement that allows their work to be reproduced as long as they are given proper credit through citation. (Scientists do not receive payments or royalties from article publications in either old-style or open-access journals.) 2) PLoS provides all content to PubMed Central. 3) PLoS relies on an alternate business modelinstead of earning money through subscriptions and online access fees (a "subscriber-pays" model), PLoS charges authors or their funding agencies a publication fee of $1,500 (an "author-pays" model). Varmus argues that such payments can be folded into laboratory research budgets, and several major funding institutions, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, have agreed to supplement publication costs for their researchers. PLoS has also promised to waive fees for authors who are unable to pay. In theory at least, "author-pays" seems a viable economic model, according to a recent analysis by the http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD003185.html Wellcome Trust . How have the PloS publications fared thus far? It's still hard to say, since the PLoS journals have had so little time to establish a track record of important or highly cited articles. Some researchers may doubt that work offered to the public for free will command the same respect as content people pay for. But if any journal is well-positioned for success, the PLoS vehicles are: Both have received plenty of media buzz, and Nobel Prize winners and other rock star scientists populate the PLoS board of directors. There are a few [A] http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/sidebar/2111027/ other publishers and journals that have adopted some elements of open access. But most traditional journals have resisted calls to post articles in PubMed Central, even with delays of six months. Only around 160 journals currently offer full-text articles through PubMed Central, out of the roughly 4,000 that are indexed annually by the National Library of Medicine. It would thus be virtually impossible for a scientist to build a first-rate career by publishing entirely in these forums, however sympathetic he or she might be to the goals of open access. (Some of the biggest names, such as JAMA , NEJM , and Science , have begun to make some content [A] http://www.slate.com/id/2111023/sidebar/2111028/ available for free on their own Web sites .) If the NIH decides to implement its proposed policyand an announcement is expected sometime this monththe open-access movement will receive a crucial shot in the arm. Not only will many more articles be available through PubMed Central, but the call by advocates for faster free access (without the six-month delay) will likely grow louder. Some journal publishers will no doubt rethink their business strategies, in order to compensate for actual or expected revenue losses. Of course, it is hard not to sympathize with traditional journal publishers, who for years have been careful stewards of the scientific literature, editing articles and selecting scientists to participate in peer review. But the change would not necessarily mean their demise. Many scientists (and science writers) would likely still subscribe to publications like, say, Science and Nature , largely for the valuable extras they offer, such as news blurbs and research summaries published each week. Journals could continue to charge fees for these features, even while adopting open access policies for new research. This is a story, then, about adapting to the digital world: How should we harness its enormous possibilities while trying to reckon with vested interests that stand to lose in the transition? Ultimately, the potential benefits of open access, for both scientists and the public, are too significant not to pursue aggressively. At a time when technical material is accumulating more quickly than ever before, extensive online databases can help scientists do the most informed work possible. At a time, too, when patients are asked to participate much more actively in health care decision-making, better access to information is crucial. The NIH's proposed compromise, in which articles are posted to PubMed Central six months after publication, is a reasonable one. But it is only a first step toward a larger goalnamely, true open access, immediately upon publication, for as much scientific work as possible. Amanda Schaffer is a science writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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ICSU Assessment Panel report on Scientific Data and Information
by Dr. T.B. Rajashekar 22 Dec '04

22 Dec '04

Dear All ICSU (International Council for Science) has just published the report of the ICSU/CSPR Assessment Panel on Scientific Data and Information. Online access to this and other related publications of ICSU are available at: http://www.icsu.org/2_resourcecentre/RESOURCE_list_base.php4?rub=9 The Assessment Panel was constituted by ICSU/CSPR in 2003, and charged with both assessing the strategic issues in this arena and reviewing ICSUs current activities. The report contains several observations and recommendations made by the panel, based on its assessment of current and emerging scenario in scientific data and information. A key recommendation is that ICSU should develop a long-term strategic framework for scientific data and information (policies, practices and infrastructure). An essential component of this framework is to establish an international Scientific Data and Information Forum (SCiDIF) involving all the key stakeholders. Though the report is directly addressed to ICSU in facilitating its future planning and policy making, I believe the report content will be of interest to much wider audience at different levels, including policy makers, planners, managers of scientific data and information systems, and also teachers, professionals and students in this area. You are welcome to distribute this publication/ link to whomever you feel would find it useful. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome. Regards Rajashekar ------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. T.B. Rajashekar Associate Chairman Tel: +91-80-23600271, 23601427 National Centre for Science Fax: +91-80-23601426, 23600683 Information (NCSI) E-Mail: raja(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Indian Institute of Science URL: http://144.16.72.189/raja/ BANGALORE-560012 (India) ------------------------------------------------------------- SciGate: http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ The IISc Science Information Portal

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Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004
by Sanjay Kataria 21 Dec '04

21 Dec '04

Dear Information Scientists, I would like to share the great news about "Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004" has been presented on 18th Dec. 04 during one Seminar at Tagore Engineering Collage, Chennai, Organized by SALIS, (Chennai Chapter) and TEC Chennai. About the Award This award is constituted by Dr. Harish Chandra, Librarian, IIT Medras, Channai and will be awarded in every year by SALIS to eminent library professional contributed their outstanding work to enhance the library and information Science in India. Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award for the year 2004 has been awarded to Dr. T A V Murthy, Director, INFLIBNET, Ahemdabad for his outstanding contribution I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Murthy for his outstanding contribution in profession on behalf of all library & Information Scientists Thanks & Regards ==*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* Sanjay Kataria Learning Resource Centre Jaypee Institute of InformationTechnology (Deemed University) A-10, Sector-62, Noida (UP) 201307 India Ph. 0120-2400973 to 978 Ext. 251 09810503341 (Mobile) E-mail: lib_scholar(a)rediffmail.com, katariasanjay2001(a)yahoo.com Website: www.jiit.ac.in --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. Dear Information Scientists, I would like to share the great news about "Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004" has been presented on 18th Dec. 04 during one Seminar at Tagore Engineering Collage, Chennai, Organized by SALIS, (Chennai Chapter) and TEC Chennai. About the Award This award is constituted by Dr. Harish Chandra, Librarian, IIT Medras, Channai and will be awarded in every year by SALIS to eminent library professional contributed their outstanding work to enhance the library and information Science in India. Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award for the year 2004 has been awarded to Dr. T A V Murthy, Director, INFLIBNET, Ahemdabad for his outstanding contribution I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Murthy for his outstanding contribution in profession on behalf of all library & Information Scientists � Thanks & Regards ==*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* Sanjay Kataria Learning Resource Centre Jaypee Institute of InformationTechnology (Deemed University) A-10, Sector-62, Noida (UP) 201307 India Ph. 0120-2400973 to 978 Ext. 251 09810503341 (Mobile) E-mail: lib_scholar(a)rediffmail.com, katariasanjay2001(a)yahoo.com Website: www.jiit.ac.in Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/spamguard/*http://promotions.yahoo.… Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard .

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