- LIS-Forum - ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

"Reed Elsevier: Science Friction" - A Citicorp Report
by Subbiah Arunachalam 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

Citicorp report on Elsevier and open access On October 8, Citigroup Smith Barney issued a 56 page report, _Reed Elsevier: Science Friction_, analyzing the STM journal industry and the market position of Reed Elsevier. The authors are Rogan Angelini-Hurll, Marc Sugarman, Roberto Odierna, and Tom Singlehurst, in consultation with Vighnesh Padiachy. The report is not online, so I can't link to it. But here is my summary of its main conclusions, or at least the main conclusions of interest to proponents of open access. * During 2004, Reed Elsevier profits will grow more slowly than the STM publishing sector overall. Moreover, constrained library budgets and increased government scrutiny exert pricing pressure on the whole STM sector. Consequently Citicorp is downgrading its rating of Elsevier stock from Hold/Medium Risk to Sell/Medium Risk and lowering its price target from 500p to 450p. * Growth in the Reed Elsevier science division will slow down in the short term and require new investment. However, the rise of OA institutional repositories will create new risks for that investment. * Most libraries have finished switching over to electronic delivery, so Elsevier's premium for ejournals will no longer bring in much revenue. At the same time, more and more libraries want out of the big deal. * Open access is rising in popularity and will not go away. OA archives and OA journals are increasing in number and usage, and governments are considering policies that would mandate OA to taxpayer-funded research. * The market will move towards upfront-funded OA journals. However, several factors will slow the transition, which will therefore be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. For the short or medium term, but not the long term, the transition to upfront funding for journals will cost more than the present system. Governments may be reluctant to reduce research funding in order to pay for OA. To support their journals, society publishers might have to give up revenue now used for other purposes. OA journals will not have the benefit of funding from corporate users that conventional journals currently enjoy. * The STM journal market is peculiar. Journals don't pay authors. Readers don't pay journals; because libraries pay on behalf of readers, readers know the quality but rarely the cost of what they read. Journals don't compete directly with one another and have a monopoly on the distribution of their own articles. Unlike other consumers, libraries spend up to the limit of their budgets. * Publishers explain their price increases by citing increased costs, increased volume, increased usage, and increased investment in infrastructure for electronic publishing. However, when examined closely (details in the report), these explanations are misleading and unpersuasive. Citicorp believes that price increases are mainly due to a desire to maintain high profit margins. * If the price per article is falling, it is due to greater volume, clever bookkeeping, and bundling, and does not result in lower costs for subscribers. * Library budgets are maxed out. If publishers continue to raise prices, libraries will have to purchase smaller and smaller percentages of the published literature. * Universities are starting to understand that rising journal prices and journal use of copyright are reducing access to research. At the same time universities are starting to see the benefits of open access as an alternative to the current system. (At this point, the report offers a table based on my list of University Actions Against High Journal Prices, <http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions>.) However, while universities protest high prices, and some endorse open access, most renew their Elsevier subscriptions. * OA advocates are correct to argue that OA removes access barriers, increases the visibility and impact of authors and their work, increases a funding agency's return on investment, relieves library budgets, brings access to non-academics, and provides a business model that scales with research funding rather than with library funding. * On the downside, the "author-pays" model may not be economically sustainable, may not transfer from biomedicine to other fields, may "penalize" high-output research institutions and countries (though this "penalty" may be "more than recouped" through OA efficiencies), and may not generate revenue needed for post-publication expenses such as long-term preservation and upgrading technology. * Government intervention is justified by the use of public money to fund research, to fund researcher salaries, and to fund the purchase of journal subscriptions. * Today the level of knowledge about open access among scientists is low, but this will change. Universities are starting to educate their faculty about OA and to recommend it (in part) as a solution to library budget problems. Large and conspicuous government-sponsored OA initiatives are imminent in the U.S. and U.K. Successful OA journals are rising in usage and repute. ___________________________________________________________ Win a castle for NYE with your mates and Yahoo! Messenger http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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Radio Talk on E-mail Communication
by I.R.N.Goudar 03 Nov '04

03 Nov '04

Hello Lis-forum members, You may like to listen to a Radio Talk on " Know about E-Affairs: E-mail as a Quick and Effective Means of Communication" by Mrs. Poornima Narayana, Deputy Head, ICAST, NAL, Bangalore All India Radio, Bangalore, Bhadravathi, Mysore, etc On 3rd Nov 2004 (Wednesday) at 9.16 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I.R.N. Goudar Tel: 91-80-5086081 Head, Information Centre for 91-80-5235315 Aerospace Science and Technology Fax: 91-80-5268072 National Aerospace Laboratories E-mail:goudar@css.nal.res.in Airport Road http://www.icast.org.in/staff1.htm BANGALORE-560 017 India

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SLA-MAHD Travel Grant to attend SLA conference in Toronto
by JK Vijayakumar 02 Nov '04

02 Nov '04

Original Message ----- From: Martha McPhail To: ifla-l(a)infoserv.inist.fr Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 12:26 AM Subject: travel grant to SLA conference in Toronto IFLA Colleagues: The Museums, Arts and Humanities Division of the Special Libraries Association is offering a travel grant to attend the SLA annual conference in Toronto, Canada, June 5-9, 2005. The grant is specifically for arts or humanities librarians from developing countries. Past awardees have come from Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Trinidad and Tobago. Application information and criteria are available on the SLA website: http://www.sla.org/division/dmah/Travel%20Grant.htm Martha McPhail Past-chair, Museums, Arts and Humanities Division, 2004/2005 Special Libraries Association http://www.sla.org/division/dmah/ E-Mail: mmcphail(a)mail.sdsu.edu San Diego State University 619-594-6736 ---- Posted by JK Vijayakumar __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com

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search full text article
by monawwer eqbal 02 Nov '04

02 Nov '04

Dear Sir/Madam I am research scholar of department of library and information science AMU akigarh,UP. I am doing PhD on "Total quality Management in central university library :A Study".Please help me to search fulltext articles on the Internet. or get me information in which web sites I can get this inforamation. With regards MONAWWER EQBAL AMU ALIGARH Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. Dear Sir/Madam I am research scholar of department of library and information science AMU akigarh,UP. I am doing PhD on "Total quality Management in central university library :A Study".Please help me to search fulltext articles on the Internet. or get me information in which web sites I can get this inforamation. With regards MONAWWER EQBAL AMU ALIGARH http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matri… Yahoo! India Matrimony : Find your life partner http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg2/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matr… online .

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Workshop on DSpace, HTML and Mylibrary
by G. K. Manjunath 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

Workshop on DSpace, HTML and Mylibrary December 27, 2004 to January 1, 2005 Organizers and Venue Library Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Gen Vaidy Marg, Film City Road, Santosh Nagar, Goregaon (E) MUMBAI-400 065 For further details please visit http://www.igidr.ac.in/lib/dlw.htm g.k.manjunath CHIEF LIBRARIAN INDIRA GANDHI INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH FILM CITY ROAD ( GEN.VAIDYA MARG ) SANTOSH NAGAR GOREGAON ( EAST ) MUMBAI - 400 065 INDIA e-mail : gkm(a)igidr.ac.in http:// www.igidr.ac.in/lib/library.htm phone 91-22-28490653 ************************************************

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interactive Medical Library
by vasanth raj 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

Dear sir/madam/ Friends There is a interactive Medical library at "Medical futures India" in Mysore which is exclusively for medical student , doctors and research schlors of health sciences. If you are intrested to visit that Library you can visit to following address. Interactive Medical library doctor's corner Gokulam 3rd stage Mysore Vasantha Raju N dept of library and Inforamation science University of Mysore Mysore Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. Dear sir/madam/ Friends There is a interactive Medical library at "Medical futures India" in Mysore which is exclusively for medical student , doctors and research schlors of health sciences. If you are intrested to visit that Library you can visit to following address. Interactive Medical library doctor's corner Gokulam 3rd stage Mysore Vasantha Raju N dept of library and Inforamation science University of Mysore Mysore http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matri… Yahoo! India Matrimony : Find your life partner http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg2/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matr… online .

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SLA-PAM International Award Member Call for Nominations
by JK Vijayakumar 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Debra K. Bailey Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 12:02 AM Subject: SLA-PAM International Award Member Call for Nominations International Membership Award Call for Nominations for 2005-2006 The Physics Astronomy Mathematics (PAM) Division of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) is now calling for nominations for the International Membership Award. The SLA-PAM Division will present this award to a librarian from the Developing World; it provides a two-year SLA membership, for the years 2005 and 2006. For more information, please visit the following web page: http://www.sla.org/division/dpam/manual/awards/pamimadetails.html Nominations should be submitted to the chair of the International Relations Committee of the PAM Division (address below) by December 31, 2004 and the award will be announced in January 2005. Objective The purpose of the award is to provide an opportunity for a librarian from the Developing World to be an active member of SLA and of SLA-PAM. Components The award will provide SLA membership, including PAM Division affiliation, for a period of two years (2005-2006). The award recipient will serve as a member of PAM's International Relations Committee (IRC) during the term of the award. PAM will normally fund the award recipient to attend SLA's annual conference during the first year of the award. The award recipient will prepare a short report on the state of scientific information/libraries in his/her country, to be presented to the membership at the annual SLA conference either in person or in writing. The award recipient will also prepare a final report reflecting on his/her experience with PAM and providing recommendations for future improvements to the award program; this report is to be sent before the end of the second year of the award to the PAM Executive Board and PAM IRC. Qualifications The nominee must reside and work in a developing country and have basic English skills. The nominee must be working currently in a library, information center, library school or other information-related capacity, in one of the subject areas relevant to PAM: physics, astronomy, mathematics or computer science. The nominee will not normally have had a previous opportunity to become actively involved in SLA, such as by attending an SLA conference, or other professional library association meeting in the U.S. Nomination Process Self nominations are encouraged. Nomination documentation should include: A letter highlighting the candidate's professional career and qualifications and explaining why this person should be granted the award; The candidate's current professional resume [see resume guide at http://www.jobweb.com/Resumes_Interviews/default.htm if desired]; Contact information for the nominee: name, position, business address, and (if possible) email address. Nominations are to be submitted by 31 December 2004 to the PAM IRC chair, and the award recipient will be announced in January 2005. Selection Process The selection will be made by the PAM Executive Board in consultation with the PAM IRC chair. Address nominations to: Debra Bailey Chair, SLA-PAM International Relations Committee Fondren Library MS255 Rice University P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892 Phone: 713-348-2350 Fax: 713-348-5859 Email: dbailey(a)rice.edu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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MyLISA - November Lecture
by SUNIL M.V. 29 Oct '04

29 Oct '04

Mysore Librarian and Information Scientists Association (MyLISA) A Lecture on �Open Access and Institutional Repositories� By M G Sreekumar Librarian & Head Center for Development of Digital Libraries (CDDL) Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode Kunnamangalam P.O., Kozhikode, Kerala, India-673 571 You are cordially invited Date : 06.11.2004 Time : 3.30 P.M Venue : Dept. of Library and Information Science, Manasagangothri, Mysore-6 Sunil MV Librarian SDM Institute for Management Development No. 1, Chamundi Hill Road Siddartha Nagar, Mysore Phone : 0821 - 2420490/491 2429722/161 Fax: 0821-2425557 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. Mysore Librarian and Information Scientists Association ( MyLISA) � A Lecture on �Open Access and Institutional Repositories� � By M G Sreekumar Librarian & Head Center for Development of Digital Libraries (CDDL) Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode Kunnamangalam P.O., Kozhikode , Kerala, India-673 571 � You are cordially invited � Date � �� : 06.11.2004 Time � � � : 3.30 P.M Venue : Dept. of Library and Information Science, Manasagangothri, Mysore-6 Sunil MV Librarian SDM Institute for Management Development No. 1, Chamundi Hill Road Siddartha Nagar, Mysore Phone : 0821 - 2420490/491 2429722/161 Fax: 0821-2425557 Do you Yahoo!? http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/mobile/*http://mobile.yahoo.com/mai… Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.

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Fw:CoLIS 5 - call for contributions
by JK Vijayakumar 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call] CoLIS 5 Context: Nature, Impact and Role Fifth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/colis5/ University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK 4-9 June 2005 CALL FOR PAPERS, TUTORIAL, WORKSHOP AND DOCTORAL FORUM CONTRIBUTIONS CoLIS 5 is the fifth in the series of international conferences whose general aim is to provide a broad forum for critically exploring and analysing research in areas such as computer science, information science and library science. The theme for CoLIS 5 will be the nature, impact and role of context within information-centred research and technologies. Context is a complex, dynamic, and multi-dimensional concept that influences both humans and machines: how they behave individually and how they interact with each other. In CoLIS 5 we will take an interdisciplinary approach to the issue of context to help us define the theoretical approaches to modelling and understanding context, to incorporate contextual reasoning within information access technology and to develop a shared framework for promoting the exploration of context. Contributions are invited that address issues such: the relationship between context and information, investigations of context in information seeking environments, models of context and relevance, contextual issues in interactive information retrieval, and contextual evaluations of information technologies. CoLIS5 is particularly interested in technical issues involved in modelling context, and methodologies for providing and evaluating context-sensitive technologies for information access. Submissions CoLIS 5 invites submissions of high quality research papers, proposals for half or full day tutorials, proposals for one day workshops and contributions to the Doctoral Forum. All submissions will be reviewed by the international program committee. All accepted research papers will be published in the conference proceedings by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Submissions guidelines for all types of contributions, including a full list of topic areas, are available at the conference website: http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/colis5/ Important dates 7 February 2005: Deadline for all submissions. 7 March 2005: Author notification 21 March 2005: Final camera-ready copy 4 June 2005: Doctoral Forum day 5 June 2005: Tutorials 6-8 June 2005: Plenary conference 9 June 2005: Workshops Invited speakers Prof. David Blair, University of Michigan Business School and Prof. Elisabeth Davenport, Napier University School of Computing Organisation Conference Chairs: Fabio Crestani. University of Strathclyde, UK Ian Ruthven. University of Strathclyde, UK. Tutorials chair: Monica Landoni. University of Strathclyde, UK. Workshops Chair: Jonathan Furner. University of California, Los Angeles, US. Doctoral Forum Chair: Pia Borlund. Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark. About the venue Glasgow is Scotland's largest city and the cultural, commercial and convention capital of Scotland. Surrounded by some of the most breathtaking scenery in Western Europe, the city is one of the liveliest and most cosmopolitan destinations in Europe. Glasgow boasts world famous art collections, the best shopping in the United Kingdom outside London, and the most vibrant nightlife in Scotland. For more information please visit the conference website at http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/colis5/ -------------- Ian Ruthven Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Strathclyde Glasgow G1 1XH Email: Ian.Ruthven(a)cis.strath.ac.uk Tel: +44 141 548 3098 Fax: +44 141 552 5330 http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/people/biography/ir/ CoLIS 5 - http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/colis5/ ---------------------------------------- __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

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Re: [LIS-Forum] Mandating OA around the corner?
by Sukhdev Singh 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

This is exactly what I had experienced with our Online database IndMED [Bibliographic Database of Indian Journals, available freely from http://indmed.nic.in]. As more and more people became aware of/User of IndMED, the request for the full text of the indexed article started increasing. To my surprise, they were even requesting articles which were from journals which had online presence and the full text available for free. May be people were not aware about these?. Putting links to such articles along with the references came to mind. I experimented, but soon realised that these journal sites did reorganisation of their content quite often. Hence the links "evaporated" in no time. It was too much to expect them to use PURLs, DOI etc. So leaving the link to the home pages was a practical way to inform IndMED users about online availability of journals. This helped to some extent but problems did not end even here. These journals changed their host and domain names. I had to put extra effort to keep track of their domains and modify our database. And once it also happened that a journal's domain name was purchased by some "unwanted content" provider. Since August 2003, NIC has a project called medIND (http://medind.nic.in). It has been designed to serve as "backend" for IndMED (I am using term 'backend' just because I could not find better word). It aims to host full content of the journals indexed in IndMED/PubMed. Here NIC takes the responsibility to digitalize and host the journals for free. In return the journal becomes freely accessible to the users. The contents of these journals are organised using a File Naming and Organising Policy. The same policy has been implemented to generate links on the fly in the IndMED database. It ensures, one-to-one link between the Reference and the Full Text of the articles. As a Design Policy, these would be persistent to end users. I hope, Bio-Medical Community will be less frustration while searching for Indian Bio-Medical Literature. But still, there is need for Open Access Archive for Indian Medical Literature. And we will make it happen very soon. ATLEAST I BELIEVE IT!!! Thanks SUKHDEV SINGH, NIC. -----Original Message----- Friends: Here is a short message from Stevan Harnad that I received recently. I thought all of you might find it usful. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk] The Science Advisory Board, an international panel of 22,319 life science and medical professionals formed in 1997, has conducted a survey on "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?": > Scientists Frustrated with Limited Access to Full-Text Documents > http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.214.html > > While scientists often cite staying abreast of developments in their > field as the most common reason for reading scientific literature, > it is by far from the only reason. "Scientists perceive their > ability to access scientific and medical literature almost as an > unalienable right of their profession," observes Tamara Zemlo, > Ph.D., MPH, Director of The Science Advisory Board. The Internet > has reinforced this perception by increasing the speed and ease by > which these searches can be conducted. > > To find out what is the biggest obstacle to this ubiquitous scientific > practice, members of The Science Advisory Board participated in a poll > to address, "What makes searching scientific and medical literature > online frustrating?: Almost 80% of the 1,400 respondents stated that > limited access to full-text documents was the most annoying aspect > of online literature searches. It far exceeded the other complaints > of broken hypertext links, copyright restrictions and inadequate > search engines. > > Such sentiments will be sweet music to the ears of Public Library of > Science (PLoS) founders who espouse the philosophy that unrestricted > access to scientific and medical literature will accelerate progress > in these critical fields. Their model of offering full-text and data > of published research article--available free of charge anywhere > in the world--is still being tested. Time will tell whether the > scientists, who in theory embrace the nobility of this idea, will > choose to publish their own findings in such a venue. It continues to amaze, how researchers, despite their mounting frustration, remain blind (or paralyzed) with respect to the obvious! Why on earth would they want to keep waiting, passively, frustrated, for the eventual outcome of the test of a new cost-recovery model in order to gain access at last to one another's full-text articles, when they can already provide that access themselves, right now, by self-archiving their own articles? http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html There is no question but that the research community fervently desires Open Access: Already back in 2001, for example, 34,000 biologists worldwide signed the PLoS open letter to that effect, essentially threatening to stop publishing in and refereeing for journals if they did not provide Open Access. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html But while researchers have proved willing and able to perform the requisite keystrokes for signing open letters, declarations and surveys clamouring for Open Access to be provided for them, it looks as if they are not yet ready to perform the few additional keystrokes it would take to actually provide that Open Access for themselves -- even when over 90% of their journals have already given them the green light to go ahead and do so, with their blessing! http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php It looks as if nothing less than a self-archiving mandate from their funders and employers will manage to induce the thirsty research cavalry, having been duly led to the waters of Open Access Self-Archiving, to actually stoop to drink, at last! http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (Historians will have a jolly time sorting out why this was the case: why researcher inertia kept itself waiting, thirsty, needlessly, and despite mounting frustration, for over a decade, before grasping the optimal and inevitable that had been within their reach all along!) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml Stevan Harnad http://clients.rediff.com/signature/track_sig.asp http://ads.rediff.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.cgi/www.rediffmail.com/inbo… This is exactly what I had experienced with our Online database IndMED [Bibliographic Database of Indian Journals, available freely from http://indmed.nic.in]. As more and more people became aware of/User of IndMED, the request for the full text of the indexed article started increasing. To my surprise, they were even requesting articles which were from journals which had online presence and the full text available for free. May be people were not aware about these?. Putting links to such articles along with the references came to mind. I experimented, but soon realised that these journal sites did reorganisation of their content quite often. Hence the links "evaporated" in no time. It was too much to expect them to use PURLs, DOI etc. So leaving the link to the home pages was a practical way to inform IndMED users about online availability of journals. This helped to some extent but problems did not end even here. These journals changed their host and domain names. I had to put extra effort to keep track of their domains and modify our database. And once it also happened that a journal's domain name was purchased by some "unwanted content" provider. Since August 2003, NIC has a project called medIND (http://medind.nic.in). It has been designed to serve as "backend" for IndMED (I am using term 'backend' just because I could not find better word). It aims to host full content of the journals indexed in IndMED/PubMed. Here NIC takes the responsibility to digitalize and host the journals for free. In return the journal becomes freely accessible to the users. The contents of these journals are organised using a File Naming and Organising Policy. The same policy has been implemented to generate links on the fly in the IndMED database. It ensures, one-to-one link between the Reference and the Full Text of the articles. As a Design Policy, these would be persistent to end users. I hope, Bio-Medical Community will be less frustration while searching for Indian Bio-Medical Literature. But still, there is need for Open Access Archive for Indian Medical Literature. And we will make it happen very soon. ATLEAST I BELIEVE IT!!! Thanks SUKHDEV SINGH, NIC. -----Original Message----- Friends: Here is a short message from Stevan Harnad that I received recently. I thought all of you might find it usful. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk] The Science Advisory Board, an international panel of 22,319 life science and medical professionals formed in 1997, has conducted a survey on "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?": > Scientists Frustrated with Limited Access to Full-Text Documents > http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.214.html > > While scientists often cite staying abreast of developments in their > field as the most common reason for reading scientific literature, > it is by far from the only reason. "Scientists perceive their > ability to access scientific and medical literature almost as an > unalienable right of their profession," observes Tamara Zemlo, > Ph.D., MPH, Director of The Science Advisory Board. The Internet > has reinforced this perception by increasing the speed and ease by > which these searches can be conducted. > > To find out what is the biggest obstacle to this ubiquitous scientific > practice, members of The Science Advisory Board participated in a poll > to address, "What makes searching scientific and medical literature > online frustrating?: Almost 80% of the 1,400 respondents stated that > limited access to full-text documents was the most annoying aspect > of online literature searches. It far exceeded the other complaints > of broken hypertext links, copyright restrictions and inadequate > search engines. > > Such sentiments will be sweet music to the ears of Public Library of > Science (PLoS) founders who espouse the philosophy that unrestricted > access to scientific and medical literature will accelerate progress > in these critical fields. Their model of offering full-text and data > of published research article--available free of charge anywhere > in the world--is still being tested. Time will tell whether the > scientists, who in theory embrace the nobility of this idea, will > choose to publish their own findings in such a venue. It continues to amaze, how researchers, despite their mounting frustration, remain blind (or paralyzed) with respect to the obvious! Why on earth would they want to keep waiting, passively, frustrated, for the eventual outcome of the test of a new cost-recovery model in order to gain access at last to one another's full-text articles, when they can already provide that access themselves, right now, by self-archiving their own articles? http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html There is no question but that the research community fervently desires Open Access: Already back in 2001, for example, 34,000 biologists worldwide signed the PLoS open letter to that effect, essentially threatening to stop publishing in and refereeing for journals if they did not provide Open Access. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html But while researchers have proved willing and able to perform the requisite keystrokes for signing open letters, declarations and surveys clamouring for Open Access to be provided for them, it looks as if they are not yet ready to perform the few additional keystrokes it would take to actually provide that Open Access for themselves -- even when over 90% of their journals have already given them the green light to go ahead and do so, with their blessing! http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php It looks as if nothing less than a self-archiving mandate from their funders and employers will manage to induce the thirsty research cavalry, having been duly led to the waters of Open Access Self-Archiving, to actually stoop to drink, at last! http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (Historians will have a jolly time sorting out why this was the case: why researcher inertia kept itself waiting, thirsty, needlessly, and despite mounting frustration, for over a decade, before grasping the optimal and inevitable that had been within their reach all along!) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml Stevan Harnad

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