BANR

The Summer 2007 issue of ISTL (Issues in Science and Technology LIbrarianship) includes an article by Elizabeth C. Turtle and Martin P. Courtois on the importance of science librarians in the scholarly communication process. Quoting Turtle and Courtois, "It is our view that the range of issues being addressed under the umbrella of scholarly communication offers tremendous opportunity to expand access to scientific information".

ISTL
http://www.istl.org/07-summer/

Posted by Allison Level at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quoted from the SPARC press release,

"CERN, Geneva, Switzerland - As part of OAI5 - the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, held at the CERN Laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland, the SHERPA partnership was presented with the 2007 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Europe initiated the Award in 2006 to recognise the work of an individual or group within Europe that has made significant advances in our understanding of the issues surrounding scholarly communications and/or in developing practical means to address the problems with the current systems. In making the Award to SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) the judging panel noted their advocacy for the adoption of institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in support of Open Access, including OpenDOAR (a world-wide directory of repositories hosting freely available peer-reviewed publications), JULIET (a listing of funding bodies' policies regarding deposit mandates) and RoMEO (listing publishers' copyright policies in relation to articles deposit)."

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/

For more information, contact: David Prosser, david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

Posted by Allison Level at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Open Access and Scientific Research: Are Digital Repositories A Solution?

Monday, April 23, 4:00 pm
Virginia Dale Room/University Club
Lory Student Center, CSU Campus

Presented by Dr. Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK

Digital repository tools are now being widely promoted for the capture and preservation of primary academic research output, in fact, many institutions and funding agencies are starting to mandate such processes. Such repositories enable faculty, students, and researchers to deposit their research into an openly accessible digital environment. In principle, digital repository efforts can be extended to the data on which scientific research rests and have the potential of generating a huge resource for data-driven practice. When data are properly reposited enormous new opportunities in data-driven science arise. Dr. Murray-Rust will report and demonstrate some of the exciting new developments in this dynamic and rapidly evolving arena.

Wine and Cheese reception to follow. Sponsored by Colorado State University Libraries.

More Information can be found at: http://lib.colostate.edu/about/news/openaccess/

Questions should be directed to:
Jan.Gilligan@Colostate.edu (970.491.4085)
Michelle.Wilde@Colostate.edu (970.491.1860)

Posted by Joanna Blair at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An article in the March 22, 2007 issue of Nature reports that a plan is underway to make raw scientific data from federal agencies available in an open access repository.

"The US government is considering a massive plan to store almost all scientific data generated by federal agencies in publicly accessible digital repositories. The aim is for the kind of data access and sharing currently enjoyed by genome researchers via GenBank, or astronomers via the National Virtual Observatory, but for the whole of US science.

Scientists would then be able to access data from any federal agency and integrate it into their studies. For example, a researcher browsing an online journal article on the spread of a disease could not only pull up the underlying data, but mesh them with information from databases on agricultural land use, weather and genetic sequences.

Nature has learned that a draft strategic plan will be drawn up by next autumn by a new Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD)."

Content for this entry quoted from Butler, D. 2007. Agencies join forces to share data. Nature (446): 354.

Posted by Joanna Blair at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dissertations and theses published since 1997 are often available in an online format through the library database Digital Dissertations and Theses . This database covers all disciplines, is international in scope, and has several unique search features such as school name, advisor, and degree.

Many schools are now making their students' dissertations and theses freely available online through an open access database called Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD). This database is also international and currently has 60 institutions that submit materials.

Posted by Joanna Blair at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a long-awaited policy, Research Councils UK (RCUK) mandates that all research it funds should be made freely available, The Scientist, June 28, 2006 (Posted June 29, 2006 Scientists funded by the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will soon be obliged to deposit copies of their published articles in an online repository at the earliest opportunity the council announced today (June 28).
RCUK position statement on access to research outputs:

Information from the Scientist Website

Entry edited to remove broken links 21 March 2007

Posted by Allison Level at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recently two pieces of legislation have been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would increase access to federally funded research.

"The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and cosponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), would require free online access within six months of publication for virtually all peer-reviewed journal articles resulting from federally funded research.

The American Center for CURES Act of 2005, introduced by Lieberman and cosponsored by Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), has a similar provision for research sponsored by agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)."

More information about the legislation is available from Thomas, the Library of Congress sponsored portal to legislative information http://thomas.loc.gov/. The full-text of an article with details about the Cornyn-Lieberman and CURES bills is available from the Association of College and Research Libraries website at: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2006/june06/fedfundedresearch.htm

Information from this posting is quoted from the ACRL C&RL News article June 2006.

Posted by Allison Level at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Senators John Cornyn and Joseph I. Lieberman introduced a bill on May 2nd that would require free web access to publications derived from funding from federal agencies that have research expenditures over $100 million. The "Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 "would make it mandatory for peer-reviewed articles to be made available for free online within six months of publication. Eleven agencies have been identified including the NIH, NSF, NASA, EPA, Department of Agriculture and Department of Defense.

Via Open Access News and News Blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education

Continue reading "Proposed Open Access Legislation" »

Posted by Joanna Blair at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Open Access journal PLoS Biology, launched in 2003, received its first ISI impact factor. The impact factor of 13.9 puts PLoS Biology at the top of the ISI group for Biology Journals.

via STS list by Flora Grabowska, originally published in the 1/27/2006 PLoS e-Newsletter .

Continue reading "PLoS Biology has Impact Factor of 13.9" »

Posted by Joanna Blair at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)