Tom Roper's Weblog

RCUK updated position on access to research outputs

RCUK has announced an updated position on access to research outputs.
There's a press release and the statement itself (a pdf)

Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association now open access

The Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association is now on open access from 2004 to the current issue.
The latest issue contains:
Barsky, Eugene
Introducing Web 2.0: weblogs and podcasting for health librarians
JCHLA / JABSC 2006 27: 33–34

Technorati Tags: openaccess

RAE and metrics

Today's Times Higher reports on the Department for Education and Skills consultation paper on proposed metrics-based funding models to replace the RAE, as does the Guardian
From an open access point of view, Stevan Harnad, posting on the JISC-Repositories list, thinks this is a Good Thing.

Technorati Tags: rae, research

Guardian on Reed Elsevier

There's a piece in this morning's Guardian business section on Reed Elsevier, possible threats from Google Scholar and Windows Live Academic Search and open access.
I'm not sure the author quite understands Google Scholar.

Technorati Tags: google, reedelsevier

THES on European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)

Today's THES reports that the Arts and Humanities Research Council is proposing a Europe-wide citation index. The database is being put together by the European Science Foundation, though there's nothing about it on the AHRC website, apart from a contact name.

Technorati Tags: citations, rae

Open and Shut?

I have just found, via a posting on [email protected], an excellent piece by Richard Poyner on the history of institutional repositories on his blog Open and Shut.

HSLG Open Access 2: Niamh Brennan, Trinity College

Niamh Brennan of Trinity College Dublin gave a wide-ranging and rich presentation This is the trouble with this conference blogging lark, when you come across such  presentation it's very difficult to render it faithfully. I am aware that my notes become more and more incoherent as they go on. Nevertheless I record them as I have them.

HSLG: session 1 Arne Jakobson on Open Access

Bernard Barrett opened the 4th conference of IHLG, saying, in introducing the first session on open access that it was up to us to change things.
Mary Burke of UCD chaired the session and referred to the words of the Budapest declaration on open access on combining old traditions and new technology. She introduced Arne Jakobson, President of EAHIL. Arne spoke on open access and institutional repositories (IRs). EAHIL supports both, he said, but he was going to concentrate on IRs
He referred to the Budapest and Berlin statements, and to RCUK's, though also to the controversial Royal Society statement. He gave some figures on numbers of IRs based on ePrints' Registry of Open Access Archives, , OAIster and OpenDOAR.
He introduced the audience to the distinction between pre- and post-prints. He listed a number of benefits of IRs:

• increased visibility of an institution's research
• no delay
• better availability
• secure and sustainable storage

Libraries are the natural hosts for IRs; storage and software costs are low. The challenges are cultural.
Arne then illustrated his point by describing the development of the Oslo repository, DUO. They will require all postgraduate theses to be submitted electronically from 2007. For electronic journal articles they have a sister project, FRIDA, and deposit is mandatory for scientific staff. Nationally they have NORA, the Norwegian Open Research Archive.
He concluded that a strategic plan was important, and that it was difficult to change scientists' and postgraduates' behaviour.
Questions: who adds metadata? Arne said that researchers do so on submission, using a simplified set of subject headings
What abut peer review? Items in FRIDA are peer-reviewed by definition, because they all post-prints.
What's the biggest block to compliance? Researchers'  time is short and workload heavy. Arne is  considering offering financial incentives for submission. Funding bodies are not yet insisting on deposit in IRs.
Citation counts? The database will contain citation to journals. It's clear open access increases visibility.
Which is better, a top down or bottom up approach? "Everywhere", replied Arne.

Tender process for UK PubMed Central announced

The Wellcome Trust have annouced the procurement process for UK PubMed Central

OpenDOAR is open

OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories went live on Friday.
This morning there were 49 UK repositories listed; browing by subject internationally finds 116 health repositories.