Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP

Promoting open scholarship in Africa: benefits and best library practices

Knowledge, as a prerequisite for development, is contingent on information. The main value of information is in its ability to be used, reused, and shared. Open access (OA) allows for the easy dissemination and preservation of information by providing all scholarly communication and knowledge at no cost to the end user. In the rapidly expanding, global knowledge-based economy, Africa’s steady progress from the peripheral to the epicenter of knowledge production is not to be ignored, not least because of its reliance on OA. Such access environments and institutional repositories throughout the continent are playing significant roles in maximizing the impact of research output. This paper reveals that OA content is more citable, not simply because of the quality of the output, but instead of the advantage that OA brings in maximizing accessibility and increased citation. It goes on to show that OA will enhance the research community’s existing system for evaluating and rewarding research productivity. Ultimately, OA has the ability to elevate (South) Africa, its universities and institutions, to the status of knowledge producers rather than mere knowledge consumers.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 314)

This bibliography lists 139 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in August, 1988

Supporting Research in Area Studies: a guide for academic libraries

The study of other countries or regions of the world often crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences. Supporting Research in Area Studies is a comprehensive guide for academic libraries supporting these communities of researchers. This book explores the specialist requirements of these researchers in information resources, resource discovery tools, and information skills, and the challenges of working with materials in multiple languages. It makes the case that by adapting their systems and procedures to meet these needs, academic libraries find themselves better placed to support their institution's�� international agenda more widely. The first four chapters cover the academic landscape and its history, area studies librarianship and acquisitions. Subsequent chapters discuss collections management, digital products, and the digital humanities, and their role in academic projects. The final chapter explores information skills and the various disciplinary skills that facilitate the needs of researchers during their careers

Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data. This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research. Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies

Finding cultural heritage images through a Dual-Perspective Navigation Framework

With the increasing volume of digital images, improving techniques for image findability is receiving heightened attention. The cultural heritage sector, with its vast resource of images, has realized the value of social tags and started using tags in parallel with controlled vocabularies to increase the odds of users finding images of interest. The research presented in this paper develops the Dual-Perspective Navigation Framework (DPNF), which integrates controlled vocabularies and social tags to represent the aboutness of an item more comprehensively, in order that the information scent can be maximized to facilitate resource findability. DPNF utilizes the mechanisms of faceted browsing and tag-based navigation to offer a seamless interaction between experts’ subject headings and public tags during image search. In a controlled user study, participants effectively completed more exploratory tasks with the DPNF interface than with the tag-only interface. DPNF is more efficient than both single descriptor interfaces (subject heading-only and tag-only interfaces). Participants spent significantly less time, fewer interface interactions, and less back tracking to complete an exploratory task without an extra workload. In addition, participants were more satisfied with the DPNF interface than with the others. The findings of this study can assist interface designers struggling with what information is most helpful to users and facilitate searching tasks. It also maximizes end users’ chances of finding target images by engaging image information from two sources: the professionals’ description of items in a collection and the crowd's assignment of social tags

Audiovisual preservation strategies, data models and value-chains

This is a report on preservation strategies, models and value-chains for digital file-based audiovisual content. The report includes: (a)current and emerging value-chains and business-models for audiovisual preservation;(b) a comparison of preservation strategies for audiovisual content including their strengths and weaknesses, and(c) a review of current preservation metadata models, and requirements for extension to support audiovisual files

Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other. In pursuit of those objectives, the workshop participants produced:1. a value statement addressing the question of why a Linked Data approach is worth prototyping;2. a manifesto for Linked Libraries (and Museums and Archives and …);3. an outline of the phases in a life cycle of Linked Data approaches;4. a prioritized list of known issues in generating, harvesting & using Linked Data;5. a workflow with notes for converting library bibliographic records and other academic metadata to URIs;6. examples of potential “killer apps” using Linked Data: and7. a list of next steps and potential projects.This report includes a summary of the workshop agenda, a chart showing the use of Linked Data in cultural heritage venues, and short biographies and statements from each of the participants