Fast, linked, and open – the future of taxonomic publishing for plants: launching the journal PhytoKeys

The paper describes the focus, scope and the rationale of PhytoKeys, a newly established, peer-reviewed, open-access journal in plant systematics. PhytoKeys is launched to respond to four main challenges of our time: (1) Appearance of electronic publications as amendments or even alternatives to paper publications; (2) Open Access (OA) as a new publishing model; (3) Linkage of electronic registers, indices and aggregators that summarize information on biological species through taxonomic names or their persistent identifiers (Globally Unique Identifiers or GUIDs; currently Life Science Identifiers or LSIDs); (4) Web 2.0 technologies that permit the semantic markup of, and semantic enhancements to, published biological texts. The journal will pursue cutting-edge technologies in publication and dissemination of biodiversity information while strictly following the requirements of the current International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)

Semantic and Web: The Web Part

One major aim of the Semantic Web is to enable a machine-processable Web of data. Hence, the Semantic Web community regards it as extension of the traditional web. On the other hand, the applications of the Semantic Web rely deeply on web technologies in order to work in a distributed fashion, world-wide. The goal of this special issue is to bring together contributions from these communities to address the challenges in Semantic Web and Web technologies in cooperation. The papers included in this special issue demonstrate how new technologies of the Web and Semantic Web complement each other and provide more contributions to the area of web technologies. The semantic part of this special issue, which contains substantial theoretical and empirical contributions to Semantic Web, is published in Open Journal of Semantic Web (OJSW)

Semantic and Web: The Semantic Part

The Web is everywhere in daily life. Business is not possible any more without the fast communication through the web. The knowledge of the humans is reflected in the information accessible in the web. New challenges occur with the flood of information and electronic possibilities for the human being. The current World Wide Web enables an easy, instant access to a vast amount of online information. However, the content in the Web is typically for human consumption, and is not tailored to be machine-processed. The Semantic Web, which is intended to establish a machine-understandable web, thereby offers a promising and potential solution to mining and analyzing web content. The Semantic Web is currently changing from an emergent trend to a technology used in complex real-world applications. This part of the special issue "Semantic and Web" especially investigates how semantic technologies can help the human being to open the new possibilities of the web. The papers, which contribute more to Web technologies, are published in Open Journal of Web Technologies (OJWT)

An Approach to Publish Scientific Data of Open-Access Journals Using Linked Data Technologies

Semantic Web encourages digital libraries, including open access journals, to collect, link and share their data across the Web in order to ease its processing by machines and humans to get better queries and results. Linked Data technologies enable connecting related data across the Web using the principles and recommendations set out by Tim Berners-Lee in 2006. Several universities develop knowledge through scholarship and research with open access policies for the generated knowledge, using several ways to disseminate information. Open access journals collect, preserve and publish scientific information in digital form related to a particular academic discipline in a peer review process having a big potential for exchanging and spreading their data linked to external resources using Linked Data technologies. Linked Data can increase those benefits with better queries about the resources and their relationships. This paper reports a process for publishing scientific data on the Web using Linked Data technologies. Furthermore, methodological guidelines are presented with related activities. The proposed process was applied extracting data from a university Open Journal System and publishing in a SPARQL endpoint using the open source edition of OpenLink Virtuoso. In this process, the use of open standards facilitates the creation, development and exploitation of knowledge.This research has been partially supported by the Prometeo project by SENESCYT, Ecuadorian Government and by CEDIA (Consorcio Ecuatoriano para el Desarrollo de Internet Avanzado) supporting the project: “Platform for publishing library bibliographic resources using Linked Data technologies”

An Approach to Publish Statistics from Open-Access Journals Using Linked Data Technologies

Semantic Web encourages digital libraries which include open access journals, to collect, link and share their data across the web in order to ease its processing by machines and humans to get better queries and results. Linked Data technologies enable connecting structured data across the web using the principles and recommendations set out by Tim Berners-Lee in 2006. Several universities develop knowledge, through scholarship and research, under open access policies and use several ways to disseminate information. Open access journals collect, preserve and publish scientific information in digital form using a peer review process. The evaluation of the usage of this kind of publications needs to be expressed in statistics and linked to external resources to give better information about the resources and their relationships. The statistics expressed in a data mart facilitate queries about the history of journals usage by several criteria. This data linked to another datasets gives more information such as: the topics in the research, the origin of the authors, the relation to the national plans, and the relations about the study curriculums. This paper reports a process for publishing an open access journal data mart on the Web using Linked Data technologies in such a way that it can be linked to related datasets. Furthermore, methodological guidelines are presented with related activities. The proposed process was applied extracting statistical data from a university open journal system and publishing it in a SPARQL endpoint using the open source edition of the software OpenLink Virtuoso. In this process the use of open standards facilitates the creation, development and exploitation of knowledge. The RDF Data Cube vocabulary has been used as a model for publishing the multidimensional data on the Web. The visualization was made using CubeViz a faceted browser filtering observations to be presented interactively in charts. The proposed process help to publish statistical datasets in an easy way.This work has been partially supported by the Prometeo Project by SENESCYT, Ecuadorian Government

The Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics: An Introduction and Invitation

The Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics publishes research, literature reviews, and application reports that use the theories and methods of economics to shape the understanding of oceans and their resources, and coastal regions. The Journal is intended for a broad audience of scholars and practitioners in economics and ocean and coastal management. Oceans includes the major oceans, bays, and estuaries, but other definitions may be proposed. Articles addressing both economic values and the measurement of economic activity in ocean industries are included, along with articles addressing the economy of coastal regions. The Journal uses an open peer review system and Web-based technologies to encourage and open and active community of researchers. Lea este abstracto y los demás abstractos del número inaugural en españo

Building Web Journal Directory and Its Articles with Drupal

The rapid growths of web based applications force web programmers to keep updating their knowledge especially on web applications technologies. Drupal is one of open source Content Management System (CMS) that can be used to develop web based applications and meet recent web standard. Unlike other CMS, Drupal is more configurable and customizable; many kind of sites using Drupal as an engine, from University site to Company or even personal blog site. Having been supported by huge modules are the reason why Drupal can be used for many kind of websites. This paper will show the ability of Drupal for building a Web academic Journal directory and its articles content. The developed system can be accessed via url http://sitasi.co

E-learning for Networked Living

Networked Living is a Level 1 course in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offered by the UK Open University. The first two presentation of the course, in 2005 and 2006, attracted over 3000 students between them. Networked Living introduces students to ICT concepts and issues in a range of contexts. The course adopts a blended learning approach, using printed texts, web resources, DVD and computer conferencing. All the above media are used where appropriate to support students' learning. About 60% of the material is print-based – teaching texts, together with selected third-party articles. About 20% is web-based – using a comprehensive course web site, but also requiring students to find and use third-party sites. The remaining 20% is based on offline computer resources (e.g. spreadsheets) and collaborative activities using computer conferencing. The course web site contains short animations, quizzes and several interactive activities where students contribute information and commentaries, and can then see the collated contributions of other students. The DVD contains longer animations, simulations and software. Computer conferencing is used for tutor-group and whole-cohort conferences, and for online tutorials, with both asynchronous and synchronous discussion. The course web site provides a new, shareable 'online journal' facility, where students can record their work for the course. This paper discusses the various e-learning elements of Networked Living, based on the first two presentations of the course. The paper considers how e-learning can be combined with printed resources to create a successful blended learning experience for students

Open Source, Crowd Source: harnessing the power of the people behind our libraries

Presented at the Bridging Worlds 2008 Conference in Singapore, this paper was later published in the journal Program: electronic library and information systems in July 2009: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00330330910978581 Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the use of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technologies so that librarians can combine open source software with user-generated content to create a richer discovery experience for their users. Design/methodology/approach – Following a description of the current state of integrated library systems (ILS) and the developments with Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technologies, examples are given of library suppliers and libraries which are making use of these technologies. Findings – Libraries are moving away from the traditional, vendor-sourced library catalogue software in favour of open source software that can be tailored to meet the community\u27s needs by the people who are most familiar with those needs: library staff. Open source products and some vendor products outside the traditional ILS market allow libraries to pool data created by users: tags, reviews, comments. This allows the smallest libraries to harvest richer data than those of their own communities. Originality/value – The paper provides a “snapshot” of current developments in this fast-moving area