Research Information Systems in the Nordic Countries - Infrastructure, Concepts, and Organization

Used on the Copyright licens Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/se/deed.en_GBA report about Research Information Systems in the Nordic Countries, Infrastructure, concepts and organizationThis report is commissioned by the Nordbib programme, and is based on a web survey of the current status of CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and IR (Institutional Repositories) in the Nordic countries. The survey has been conducted to investigate how Nordic higher education institutions collect and present their research output. Do they use Institutional Repositories and/or Current Research Information Systems, are these systems separate or integrated, what software is used, and how are they staffed and financed? An important part of the survey was to analyse the perceived needs for national and Nordic coordination and support regarding such specific issues as rights management, central search services, educational and promotional materials etc. The survey results are presented against international developments in Open Access, both historical and current. The main purpose of the survey is to help Nordbib gather relevant information for promoting greater visibility to Nordic research and offer a background for creating a joint Nordic approach to further developments in Open Access. A presentation of the survey project was given at the Nordbib Workshop on ”Research Visibility – managing quality for better evaluation” 27-28 October, 2008. We would like to thank the members of the Nordbib workshop group for valuable viewpoints regarding the final formulations in the questionnaire. We also wish to thank all our contacts in the Nordic countries for their invaluable help in identifying respondents and providing us with email addresses, and other valuable advice and support

Scholarly publishing and open access in the Nordic Countries

This study examines aspects of scholarly journal publishing in the Nordic countries. On average half of Nordic journals publish online. In most Nordic countries, commercial publishers predominate; however, in Finland the majority are society publishers. The number of open access journals is low, in line with international figures. There is concern to maintain local languages in journal publishing. A majority of the journals publishing in local languages are within social science, humanities, and arts; the STM sector publishes in English. English-language publications are favoured in research assessments, international recognition, and impact, while the visibility of local-language scholarly journals in international databases is low. The Nordbib program supports Nordic scholarly journals and fosters co-operation with publishing companies and learned societies over migration to e-publishing; it also supports open access. The article discusses future challenges for journal publishing, pointing out the problems of small journal publishers and the need for co-operation between stakeholders

Utilizing hprints.org as a subject based research infrastructure

hprints.org is a recently established Open Access repository in the fields of social sciences and arts and humanities. It is a Nordic initiative and as such an example of a ”green” Open Access facility aiming at making scholarly documents publicly available to the widest possible audience. The archive can be accessed freely on the Internet.hprints.org has been funded twice by Nordbib, since 2007. The first hprints project set up the current repository on a basis of technical and policy requirements, and the second – ongoing – project has translated the authors’ rights document “Licence to Publish” into Nordic languages, and are now conducting focused outreach to selected groups of researchers