An online electronic journal for teaching purposes

Electronic journals are rapidly increasing in importance as a means of communication, but there is, as yet, little available in the way of training in their production or use. An experimental online electronic journal has therefore been established to provide such training. The journal is provided on the World Wide Web as a distributed activity: in the recently concluded evaluation phase, issues were produced at three nodes ‐ Loughborough University, City University and the University of South Australia. The students involved in the evaluation have been on courses in information, library and publishing studies at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The main training topics are: accessing electronic journals and evaluating interfaces; refereeing and editing; evaluating layout and design. The results of the evaluation show that this simulation approach is highly acceptable to students. It also has the value of highlighting areas where students are uncertain, or experience problems in handling the material. Student reactions to, and comments on, electronic journals appear to parallel those among actual users of such journals. Hence the training activity throws some light on the general problems that can be expected in making the transition from printed to electronic journals. As a result of the evaluation activities reported here, an online training package is being assembled, which will be made available over the Internet

Knowledge management in a public organisation in Malaysia: Do people really share?

In the new millennium, the concern of the Government of Malaysia in developing the nation through the knowledge economy has become very apparent.In 2002, the Government of Malaysia has launched the Knowledge Management Strategic Master Plan aiming to transform Malaysia from a Production-based economy to a knowledge-based economy.This study is an empirical investigation on the sharing/transfer of knowledge in a public organisation.To achieve an in-depth study, the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development of Malaysia was chosen for a case study. The findings are based on replies to a questionnaire survey done from September to December 2001

The citation advantage of open-access articles

Four subjects, ecology, applied mathematics, sociology and economics, were selected to assess whether there is a citation advantage between journal articles that have an open access (OA) version on the Internet compared to those articles that are exclusively toll access (TA). Citations were counted using the Web of Science and the OA status of articles was determined by searching OAIster, OpenDOAR, Google and Google Scholar. Of a sample of 4633 articles examined, 2280 (49%) were OA and had a mean citation count of 9.04, whereas the mean for TA articles was 5.76. There appears to be a clear citation advantage for those articles that are OA as opposed to those that are TA. This advantage, however, varies between disciplines, with sociology having the highest citation advantage but the lowest number of OA articles from the sample taken and ecology having the highest individual citation count for OA articles but the smallest citation advantage. Tests of correlation or association between OA status and a number of variables were generally found to be weak or inconsistent. The cause of this citation advantage has not been determined

Finding open access articles using Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR

Purpose – The paper seeks to demonstrate the relative effectiveness of a range of search tools in finding open access (OA) versions of peer reviewed academic articles on the WWW. Design/methodology/approach – Some background is given to why and how academics may make their articles OA and how they may be found by others searching for them. Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR were used to try to locate OA versions of peer reviewed journal articles drawn from three subjects (ecology, economics, and sociology). Findings – Of the 2519 articles 967 were found to have OA versions on the WWW. Google and Google Scholar found 76.84% of them. The results from OpenDOAR and OAIster were disappointing, but some improvements are noted. Only in economics could OAIster and OpenDOAR be considered a relative success. Originality/value - The paper shows the relative effectiveness of the search tools in these three subjects. The results indicate that those wanting to find OA articles in these subjects, for the moment at least, should use the general search engines Google and Google Scholar first rather than OpenDOAR or OAIster

Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education

A study carried out for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee examined models for the provision of access to material in institutional and subject-based archives and in open access journals. Their relative merits were considered, addressing not only technical concerns but also how e-print provision (by authors) can be achieved – an essential factor for an effective e-print delivery service (for users). A "harvesting" model is recommended, where the metadata of articles deposited in distributed archives are harvested, stored and enhanced by a national service. This model has major advantages over the alternatives of a national centralized service or a completely decentralized one. Options for the implementation of a service based on the harvesting model are presented