Information Literacy Needs Open Access or: Open Access is not Only for Researchers

The Open Access was initially (blandly) conceived in view not only of researchers but also of lay readers, then this perspective slowly faded out. The Information Literacy movement wants to teach citizens how to arrive at trustable information but the amount of paywalled knowledge is still big. So, their lines of development are somehow complementary: Information Literacy needs Open Access for the citizens to freely access high quality information while Open Access truly fulfils its scope when it is conceived and realized not only for the researchers (an aristocratic view which was the initial one) but for the whole society

Antiquities trafficking in conflict countries: A crime-mapping approach

Studies on antiquities trafficking have often been overshadowed by research looking at the trafficking of human beings, drugs, and weapons, a fact partly motivated by the arguably higher relevance and greater security implications involved in these other forms of illicit trade. However, the past decade of conflicts in the Middle East has revived an interest in the study of antiquities trafficking networks. 1 The association between the growing size of the illicit antiquities market and conflicts in the region did not go unnoticed by crime scientists and criminologists looking deeper at the relation between the trafficking of antiquities and transnational organized crime

Introduction; open access in the social and political sciences : threat or opportunity?

This article introduces a Symposium which brings together the academic and publishing industry in two key countries (the UK and the US) to analyse and assess the implications of Open Access (OA) journal publishing in the social and political sciences, as well as its different formats and developments to date. With articles by three academics (all involved in academic associations) and three publishers, the Symposium represents an exchange of views which help each of the two sectors understand better the perspectives of the other. More generally, the Symposium aims to raise the visibility of OA amongst the academic community whose general awareness and knowledge of OA – compared with publishers – has been rather limited to date

Supporting the advancement of science: Open access publishing and the role of mandates

In December 2011 the United States House of Representatives introduced a new bill, the Research Works Act (H.R.3699), which if passed could threaten the public's access to US government funded research. In a digital age when professional and lay parties alike look more and more to the online environment to keep up to date with developments in their fields, does this bill serve the best interests of the community? Those in support of the Research Works Act argue that government open access mandates undermine peer-review and take intellectual property from publishers without compensation, however journals like Journal of Translational Medicine show that this is not the case. Journal of Translational Medicine in affiliation with the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer demonstrates how private and public organisations can work together for the advancement of science

Insights from in situ and environmental TEM on the oriented attachment of α-Fe₂O₃ nanoparticles during α-Fe₂O₃ nanorod formation

Acicular α-Fe2O3 nanorods (NRs), at an intermediate stage of development, were isolated using a snapshot valve-assisted hydrothermal synthesis (HS) technique, for the purpose of complementary in situ transmission electron microscopy (iTEM) and environmental TEM (ETEM) investigations of the effect of local environment on the oriented attachment (OA) of α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles (NPs) during α-Fe2O3 NR growth. Observations of static snapshot HS samples suggested that α-Fe2O3 NPs undergo reorientation following initial attachment, consistent with an intermediate OA stage, prior to ‘envelopment’ with the developing NR to adopt a perfect single crystal. Conversely, the heating of partially developed α-Fe2O3 NRs up to 250 °C, under vacuum, during iTEM, demonstrated the progressive coalescence of loosely packed α-Fe2O3 NPs and the coarsening of α-Fe2O3 NRs, without any direct evidence for an intermediate OA stage. Direct evidence was obtained for the action of an OA mechanism prior to the consumption of α-Fe2O3 NPs at the tips of developing α-Fe2O3 NRs during ETEM investigation, under an He pressure of 5 mbar at 500 °C. However, α-Fe2O3 NPs more strongly attached to the side-walls of developing α-Fe2O3 NRs were more likely to be consumed through a local NP destabilisation and reordering process, in the absence of an OA mechanism. Hence, the emerging ETEM evidence suggests a competition between OA and diffusion processes at the α-Fe2O3 NP coalescence stage of acicular α-Fe2O3 NR crystal development, depending on whether the localised growth conditions facilitate freedom of NP movement