Bio-piracy next bone of contention between rich, developing nations
(dailypioneer.com): Post-Copenhagen, in the International Year of Biodiversity, the issue of bio-piracy is all set to be the next bone of contention between the developed and developing countries. India recently sought to assume a “leadership role” in the global biodiversity conservation efforts by asserting it will push for the adoption… Read More
How to time travel by search engine
(independent.co.uk): Until recently, ancient publications could only be scoured by visiting in person the reading rooms at Colindale in the northern suburbs of London. Now they can be trawled using search engines that can pick out the mention of a surname or a place name from 49 titles, from Trewman's… Read More
Can we trust industry-funded drug research?
(guardian.co.uk): The point of science is that it can give us impartial answers to important questions. Doctors and patients can look at scientific evidence to help them decide what makes a healthy diet, or whether a drug can treat a particular condition. Scientific journals publish detailed reports of research, allowing… Read More
Illegal Trading Volume of Academic Papers Reaches 1b Yuan
(english.cri.cn): Trading academic papers has become big business in China. It has even evolved into an "industry chain" with an annual sales volume of one billion yuan last year, nearly 5.5 times the figure in 2007. The figure was released by a research team headed by Shen Yang, an associate… Read More
Digital Curation Centre User Survey 2009: Highlights
(digitalcuration.blogspot.com): In 2009 DCC users were surveyed, repeating a similar survey carried out in 2006. Both surveys were publicised on the DCC website and via several mailing lists, principally the DCC-Associates and (in 2009) the JISC sponsored Research-Dataman list. In both surveys around 90% of respondents are familiar with the… Read More
A Librarian’s View of Ebook Acquisitions
(infotoday.com): Although they are a relatively small part of a library’s budget, ebooks are being adopted by librarians, providing an alternative source of information to end users. Research done by Swets shows that ebooks constitute approximately 9% of total book expenditures, and that number is expected to double within the… Read More
The strange case of academic libraries and e-books nobody reads
(teleread.org): Instead of focusing on books downloadable to e-readers or smart phones, academic libraries have created enormous databases of e-books that students and faculty members can be read only on computer screens. The result, as shown by studies like the JISC national ebooks observatory project, is that these collections are… Read More
Putting the
(eff.org): Sometimes an idea is so blindingly, obviously good that you have to wonder why it hasn’t already been implemented. A few years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had an idea like that. Why not create a free, public, online archive of findings from research studies that were… Read More
ROAR Registry of Open Access Repositories upgraded to Power of EPrints Functionality
(eprints.org): The ROAR Registry of Open Access Repositories has just been upgraded to the full power of the EPrints software's remarkable functionality. Explore the power of ROAR to display and track repository size, contents and growth across time, by country, repository type, and many performance parameters. Read More
The Greater Flexibility of Publishing With E-Books
(publishingandprinting.pricesstop.com): E-books have replaced traditional books that run the whole gamut and range from small poetry chapbooks to full-fledged novels and comprehensive technical manuals. These days, rather than go to paper and ink, everyone from corporate presentation givers to best selling novelists is taking the electronic path to publication. E-books… Read More
