The Open Science Movement
(physics.about.com): As the internet becomes more diverse, there continues to be intense debate about how to best leverage it for both productivity and fairness. This debate extends to many areas - politics, journalism, design, and also science. The move to post scientific research data online is part of a movement… Read More
Google working with U.S., European officials on censorship trade case
(afterdawn.com): Google Inc. is working with the U.S. State Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Commerce Department and European officials to help build a case arguing that censorship acts as a trade barrier, according to Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications. The company shut… Read More
Over 9 million items now on Europeana
(europeana.eu): Nearly 2 million new items have been added to Europeana. The latest contributions mean Europeana now has 9.1 million digital images, sounds, texts and videos, representing the cultural and scientific heritage of countries across Europe. Europeana’s collection will grow to over 10 million in 2010. Read More
Opening Research on the Web: Hastening the Inevitable
(internetevolution.com): Over 100 institutions (starting with Southampton, and now including Harvard and MIT) and over 40 research funders (including NIH and RCUK) have mandated Green OA so far. Institutions have created OA repositories (with the help of free software, the first of which was EPrints, created in 2000 by the… Read More
The catalog is out of the box
(oclc.org): For hundreds of years, metadata was kept in a box. Literally. A wooden box, filled with paper cards. Libraries cataloged for one reason: to be able to find resources on a shelf. Today, though, we’re seeing a growing importance placed on metadata management activities. In an increasingly information-driven world,… Read More
E-Book Sales Grew in April, But More Slowly
(publishers.org): Book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the month of April increased by 24.8% percent in April to $629.8 million and were up by 11.8 percent for the year through April. E-book sales jumped up 127.4 percent for the month ($27.4 million), reflecting an increase… Read More
FDA to Communicate Safety Monitoring Activities to Consumers and Health Care Professionals
(fda.gov): The US Food and Drug Administration has unveiled a new source of information for patients and health care professionals on the safety of recently approved drugs and biologics. Summaries of FDA safety analyses on recently approved products will now be periodically prepared and posted on FDA’s website along with… Read More
Peer Review vs. Peer Ranking: Dynamic vs Passive Filtration
(openaccess.eprints.org): Chen & Konstan's (C & K) paper, "Conference Paper Selectivity and Impact" is interesting, though somewhat limited because it is based only on computer science and has fuller data on conference papers than on journal papers. The finding is that papers from highly selective conferences are cited as much… Read More
Falling demand of OUP’s open access model deserves closer examination
(iwr.co.uk): OUP’s conclusion that when given a choice, most authors are not yet choosing to publish their articles under an open access model is too simplistic. On June 16, IWR has received a letter from Frederick Friend, JISC scholarly communication consultant and the honorary director scholarly communication at UCL. His… Read More
New impact factors yield surprises
(the-scientist.com): Thomson Reuters has released its 2009 Journal Citation Report, cataloging journals' impact factors, and shuffling in the top few spots have some analysts scratching their heads. Specifically, the publication with second highest impact factor in the "science" category is Acta Crystallographica - Section A, knocking none other than the… Read More
