Nature Publishing offer to archive authors works

The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will launch a new initiative that automatically deposits manuscripts for authors mandated by funding bodies to self-archive.

The free service will place the research works into the PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UK PMC) depositories. The service is aimed at assisting authors needing to comply with the self-archiving policies of research funders such as the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

source: IWR

Paleobiology Database

n run by paleontological researchers from many institutions.

We are bringing together taxonomic and distributional information about the entire fossil record of plants and animals.

Our goal is to educate the public, summarize the literature for professionals, and foster statistical analyses of mass extinctions and other aspects of biodiversity.

http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl

Strategic Issues Survey Results Published

www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/strategy-planning

As part of its 2-year JISC-funded Strategy Planning & Implementation initiative JISC infoNet recently conducted a survey of both further and higher education institutions to identify their most pressing strategic issues and their underlying causes.

The results make for fascinating reading and suggest that issues relating to ‘organisational infrastructure’ are considered the most pressing challenges faced by institutions, even eclipsing financial concerns and the stresses of operating within an increasingly competitive, market-driven sector.  In particular, the quality and efficiency of processes, lack of communication & collaboration and problems with the IT infrastructure all rank highly as areas which waste the most time, effort and energy within the institution.   Interestingly, however, when it comes to identifying the reasons institutions continue to face these pressures, the majority chose to cite ‘external factors beyond their control’ as the principal factor.

The overwhelming majority of institutions favour an annual process of strategy review which, on one level, may seem appropriate given that only 11% of respondents pointed to issues coming to light since the last round of strategic planning as being the major causal factor.  However, the high level of infrastructural challenges faced by institutions and alluded to throughout the results does, perhaps, suggest that these well-established annual strategy update processes often achieve more on paper than in practice.

The journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials

The journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (STAM) has reportedly converted to a no-fee open access (OA) model with its January-March issue. The journal is being published by Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science in partnership with IOP Publishing.

source: Knowledgespeak newsletter

Knowledge Politics Quarterly

http://www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk/journal.html

Publisher: Knowledge Politics

Knowledge Politics Quarterly (KPQ) publishes original articles by established scholars, graduate students and non-academic practitioners. The topics covered by KPQ include the media, the internet, broadcasting, technological development, the social, political and economic implications of ICTs ­ in terms of theory, policy or practice.

ISSN: 1757-7675

Editor:

Craig Berry
Email:  c.berry [at] sheffield.ac.uk or
craig.berry [at] knowledgepolitics.org.uk

Knowledge Politics Quarterly is available free of charge as an Open Access journal on the Internet

Soundscapes: Journal on Media Culture

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/

Publisher: Soundscapes

Soundscapes is an online journal on the history and social significance of media culture. That’s all. No, this journal has no mission statement, nor does it have a corporate identity. It is non-profit and educational.

In short, it’s just an academic journal that likes to talk back to the load of fleeting media messages that are overflowing all of us on a daily base.
What are these things doing to us and what are we doing with them ourselves?

It is this question that, one way or another, all of our essays try to address by informing their readers about radio programs, television series, popular music, styles of presentation and representation, and all that’s related to the sounds and images of media culture.

The journal does accept contributions in any language, as long as the editors or their associates can read it. At the moment we cover only English, French, German and Dutch.

ISSN 1567-7745

Editors:

Hans Knot and  Ger Tillekens
Department of Psychological, Pedagogical and Sociological Sciences University of Groningen Grote Rozenstraat 38
NL-9712 TJ Groningen
The Netherlands

Email: H.Knot@ppsw.rug.nl, G.J.Tillekens@ppsw.rug.nl

Soundscapes: Journal on Media Culture is available free of charge as an Open Access journal on the Internet.

July 31st OvidSP Release News - New Search Tab and Interface Enhancements

New Multi-Field Search Tab Plus User Interface Enhancements

Dear Ovid Customer:

Last week we informed you of the upcoming launch of our next release of OvidSP. Beginning this week, and continuing until launch, we’ll be introducing in greater detail new features and functionality that you and your users will see on July 31st.

All of the new features and enhanced functionality are designed to optimize searching and workflow, and provide a more flexible search and discovery experience.

New Multi-Field Search Mode
Now you and your users will have even more search options to choose from! The Multi-Field Search mode, currently available as the Advanced Search feature in SilverPlatter, allows you to combine search terms using multiple search fields in just one step.

User Interface Enhancements
At Ovid, all of our platform design and development decisions are based on direct customer feedback and interviews with users. The following enhancements are all designed to let users search the way they want to search:

• Main Search Page – the tabular format has been simplified to make better use of the screen
• New instructional “hint” text that explains how to best take advantage of the Basic Search mode
• Browse Books and Browse Journals links now displayed on the Database Selection page for easier and faster navigation to these helpful tools
• Adjustable font sizes throughout the entire interface - users can set the size in their browser according to their preferences

Over the coming weeks, please be sure to visit the OvidSP Resource Center for new marketing and support materials-including screenshots, training tools and schedules, FAQs, and more-updated for the July 31st release of OvidSP.

Watch your inbox next week for more information on upcoming enhancements to the OvidSP workflow tools, including Search History and Results Manager. If you’d like trial access to OvidSP so you can get a feel for the new platform before SilverPlatter retires in early 2009, please contact support@ovid.com.

Regards,

Wolters Kluwer Health - Ovid

What’s New in Digital Preservation

DPC / PADI “What’s New in Digital Preservation” - Issue 17 available

Issue no. 17 (September 2007 - February 200 of the DPC / PADI “What’s New in Digital Preservation” bulletin is now available from:

The Digital Preservation Coalition Web site:
http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/whatsnew/issue17.html

and the  National Library of Australia:
http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/qdigest/dpc-padi-digest-issue17-2008.html

“What’s New” is a summary of selected recent activity in the field of digital preservation, compiled by Najla Semple for the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC).

Issue 17 features news from a range of organisations and initiatives, including the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), Digital Curation Centre (DCC), JISC (UK), The National Archives (UK), The National Library of Scotland (NLS), The British Library (BL), PLANETS (Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services), nestor (Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources), DPE (Digital Preservation Europe), Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands), the recently formed Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation (NCDD), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIPP) and the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC).

The bulletin also includes two new sections on Digital Preservation and the Information Profession and Digital Preservation Life Cycle as well as summaries of recent publications on the themes of digital preservation directions, large scale digital preservation, file formats, effective environment data management and more.

Gerard Clifton
Collections Infrastructure,
National Library of Australia, Canberra ACT 2600
p: +61 2 6262 1381   |  e: gclifton@nla.gov.au

Tracking Our Progress, Planning Our Future

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/NCP08079.pdf

MIT recently completed a benchmark study on the use of educational technology in subjects considered to count toward the core curriculum (General Institute Requirements). This presentation will discuss how the data was collected, analyzed, and implemented.

Academic authors, scholarly publishing and open access in Australia

http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00013144/01/MAK.2007.LearnedPublishingPostPrint.pdf
Author draft of copy accepted for publication in Learned Publishing, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp 138-146, April, 2007
Mary Anne Kennan, School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, The University of New South Wales, Australia 2052
Abstract
This paper briefly describes the rapidly changing research evaluation and funding landscape in Australian universities, specifically in relation to open access and institutional repositories. Recent announcements indicate that funding and evaluation bodies are becoming increasingly concerned that publicly funded research be made publicly available. The paper then reports a survey of all levels of academic staff plus research students at one Australian university conducted in May 2006, prior to the introduction of an institutional repository. The survey, in line with previously reported surveys, found that while there was a high level of engagement with scholarly publishing, there was a low level of awareness of, or concern with, either open access (‘green’ or ‘gold’) or the roles repositories can play in increasing accessibility of research. Practically, this indicates that much work needs to be done within this university to increase knowledge of, and change behaviours with regard to, open access and repositories if the university and its academics are to make the most of new funding requirements and research evaluation processes.