Windows Live Academic Search Is Up

The beta version of Windows Live Academic Search is now available: http://academic.live.com/. It appears to me that the system is under a very heavy load, so you may want to wait a bit before giving it a test drive.

The Windows Live Academic Search development team now has a Weblog. The official press release is now available. A list of participants in Microsoft’s MSN Search Champs V4, some of whom gave Microsoft detailed feedback about Windows Live Academic Search is also available.

Windows Live Academic Search Overview

The home page provides a search box, brief overview, an explanation of search results, and an FAQ.

The system’s indexed content is limited to Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Physics journals and conferences, including: "6 million records from approximately 4300 journals and 2000 conferences." Here is a list of works indexed. Relevance is determined by: (1) "quality of match of the search term with the content of the paper", and (2) "authoritativeness of the paper." Citation count is not being used in the ranking algorithm at this time.

Interface

The interface has the following key features:

  • Search box: My understanding is that all MSN search commands work, but I have not tested this.
  • Slider bar: Expands or restricts the amount of information shown for each hit in the search results (left side of screen).
  • Search results:
    • Author and title information in hits are linked (blue links).
    • Other hit links include search the Web for the item, CiteSeer citations (if available), show abstract, and hide abstract (grey links).
  • Sort by: You can sort search results by relevance, date (oldest), date (newest), author, journal, and conference. The last three sorts provide a header that precedes the listed search results: for example, John Doe (2).
  • "+add to Live.com": Adds the search to your Windows Live page. Three clickable buttons appear above the stored search on that page: Web, News, Feeds. When one is clicked, the search is repeated in the appropriate information source (e.g. RSS feeds).
  • Preview pane: The right side of the screen is used to display the fielded abstract, BibTex formatted abstract, or EndNote formatted abstract.

Highlights from the Home Page FAQ

  • More content?: "We are not ready to provide a detailed timeline on when we will have a comprehensive index by subject."
  • OpenUrl: "You will be able to click on the link to your library Open URL resolver to determine the availability of full text access."
  • Preferences: "While the version of Academic search does not have a preference page, future versions will have that functionality."

Highlights from Windows Live Academic Information: Librarians

  • OpenURL: "If Academic search can identify that a user is affiliated with your institution, appropriate search results will be accompanied by a link to your OpenURL resolver vendor. We request that you work with your link resolver company and give them permission to provide the necessary information about your institution to us."
  • RSS feeds for searches: "When a new article related to that search is posted, they [researchers] are alerted instantly via an RSS feed."

Highlights from Windows Live Academic Information: Publishers

  • Participation: "Talk to Crossref about the Crossref/Academic search partnership to receive information on the program and instructions on how to initiate participation."
  • Search Results: "Therefore, search results from journals that are indexed from publishers and are published articles will always be marked ‘Published Version’. This ensures that users know which result is the official version. If there are many instances of the same article (from other sources such as a web-crawl), we will always link the search result heading to the version on the publisher’s site."
  • Abstract information: "We require that non-subscribers at least see an abstract of the paper when they land on your site from our search results page." However, it also says:

    "Academic search provides for three levels of display in the preview pane:

    • Full abstract
    • First 140 characters from abstract
    • Nothing from the abstract

    Publishers can choose any of these options for their content."

The Caravan Project: One Book, Five Distribution Formats

BusinessWeek reports that Peter Osnos, founder and Editor-at-Large of Public Affairs, is working with Borders, selected independent bookstores, six nonprofit publishers, and Ingram Industries to experiment with a new book publishing model. The idea is this: publish the book in five formats (audio, chapter, hardcover, digital, and print-on-demand) and let customers decide which one(s) they want. Larger publishers have reservations about the Caravan Project’s experiment. The article states that "going this far this fast unnerves publishers," and it quotes Al Greco (of the Book Industry Study Group): "they are terrified of being Napsterized."

Source: Lowry, Tom. "Getting Out Of A Bind." BusinessWeek, 10 April 2006, 79-80.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Academic Search

Microsoft will be releasing Windows Live Academic Search shortly (I was recently told Wednesday; the blog buzz is saying tomorrow).

As is typical with such software projects, the team is doing some last minute tweaking before release. So, I won’t try to describe the system in any detail at this point, except to say that it integrates access to published articles with e-prints and other open access materials, it provides a reference export capability, there’s a cool optional two-pane view (short bibliographic information on the left; full bibliographic information and abstract on the right), and it supports search "macros" (user-written search programs).

What I will say is this: Microsoft made a real effort to get significant, honest input from the librarian and publisher communities during the development process. I know, because, now that the nondisclosure agreement has been lifted, I can say that I was one of the librarians who provided such input on an unpaid basis. I was very impressed by how carefully the development team listened to what we had to say, how sharp and energetic they were, how they really got the Web 2.0 concept, and how deeply committed they were to creating the best product possible. Having read Microserfs, I had a very different mental picture of Microsoft than the reality I encountered.

Needless to say, there were lively exchanges of views between librarians and publishers when open access issues were touched upon. My impression is that the team listened to both sides and tried to find the happy middle ground.

When it’s released, Windows Live Academic Search won’t be the perfect answer to your open access search engine dreams (what system is?), and Microsoft knows that there are missing pieces. But I think it will give Google Scholar a run for its money. I, for one, heartily welcome it, and I think it’s a good base to build upon, especially if Microsoft continues to solicit and seriously consider candid feedback from the library and publisher communities (and it appears that it will).

Customers Welcome RFID-Enabled Cards. . . with Hammers and Microwave Ovens

The Wall Street Journal reports that customers lack enthusiasm for RFID credit cards due to privacy and fraud concerns. In fact, they are devising novel ways to disable RFID chips, including using hammers and microwave ovens to smash or fry them. FoeBud, a German digital rights group, sells a variety of devices to detect or disable the chips. Sensing a hot market, some companies have joined the bandwagon with new products (e.g., RFIDwasher) that do the job more safely than a microwave oven, which can be a fire hazard when used for RFID frying. For those who don’t want to tamper with their RFID cards, they can buy shielded wallets and passport cases from DIFRWEAR that block signals when closed.

As libraries begin to embrace RFID technology, these concerns from the credit card sector may be worth watching, and it may give them pause.

Source: Warren, Susan. "Why Some People Put These Credit Cards in the Microwave." The Wall Street Journal, 10 April, 2006, A1, A16.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (4/10/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "CERN’s Open Access E-print Coverage in 2006: Three Quarters Full and Counting," "Comparison of Content Policies for Institutional Repositories in Australia," "Discovering Books: The OCA/GBS Saga Continues," "A Library’s Contribution to Scholarly Communication and Environmental Literacy: The Case of an Open-Access Environmental Journal," "The State of the Large Publisher Bundle: Findings from an ARL Member Survey," Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe, and "Surveying the E-Journal Preservation Landscape"

Commemorative Issue of Reference Services Review for Dr. Ilene F. Rockman

Emerald Group Publishing has announced that the volume 34, number 1 (2006) issue of Reference Services Review has been dedicated to the memory of that journal’s former long-time editor Dr. Ilene F. Rockman, whose obituary was previously published in DigitalKoans.

This issue includes "tributes to Rockman, along with the editorial she was composing during the final days of her life."

Emerald will make this issue freely available during the month of April. (See the press release for access details.)

Emerald will also:

  • Fund the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Instruction Publication of the Year Award for five years, beginning with the 2006 Award, renaming it the Ilene Rockman Publication Award.
  • Establish that the Emerald Literati Network Award from Reference Services Review—the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award—hereafter be known as the Dr. Ilene Rockman Award.
  • Nominate Rockman for an Emerald Outstanding Service Award in April 2006.

Thanks to Emerald for these welcome tributes to Ilene.

Open Source Software for Publishing E-Journals

Want to publish an open access journal, but you don’t want to license a commercial journal management system, develop your own system, or to do it all by tedious HTML hand-coding? Here’s summary information about two existing open source e-journal management systems (and one emerging system) that may do the trick.

HyperJournal

  • "HyperJournal is a software application that facilitates the administration of academic journals on the Web. Conceived for researchers in the Humanities and designed according to an intuitive and elegant layout, it permits the installation, personalization, and administration of a dedicated Web site at extremely low cost and without the need for special IT-competence. HyperJournal can be used not only to establish an online version of an existing paper periodical, but also to create an entirely new, solely electronic journal."
  • Overview
  • Documentation
  • Download

Open Journal Systems, Public Knowledge Project

  • "Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing. Through its management systems, its finely grained indexing of research, and the context it provides for research, OJS seeks to improve both the scholarly and public quality of referred research."
  • Open Journal Systems (Overview)
  • FAQ
  • OJS Technical Reference
  • Download

DPubS (Digital Publishing System), Cornell University Library (In development)

  • "DPubS’ ground-breaking software system will enable publishers to cost-effectively organize, deliver, present and publish scholarly journals, monographs, conference proceedings, and other common and evolving means of academic discourse."
  • About DPubS
  • FAQ

Postscript: Peter Suber suggests adding several other software packages, including:

  1. ePublishing Toolkit
  2. SciX Open Publishing Services (SOPS)

Bar Code 2.0

Now you can store a 20-second video that can be viewed on a cell phone in a colored bar code the size of a postage stamp. Or, if the cell phone is connected to the Internet, use the bar code to launch a URL. The user snaps a picture of the bar code to utilize it. Content Idea of Asia invested this new bar code technology, which can store 600 KB, and plans to offer it later this year.

Source: Hall, Kenji. "The Bar Code Learns Some Snazzy New Tricks." BusinessWeek, 3 April 2006, 113.

Scholarly Communication Web Sites and Weblogs at ARL Libraries (Version 2)

This posting updates and considerably expands my earlier "Scholarly Communication Web Sites at ARL Libraries" posting.

It presents a list of scholarly communication Web sites and Weblogs at the academic member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries. Web sites and Weblogs were identified using separate Google "site:" searches for the exact phrases "scholarly communication" and "open access." Search results were then scanned to identify Web sites or Weblogs that appeared to be intended as the main library’s primary means of communicating to the university community about scholarly communication and/or open access issues. Conferences, presentations, newsletter articles, symposiums, and similar materials were excluded, as were Web sites or Weblogs at branch libraries. Searching was limited to the first few pages of search results.

Additions and corrections are welcome. Use the "Leave a Comment" function for this.

On the Internet Everyone Knows You’re a Dog (Bark Carefully)

A recent BusinessWeek article ("You Are What You Post") by Michelle Conlin may give Millennials (and everyone else) pause.

The article leads with a story about then 22-year-old Josh Santangelo’s 2001 posting on a dusty corner of the Internet about a bad drug trip. This caught the eye of super blogger Jason Kottke, and, after he linked too it, it became very popular. Now, Santangelo’s name pops up about 92,600 Google hits. Unfortunately, as the article states:

That was back when Santangelo was an up-all-night raver in giant pants and flame-red hair. Today he’s a Web development guy with a shaved head who shows up at meetings on time and in khakis. Clients have included such family-friendly enterprises as Walt Disney and Nickelodeon, as well as Starbucks, AT&T, and Microsoft.

And the business world is now tuned in to search engines as a rich source of information about potential employees:

Google is an end run around discrimination laws, inasmuch as employers can find out all manner of information—some of it for a nominal fee—that is legally off limits in interviews: your age, your marital status, the value of your house (along with an aerial photograph of it), the average net worth of your neighbors, fraternity pranks, stuff you wrote in college, liens, bankruptcies, political affiliations, and the names and ages of your children.

So, this could be trouble for those pouring out the intimate details of their personal and work lives on blogs, vlogs, social networking sites (e.g., MySpace), and other cool sites.

The article gives several amusing examples of employees fired for revealing too much on the Internet (amusing, that is, unless you’re the one fired).

Of course, there is the counter-notion that any publicity is good publicity. For example, celebrity sex tapes. A recent New York Times article ("Sex, Lawsuits and Celebrities Caught on Tape") by Lola Ogunnaike says about the Paris Hilton tape:

Ms. Hilton tried to stop distribution of the tape, although its notoriety paradoxically catapulted her to an even higher orbit of fame, establishing her as a kind of postmodern celebrity, leading to perfume deals, a memoir and the covers of Vanity Fair and W.

And, after discussing the latest round of celebrity sex tapes threatening to emerge, it says:

Celebrity sex tapes surface with such regularity that cynics question whether the stars themselves may be complicit, despite their efforts to suppress them in court, because of the publicity they bring.

However, this counter-notion may only apply to the already famous.

No doubt we’ll find out as part of a generation that’s digitally exposed itself on the Internet increasingly enters the workplace and competes within it.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (3/27/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Advancing Scholarship and Intellectual Productivity: An Interview with Clifford A. Lynch (Part 1)," "Building the Econtent Commons," Digital Libraries, "Finding Information in (Very Large) Digital Libraries: A Deep Log Approach to Determining Differences in Use According to Method of Access," "Institutional Open Archives: Where Are We Now?," and "What Do You Do with a Million Books?."

All Sections and Subsections of the Open Access Bibliography Now Linked

There is now a link to each section and subsection of the HTML version of the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals.

For example:

4 Open Access Journals

4.1 General Works
4.2 Economic Issues
4.2.1 General Works
4.2.2 BMJ Rapid Responses about "Author Pays" May Be the New Science Publishing Model
4.3 Open Access Journal Change Agents
4.3.1 SPARC
4.4 Open Access Journal Publishers and Distributors
4.4.1 BioMed Central
4.4.2 Public Library of Science
4.4.3 PubMed Central
4.4.3.1 General Works
4.4.3.2 Science Magazine dEbate on "Building a GenBank of the Published Literature"
4.4.3.3 Science Magazine dEbate on "Is a Government Archive the Best Option?"
4.4.3.4 Science Magazine dEbate on "Just a Minute, Please"
4.4.3.5 Other
4.5 Specific Open Access Journals
4.5.1 Journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals
4.5.2 Pioneering Free E-Journals Not in the DOAJ
4.5.3 Other
4.6 Research Studies

The table of contents in the home page of the bibliography has a complete set of links for all sections and subsections of the document.

The Web page for each major section of the bibliography has links to the subsections (if present) at the start of the page.

Cato Institute Report Denounces DMCA

The Cato Institute has released a report (Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) that is sharply critical of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The following quote is from the executive summary:

The result has been a legal regime that reduces options and competition in how consumers enjoy media and entertainment. Today, the copyright industry is exerting increasing control over playback devices, cable media offerings, and even Internet streaming. Some firms have used the DMCA to thwart competition by preventing research and reverse engineering. Others have brought the weight of criminal sanctions to bear against critics, competitors, and researchers.

The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates.

And this quote is from the conclusion (links are mine):

When the next breakthrough media device is invented, its inventor should not face a legal system in which the deck is stacked against him, as Streambox and DeCSS did. He should be free to focus on hiring the best programmers, designers, and marketers, rather than on shopping for a good law firm. If industry incumbents attempt to prevent his product from working with theirs, he should be allowed to circumvent the restrictions as Accolade did in the Sega case. And if the device has a "substantial non-infringing use" and is developed and marketed for such use, Congress and the courts should uphold its legality, even if it threatens the business model of an established industry.

HTML Version of the Open Access Bibliography

An HTML version of the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals (OAB) is now available.

The HTML version of the book was created from the final draft using a complex set of digital transformations. Consequently, there may be minor variations between it and the print and Acrobat versions, which are the definitive versions of the book.

The OAB provides an overview of open access concepts, and it presents over 1,300 selected English-language books, conference papers (including some digital video presentations), debates, editorials, e-prints, journal and magazine articles, news articles, technical reports, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding the open access movement’s efforts to provide free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature. Most sources have been published between 1999 and August 31, 2004; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1999 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet (approximately 78 percent of the bibliography’s references have such links).

An Important Partial Win for Google and Privacy

U.S. District Court Judge James Ware ruled on Friday that Google does not have to turn over 5,000 search queries to the Justice Department; however, it does have to turn over 50,000 random Web URLs.

The Google Blog posting ("Google Wins!") was ecstatic, stating that:

This is a victory for both online rights activists and users of Google. Google may not always be perfect, but this time they stood up for what is right.

According to an article in Red Herring ("Judge Limits US Data Hunt"):

The government’s subpoena originally told Google it must turn over massive amounts of data in two broad categories: all the URLs available on the company’s search engine as of last July 31, and all search queries entered into Google’s search engine during June and July of 2005. That likely would have included tens of millions of data points.

A San Francisco Chroncile article ("Google Must Divulge Data Judge Cuts Amount of Info Company Has to Give Feds") noted that:

Google, along with privacy advocates, argued that sometimes users can reveal personal information in search queries, including their Social Security Numbers. Or they can suggest the sexual preferences of public officials or use inflammatory phrases such as "bomb-making equipment," which would pique the interest of law enforcement. The privacy advocates said that the Justice Department couldn’t be trusted with access to such sensitive data, despite the administration’s promises to use the queries only for its online pornography case.

Judge Ware expressed concern about the impact of search-term disclose on Google due to user privacy issues:

The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable, but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google. Such an expectation does not rise to the level of privilege, but does indicate that there is a potential burden as to Google’s loss of goodwill if Google is forced to disclose search queries to the government.

Digital Generation? Latest Breakdown of Web Users By Age Group

What age group uses the Web most heavily? The latest numbers may surprise you.

Here a ranking of unique Web site visitors by age group for February 2006:

  1. 50 and older: 47 million.
  2. 35-49: 42.5 million.
  3. 17 and under: 30.3 million.
  4. 25-34: 19.9 million.
  5. 18-24: 11.2 million.

Seventeen-and-under users are third; traditional college-age students are dead last. Digital generation? Geezers rule the Web.

Source: Etter, Lauren. "Google vs. Justice: Privacy, Pornography, Secrets." The Wall Street Journal, 18-19 March 2006, A7.

dLIST E-Print Archive Adds Use Statistics

Authors who deposit e-prints in dLIST (Digital Library of Information Science and Technology) can now see use statistics for their works (archive users can see use startistics as well). For example, at the record for the "Indian Digital Library in Engineering Science and Technology (INDEST) Consortium: Consortia-Based Subscription to Electronic Resources for Technical Education System in India: A Government of India Initiative," you would click on "View statistics for this eprint" to get the use statistics for this work. You can view use statistics for the past four weeks, this year, last year, or all years.

Archive-wide use statistics are also available from either an e-print record or the dLIST Statistics page. From either one, you can rank all e-prints by use for the same time periods as individual e-prints and show overall archive use by year/month or country.

Disclosure: I am now the Scholarly Communication subject editor for dLIST.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (3/13/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Establishing a UK LOCKSS Pilot Programme," "EThOS: Progress towards an Electronic Thesis Service for the UK," "Long-Term Preservation of Digital Humanities Scholarship," "Net Neutrality Reading List," "Managing Digital Assets in Higher Education: An Overview of Strategic Issues," "Three Gathering Storms That Could Cause Collateral Damage for Open Access," and "Update on the NIH Policy."

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (2/27/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "©1: Term & Extent," Copyright and Access to Knowledge, "Copyright Issues in Open Access Research Journals: The Authors’ Perspective," "Digital Repositories in UK Universities and Colleges," "A Research Library Based on the Historical Collections of the Internet Archive," and "The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition: An Evolving Agenda."

Version 61, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 61 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,610 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals, by the same author, provides much more in-depth coverage of the open access movement and related topics (e.g., disciplinary archives, e-prints, institutional repositories, open access journals, and the Open Archives Initiative) than SEPB does.

The "Open Access Webliography" (with Ho) complements the OAB, providing access to a number of Websites related to open access topics.

Changes in This Version

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are marked with an asterisk):

Table of Contents

1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History*
2.2 General Works*
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History*
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals*
3.4 General Works*
3.5 Library Issues*
3.6 Research*
4 General Works*
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights*
5.2 License Agreements*
5.3 Other Legal Issues
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata*
6.2 Digital Libraries*
6.3 General Works*
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation*
7 New Publishing Models*
8 Publisher Issues*
8.1 Digital Rights Management*
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author*
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics*

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata*
Digital Libraries*
Electronic Books and Texts*
Electronic Serials*
General Electronic Publishing*
Images*
Legal*
Preservation*
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI*
SGML and Related Standards*

Further Information about SEPB

The HTML version of SEPB is designed for interactive use. Each major section is a separate file. There are links to sources that are freely available on the Internet. It can be can be searched using Boolean operators.

The HTML document includes three sections not found in the Acrobat file:

  1. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (biweekly list of new resources; also available by mailing list and RSS feed)
  2. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources (directory of over 270 related Web sites)
  3. Archive (prior versions of the bibliography)

The Acrobat file is designed for printing. The printed bibliography is over 215 pages long. The Acrobat file is over 570 KB.

Related Article

An article about the bibliography has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

HTML Version of "What Is Open Access?"

An HTML version of my "What Is Open Access?" preprint is now available. This version includes additional links in the body of the document that make it easier to quickly access related information about OA concepts, documents, or systems. While it makes many footnote links available in the body of the document (as well as new ones), it is not an attempt to replicate all footnote links in it.

This paper presents a more nuanced, contemporary view of open access than my "Key Open Access Concepts" excerpt from the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals; however, it had to be very compact to meet the publisher’s needs, and it omits some topics discussed in the earlier document.

Those wanting a more in-depth recent treatment might want to try the first half of my "Open Access and Libraries" preprint, which covers much of this material more fully as a preliminary to discussing the relationship between open access and library functions and operations. However, the "What Is Open Access?" paper reflects some changes in my thinking about OA not found in "Open Access and Libraries."

A PDF version of "What Is Open Access?" is also available, which is more suitable for printing and reading offline.

"What Is Open Access?" will appear in: Jacobs, Neil, ed. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2006. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (2/13/06)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "Analog Hole and Broadcast Flag," "Delivering Open Access: From Promise to Practice," "The (Digital) Library Environment: Ten Years After," "Google Scholar: Potentially Good for Users of Academic Information," "Open Journal Systems: An Example of Open Source Software for Journal Management and Publishing," Report on Orphan Works, "Research Libraries Engage the Digital World: A US-UK Comparative Examination of Recent History and Future Prospects," "Scholarly Communication in the Digital Environment: The 2005 Survey of Journal Author Behaviour and Attitudes," "Self-Archiving and the Copyright Transfer Agreements of ISI-Ranked Library and Information Science Journals," and "Six Things That Researchers Need to Know about Open Access."

"What Is Open Access?" Preprint

A preprint of my book chapter "What Is Open Access?" is now available. This chapter provides a brief overview of open access (around 4,800 words). It examines the three base definitions of open access; notes other key OA statements; defines and discusses self-archiving, self-archiving strategies (author Websites, disciplinary archives, institutional-unit archives, and institutional repositories), and self-archiving copyright practices; and defines and discusses open access journals and the major types of OA publishers (born-OA publishers, conventional publishers, and non-traditional publishers). It will appear in: Jacobs, Neil, ed. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2006. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

UH E-Publications Have A New Virtual Home

The University of Houston Libraries’ e-publications have moved to a new server. The old URLs have been mapped to the new ones, but some minor Web page cleanup is being done to accommodate the new venue and searching is temporarily down. Pardon our digital dust.

PACS-L http://epress.lib.uh.edu/pacsl/pacsl.html
PACS-P http://epress.lib.uh.edu/pacsp/pacsp.html
Public-Access Computer Systems News http://epress.lib.uh.edu/news/pacsnews.html
Public-Access Computer Systems Review http://epress.lib.uh.edu/pr/pacsrev.html
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography http://epress.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources http://epress.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepr.htm
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog http://epress.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepw.htm

Update: Migration complete. Everything should be working now.

Open Access Bibliography Author and Title Indexes Are Now Available

Author and title indexes for the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals are now available.

These indexes, which include complete references, were initially generated in EndNote, then refined through a lengthy production process using several text editing programs to produce the final HTML files.