UK Ordnance Survey to free up information

Prime minister Gordon Brown has said that the government will be making “a substantial package of information held by ordnance survey freely available to the public, without restrictions on re-use.”

By Peter Williams, Information World Review 22 Mar 2010
The announcement came in a speech on building Britain’s digital future. He said further details on the package and government’s response to the consultation will be published by the end of March.

HSE’s Lenus joins global science gateway

The HSE’s online repository for health research, has been accepted as part of the WorldWideScience Alliance, the internet-based global science gateway.

This is a considerable achievement and represents an important step in Lenus’ innovative programme to increase the profile and effectiveness of research in the Irish health services. The Lenus repository is maintained by the Regional Library in Dr Steevens’ Hospital, and since its inception has worked to provide a platform for researchers working in the HSE to make their work available to colleagues, both in Ireland and around the world. In Lenus, researchers create their own web pages to share information and contacts online with others engaged in similar work. This facilitates the inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas and findings, making Lenus a key research hub in the Irish health sector.

Read the full press release www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/lenus.html

and visit the WorldWideScience Alliance here http://worldwidescience.org/news.html

OA citation advantage: paper summarizing research to date

Paper by Alma Swan

Science Foundation of Ireland and the Health Research Board (HRB) are introducing a mandatory open access publication policy for all research

The Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) and the Health Research Board (HRB) are introducing a mandatory open access publication policy for all SFI and/or HRB-funded research, providing unrestricted access to published research.

HRB Director of Research Strategy and Funding Dr Mairead O’Driscoll said the HRB, along with the SFI, has consequently become a member of the UK PubMed Central Repository – a free-to-access digital archive of full-text peer reviewed biomedical and life sciences research.

“While the published research must still be subject to rigorous quality assurance through the peer review process, the public should not have to ‘pay twice’ for it by having to pay a fee to access the academic publication in question,” Dr O’Driscoll said.

The research community will be circulated detailed instructions on the practicalities of the move.

Report on Jan 2010 conference to launch Economists Online

A report by Dave Puplett on the conference held in January 2010 to launch Economists Online, an EU project to create an economics full text portal, in which UCD is a participant