The real future of Open Access - mining the literature

a challenge to researchers from Dr. Philip E. Bourne, Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego and Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology. In a video posted to the OA Week Web site, Bourne calls upon scholars to think beyond free and ready access to the literature – made possible by Open Access – and consider how technology may be deployed to advance research, to truly mine the increasing amount of available literature.

More open access to public funded research would aid the knowledge economy

In this issue, Houghton and Oppenheim put forward a proposition for a widespread shift to Green Open Access publication of research, based on the Houghton Report, and the Editor, Professor Stuart Macdonald, gives key figures the chance to respond. Read the articles that form this lively and interesting debate!

Tools to search RePEc

Currently, there are three different websites that offer bibliographic searches based on the data collected by RePEc: EconPapers, IDEAS and EconomistsOnline. Why use them instead of simply Google or Google Scholar? First, RePEc services allow fielded search: given the structure of the underlying metadata, it is possible to separate search results by authors, topical area, date, publication type and other attributes. EconomistOnline goes here the furthest, by allowing to narrow result sets successively according to various criteria. Second, the database and the search engines are updated as soon as publishers post new material, thus search results always reflect current holdings.

Now free - world's most comprehensive bibliography of scholarly writing about the history of western art

As of April 1, 2010, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will be available free of charge on the Getty Web site at http://library.getty.edu/bha. Free Web access to BHA is an advantage not only to all traditional users of the database but also to such potential users as institutions in developing countries and independent scholars worldwide, who until now have been unable to afford access to the BHA. Since ending its collaboration with the Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)–CNRS in December 2007, the Getty has been searching for partners to continue the production and distribution of BHA. This process has been complicated, and with no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site.

Open Sesame - Nature editorial on Open Access developments

Government influence favouring enhanced openness is rightly diversifying practices in science publishing.

The rise of the Internet in the 1990s helped spark a radical idea for turning primary science publishing on its head. If journals charged authors a fee to publish, instead of charging readers and libraries a fee to subscribe, said the advocates, published peer-reviewed papers could be provided free to anyone in the world.

This simple-sounding notion provoked visceral debate..........