[from E-LIS editors' list]
--- Tomas Baiget <baiget_at_sarenet.es> wrote:
> From: "Tomas Baiget" <baiget_at_sarenet.es>
> To: "E-LIS editors list" <elis-editors_at_lists.openlib.org>
> Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 13:56:41 +0200
> Subject: [Elis-editors] Jacsó writes about E-LIS
>
> Péter Jacsó, University of Hawaii,
> http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/
> has writen a short article about E-LIS in the current issue of Online:
> http://www.infotoday.com/online/may08/index.shtml
> Vol. 32, num. 3, May/June 2008, page 20.
>
> Below I copy the text.
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomŕs Baiget, Director
> El Profesional de la Información
> http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com
>
>
>
> E-LIS
>
>
>
> The E-LIS database (http://eprints.rclis.org) is close to my heart
> because it delivers for free what the publisher I pan later often does
> not deliver even for a fee-timely information about research in library
> and information science and technology. As of early 2008 it had 7,200
> papers from about 700 journals.
>
>
>
> As an open archive, it covers all fields of LIS from the theoretical to
> the highly practical, from school libraries to national libraries, from
> rare books to ebooks, all reflected in the excellent classified subject
> index. Sure, you can argue if there is a need for separate classes for
> use studies and for user studies, but the display of the number of
> postings for each class -to my delight- offers a rather convincing
> argument without saying a word.
>
>
>
> Its coverage is highly international both in terms of the language and
> country of residence of the authors. The strong presence of Spanish
> language documents is no surprise to me. It is not merely a sign of the
> productivity of researchers from Spanish speaking countries (especially
> from Spain) but a blessing for those whose English is not strong enough
> to publish. Many of the leading LIS journals would be happy to accept
> these papers -if they were written in excellent English. Obviously,
> materials in some foreign languages, such as Turkish or Greek, have a
> limited target audience.
>
>
>
> Actually, quite a number of the deposited papers were published in some
> of the leading English language journals, such as JASIS, JASIS&T,
> Journal of Information Science, Information Processing and Management,
> Library Resources and Technical Services, Information Technology and
> Libraries, and Information Services and Use. Looking at the results from
> my search on citation indexes, it's obvious that there are few papers
> from these and other mainstream journals. However, there are more than
> immediately meets the eye, because the journal names are not spelled
> consistently and are therefore scattered.
>
>
>
> I am glad that after my earlier criticism the four variants of El
> Profesional de la Información have been consolidated into one entry, but
> there are many others that need standardization. Often, these are just
> punctuation differences hardly perceivable by the human eye, but an
> eyesore in the alphabetic index during browsing. For example, this
> "alphabetical" list of author names was obviously compiled using a
> computer's rules rather than a human being's:
>
>
>
> . Álvarez, Alejandro (1)
>
> . Álvarez, Ángeles (1)
>
> . Álvarez, Olga (1)
>
> . Ünal, Yurdagül (5)
>
> . Aureliano Alarcón, Ramón (1)
>
> . Üstün, Ayfle (2)
>
> . Aviles Merens, Rafael (3)
>
> . Avila, Belén (i)
>
> . Avila, Rodolfo E. (3)
>
>
>
> This should also be fixed.
>
>
>
> Very often an article that catches my eye in a search turns out to be a
> paper from a journal with which I was not familiar.
>
> The same applies to the more than 2,000 papers presented at hundreds of
> conferences, which are particularly difficult to fínd.
>
>
>
> The strongest part of the software is its browsing feature, and E-LIS
> stands out with the number of indexes that can not only be searched but
> also browsed by subject, country, journal name, book name, author/editor
> name, and publication year. The only significant limitation is that
> there is no option to do exact phrase searching and differentiate
> between, say, information industry and industry information. For
> full-text databases this is important.
>
>
>
> The database is hosted by the CILEA Interuniversity Consortium, an
> Italian organization dedicated to data processing. There are dozens of
> supporting institutions with unfamiliar acronyms from around the world
> behind this service. They deserve our recognition (http://eprints
> .rclis.org/support.html) and should get a nod along with the
> enthusiastic and competent staff and team of editors with LIS
> educational backgrounds, volunteering from all the four corners of the
> world [http://eprints.relis .org/staff.html).
>
>
>
> E-LIS is one of the many repositories that use the free and intuitive
> EPrint software, which is the brainchild of Stevan Harnad, the key
> figure of the open access movement. Harnad possesses an admirable
> combination of mental prowess and hyperactivity as the "archivengalist"
> of self-archiving who talks the talk and walks the walk tirelessly.
>
>
>
> E-LIS (together with DLIST, which was an earlier pick) can be also
> important for preventing open aecess articles from disappearing into the
> abyss. Years ago, Columbia University Press acquired JEP (Journal of
> Electronic Publishing) the outstanding open access journal, and
> immediately made it inaccessible (which must have helped to sell more
> copies of its book on the subject). Columbia was sitting pretty on it,
> like a rich senior citizen on a Harley Davidson prop for a photo
> opportunity. Luckily, JEP was acquired back by the original publisher,
> the University of Michigan, in late 2006, and it was again made open
> access.
>
> http://www.journalofelectronicpublishing.org/
>
>
>
> E-LIS is small, but it is growing. Its size doubled in the past 2 years;
> it could have tripled if we, the authors, would not just feel good after
> getting our papers published but would go that extra inch and legally
> deposit them in E-LIS, DLIST, and the slowly emerging institutional
> repositories, a process that takes just a few minutes.
>
>
> Péter Jacsó
> jacso_at_hawaii.edu > _______________________________________________
> Elis-editors mailing list
> Elis-editors_at_lists.openlib.org
> http://lists.openlib.org/mailman/listinfo/elis-editors
>
---
----
Dr. Zapopan Martín Muela Meza, PhD, MLS SUNY-Buffalo, B.A.LIS UANL
Doctor en Estudios de la Informacion
University of Sheffield, Inglaterra
...y para que al morir se pueda exclamar
ˇtoda la vida y todas las fuerzas
han sido entregadas a lo más hermoso del mundo,
a la liberación de la humanidad!
-- Nikolai Ostrovski
(novela Así se templó el acero,
Moscú: Editorial Progreso,
1969, p. 268, cap. 3, 1a parte)
Solo son verdaderas personas
quienes arrancan al hombre
las cadenas que sujetan su razon.
--Maximo Gorki
(novela La Madre, cap. XVII, parte I)
Received on Tue May 27 2008 - 18:54:08 BST