For daily news in these areas see these excellent Weblogs:
- Peter Suber's Open Access News, news from the open access movement
- Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog
Join the debates.
Latest
...
20Jul04 The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's report on Scientific Publications: Free for all? recommends the government should provide funds for all UK universities to launch open-access institutional archives.
17May04 Archimede, new software for OAI institutional repositories from Universite Laval, Quebec, competes with Eprints and DSpace.
05May04 The UK parliamentary enquiry into scientific publications, which has focussed on open access, held its fourth and final evidence session. Progress of the enquiry can be followed in these
transcripts and reports.
25Feb04 Blame it on Bethesda. IFLA releases a Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation, taken from a similar statement by the Wellcome Trust, which was itself based on the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing.
19Feb04 Pre-announcement: Declaration of Institutional Commitment to implementing the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Berlin Declaration on open-access provision and the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action.
30Jan04 Institutional Archives Registry displays the number of records harvested from each known archive - "shows what really matters: content!"
22Oct03 The Berlin Declaration sets a landmark example of promoting open access on a national scale, but further actions are expected.
13Oct03 PLoS Biology launches. Perhaps the most anticipated, and lauded (internationally lauded too!), open access journal launch, but it's not the first such journal.
10Oct03 For small metadata collections (1-5000 records) that need a simple approach to expose that data, OAI offers a beta of the Specification for an OAI Static Repository and an OAI Static Repository Gateway.
01Oct03 An important funder of biomedical research, the Wellcome Trust endorses open access model ("unrestricted access to the published output of research") after it publishes a report criticising the effectiveness of scientific publishing.
29Sep03 The Open Archives Initiative and Project RoMEO are to investigate and develop means of expressing rights about metadata and resources in the OAI framework (OAI-rights).
15Sep03 ArXiv refocuses biology submissions with new Quantitative Biology (q-bio) archive.
04Sep03 How many refereed academic journals are there, and what proportion of the papers published in these journals could be made openly accessible? Stevan Harnad identifies the 5% (open access publishing) and 55% (author self-archiving) solutions with compelling new data revealed in this American Scientist Forum thread.
11Aug03 BioMed Central editorial on free versus open access sparks correspondence highlighting critical differences.
07Aug03 Sabo prompts more mainstream coverage for open access publishing: New York Times editorial follows front page story in Washington Post (free registrations necessary).
06Aug03 Building on the Sabo-inspired debate, ARL and SPARC restate support for open access to federally funded research.
04Aug03 What is "open access"? Peter Suber compares definitions from BOAI, ARL, PLoS, BioMed Central and the Bethesda Statement.
26Jun03 Public Libary of Science puts open access on US local TV with short video commercial to promote Sabo bill.
26Jun03 First proposed open access legislation: Congressman Martin Sabo (MN) introduces a bill in the US House of Representatives to make scientific and medical research results, "substantially funded by the Federal Government", freely available to all persons: text of Public Access to Science Act. See coverage in The Scientist.
20Jun03 Bethesda Statement lends more support to open access journal publishing by leading biomedical scientists and publishers, but ignores author self-archving route to open access.
19Jun03 UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funds biomedical author fees with initial 15 month membership to open access journal publisher BioMed Central for all UK universities. Follows similar deal by the UK National Health Service with the publisher.
12May03 Lund University Libraries launches the Directory of Open Access Journals listing 'about 350' peer-reviewed open access journals.
07May03 OAI services project Cyclades announces beta system offering advanced search, and collection and community management features.
18Apr03 The Internet Archive, a repository with over 1,700 films, 8,500 texts, 3,700 concerts, and 8,400 software titles implements OAI-PMH to share metadata.
12Mar03 Using simple Dublin Core to describe eprints, a document encouraging consistent usage of 'simple' Dublin Core metadata within eprint archives.
03Feb03 SPARC's Institutional Repository Checklist and Resource Guide offers practical information on implementing an institutional repository.
29Jan03 BOAI announces two guides to business planning for open access (OA) journals: converting a subscription-based journal to OA, and launching a new OA journal.
08Jan03 Model policy for self-archiving university research output from Southampton University's Department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), developer of GNU EPrints archive software.
2002
17Dec02 Public Library of Science receives $9 million grant, plans to launch two open access journals - PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine - based on Biomed Central-like author-fee model.
14Nov02 Rapid Visual OAI Tool (RVOT) from Old Dominion University helps archives to become OAI compliant by constructing an OAI-PMH repository from a collection of files.
11Nov02 Dutch universities to make all their research results digitally accessible: DARE (Digital Academic Repositories) (in Dutch).
04Nov02 DSpace, an open source institutional digital repository, is launched by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard, and the 'digital asset management software' that builds it is available for download.
15Oct02 Over-subscribed OAI workshop Webcasts presentations.
19Sep02 Over 1000 images from major art galleries accessible from the EU-funded Artiste project's OAI interface.
09Sep02 Project RoMEO (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) to investigate rights issues surrounding the self-archiving movement.
21Aug02 Institute of Physics adopts OAI technical framework for its Electronic Journals service: metadata records for article abstracts are available for harvesting.
14Aug02 Is this the first sustainable business model for open-access publishing? BioMed Central: What we do and what we don't do.
08Aug02 "Momentum for Eprint Archiving": developments in open access and free online scholarship over the last six months brilliantly reviewed in Peter Suber's newsletter article.
01Aug02 Using technology from OpCit, among others, the new ePrints-UK project will build a resource discovery service to access collected eprint papers from compliant Open Archive repositories at UK universities and colleges.
01Aug02 One of the largest eprint projects, SHERPA: Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access launches to establish open eprint archives in a number of UK research universities.
29Jul02 SPARC white paper asserts critical role for 'institutional repositories, digital collections that capture and preserve the intellectual output of university communities'.
29Jul02 TARDIS project at Southampton will examine ways of achieving cultural and institutional change required to get academics involved in self-archiving.
02Jul02 MARC records accessible through the Z39.50 protocol can now be made available through OAI-PMH v.2.0 using the ZMARCO 'data provider'.
01Jul02 Journal content aggregator Ingenta to offer commercially supported version of EPrints.org archive-creating software.
28Jun02 New OAI search interface, OAIster, announced.
14Jun02 Open Archives Initiative releases 'stable specification' of v.2.0 of the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
5Jun02 Library of Congress creates a conversion stylesheet to transform/migrate from oai_marc to MARCXML, an authoritative new MARC Schema which is to be recommended in OAI-PMH v.2.0.
14May02 SPARC endorses BioMed Central commitment to open access that "precludes it from selling assets to any publisher that does
not share its promise to keep all BioMed Central journals available through open access both retrospectively and prospectively".
13May02 Version 2.0 BETA of the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting announced.
6May02 BOAI pilot project targets author page charge strategy to support open access journals: $100,000 for authors working in developing countries.
6May02 Perseus digital library project adds search interface for OAI cultural heritage repositories.
24Apr02 OAI heralds 'landmark' XML schema for unqualified Dublin Core metadata, which "has been developed for use with the OAI Protocol".
08Apr02 OAI previews Protocol for Metadata Harvesting v.2.0 and outlines schedule leading to release in June.
03Apr02 California Digital Library reveals initial strategy for eScholarship Repository: working papers from the humanities and social sciences.
18Mar02 MyOAI.com aims to personalise Open Archives search.
18Mar02 JISC sneaks out an OAI FAQ.
12Mar02 DSpace project extends its sustainable digital repository to diverse communities at MIT.
New initiatives promote open access to the scholarly journal literature based on 'alternative journals' and 'institutional and discipline-based archives that allow public access'
... 14Feb02 Budapest Open Access Initiative wants 'research and education in every part of the world to be much more free to flourish'.
... 06Feb02 Research libraries form the International Scholarly Communications Alliance to act for 'equitable, open and affordable access'.
04Feb02 Technical Committee pre-announces
OAI v.2 features, due in May.
23Jan02 Elsevier's Scirus search engine covers arXiv eprints (but it only reveals this as a secondary item to its 'new look' search interface). Comment by Stevan Harnad, principal investigator for OpCit.
18Jan02 JISC's Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) Programme recognises the critical role of OAI in sharing digital resources in higher and further education.
04Jan02 Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) launches experimental OAi cross-archive search service covering 11,000+ records in 12 language archives.
200120Dec01 Pioneering scheme seeks to fund open access to biomedical research with an institutional membership programme, shifting the emphasis from author charges, and from journal subscriptions.
20Dec01 An open source digital video collection with contributions from the Internet Archive, Carnegie Mellon¹s Informedia Project, and the University of Maryland¹s Human Computer Interaction Laboratory, is now registered with OAi.
21Nov01 DP9 gateway makes XML metadata from OAi archives visible to Web search engines.
23Oct01 Elsevier's Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS) is validated as fully compliant with the OAi protocol v1.1.
04Oct01 California Digital Library and bepress augment eprint repositories with tools for peer review and editorial management.
02Oct01 Components for Constructing Open Archives (Cocoa) and "Open Archives in a box" alpha releases support metadata export from databases and file systems using the OAi protocol.
25July01 BioMed Central becomes first publisher to implement support for the OAi Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
05July01 Digital Library Federation to build gateways using OAi metadata harvesting.
1July01 Metadata Harvesting protocol of the OAi migrates to version 1.1 to comply with the latest W3C XML Schema Recommendation.
31May01 Kepler, new OAi service, sparks debate (debate continues).
18May01 Citation and "hit" impact for papers could be assessable continuously online, benefitting research assessment exercises. THES article.
Apr01 Repository explorer tests archives for compliance with the OAI Metadata Harvesting Protocol.
23Apr01 Scientists prompt high-profile debates on archives and freeing the refereed literature in Science, Nature and Scientific American.
24Jan01 California Digital Library makes first three prototype ePrint repositories available.
18Jan01 OAi releases Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, v1.0, as it continues to reinvent itself. Confused? See the FAQ.
2000
15Nov00 60,000 DOE Scientific and Technical Reports Online. US Department of Energy announces Information Bridge to complement the PrePRINT Network (>340,000 preprints) and PubSCIENCE (>2M abstracts).
03Nov00 Opcit partners join alpha test of Open Archives specifications for metadata harvesting.
09Oct00 The first OAi-compliant service provider is arc, a cross-archive search engine. Try it.
13Sep00 OAi technical committee introduces Open Archives Harvesting Framework Specifications. Meeting report.
02Nov00 Plea for large e-print archives, rather than 'fragmented' interoperability (OAi) solution, sparks September-Forum debate.
13Sep00 OAi appoints steering committee and extends interoperability framework beyond eprints.
12Sep00 German Initative for Networked Information (DINI) calls for universities to make local archives available using OAi standards (in German).
22Aug00 Elsevier's ChemWeb unveils chemistry preprint server. Aims to be OAi-compliant data provider. Chemists' concerns and other doubts persist.
6-7Jul00 Open access challenges us all to be “good scientific citizens”. Freedom of Information - conference summary. Transcripts available.
16Jun00 Report on the second meeting of the Open Archives initiative, San Antonio, TX
6Mar00 HighWire
Press publishers offer more than 137,000 free online articles
15Feb00 Open Archives Santa
Fe Convention released, a framework to support basic interoperability
among eprint archives.
Feb00 US DOE announces PrePRINT
Network for science Researchers.
Feb00 BioMed
Central, a new "open" publisher of peer-reviewed original research.
Feb00 First
journals appear on PubMed Central. See report in HMS
Beagle (free registration required).
1999
11Dec99 Netprints: BMJ
and Stanford Libraries launch archive for clinical medicine and health.
29Oct99 First meeting of the Open Archives
initiative - report
and press release.
30Aug99 NIH
to establish Pubmed Central.
Keeping up to date
Find papers on Open Archives, open access and eprints in OpCit-related papers
Key sites on Open Archives and open access
|
What are citation analysis and reference linking? See this OpCit paper in D-Lib Magazine. This helpful RLG DigiNews FAQ assesses the practicalities of linking.
Latest
...
6Nov03 Paracite, the citation-seeking search engine, can now identify documents using abstracts, as well as by citation.
07Oct03 National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services (NFAIS) issues guiding principles for reference linking. As a point of comparison, see the Open Journal Project that began in 1995.
06Oct03 Draft OpenURL Standard adapted to take account of proposed "info" URI Scheme.
29Sep03 "info" URI Scheme, a new Internet-Draft for an Informational RFC, will allow referencing of information assets with identifiers in public namespaces that are not otherwise referenceable by URI schemes.
25Jul03 Openly Informatics president Eric Hellman reveals in an open letter
that NISO rejected an offer to grant no-cost licenses for the LinkBaton Technology to NISO and its members for the purposes of implementing OpenURL.
26Jun03 NISO OpenURL committee white paper presages publication of a RFC for 'open' URI scheme.
16Jun03 Trial users announced for OpenURL framework standard.
02May03 NISO statement reveals concerns about prior patent application that 'mirrors the OpenURL Framework'. Patent applicant Openly Informatics says the application was to protect its LinkBaton system, and that organizations can implement the OpenURL standard without infringing on the patent if granted. NISO Board of Directors to investigate.
23Apr03 Herbert Van de Sompel, one of the inspirations for OpenURL (and OAI), wins the 2003 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology.
02Apr03 Proposed standard, The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, is available for public comment.
27Jan03 ParaTools v1.00, a set of Perl modules for handling references, is available for download. Parses documents and references, and can create OpenURLs.
2002
07Nov02 DC-Citation Working Group making progress: DC Usage Board approves as 'conforming' a proposal for a bibliographicCitation element refinement for dc:identifier.
27Sep02 A new experimental service, Paracite, locates cited papers on the Web.
6Jun02 Draft OpenURL standard to be trialled in the first three months of 2003. How to participate.
26Apr02 Bibliographic databases from the Research Libraries Group enabled to present search results with OpenURL links.
18Jan02 Libraries can use DOI and CrossRef linking via an SFX link
server.
2001
16Nov01 Updated lists of OpenURL-enabled resources and available SFX targets.
13Nov01 In a somewhat arcane procedure OpenURL version 0.1 (items 11 and 12 in the document list) is adopted by the NISO standards committee leading to version 1.0 (at the time the document designated in the list as 0.1 was actually labelled as 1.0f).
17Oct01 Openly adapter simplifies CrossRef linking in affiliate libraries. To understand the broader significance of link servers in library systems see this posting by Openly's president, Eric Hellman.
27Jun01 XML Linking Language (XLink) endorsed as official W3C Recommendation.
29May01 International DOI Foundation releases tools for multi-resolution linking.
13Mar01 NISO creates OpenURL Standard Committee.
2Feb01 OpenURL syntax supported in jake.openly version of jake (Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment).
12Jan01 OpenURL submitted to NISO, begins process of becoming an accredited standard.
2000
23Dec00 Openly Informatics, Inc. announces Link.Openly Server, a Web version of its Link.Openly software: "a small but necessay piece of the linking infrastructure we all need".
2Nov00 Article Linkbaton allows users to select preferred data source for article search and retrieval.
Nov00 The 'explosion' of linking agreements among primary and secondary publishers assessed.
Oct00 “Are Publishers and Librarians Making a Hash of It? Will Links Save your Bacon?” Report of a panel meeting at the 2000 annual meeting of the American Library Association.
24Jul00 Localization in reference linking
. Report on the NISO/DLF/CrossRef Workshop.
22Jul00 CrossRef -- DOI -- OpenURL -- SFX demo. Alternative resolvers facilitate 'localization' of links.
12Jun00 SFX beta testing underway.
5Jun00 CrossRef goes live: first links activated. See the demonstration
16May00 OpenURL syntax description, for the delivery of context-sensitive services via an SFX-inspired framework (draft version 1.0).
13Feb00 Ex
Libris acquires rights to SFX Reference Linking Software.
1999
9Dec99 LinkBaton
redirection service announced.
16Nov99 Publishers
to collaborate on reference linking.
10Jun99 A
model for reference linking: report and follow-up from a NISO invitational meeting
Keeping up to date
Discover papers on citation impact and reference linking from OpCit-related papers
Key sites offering citation impact analysis services
The best known citation indexes are offered by ISI through Web of Science. The following services are free and index freely-available papers, many from OAI-compliant open access archives:
- Citebase citation-ranked search for Open Archives, covering arXiv, CogPrints and BioMed Central
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) SPIRES HEP Literature Database, the oldest of these services, covers high-energy physics
- CERN Document Server (CDS), covers physics, with document impact tool showing how many times full-text documents stored on the CDS are downloaded
- iCite, covers physics eprint archives and journals
- ResearchIndex (aka CiteSeer), the largest of these services, covers computer science
- See also NewsSeer, like Google News, an automated general 'news stand'. Could this be a precursor to a current-awareness service for free scholarly papers?
Authors: wondering why physics appears to get preferential treatment? It's because physicists make their published papers freely available.
Key sites on reference linking services
Join the debate on reference linking services - subscribe to the OpenURL discussion list.
* The Ref-Links discussion list, previously recommended on this page, is closed. According to the moderator Norman Paskin's closing statement: "there have been further developments in which most of us are
active, such as the NISO OpenURL and Digital Reference Services
activities; the reflinks list has served its purpose". There is a Ref-Links archive.
|
