Excerpts from the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter November 26, 2001
I'll be attending an FOS conference in Budapest next week sponsored by the Open Society Institute. As a result, the next issue of the newsletter will appear after I return and catch up on my news-gathering. ---------- * DP9 is an open source gateway service that allows general search engines, like Google, to index OAI-compliant archives. It stands between the crawler and the archive, intercepts the crawler's requests, forwards them to the archive, and translates the archive's output from XML into HTML. This allows OAI archives hidden in the deep internet to be indexed by search engines that don't venture into the deep internet. DP9 was developed by Xiaoming Liu of the Old Dominion University DLib Group. DP9 home page http://arc.cs.odu.edu:8080/dp9/index.jsp Source code for downloading http://arc.cs.odu.edu:8080/dp9/install.jsp * The Resource Discovery Network (RDN) has launched RDN-Include, which allows higher education sites to put the RDN search engine on their pages. Sites may use the RDN search engine for a specific discipline or the general RDN search engine. Users see RDN's hit list of hand-picked resources and the useful RDN annotations on each one. The service is free for UK education sites and may be licensed by others. http://www.rdn.ac.uk/rdn-i/ * _Best of Science_ is a new free online peer-reviewed science journal covering nearly all scientific disciplines. It recoups the costs of online publication through fund-raising and author fees, which it reduces for authors from developing countries. This is welcome but standard fare. More remarkable is the pro-FOS statement of principles inspiring it, issued jointly by the ICSU (International Council for Science) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Best of Science http://bestofscience.free.fr ICSU-UNESCO statement of principles on electronic publishing in science http://bestofscience.free.fr/icsu.html * The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity has released free, downloadable software tools to create and query scientific data stored in its national network of XML documents. http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/ * The papers presented at the November 9-11 conference on the public domain at Duke Law School are now online. (PS: Nice touch: For the PDF files, it recommends Ghostscript, the open source PDF viewer, over Adobe Acrobat.) About half the papers have a strong connection to FOS. http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers.html * Bookmark this useful chart to refresh your memory on when works of different vintage pass into the public domain. Thanks to the University of North Carolina's Task Force on Intellectual Property. http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm * The four major papers from the 2001 SLA conference on electronic journals have now been put online. http://www.sla.org/division/dst/2001papers.html * Walt Crawford has put online the index to volume 1 (2001) of his newsletter, _Cites & Insights_. http://home.att.net/~wcc.techx/civ1ix.pdf * Cisco Systems has put online the results of its unique poll of Nobel laureates. The prize winners still active in research use the internet, and those whose research careers are largely behind them say they wish it had existed earlier. (Their median age is 72.) 67% said it would have enabled them to do their research more quickly, and 91% said that it will accelerate their current research. 87% said it will improve education. 91% said it will enlarge educational opportunities. 93% said it will give students greater access to libraries, information, and teachers around the world. 95% said it will help scholars disseminate their work. http://www.cisco.com/nobel/survey/ * Syracuse University's School of Information Studies wants your nominations for its second annual 21st Century Librarian Award. Librarians working toward FOS will satisfy several of the criteria listed on the award web site. Nominations are due by February 8, 2002. http://istweb.syr.edu/~librarianaward/ * Joseph Pelton, Research Professor at George Washington University and Director of the Arthur Clarke Institute, claims that the volume of the world's information is growing 200,000 times faster than the world's population. If true, then (to quote Bonita Wilson's summary of Pelton's talk), "the only certainty is that the way we deal with information must and will fundamentally change." http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/11editorial.html * The November issue of _D-Lib_, has a large number of FOS-related articles: Lee Zia on the current state of the NSF's National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) Program. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/zia/11zia.html Jola Prinsen summarizing the sixth International Summer School on the Digital Library (August 5-10, Tilburg, the Netherlands). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/prinsen/11prinsen.html Dale Peters on an open source model for digital library development in South Africa. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/peters/11peters.html William Moen on the Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed (Zinterop) with an invitation to libraries to participate (see FOSN for 11/2/01). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/11inbrief.html#MOEN * In the October issue of _Information Research_, Donald Hawkins describes a bibliometric study of the ejournals for the field of information science. http://informationr.net/ir/7-1/paper120.html * In the same issue of _Information Research_ Kira Tarapanoff and three co-authors describe an experimental use of data mining for scholarly research. They mined a database of French doctoral theses for knowledge about Brazil. http://informationr.net/ir/7-1/paper117.html * In a November 1 article in _Library Journal_, Priscilla Caplan shows why reference linking (linking between citations and sources) is more complex than it may appear, and describes the role of DOI's and the efforts of CrossRef and SFX in working out a solution. She does not mention jake or OpCit, the more open solutions to this problem. http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA177643 * In an October 1 article in _Library Journal_, Carol Tenopir collects usage data on the major scholarly databases. Which are the most used and how have their relative positions changed over the past decade? http://makeashorterlink.com/?S19363F2 BTW, he only disciplinary guide to FOS I've seen that is comparable to Wilson's in scope is Bernd Sebastian Kamps' Free Medical Journals. If you know other exemplary disciplinary guides to FOS, please let me know about them. http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/ * Wilfrid Hodges has written a wonderfully detailed and helpful online checklist for mathematicians deciding what contract terms to request, or to accept, from a publisher. The checklist was approved and recommended by the International Mathematical Union's Committee on Electronic Information and Communication. Though aimed at mathematicians, Hodge's checklist and advice apply to all academic authors. http://www.maths.qmw.ac.uk/~wilfrid/copyrightdoc.pdf If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your observations with us through our discussion forum. * Eighth Call for Proposals of the European IST Programme http://www.ukishelp.co.uk/ukishelp/SI12254ku/system/Viewfull.cfm?ObjectID=318&Order=Current London, November 27 * European Forum on Harmful and Illegal Cyber Content http://www.humanrights.coe.int/media/cyberforum/main.htm Strasbourg, November 28 * Canadian Digital Library Symposium http://www.digital-libraries.net/conf2001/program.html Toronto, November 28-29 * Debate between Lawrence Lessig and Jack Valenti on the impact of intellectual property rights on innovation and creativity http://ascweb.usc.edu/debate/ Los Angeles, November 29 (There will be a live webcast for those who cannot attend.) * Fall 2001 CNI Task Force Meeting http://www.cni.org/tfms/2001b.fall/ San Antonio, November 29-30 * eGovernment [in Europe]: From Policy to Practice http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/egovconf/index_en.htm Brussels, November 29-30 * Digital Media Revolution in the Americas http://www.iamericas.org/events/eventlist.html Pasadena, November 29 - December 1 * Fourth SCHEMAS Workshop: Sharing [metadata] schemas http://www.schemas-forum.org/workshops/ The Hague, November 30 * 2001 IST Exhibition and Awards http://europa.eu.int/information_society/newsroom/istevent/programme/index_en.htm Düsseldorf, December 3 * School for Scanning: Creating, Managing, and Preserving Digital Assets http://www.nedcc.org/sfsfl1.htm Delray Beach, Florida, December 3-5 * Developing Digital Collections: Why, What, Who, How? http://www.nelinet.net/calendar/seminars/ddc_01.htm Southborough, Massachusetts, December 4 * Online Information 2001 http://www.online-information.co.uk/online/ London, December 4-6 * Second Meeting of the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS) Educational Content Special Interest Group (EC SIG) http://www.cetis.ac.uk/groups/20010809144711/viewGroup Luton, December 7 * The Electronic Library: Strategic, Policy and Management Issues http://www.britishcouncil.org/networkevents/2000/0134p.htm Loughborough, December 9-14 * 4th International Conference of Asian Digital Libraries http://www.icadl2001.org/ Bangalore, December 10-12 * Moving Beyond the Catalog: Bibliographic Access in a Web World http://www.nelinet.net/conf/special/movingbc/program.htm Worcester, Massachusetts, December 11 * Academic Institutions Transforming Scholarly Communications (SPARC/ARL Forum at the ALA Midwinter Meeting) http://www.ala.org/events/midwinter2002/ New Orleans, January 18-23 ---------- The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute. http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/ ========== This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848). Please feel free to forward any issue of the newsletter to interested colleagues. If you are reading a forwarded copy of this issue, you may subscribe by signing up at the FOS home page or the FOS Newsletter page. FOS home page, general information, subscriptions, editorial position, feedback form http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/index.htm FOS Newsletter, subscriptions, back issues http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos FOS Discussion Forum, subscriptions, postings http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum Guide to the FOS Movement http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters Copyright (c) 2001, Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm