[Apologies for cross-postings]
Dear Readers, Welcome to ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication. March 2011<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/index> Two articles present national publishing patterns in Lithuania and in Iceland: · Eleonora Dagienė, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, describes the “Changes in Lithuanian Research Journal Publishing in 2009–2010<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4906/4406>.” The new publishing models only reached Lithuania a few years ago, although Lithuanian libraries had been informing about OA and its advantages for many years. How are Lithuanian scholarly publishers adapting to the new publishing environment? · Sólveig Þorsteinsdóttir, Medical and Health Information Centre, Landspitalinn National University Hospital, has studied “Scholarly publishing at Landspitalinn<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4907/4398>”, a major life sciences research institution. Her topics: citations, publication languages, publishing affiliations, number of OA-articles, coverage in international databases, and if the library budget cuts during the recession will affect research at the hospital. We reported earlier on the OA policy adopted by the University of Tromsø (LÄNK), Norway. New developments are reported in two articles by Jan Erik Frantsvåg: · In “The Open Access publication fund at the University of Tromsø<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4908/4399>” he tells the story of how the fund was established shortly after the OA policy decision. What are the rules and procedures for the fund? What does the fund hope to achieve in the competitive world of publishing? While preparing for the publication fund in Tromsø, they realized that they did not know enough about the level of OA publishing by authors at the university. · “Open Access publishing - a status from the University of Tromsø<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4909/4400>” reveals how they found two sources that could provide some interesting – and surprising - information. In four articles from Sweden, both local and international topics are covered · “A new open access policy for Malmö University<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4910/4401>” by Jessica Lindholm and Peter Nilén at Digital Information Services, Malmö University, describes both the work leading up to the policy, and its conditions. Publishing at Malmö University, and future developments are discussed Paving the way for researchers is essential for successful parallel publishing, · “Bibliofil makes parallel publishing easier<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4911/4402>” by Aprile Clark and Yvonne Hultman-Özek at the Library & ICT Unit at the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, describes how they since 2002 have been assigned to support researchers in the scientific communication process. The Bibliofil tool was created to facilitate this work. DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, has for many years been the internationally established tool for finding OA journals. · Linnéa Stenson, member of the DOAJ team at the Head Office of Lund University Libraries, Sweden, gives us the story of “The development of Directory of Open Access Journals.<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4912/4403>” Focus is on the period 2008-2011. Changes and the reasons for them are discussed, and so is the complicated question of what quality criteria to use. Finally, a report from an important conference in Berlin: · Jan Hagerlid, the National Library of Sweden, reports from the first OAPEN conference: “Open Access to monographs in the Humanities and Social Science.<http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4913/4404>” The EU-funded OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) aims to develop and implement an OA publishing model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Have a good read. As always, your comments and ideas are very welcome Ingegerd Rabow Editor-in-chief
