April 2004 | Main | July 2004
May 12, 2004
More of PNAS in PMC Open Access Archive
The following new content is now available in PubMed Central as part of
NLM's project to digitize the back issues of PMC journals:
PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
49(1-6); January to June 1963
50(1-6); July to December 1963
51(1-6); January to June 1964
52(1-6); July to December 1964
Digitization of content is now complete for the years 1959-1971 and
1980-2003.
While the digitization of the back issues of these three journals is in
progress you may find gaps in the range of available issues/volumes.
Completion of the archive for the titles is on-going.
Posted by Donna Braquet at 12:03 PM
New OA book about Einstein
Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution
Edmund Blair Bolles
Joseph Henry Press
356 pages, 6 x 9, 2004, ISBN: 0309089980
Posted by Donna Braquet at 11:56 AM
Finland: First country to make OA commitment
Finland is the first country to make a nationwide commitment to support
Open Access publishing with BioMed Central. All universities, polytechnics and research institutes in Finland have become BioMed Central members. The membership agreement covers the cost of publication, in BioMed Central's 100+ Open Access journals, for all 25000 publicly funded researchers and teachers in Finland.
BioMed Central agreed the membership with FinELib, the National Electronic
Library of Finland. A consortium of universities, polytechnics, research
institutes and regional libraries, FinELib is part of the National
Library's services for libraries. FinELib acquires Finnish and
international resources to support teaching, learning and research. 86
institutions from the consortium will take part in the membership deal,
adding 80 new institutions to BioMed Central's membership program.
Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, Head, National Electronic Library Services,
explained why the National Electronic Library took the decision,
"The aim of FinELib is to promote access to information. Open access is an
important movement to improve access to information all over the world.
Open access enables the most effective distribution of research results
and can have significant impact to the Finnish innovation system.
FinElib is also interersted in the developments in new business models
which are evolving."
Finland's decision represents a landmark in the move towards Open Access
for all biomedical research. BioMed Central, the largest Open Access
publisher, has seen their membership program go from strength to strength.
Over 300 institutions worldwide became members in 2003. These included the
NHS in England and all UK universities, all institutions in Ohio, USA, 18
institutions in Australia, and the Max Planck Society. BioMed Central now
has 500 member institutions in 39 countries.
Natasha Robshaw, Head of Marketing and Sales at BioMed Central, said:
"We are very excited to welcome FinELib on board as members. Finland is
leading the world in its nationwide commitment to Open Access, and this is
a huge boost for the Open Access movement. We look forward to other
nations making the same strides to support making research findings freely
available."
For more information:
Press Office Contacts:
Grace Baynes for BioMed Central
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7323 2988
E-mail: grace.baynes@biomedcentral.com
About BioMed Central
BioMed Central is an independent online
publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to
the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This
commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential
to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to
open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and
other subscription-based content.
BioMed Central's business model is based on charging authors to publish,
and then making the content free to readers. Under the agreement,
article-processing charges are waived - for all publicly funded
researchers in Finland - for publication in any of BioMed Central's 100+
peer-reviewed journals. Upon acceptance, the article becomes available
online without charge to readers worldwide. Many researchers from Finnish
institutions have already published in BioMed Central journals.
BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January
2002 and now has well over 400 members, including some of the world's most
prestigious academic institutions. NHS England, Cancer Research UK, the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and the World Health Organization are all
BioMed Central Institutional Members.
Posted by Donna Braquet at 11:24 AM
2 new OA Journals
The European Geosciences Union has
launched two new journals in the interdisciplinary field of
biogeoscience:
Biogeosciences
Forthcoming fulltext v1+ (2004+)
Print ISSN: 1726-4170
Online ISSN: 1726-4189
Biogeosciences Discussions
v1+ (2004+)
Print ISSN: 1810-6277
Online ISSN: 1810-6285
* Biodiversity & ecosystem function
* Evolutionary ecology
* Environmental microbiology
* Biogeochemistry & global elemental cycles
* Biogeochemistry & gas exchange
* Biomineralization, microbial weathering & sedimentation
* Interactions between microbes, organic matter sediments & rocks
* Biogeophysics
* Earth system sciences & response to global changes
* Paleogeobiology, including origin & evolution of life, evolution of
the biosphere, sedimentary records, & the development & use of proxies
* Astrobiology & Exobiology
Posted by Donna Braquet at 11:19 AM
May 10, 2004
New Open Access Journal
Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine
May 5, 2004, San Francisco -- New discoveries about human health and
disease will be made freely and immediately available to anyone in the
world with an Internet connection -- from physicians and researchers to
patients and policy makers -- in a new open-access medical journal, PLoS
Medicine, to be launched in Autumn, 2004.
"Thanks to the Internet and new strategies for financing publication
costs, it is now possible to share the results of medical research with
anyone, anywhere, who could benefit from it. How could we not do it?"
argued Dr. Harold E. Varmus, Nobel laureate, former National Institutes
of Health Director, and one of the co-founders of the Public Library of
Science [PLoS].
PLoS, a non-profit organization whose mission is to make reliable
scientific and medical literature a public resource, formally announced
today that it will publish PLoS Medicine,an open-access, international,
general medical journal, beginning this fall. A call for papers has been
issued, indicating that the journal is now accepting submissions.
PLoS Medicine will publish important peer-reviewed advances in all areas
of medical research, including epidemiology and public health, together
with summaries of all research articles written for non-specialists and
features about international developments in medicine, controversial
medical topics, neglected diseases, and other health-related subjects. All
content in the journal will be freely available online and allowed to be
reproduced worldwide for teaching, promoting awareness of new discoveries,
and other purposes.
The prospect of an open-access alternative to the existing
subscription-based prestigious medical journals has been welcomed by many
in the health research and advocacy worlds. Already more than 75
physicians and researchers have been recruited to the editorial board of
PLoS Medicine, ranging from an AIDS physician in Rwanda to the leader of a
gene therapy unit in Paris to a cardiologist in Salt Lake City.
PLoS was founded in 2000 by Dr. Varmus and colleagues Patrick O. Brown of
Stanford University and Michael B. Eisen of Lawrence BerkeleyLaboratory
and the University of California, Berkeley. Last October,=20 the
organization launched its first open-access journal of peer-reviewed
scientific research, PLoS Biology, whose content has been favorably
reviewed by the New York Times, Le Monde, and countless other media
outlets around the world.
"The case for open access to medical research is even stronger than it is
for basic research in biology. The National Institutes of Health in
theUnited States alone spends over $28 billion on biomedical research.
Everyone in the country -- and around the world -- should have access to
the results of those studies," commented Joseph L. Goldstein, a member of
the PLoS Medicine editorial board and Nobel Prize winner in Medicine based
at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
PLoS Medicine will be overseen by PLoS Senior Editors Barbara Cohen,
former editor of Nature Genetics and former executive editor of the
Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Virginia Barbour, a physician and
haematologist and former executive editor of the Lancet. Working closely
with members of the editorial board and in consultation with the wider
medical and health research community, they will develop an open-access
forum for important studies and for discussion of medical research and
practice in the broader context of global health and social
responsibility.
For more information about the Public Library of Science, see
http://www.plos.org.
Posted by Donna Braquet at 05:33 PM
May 06, 2004
New Open Access Journal
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM)
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM) is a new international journal that seeks to understand the sources and to encourage rigorous research in this new, yet ancient world of complementary and alternative medicine.
This international rigorously peer-reviewed journal seeks to apply scientific rigor to the study of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities, particularly traditional Asian healing systems. eCAM will emphasize health outcome, while documenting biological mechanisms of action. The journal will be devoted to the advancement of science in the field of basic research, clinical studies, methodology or scientific theory in diverse areas of Biomedical Sciences.
Posted by Donna Braquet at 05:19 PM
May 05, 2004
American Physical Society Lowers 2005 Prices
The Council of the American Physical Society has established journal prices for 2005. APS will be DECREASING PRICES for all tiers. See more ....
Posted by at 03:17 PM
May 03, 2004
Will They Find My Online Publication?
One of the issues related to online publishing concerns the ability of potential readers to discover the content. In a May 1, 2004 liblicense-l posting about citations of online publications, Stevan Harnad writes:
That providing Open Access to an article dramatically increases its
citations has already been tested, and it begins immediately (with
downloads, which correlate with and predict downloads 6-24 months later.
He provides a link to the Correlation Generator, a tool that generates a graph (or table) of the correlation between citation impact and usage impact* ("hits") from the Citebase database.
Harnad et al have written two articles about web citation linking and discovery:
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr, Wendy Hall, Stevan Harnad, Donna Bergmark, Carl Lagoze, Open Citation Linking: The Way Forward. D-Lib Magazine. Volume 8 Number 10. October 2002. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/hitchcock/10hitchcock.html
Hitchcock, Steve; Woukeu, Arouna; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les; Hall, Wendy and Harnad, Stevan. (2003) Evaluating Citebase, an open access Web-based citation-ranked search and impact discovery service http://opcit.eprints.org/evaluation/Citebase-evaluation/evaluation-report.html
Posted by at 05:00 PM