The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has released the IFLA World Report 2010.
Here's an excerpt from the "Analysis and Conclusions" section of the report:
Open Access to information resources can contribute to reduce the impact of the digital divide. The fact that respondents that provided data for the specific questions indicated that nearly 90% of library associations are in favour of Open Access and that there are Open Access initiatives in about 76% of countries, is a very positive development. According to respondents copyright laws exist in 110 countries and in 72 countries the copyright laws include limitations or exceptions for libraries; 85 respondents reported that their countries have legislation that guarantees freedom of access to information and freedom of expression. These are all very positive aspects. Library associations and library communities across the world should endeavour to increase these numbers and to ensure that the principles underlying the questions are implemented and safeguarded in their countries.
Violations of freedom of expression and freedom of access to information are still very prevalent in many countries in all regions of the world. Interestingly enough very few respondents have reported on such incidents in their countries and most of the information comes from third-party sources—only 21 respondents have highlighted any issues, whereas the consulted third-party sources have listed issues in at least 109 countries (compared to 19 and 82 respectively in 2007). The fact that only a few respondents have reported incidents is worrisome, regardless of the reason for this. On the other hand, the fact that there are so many countries in which such incidents take place, should be a matter of grave concern to IFLA and the library community in general. Further reading...
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Strategies for Promoting Open-Access Publishing
Matthew C. Nisbet on August 31, 2010, 11:14 AM
About 20% of journal articles published in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities are open-access, meaning that only about 1 out of every 5 articles are immediately or eventually accessible online without paying an expensive journal subscription fee. And although the open-access movement began in the early 1990s, survey studies find that a majority of researchers still consider publishing at open-access journals as posing a risk to earning tenure and as potentially jeopardizing their chances at winning research grants. As these findings suggest, there are not only financial and technological hurdles to making most scholarship open-access, there are also perceptual and cultural barriers.
Read more......
About 20% of journal articles published in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities are open-access, meaning that only about 1 out of every 5 articles are immediately or eventually accessible online without paying an expensive journal subscription fee. And although the open-access movement began in the early 1990s, survey studies find that a majority of researchers still consider publishing at open-access journals as posing a risk to earning tenure and as potentially jeopardizing their chances at winning research grants. As these findings suggest, there are not only financial and technological hurdles to making most scholarship open-access, there are also perceptual and cultural barriers.
Read more......
Monday, August 23, 2010
List of institutional repositories in South Africa
 |
| University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park Campus |
Name of IR: CSIR Research Space
Software used: DSpace
Durban University of Technology
Name of IR: DUT IR
URL: http://ir.dut.ac.za
URL: http://ir.dut.ac.za
Software used: DSpace
North-West University
Name of IR: Boloka
Software used: DSpace
Rhodes University
Stellenbosch University
UCT Computer Science Research Document Archive
UCT Lawspace
Name of IR: Lawspace
Software used: DSpace
University of Johannesburg
University of Pretoria
Name of IR: UPeTD
URL: http://upetd.up.ac.za/UPeTD.htm
Software used: Virginia Tech
University of Pretoria
Name of IR: UPSpace
URL: http://www.up.ac.za/dspace/
Name of IR: UPeTD
URL: http://upetd.up.ac.za/UPeTD.htm
Software used: Virginia Tech
University of Pretoria
Name of IR: UPSpace
URL: http://www.up.ac.za/dspace/
Software used: DSpace
University of South Africa
New repository on DSpace to be launched soon.
University of the Western Cape
Name of IR: AHERO
Software used: Unknown
University of the Western CapeName of IR: UWC Theses and Dissertations
URL: http://etd.uwc.ac.za
URL: http://etd.uwc.ac.za
Software used: Unknown
University of the WitwatersrandName of IR: WIReDSpace
URL: http://witsetd.wits.ac.za:8080/dspace
Software used: DSpace
URL: http://witsetd.wits.ac.za:8080/dspace
Software used: DSpace
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Report on UJDigispace utilisation, the citation-impact advantage and the IR Global Repository Ranking
Since launched in November 2009, there is a steady growth of UJDigispace institutional repository. The Institutional Repository and Scholarly Communication librarian was appointed in February 2010, and has since piloted the process as a learning curve. The repository currently has 3107 items, of which 2078 are theses and dissertations (June 2010).
The launch of the Open Access Mandate by the University would propel the UJLIC to increase these numbers in lue of the institutional and faculty self-archiving of accredited and non-accredited journal papers, conference proceedings and book chapters. This approach will in the long term seem to be a major step towards providing open access to UJ research output. While waiting for the approval of the OA mandate UJLIC is creating new strategies for the operation of the institutional repository and the development of archiving policies as opposed to the self-archiving by authors. UJLIC’s UJDigispace immediate plan is to catch-up and compete with its peers, the University of Pretoria, UNISA and University of Stellenbosch who are now mandating all research output to be deposited in the IR. However copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) that are signed by an author prior to publication which often indicate whether, and in what form, self-archiving is allowed still remains a stumbling block. But UJLIC will embark on a full scale marketing of the IR and copyright awareness once the OA mandate is in place.
IR WORLD RANKING
UJDigispace was in the 287 position among the 800 Institutional repositories across the globe Jujly 2010.
“The Ranking Web of World Repositories” is compiled by the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. The rankings have been published since 2006. The rankings are based principally on the number of links into the repository from external websites, demonstrating the impact of an institution’s research on the rest of the Web.
The July Webometrics Ranking for Institutional Repositories is available (23 July 2010) at http://repositories.webometrics.info/top800_rep.asp?offset=250 list South African entries and positions as follows:-
261 Rhodes University Eresearch Repository
759 Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Institutional Repository and Scholarly Communication Specialist
Date: 22 July 2010
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