E-Lert # 287 / Cyberavis no. 287
Friday July 25, 2008 / le vendredi 25 juillet 2008
NEWS / NOUVELLES
PubMed Central Submissions Jump Sharply Under New NIH Policy
Library Journal, July 24, 2008
In the months since passage of the National Institutes of Health’s
(NIH) mandatory public access policy in late December of 2007, the number
of submissions to the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) PubMed
Central (PMC) repository, where authors are now required to deposit their
NIH-funded research papers, has risen significantly. According to NIH statistics,
submissions to PMC began steadily rising in December 2007, soon after it
became clear a mandatory policy would be adopted in 2008. By the first month
following passage of the new policy, January 2008, monthly submissions to
PMC hit an all-time high of 1255, and have continued to increase significantly
every month so far this year.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6581624.html?nid=2673#news1
Google Knol Opens to Public
Ashley Phillips
ABC News, July 24, 2008
In a move widely seen as the Silicon Valley behemoth's answer to Wikipedia,
this week Google opened Knol,
its own user-generated encyclopedia, to the public. Unlike Wikipedia, people
who write entries on Google's encyclopedia are identified and could even
earn a profit from their articles with ads. The more times the article is
viewed, the more an author can get paid. Google, of course, gets a cut of
the profits.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=5441051
Research Data Strategy Working Group: opening new pathways to Canadian
research data
July 23, 2008
NRC-CISTI Director General, and Chair of the Research Data Strategy (RDS)
Working Group, Pam Bjornson is pleased to announce a collaborative effort
to address the challenges and issues surrounding the access and preservation
of data arising from Canadian research. The RDS Working Group is a multi-disciplinary
group of universities, institutes, libraries, granting agencies, and individual
researchers bonded by a shared recognition of the pressing need to deal
with Canadian data management issues. The group is focusing on the necessary
actions, next steps and leadership roles that researchers and institutions
can take to ensure Canada’s research data is accessible and usable
for current and future generations of researchers.
http://data-donnees.gc.ca/eng/about/backgrounder.html
NRC Publications Archive: Extending the reach and increasing the impact
of NRC research
July 23, 2008
The National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information (NRC-CISTI) is pleased to announce an initiative to create an
NRC Publications Archive (NPArC). This searchable, web-based archive will
provide access to NRC's record of science and demonstrate the many ways
NRC researchers translate science and technology into value for Canada.
http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/media/press/nparc_e.html
Bell's internet throttling is like reading people's mail, ISPs say
CBC News, July 23, 2008
Bell Canada Inc.'s slowing of internet speeds is the equivalent of the
post office opening people's mail and deciding when they should get their
letters, a group of small service providers have said in their final volley
at the company. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group
of 55 companies that rent portions of Bell's network to provide their own
broadband services, made its last plea Wednesday to regulators to force
Bell to end its speed throttling.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/07/23/tech-caip.html
Government copyright bill runs counter to emphasis on environment
Michael Geist
Ottawa Citizen, July 22, 2008
Canadian politicians entered the summer recess expecting to get an earful
about the environment from their constituents. To the surprise of many,
the digital environment has joined the physical environment as one of the
hot button issues of the summer. Bill C-61 establishes new barriers to the
reuse of electronics. Bill C-61 also creates new barriers in the race toward
network-based computing, which forms part of the ICT industry's response
to the fact that it accounts for more carbon emissions than the airline
industry.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/bustech/story.html?id=0ea363f6-f0e0-4a69-9a9f-414e4e65a4cb&p=1
U.S. sees Canada as weak on fighting counterfeiting
Eva Friede
The Gazette, July 22, 2008
Canada is on the U.S. Trade Representative Special Watch List for its lack
of proactivity in the fight against counterfeiting, says lawyer Daniel Drapeau.
The problems arise from weak laws, said Drapeau, who specializes in intellectual
property law at Ogilvy Renault.
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/arts/story.html?id=a88b839e-bad2-4f32-82ac-4094e032ac48
La plus ancienne Bible consultable en partie dès jeudi sur
internet
Agence France-Presse, 21 juillet 2008
Le premier fragment de la plus ancienne des bibles, le «Codex Sinaiticus»,
ramené d'Egypte par un savant allemand au 19ème siècle
puis dispersé dans quatre pays va être consultable dès
jeudi sur internet, a indiqué lundi la bibliothèque universitaire
de Leipzig (est). Il s'agit d'un «premier pas décisif»
dans le projet de présenter d'ici juillet 2009 une reconstitution
virtuelle et complète sur internet de l'ensemble du «Codex
Sinaiticus», considéré par les experts comme la plus
ancienne Bible du monde, indique la bibliothèque dans un communiqué.
http://technaute.cyberpresse.ca/nouvelles/internet/200807/21/01-19302-la-plus-ancienne-bible-consultable-en-partie-des-jeudi-sur-internet.php
B.C. first in Canada to give Google its maps
Marke Andrews
The Vancouver Sun, July 19, 2008
Agriculture and Lands Minister Stan Hagen announced GeoBC,
a government organization, will provide 24/7 access to the province's geographic
database in partnership with Google. This information will be available
online at geobc.gov.bc.ca and from Google Earth. This makes B.C. the first
government in Canada to supply Google with access to its information.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=c183fccb-7759-4cf1-89e5-a1007c7ea36d
Textbooks, free and illegal, online
Hiawatha Bray
The Boston Globe, July 18, 2008
Faced with soaring prices for textbooks, cash-strapped students have discovered
a tempting, effective, but illicit alternative - pirated electronic books,
available for free over the Internet. It's not just textbooks that are being
downloaded improperly. A survey in May located about 1,100 titles available
illegally online, including novels and books on current events. Textbook
piracy is particularly seductive because students are often hard-pressed
to pay for academic books that can cost more than $100, three times the
price of most other books.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/07/18/textbooks_free_and_illegal_online/
Research Publications Online: Too Much of A Good Thing?
National Science Foundation, July 17, 2008
The Internet gives scientists and researchers instant access to an astonishing
number of academic journals. So what is the impact of having such a wealth
of information at their fingertips? The answer, according to new research
released in the journal Science, is surprising; scholars are actually citing
fewer papers in their own work, and the papers they do cite tend to be more
recent publications. This trend may be limiting the creation of new ideas
and theories.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111928&org=NSF&from=news
ARTICLES
Retaining Copyright in Journal Articles
CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) Intellectual Property
Advisory, July 2008
Digital technology has dramatically expanded the accessibility of academic
work. Academic staff, in addition to traditional journal publication, can
now distribute their articles to students and colleagues by a myriad of
electronic means including email, listservs, web pages, digital repositories
and internet journals. Unfortunately, authors who have signed a publication
agreement that transfers a work’s copyright to a publisher may not
have the right to distribute the work independently in these new ways.
http://www.caut.ca/uploads/IP-Advisory1-en.pdf
À travers l’espace (infini) du web : la mise en espace
des collections sur internet
Yves Alix
Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France, 2008, Tome 53, Numéro
4
La mise en espace des collections inclut leur déploiement physique,
mais aussi une classification et des catalogues. Sur internet, comment les
collections, privées de leur déploiement matériel,
apparaissent-elles ? À travers quelques exemples de sites, français
et étrangers, l’article décrit les approches possibles
et les partis adoptés : mise en scène patrimoniale, expositions
et visites virtuelles, rapprochements avec la librairie, catalogues enrichis.
La présence future des bibliothèques sur la Toile est incertaine,
si elles n’y ont pas d’identité. La mise en espace symbolique
des collections peut contribuer à leur donner une visibilité,
en tant qu’ensembles organisés du savoir.
http://bbf.enssib.fr/sdx/BBF/pdf/bbf-2008-4/bbf-2008-04-0057-010.pdf
At Libraries, Taking the (Really) Long View
Andy Guess
Inside Higher Ed, July 23, 2008
As libraries shift more of their resources to holdings that either originate
as digital or become digital through scanning, it’s become clear that
just because something lives in the virtual stacks doesn’t mean it
will be around forever. Anyone who’s ever suffered through a hard
drive crash (or tried futilely to save a scratched DVD) has faced the inherent
physical limitations of digital storage. Now librarians are having to do
the same as they determine how digital holdings fit into their central mission:
preserving works so that they can be accessed not just today, not just tomorrow,
but indefinitely.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/23/preservation
Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship
James A. Evans
Science, Volume 321, July 18, 2008
Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences
and are more efficiently searched and recalled. However, because they are
used differently than print electronically available journals may portend
an ironic change for science. Using a database of 34
million articles, their citations (1945 to 2005), and online availability
(1998 to 2005), the author suggests that as more journal issues came online,
the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles
were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles.
Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts
researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus
and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;321/5887/395.pdf
RESOURCES / RESSOURCES
Web-based program gives the blind Internet access
Donna Gordon Blankinship
Associated Press, July 16, 2008
Blind people generally use computers with the help of screen-reader software,
but those products can cost more than $1,000, so they're not exactly common
on public PCs at libraries or Internet cafes. Now a free new Web-based program
for the blind aims to improve the situation. It's called WebAnywhere,
and it was developed by a computer science graduate student at the University
of Washington.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700ap_tec_techbit_blind_web.html
Bill C-61: The Lowdown
Laura J. Murray, July 14, 2008
Professor Laura J. Murray, coauthor of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s
Guide and proprietor of www.faircopyright.ca,
explained the dangers to educational, activist, and artistic practice posed
by Bill C-61, the new Copyright Act recently introduced. Laura Murray is
an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Department of English
at Queen’s University. [Note: Download the free RealPlayer to view
the webcast and accompanying slides.]
http://streaming.queensu.ca/vmp/copyright/index.html
Toward a Global PhD? Forces and Forms in Doctoral Education Worldwide
Maresi Nerad and Mimi Heggelund
University of Washington Press, 2008
Universities and nations have long recognized the direct contribution of
graduate education to the welfare of the economy by meeting a range of research
and employment needs. With the burgeoning of a global economy in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, the economic outcome of doctoral education reaches
far beyond national borders. Chapter 12 reviews doctoral education in Canada.
The book is reviewed in Nature.
http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/NERTOW.html
Copyright in the Knowledge Economy (Green Paper)
Commission of the European Communities, 2008
The purpose of the paper is to foster a debate on how knowledge for research,
science and education can best be disseminated in the online environment.
It aims to set out a number of issues connected with the role of copyright
in the "knowledge economy" taking into account the perspective
of publishers, libraries, educational establishments, museums, archives,
researchers, people with a disability and the public at large.
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/docs/copyright-infso/greenpaper_en.pdf
EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS
The UK e-Science All Hands Meeting (AHM): Crossing Boundaries
Edinburgh, Scotland, September 8 – 11, 2008
This popular and well established conference is now in its seventh year
and attracts delegates from many disciplines and organizations, including
senior decision makers working in research and IT using advanced computing
techniques and technologies. It also attracts distinguished members of the
UK academic community and all eight UK Research Councils exhibit at the
event.
http://www.allhands.org.uk/2008/conference/venue.cfm
Fall Institute in Digital Libraries and Humanities
Fredericton, New Brunswick, September 25 – 27, 2008
The Electronic Text Centre will be hosting a new Fall mini-series in electronic
publishing and digital humanities. The series will feature sessions on digital
imaging and data conversion, XML markup, Institutional Repositories (IR),
and the Open Journal System (OJS) for journal management. The three day
series will feature talks by Atlantic researchers on digital humanities
research and projects.
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/index.php?id=1
