Discussion List Archives

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

ICSTI: Opinion on A&I services and Open Access

  • To: Multiple recipients of list <epc-l@iucr.org>
  • Subject: ICSTI: Opinion on A&I services and Open Access
  • From: Pete Strickland <ps@iucr.org>
  • Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 13:46:55 GMT


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Received: from list.dtic.mil (list.dtic.mil [131.84.105.11])
	by agate.iucr.ac.uk (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id h0SBRd119284;
	Tue, 28 Jan 2003 11:27:40 GMT
Received: from list (list.dtic.mil [172.16.105.11])
	by list.dtic.mil (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h0SBP9N04297;
	Tue, 28 Jan 2003 06:25:09 -0500 (EST)
Received: from DTIC.MIL by DTIC.MIL (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8e) with spool
          id 23497 for ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL; Tue, 28 Jan 2003 06:25:09 -0500
Approved-By: crandall@DTIC.MIL
Received: from dtics22.dtic.mil (dtics22.dtic.mil [131.84.1.29]) by
          list.dtic.mil (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6) with SMTP id h0S9HoN21697 for
          <icsti-l@dtics22.dtic.mil>; Tue, 28 Jan 2003 04:17:51 -0500 (EST)
Received: from mails.dtic.mil ([131.84.1.19]) by dtics22.dtic.mil (NAVGW
          2.5.2.12) with SMTP id M2003012804175030427 for
          <icsti-l@dtics22.dtic.mil>; Tue, 28 Jan 2003 04:17:50 -0500
Received: from mel-rto3.wanadoo.fr (smtp-out-3.wanadoo.fr [193.252.19.233]) by
          mails.dtic.mil (8.11.6+Sun/8.10.2/990419cac) with SMTP id
          h0S9Hod01954 for <ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL>; Tue, 28 Jan 2003 04:17:50 -0500
          (EST)
Received: from mel-rta9.wanadoo.fr (193.252.19.69) by mel-rto3.wanadoo.fr
          (6.7.015) id 3E0C33B50135BC14 for ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL; Tue, 28 Jan 2003
          10:17:49 +0100
Received: from your-z3mdcejeuo (193.248.87.124) by mel-rta9.wanadoo.fr
          (6.7.015) id 3E26DA8D006B622F for ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL; Tue, 28 Jan 2003
          10:17:49 +0100
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset="windows-1252"
X-Mailer: Opera 6.05 build 1140
Message-ID:  <YVRLGRYTDBYT7608CRNMOJIFLJOM.3e36488f@your-z3mdcejeuo>
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 2003 09:08:31 -0000
Reply-To: mahons1@EIRCOM.NET
Sender: ICSTI-L list <ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL>
From: Barry Mahon <mahons1@EIRCOM.NET>
Subject: Opinion on A&I services and Open Access
To: ICSTI-L@DTIC.MIL
Precedence: list
X-UIDL: T)N"!m3V!!`pK!!MG@"!
Status: R 
X-Status: N
An extract from the September 98 Forum, the list about Open Access:
>Date:    Mon, 27 Jan 2003 21:57:59 +0000

From:    Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>

>Subject: Open Access and Abstract/Indexing Services
>
>Query from [identity removed]:

Thank you for your continued and vigorous discussion on the current state of
journal publishing.  I am curious if you've published or presented an opinion
 on abstract and indexing services such as (the non-profit) BIOSIS and on
 online services such as (the for-profit) Web of Science/Knowledge (etc). 
 Could you direct me to that position statement?  If you have no stated
 position on such services, have you encountered a meritorious point of view
 that is worth reading and considering.

My own expertise and interest is in primary content -- in particular,
 facilitating and hastening its open accessibility through institutional
 self-archiving. A new generation of secondary services will no doubt be
 built upon this open-access, full-text, OAI-tagged distributed database,
 harvested from research institutions the world over. There is already a
 growing list of OAI service providers:
 http://www.openarchives.org/service/listproviders.html

So far, these are all free services, but there is nothing to prevent
 fee-based services from trying to find niches here, if they have a service
 that users find worth paying for (and that the free services cannot match or
 better). Among the large existing free and fee-based providers, Elsevier's
 Scirus
http://www.scirus.com/html/scirus_service_provider.htm
has already made a notable entry here, but with a free service, provided as a
value-added for their fee-based products, including the toll-access
 full-texts that are not available yet in open-access.

You ask me for my view on existing secondary services such as BIOSIS and
 ISI's Web-of-Science. They all provide valuable services, and obviously it
 is their value plus the user's ability to pay that decides which is best for
 whom today. In future, when all full-text journal articles are online and
 open-access, these services will no doubt have to upgrade and restructure
 themselves. Google already provides full- text inversion for all publicly
 available web documents. In my view, boolean search on inverted full-text
 plus the google ranking algorithm (based on link counts and authorities)
 will be hard to beat, but no doubt ever more powerful new tools will emerge.
 The open-access full-text corpus will also be fully citation-interlinked, so
 ISI too will have to work hard to stay ahead of the game.

>Stevan Harnad

The eventual outcome among secondaries is anyone's guess. The priority now is
hastening open access for the primary corpus.

-------------------------------------------------------

-- 

Best wishes

Peter Strickland
Managing Editor
IUCr Journals

----------------------------------------------------------------------
IUCr Editorial Office, 5 Abbey Square, Chester CH1 2HU, England
Phone: 44 1244 342878   Fax: 44 1244 314888   Email: ps@iucr.org
Ftp: ftp.iucr.org   WWW: http://journals.iucr.org/

NEWSFLASH: Complete text of all IUCr journals back to 1948 
now online! Visit Crystallography Journals Online for more details

Reply to: [list | sender only]
International Union of Crystallography

Scientific Union Member of the International Science Council (admitted 1947). Member of CODATA, the ISC Committee on Data. Partner with UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the International Year of Crystallography 2014.

International Science Council Scientific Freedom Policy

The IUCr observes the basic policy of non-discrimination and affirms the right and freedom of scientists to associate in international scientific activity without regard to such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political stance, gender, sex or age, in accordance with the Statutes of the International Council for Science.