30 أبريل 2015

Open Access Archives: Iran and Central Asia

Digital Persian Archive - Asnad.org


An Image Database of Persian Historical Documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th Century



"Image Database of Persian Historical Documents from Iran and Central Asia up to the 20th Century -A Research Project of the Iranian Studies Division at the Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany.
This Project aims at facilitating access to the growing number of available Persian historical deeds and documents, both published and unpublished. It shall allow work on archival material with the help of incorporated facsimiles without recourse to the original - often remote - place of publication or storage.
The Database includes "public" and "private" documents: royal decrees and orders, official correspondence, and shari'a court documents, such as contracts of sale and lease, vaqf deeds, marriage contracts, and court orders. It also serves as a bibliographic reference tool, being a continually updated repertoire of published historical documents.
 Browse and search this Database

28 أبريل 2015

Open Access e-prints

Open Access EPrints

Open Access (OA) is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, webwide.
There are two roads to OA:
(1) the "golden road" of OA journal-publishing , where journals provide OA to their articles (either by charging the author-institution for refereeing/publishing outgoing articles instead of charging the user-institution for accessing incoming articles, or by simply making their online edition free for all);

(2) the "green road" of OA self-archiving, where authors provide OA to their own published articles, by making their own eprints free for all.
The two roads to OA should not be confused or conflated; they are complementary. (This site is focussed largely on the green road, because it is the fastest and surest way to reach immediate 100% OA; but the green road might eventually lead to gold too.)
OA self-archiving is not self-publishing; nor is it about online publishing without quality control (peer review); nor is it intended for writings for which the author wishes to be paid, such as books or magazine/newspaper articles. OA self-archiving is for peer-reviewed research, written solely for research impact rather than royalty revenue.

Researchers, their institutions and their funders need to be informed of the benefits of providing Open Access and instructed on how quickly and simply it is done.
Institutional Open Access Repositories need to be created (and registered in ROAR, so as to be seen and emulated by other institutions).
Most important, an OA self-archiving mandate for systematically filling these repositories with their target content needs to be adopted and implemented (and registered, so as to be seen and emulated by other institutions).
An Institutional Repository is the best way to provide OA to research output. Software such as EPrints provides a web-based OAI-compliant IR for free.


Enabling an open education future with EPrints [Image: opensource.com via Flickr CC BY-SA]

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/

26 أبريل 2015

Open Access Jordan

Open Access Collections of the Institut français du Proche-Orient


The Institut français du Proche-Orien ensure the dissemination and valorisation of research in scientific areas invested by the Institute in the Middle Eastern societies (Syria , Lebanon, Jordan , Palestinian Territories, Iraq) in all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences from antiquity to the present day.

Les ondes de choc des révolutions arabes

SHOCKWAVES ARAB REVOLUTIONS



21 أبريل 2015

من مبادرات الدول المتقدمة في مجال الوصول الحر: تصريح Pisa


في أكتوبر 2013، عقد اجتماع في مدينة نانسي بايطاليا بحضور ممثلين من معهد المعلومات التقنية والعلمية في فرنساINIST-CNRS ومن إيطاليا ISTI-CNR ومن Open AIRE و Grey Net بهدف العمل على إنشاء لجنة تعمل على تقصي وتعزيز التعاون بين المستودعات الرقمية التي تستضيف مجموعات الأدبيات الرمادية. نتيجة هذا الاجتماع هو تشكيل لجنة باسم " لجنة سياسة المصدر " برئاسة هربرت جريتمير Herbert Gruttemeier رئيس العلاقات الدولية في معهد المعلومات التقنية والعلمية، وكان أول نشاط للجنة يتمثل في تنظيم سيمنار في ربيع 2014 في بيسا بإيطاليا يركز على الأدبيات الرمادية وتطوير السياسات المرتبطة بحركة الوصول المفتوح، البيانات المفتوحة، والمعايير المفتوحة، والعلم المفتوح....وتم الإعلان عن تصريح بيسا في نهاية السيمنار ومتاح على الرابط التالي

Open Access Publishing at the Max Planck Society

Open Access Publishing at the Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society promotes open access in a variety of ways. Firstly, scientists are supported in adopting an open access strategy when they wish to publish the results of their work.
They have the opportunity to take the “green road” when publishing their findings using the Max Planck publication repositoryMPG.PuRe.
The "golden road” of open access is supported by paying the publication fees for open access journals from a central budget. To do this, the Max Planck Digital Library acts as the central service facility to negotiate agreements with various open access publishers (for more information, please see the websites of Max Planck Digital Library).
The Max Planck Society is also linked to the Open Access initiative through numerous projects. It also supports or publishes its own open access publications, such as the eLIFE journal or the Edition Open Access website.

Explore Open Access Publishing at the Max Planck Society by following link

Image result for Open Access Max Planck Society


19 أبريل 2015

Open Access Arabic Manuscript Library Japan




This collection is the corpus of manuscripts mainly focused on Arabic, collected by Dr. Hans Daiber, a professor of Islamic studies in Germany, over many years. Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo purchased the collection, its first part in 1986-1987 and its second part in 1994.

This collection is not massive nor contains manuscripts with extremely high artistic value, but it covers various disciplines of Islam and it is making out the bird’s-eye view of traditional Islamic learning as a whole. As a part of the Digital Library of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, here we open to the web all manuscripts of Daiber Collection, 367 of Part I and 153 of Part II. Each part contains approximately 850 and 500 texts, Narratives, Geography, Biography and History, Medical art, Algebra and Geometry, Astrology, Interpretation of dreams, and Alchemy. Each manuscript was collected from different places in the Muslim world. Most of them were transcribed in Turkey and Syria, and some are thought of as they were copied in Yemen, Morocco, Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and India. The age of their transcriptions has not always been known, but manuscripts copied in 18th century are the most abundant while the earliest is in the middle of the 12th century A.D. and the most recent in the beginning of the 20th century A.D.

This Collection contains rich research materials over many fields that bring out the Muslim way of life directly or indirectly. Releasing the Collection in this way may enable more researchers to have access to these materials closer. We hope this Database contribute to the advancement of Islamic studies towards better understanding the richness and diversity of the culture.

Search the Catalogue

Daiber Collection Database

16 أبريل 2015

Open Access in Nepal: OLE Nepal's E-Pustakalaya

E-Pustakalaya



E-Pustakalaya is an education-focused digital library containing full-text documents, books, images, videos, audio files, and interactive educational software that can be accessed through an intranet or on the Internet. OLE Nepal started the development of E-Pustakalaya in 2008 with the aim to improve children's reading skills and develop a reading culture in schools by giving them free and open access to age-appropriate reading materials and to enable students to do research projects and promote habit of independent inquiry. Since E-Pustakalaya went live in 2009, teachers as well as other adults have also benefited widely from various teaching resources, and educational materials in agriculture, health, environment, local technologies, and so on.

The material is categorized as
  • Literature
  • Art
  • Course Material
  • Teaching Material
  • Reference Material
  • Newspaper & Magazines
  • Other Material
E-Pustakalaya can be accessed here

15 أبريل 2015

Don't Think Open Access Is Important

Don't Think Open Access Is Important? It Might Have Prevented Much Of The Ebola Outbreak

For years now, we've been talking up the importance of open access to scientific research. Big journals like Elsevier have generally fought against this at every point, arguing that its profits are more important that some hippy dippy idea around sharing knowledge. Except, as we've been trying to explain, it's that sharing of knowledge that leads to innovation and big health breakthroughs. Unfortunately, it's often pretty difficult to come up with a concrete example of what didn't happen because of locked up knowledge. And yet, it appears we have one new example that's rather stunning: it looks like the worst of the Ebola outbreak from the past few months might have been avoided if key research had been open access, rather than locked up. 

Read More


12 أبريل 2015

Open Access Qatar Digital Library

Open Access Qatar Digital Library
Image result for QATAR DIGITAL LIBRARY logo

WHAT IS THE QATAR DIGITAL LIBRARY?


The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualized explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

WHAT CAN I FIND IN THE QDL?

Content currently available on the QDL was developed during the first phase of the partnership, reaching a total of 500,000 images by the end of 2014. More content is being added all the time, but current highlights the QDL is proud to showcase include:
  • India Office Records that span the period 1763–1951, comprising files from the Bushire Political Residency Records and the Bahrain Agency Records
  • J. G. Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf , Oman and Central Arabia (1908, 1915), a classic introduction to the history of the Gulf
  • 500 maps, charts and plans of the Persian Gulf and the wider region
  • The Private papers of Sir Lewis Pelly, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf between 1862 and 1872
  • Arabic Scientific Manuscripts from the British Library’s Manuscripts Collections, covering topics such as medicine, mathematics, astronomy and engineering
  • A selection of photographs, postcards and other printed objects as well as sketches, drawings and watercolors; etchings, engravings and illustrations
  • A selection of audio collection materials including 200 shellac discs recorded in Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq between 1920 and 1940

09 أبريل 2015

SAGE Selects Copyright Clearance Center to Manage Open Access

SAGE Selects Copyright Clearance Center to Manage Article Processing Charges for Its Open Access Publications

SAGE Adopts CCC's RightsLink for Open Access

SAGE Publications will use Copyright Clearance Center’s (CCC) RightsLink for Open Access platform to manage its open access (OA) publications’ article processing charges (APCs). With RightsLink for Open Access, the transactions for various OA charges are streamlined, and SAGE authors will be prompted to pay APCs from within the editorial workflow.
“SAGE made it clear that speed-to-market was a critical factor in its choice to go with CCC,” says Darren Gillgrass, CCC’s director of product management for rightsholder products and services. “As a highly configurable platform, RightsLink for Open Access was able to meet SAGE’s timeline requirement for its initial rollout while still providing a branded solution that reflects SAGE’s unique Open Access pricing and discount rules.”

For more information, read the press release.


      

08 أبريل 2015

Microsoft promises Office 365 update for open document format

Microsoft promises Office 365 update for open document format


Government believes the open data format will boost software use in the public sector

Microsoft will issue an update to Office 365 to enhance support for the Open Document Format (ODF) championed by the government, allowing users to export files as ODF regardless of the format they were created in.

For more details click here

06 أبريل 2015

Briefing paper on Open Access

Cover briefing paper business models

Briefing Paper on Open Access Business Models for Research Funders and Universities





This briefing paper offers insight into various open access business models, from institutional to subject repositories, from open access journals to research data and monographs. This overview shows that there is a considerable variety in business models within a common framework of public funding. Open access through institutional repositories requires funding from particular institutions to set up and maintain a repository, while subject repositories often require contributions from a number of institutions or funding agencies to maintain a subject repository hosted at one institution. Open access through publication in open access journals generally requires a mix of funding sources to meet the cost of publishing. Public or charitable research funding bodies may contribute part of the cost of publishing in an open access journal but institutions also meet part of the cost, particularly when the author does not have a research grant from a research funding body.

The briefing paper is available for download here.



02 أبريل 2015

Wiley Announces New Open Access Journal - Clinical and Experimental Dental Research

Clinical and Experimental Dental Research (CEDR) will publish quality, peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of dentistry and oral surgery, diseases, and medicine. This provides authors with a new platform for rapid publication and dissemination of their research in the dental field.


The journal joins Wiley’s portfolio of dentistry journals as one of the first open access journals to provide extensive coverage of the dentistry field. CEDR is supported by many respected titles including the Journal of Clinical Periodontology. Clinical Oral Implants Research. and Molecular Oral Microbiology.



“We are excited to publish a journal that is valuable in all areas of dentistry,” said Rachel Burley, Vice President and Director of Open Access at Wiley. “And we are especially pleased that the Wiley Open Access program makes CEDR studies available to the entire research and practitioner community worldwide.”



“This open access online journal will present novel clinical and experimental research within all domains of oral medicine and dentistry in a format that is easily accessible and freely available to the readers,” said Dr. Asbjørn Jokstad, Editor-in-Chief of CEDR and professor at The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Norway.



Dr. Jokstad has produced numerous research and teaching publications, book chapters and conference presentations in multiple fields of dentistry, with special emphasis on evidence-based dentistry, conservative dentistry, prosthodontics, toxicology and on TMD.



All articles in CEDR will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License on Wiley Online Library. Authors with open access mandates from funders will be fully compliant when publishing with this journal. A publication fee will be payable by authors on acceptance of their articles. Authors affiliated with, or funded by, an organization that has a Wiley Open Access Account can publish without directly paying any publication charges.



The journal is open to submissions now and will publish online in spring 2015. For more information, visit cedrjournal.com/.


Contact the publicists: Dawn Peters
E: ScienceNewsroom[.]Wiley.Com - P: +1 781-388-8408

National licence mooted to free up research access

Hepi paper says access could be based on having UK IP address
Unlocked padlock (illustration)
The government should consider negotiating a national licence with publishers that would give access to academic research to anyone with a UK internet connection.
That is the proposal floated in a Higher Education Policy Institute “occasional paper”, launched on 31 March, entitled “Open access: is a national licence the answer? and written by David Price, vice-provost for research at University College London, and Sarah Chaytor, head of public policy in his office.
The idea of a national licence was dismissed in a single paragraph in 2012’s landmark Finch Report into open access.
Noting that Iceland was the only country to have adopted such a scheme, it said a UK version was “unlikely to be practicable, and the costs would probably be high”. The report’s alternative recommendation for the UK to steer a course towards universal journal-provided gold open access was accepted by the government and funders.
The Hepi paper acknowledges that some progress has been made in that direction. But it says gold open access only opens access to the 6 per cent of global papers produced in the UK, while “there is no reciprocal offering from most other countries, including those who rival or exceed our own performance in research. This is having a negative impact on British competitiveness.”
The Finch Report was the inspiration for the Access to Research initiative, which makes papers hidden behind a pay wall freely accessible via terminals in UK public libraries.
But the Hepi report – launched at a conference on the research excellence framework held at the Royal Society – says potential users of research from outside the academy, such as small businesses, policymakers, doctors and teachers still “find it hard to gain access. In an age when…90 per cent of the population are online, such constraints seem out of date”.
The negotiation of a national licence with publishers, by a “government-approved body”, would greatly improve UK access to global research, “driving innovation and the knowledge economy”.
In additional to the research and funding councils, contributions to the cost could come from the knowledge transfer budget, the NHS and business.
“We would not, however, wish to pretend that a national licence offers a simple solution to reduce the public funding commitment significantly from current levels or that cost savings are the main reason to consider its introduction,” the report cautions.
They envisage the scheme running alongside the continued payment of article processing charges during the “transition towards gold open access” – although the charges could be “offset against the national licence in the way they are now beginning to be offset against subscriptions”.
The authors admit there are a number of potential obstacles, such as competition law, the difficulty of confining access to UK IP addresses and the potential refusal of some publishers to take part.
They call on the government to set up a “high-level expert working group with representatives of all the key stakeholders” to explore such issues and carry out a detailed economic impact assessment.
Professor Price, said: “There is no doubt that negotiating a national licence would involve reconciling a great many diverse interests. However, the prize at stake – bringing cutting-edge research to bear on every aspect of life in the UK – is of such significance that we must collectively pursue it.”

Springer and Jisc agree model to reduce cost of open access and subscriptions


Springer SBM and Jisc have agreed an arrangement to take into account UK scientists’ need to comply with multiple open access policies while accessing scientific articles published by Springer, while containing the combined costs of article processing charges and subscriptions.
The proposed agreement will cap the amount paid by UK higher education (HE) institutions to subscribe and maintain full access to Springer’s subscription journals and to make their researchers’ articles open access in those journals – the latter being in compliance with the requirements of HEFCE’s Research Excellence Framework, RCUK’s open access policy and other major funders such as the Charity Open Access Fund. 


The two parties hope the agreement will significantly reduce the cost and administration barriers to hybrid open access publishing for UK academic institutions, while supporting the transition to open access in a transparent and sustainable way.
Jisc and Springer first entered into negotiations in response to changes to the UK’s open access requirements in early 2014. Jisc supports education and research through digital services, and approached Springer with a clear mandate and objectives to contain the costs to UK institutions. 
'Springer is proud to work so closely with Jisc on this new direction in science publishing,' says Roné Robbetze, vice president for sales in north-western Europe and Africa. 'The UK has taken a major step in further developing open access and we are happy to be the first to have such a far-reaching arrangement here.'

Lorraine Estelle, executive director of digital resources and divisional CEO of Jisc Collections, added: 'Jisc sees the development of these models as essential in order to contain the total cost of ownership of scholarly communication. Springer has shown a deep understanding of the issue and contributed proactively in finding a model that addresses the needs of UK higher education institutions as they lead in the transition to open access.'


01 أبريل 2015

Open Access Library: MENALIB



Open Access Library

Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB)

The Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB) is an information portal for Middle East, North African, and Islamic Studies. It provides access to electronic fulltext materials or electronic bibliographical records of printed materials and manuscripts.

MENALAB can be searched for Digital collections, Periodical contents, and can also be explored for conferences and document delivwery.