Open data

SPARC-ACRL FORUM TO EXPLORE OPEN DATA

Washington, DC and Chicago, IL - May 11, 2006 - The upcoming SPARC-ACRL forum on emerging issues in scholarly communication, to be held during the American Library Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, will explore questions related to the field of Open Data. The forum will feature experts who are familiar with the issues associated with Open Data and known for their analysis of the evolving scholarly communication scene.

During the past several years, Open Data has become a field of urgent interest to researchers, scholars, and librarians. With the amount of scientific data doubling every year, issues surrounding the access, use, and curation of data sets are increasing in importance. The data-rich, researcher-driven environment that is evolving poses new challenges and provides new opportunities in the sharing, review, and publication of research results. Ensuring open access to the data behind the literature will play a key role in seeing that the scholarly communication system evolves in a way that supports the needs of scholars and the academic enterprise as a whole.

As Open Data moves to the forefront of scholarly communication, librarians, administrators, and researchers will be responsible for considering new access policies for data and data curation issues. This SPARC-ACRL forum will introduce Open Data as an emerging focus, explore the challenges of managing the data deluge, and aid participants in crafting their own digital data preservation and curation policies.

Speakers will include:

* Christopher Greer, Cyberinfrastructure Advisor, Office of the Assistant Director for Biological Sciences, National Science Foundation
* Robert Hanisch, Project Manager, Space Telescope Science Institute
* Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information

The SPARC-ACRL forum will be held on Saturday, June 24th from 4:00 - 5:30PM in the Morial Convention Center, Room 356 - 357. Reservations are not required.

The forum is followed by the ACRL Scholarly Communication Discussion Group, an opportunity to exchange views with speakers from the forum and take the discussion to a deeper level. The Discussion Group convenes on Sunday, June 25th, from 4:00 - 5:30PM in Evangeline Suite of the Royal Sonesta Hotel.

For more information, visit the SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/ and the SPARC Open Data email discussion list at http://www.arl.org/sparc/opendata/.

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and SPARC Europe are an international alliance of more than 300 academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. SPARC's advocacy, educational, and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is located on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc; SPARC Europe is at http://www.sparceurope.org.

ACRL
ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 13,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians.
Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments.

Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006

The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 by Robin Peek, InfoToday, May 8, 2006 http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060508-2.shtml

"One of the greatest events in the history of Open Access may have just happened. On May 2, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced the bipartisan Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA) (S.2695). The legislation is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. If passed, the policy would require that agencies with research budgets of more than $100 million enact policy to ensure that articles generated through research funded by that agency are made available online within 6 months of publication.

Aurarians can track this bill thru Legislative Histories, Bills & Laws (Lexis Nexis). Click on Bill Tracking and then do a search on S 2695 limited to the current session 109 (2005-2006).

Related story

Scholarly journals resist offering online versions By Sara Ivry, The New York Times, May 8, 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6069510.html

"Scholarly publishing has never been a big business. But it could take a financial hit if a proposed federal law is enacted, opening taxpayer-financed research to the public, according to some critics in academic institutions."

Meta universities and open access

Dr. Charles M. Vest discusses how the Internet, educational technology, and the open access movement will contribute to the globalization of higher education and the possible emergence of a global meta-university in Open content and the emerging global meta-university, May/June of EDUCAUSE Review. He writes:

My view is that in the open-access movement, we are seeing the early emergence of a meta-university—a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced. The Internet and the Web will provide the communication infrastructure, and the open-access movement and its derivatives will provide much of the knowledge and information infrastructure.

Big changes that can have unintended consequences.

Google Scholar at Auraria Library

Auraria Library is back in the list of library links from Google Scholar so you may again choose it as a resource. On campus, the linking to full text resources via Auraria Full Text Resources in Google Scholar works just fine without going through the Library proxy, since campus computers are in the valid ip address ranges for Auraria Library electronic resources.

You may also choose Google Scholar from the Library's list of databases, login with your student id and nine-digit password, and you will automatically be searching Google Scholar with Auraria Library and Open WorldCat chosen as your defaults. Each record that you have access to has a link to Auraria Library Resources.

The link to this resource is available from on and off campus because you log in. The direct link to it, which you can bookmark/make a favorite, is
http://0-scholar.google.com.skyline.cudenver.edu/advanced_scholar_search.

FYI: As with all the online databases we buy or send you to, the number of resources Google Scholar can show you is large, very large, but is not the universe of scholarly resources available to you. As a matter of economics, each individual publishers' entire set of resources is not opened to Google to search. Many, but not a majority, of academic authors are turning to referreed open access journals as a place to publish their work (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html, http://www.doaj.org/) which are often available to anyone via the internet and thus to Google (and other search engines http://www.freefulltext.com/, http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/). So Google Scholar is well populated and extremely useful to serious researchers.