Thursday, March 4, 2010
Online Guide to Publishing Open-Access Journals Launches
Co-Action Publishing and Lund University Libraries Head Office have launched an Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing, which provides information and tools to support the efforts of scholars and other small teams producing independent open-access journals. The guide includes information on planning, setting up, launching, publishing, and managing an open-access scholarly journal, as well as links to related information, samples of applied practices, and downloadable tools. The guide seeks to be interactive, allowing users to share their own best practices, tips, and suggestions. For more information and to view the guide, visit http://www.doaj.org/bpguide/
NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom 1909-2009
Founded in 1909, the NAACP celebrated its centennial in 2009. Its records are the cornerstone of the Library’s unparalleled resources for the study of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. They are the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library and the most heavily used. The records were given to the Library in 1964 and are periodically augmented. They cover issues and history from the period 1842-2003. Included are manuscripts, prints, photographs, pamphlets, broadsides, audio tapes, phonograph records, films and video recordings.
The pictorial portion of the collection includes 4,500 photos, prints, drawings and posters on microfilm. The pictures depict victims of police and mob violence, segregation in schools, and civil-rights marches. Others document African American men and women in the armed services during World War II, reflecting the NAACP’s campaign to integrate the military.
A selection of these can be found in a new online exhibition,“NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom.” The site features nearly 70 treasures from the NAACP’s storied history, including the “Call,” Oswald Garrison Villard’s manifesto that launched the NAACP; the organization’s constitution and bylaws; photos of such key events as the New York Silent Protest of 1917, the Marian Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 and Rosa Parks’ 1955 arrest; documents about investigations of lynchings; President Harry Truman’s executive orders barring discrimination in the federal government and military; the Supreme Court decisions on discrimination; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and background on seminal figures in the NAACP. The online exhibition will expand to eventually feature some 150 items.
The overview continues with information about other NAACP materials LC holds as well as, “the personal papers of major figures in black American history.
Integrity Under Attack: The State of Scholarly Publishing
From an Article by Douglas N. Arnold
Scientific journals are surely important. They provide the most effective means for disseminating and archiving scientific results, and so are a key part of an enterprise on which our health, security, and prosperity ultimately depend. Publications are used by universities, funding agencies, and others as a primary measure of research productivity and impact. They play a decisive role in hiring, promotion, and salary decisions, and in the ranking of departments, institutions, even nations. With big rewards tied to publication, it is not surprising that some people engage in unethical behavior, abuse, and downright fraud. Still, when I started to look at the issues more closely, I was appalled by what I found. In this column, I give a few troubling examples of misconduct by authors and by journals in applied mathematics. One conclusion I draw is that common bibliometrics—such as the impact factor for journals and citation counts for authors—are easily manipulated not only in theory, but also in practice, and that their use in ranking and judging should be curtailed.
Source: SIAM News (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Hat Tip: Pete W.
Center for Studies in Higher Ed Publishes Report on Faculty Values & Needs
Diane Harley, Principal Investigator and Director, Higher Education in the Digital Age Project, has presented previous research results at ARL meetings and is scheduled to give a briefing session on this report on April 28 at the ARL Membership Meeting in Seattle.
The full report, Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines, is available online @: http://escholarship.org/uc/cshe_fsc
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)