Welcome to the March 2012 issue of ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication.

Authors

NEWS:

OA-mandate in Iceland

Bifröst University, Iceland, has recently adopted an OA-mandate. All personnel employed after the implementation of the mandate shall deposit a post-print version of scientific articles created in the course of their duties in the institutional repository of the University. Read more about the policy in Njörður Sigurjónsson’s article “An Open Access mandate in Iceland.”

COMING EVENTS

ARTICLES

In his article “An Open Access mandate in Iceland” , Njörður Sigurjónsson, Assistant Professor at Bifröst University, Borgarbyggð, Iceland, presents the university’s recent OA-mandate – the first in Iceland - and the discussions leading up to it. Among other things, he stresses the importance of including an exemption clause, a chance to opt-out, if necessary. The mandate was initiated by the faculty and clearly shows their preference to publish in OA-journals and to deposit their research articles in an Open Access repository such as “Skemman”, used by Bifrost together with several other Icelandic institutions

From this very recent mandate to the experiences of a university with an older mandate and its implementation process. Jonas Gilbert is head of the publishing services and bibliometrics at the library at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. In his article he reflects on the patience needed for a successful of the dynamics created in the implementation of a mandate in a university environment:“Patience is a virtue? Some reflections on mandate implementation and uptake”.

Is our quest for gold hopeless? An economic model is tackled by Jan Erik Frantsvåg, our Norwegian editor and Open Access adviser at the Dept. of digital resources and services, University Library of Tromsø, Norway. He reveals his thoughts in “The – hopeless? - quest for gold …”
What do universities get in exchange for the exorbitant price they pay to make single articles from their licenced journals Open Access (hybridpublishing)? The reality is that the university cannot even self-archive those pricey articles unless the authors themselves remember to do this job. Publishers also refuse to give the university tools for finding these articles. We can only conclude, that it is our gold the publishershoard.
Bibliometrics is a hot topic that certainly has economic implications. We are happy to publish two studies in this issue.
Dr. Žibutė Petrauskienė, Head of Scientific Information Data Centre at Vilnius University Library, Lithuania, tells us about “Bibliometric researches – a new service at Vilnius University Library”. She presents the results of their survey on the need for bibliometric reseatrch, and discusses the scant coverage- 10% - of humanities publications in Web of Scinence with very very few from Lithuania and other European countries. She concludes that WoS offers an insufficient representation of research in the humanities.

Our other article on bibliometrics is “Bibliometric research output indicators and university funding in the Nordic countries”. Hampus Rabow at the University of Malmö provides some background on the role of bibliometric indicators in government funding of university research in the Nordic countries. He also outlines the principal differences between the different indicators in use.

The handling of access to primary data is a very important issue Three Danish authors from The Royal Library and Copenhagen University Library describe the recent launch of the KUBIS Dataverse Network, a digital archive for scientific primary data. KUBIS Dataverse Network is available to researchers, departments, and institutes at the University, and to research groups with an affiliation to the University of Copenhagen. A related service, Research@KUBIS, was created using the Dataverse Network as one of its three components: a platform for project sites, for promoting project research data, and for promoting publications associated with the project. Thea M. Drachen, Asger V. Larsen, Bertil F. Dorch: “KUBIS Dataverse Network – A repository for primary data at the The Royal Library / Copenhagen University Library and Informationservice.”

Adrian Price, our Danish editor and Information specialist at the Library, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, presents the most important results of the first phase of a large project for establishing a Danish infrastructure for the use of persistente identifiers (PID). Adrian Price describes the Danish PID landscape and its actors, the steps leadig up to the danPID infrastructure, the choice of the Handle software, and the basic buiding blocks on the way: “A Persistent Identifiers in Denmark anno 2012”

Leif Longva, University of Tromsø Library in Norway, reports on their Munin conference on scientific publishing, held annually since 2006: “A brief report on the 6th Munin Conference on Scientific Publishing 22-23 November 2011 in Tromsø, Norway.” This year’s focus was on new and additional services made available alongside and connected to the published articles. “Enhancing publications” was the subtitle of the conference.

Open Educational Resources (OER) is an international trend supported by a strong global movement. Our article ”OER – an international trend with slow development in Sweden” gives you an overview of the concept of OER, its impact on teaching and on the teacher’s role, as well as important international developments and projects. The new digital learning environment stresses the importance of careful verification of Internet resources. The fundamental copyright issues are discussed, and the three Swedish authors Lasse Bourelius, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Alastair Creelman, Linnaeus University, and Åsa Forsberg, Lund University, want to see a reevaluation of the Swedish concept “teacher’s exemption”, a rule meaning that teachers own the rights to their material rather than the university.

So much has happened, is happening, and will happen in the movement towards open resources. We are happy to present a 10-year summing up and a short prognosis by a man who has seen most of the developments both nationally and internationally. Jan Hagerlid, Senior executive officer at the Swedish National Library and long-time coordinator of its OpenAccess.se programme. has written a personal chronicle of his experiences: “Open access - looking ten years back and a few years ahead”. One notices a streak of impatience – he had expected developments to move faster, but he is reassured by the fundamental changes that have happened. Open Access has finally won the political battle. Practical models and implementations lag behind, but all statistics show that they are moving in the right direction. The goal is clear but the means to reach it are still under discussion..

We hope that you will have a god read. Your comments and ideas are always most welcome

Ingegerd Rabow

Editor-in-chief
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