08 Tuesday Dec 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, New titles added to JURN
Acta Geoturistica (geotourism and mining heritage)
Annales Botanici Fennici (2012—, Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board)
PERC Reports and PERC Policy Series and PERC Case Studies (Property and Environment Research Center, USA)
07 Monday Dec 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, New titles added to JURN
University of Wyoming National Park Service Research Center Annual Reports and the title’s previous incarnation Jackson Hole Research Station Annual Report (Grand Teton National Park, USA, 1954-1976)
02 Wednesday Dec 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, My general observations
I’ve checked and repaired the links of the openECO A-Z List of over 600 open or free eco/nature journals. Please update any local copies that you may be keeping.
07 Saturday Nov 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, My general observations
My openECO A-Z listing of journals has now had all known free bird titles added to it, with help from the open ejournals in the Ornithology Exchange list and the British Trust for Ornithology list of open ejournals. All the new bird journal URLs were closely checked before being added to the A-Z, since those older lists have a lot of linkrot and even some mis-attribution of OA status.
27 Monday Jul 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, My general observations
Here’s another quick group test of academic search tools that index open access or otherwise free academic papers. It follows JURN’s recent large number of additions of ecology related sources. The test search is on the popular topic of “mountain gorillas”, with a tourism keyword that is intended to skew results toward papers and chapters useful for understanding the inter-relationship of gorillas with tourism. Not a very sophisticated search, but the sort of thing that an age 16-18 college student or undergraduate might input.
Search: “mountain gorillas” tourism
| JURN group test: “mountain gorillas” tourism July 2015. Searching for free full-text academic articles, theses, reports or book chapters in English. I clicked through on possible results and evaluated. |
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| Journal Click | ? | Now requires registration / payment to use, and the public search box has been removed. Thus it was not tested. It performed very poorly in previous tests. | |||||||||
| DOAJ | 0 | Used ‘Article’ search. Zero from one result. | |||||||||
| JournalTOCS | 0 | Zero from one result. | |||||||||
| Paperity | 0 | Checked first 25 results. Closest possibility seemed to be the general short survey article “Exploring Sustainable Tourism in Nigeria for Developmental Growth”, but on investigation the text had no mention of gorillas. | |||||||||
| Journal Seek | 0 | Zero results. | |||||||||
| PQDT Open | 0 | Zero from five results. | |||||||||
| Ingenta Connect | 0 | Zero from three results | |||||||||
| CORE | 0 | Filtered search by English language, full-text only. Looked at first three pages of results. Results were a disparate jumble of general tourism items, though CORE did manage to bring the political anthropology dissertation “Lines in the sand: An anthropological discourse on wildlife tourism” to the top, but this was only tangentially relevant. | |||||||||
| Microsoft Academic | 1 | 1 from eight results. “Measuring the demand for nature-based tourism in Africa”, a UK economics experiment asking potential tourists about their likely choices around a hypothetical visit to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. | |||||||||
| OATD | 1 | 1 from two results. 2014 PhD thesis, asking if tourism reduces poverty-related forest mis-use by local people, in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, a key mountain gorillas tourism destination. | |||||||||
| OAlib | 1 | OAlib gave a jumble of general results for tourism in mountains, but had nothing specific on the first page for either Africa or gorillas. Second page had the 2011 article “Extreme Conservation Leads to Recovery of the Virunga Mountain Gorillas” at PLOS One, among another jumble of irrelevant results. | |||||||||
| Google Search | 1 | Used a Web browser not signed in to Google, forced Google.com results (not .uk). Newspapers (Guardian, Daily Mail, CNN, FT etc) and magazine (National Geographic) articles, amid charity and tourist holiday booking sites. Got one good result, the World Bank’s report “The success of tourism in Rwanda – Gorillas and more”, as result No.15. Checked the first thirty results. A short interview by the Breakthrough Institute, “Extreme Conservation of Gorillas”, was judged too journalistic and tangential to be a result. | |||||||||
| OpenAIRE | 1 | The one likely candidate, 2001’s “Ecological and economic impacts of gorilla-based tourism in Dzanga-Sangha, Central African Republic”, proved to have no full text available. But trying a different search access point into OpenAIRE surfaced one useful item, “Habituation, ecotourism and research for conservation of western gorillas in Central African Republic”. | |||||||||
| Mendeley | 2 | Searched ‘Articles’ only, then filtered for Open Access articles only. After the first ten results, results dissipated into general/unrelated tourism items. One useful result provided some deep historical background to the current tourism: “Memories of Walter Baumgartel (1902-1997): pioneering promoter of the mountain gorillas of Uganda”. Another was more about the general conservation measures, but useful, “Extreme conservation leads to recovery of the Virunga mountain gorillas”. | |||||||||
| Digital Commons Network (BePress) | 2 | I switched out of the Arts and Humanities section for this search. I had 17 results, two of them strong, with another three being very broad critical studies of aspects of eco-tourism aesthetics. | |||||||||
| FreeFullPDF | 5 | From 26 results. Three tourism items (“Measuring the demand for nature-based tourism in Africa” in which gorillas was used as test topic; “The success of tourism in Rwanda – Gorillas and more”; “Development AND gorillas? Assessing fifteen years of integrated conservation and development in south-western Uganda”; and “Memories of Walter Baumgartel (1902-1997)”. Plus two partially relevant items on general conservation (“Extreme Conservation Leads to Recovery of the Virunga Mountain Gorillas”; and “Sustainable Conservation of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and community welfare improvement”). | |||||||||
| BASE | 5 | I chose the facet to “boost open access documents”. 24 results, with many duplicates. Some possible results turned out to lack full-text. One promising article, “Benefits to the poor from gorilla tourism in Rwanda”, proved to be paywalled at $76(!). | |||||||||
| Google Scholar | 6 | Checked first 40 results. Results tended to focus strongly on gorilla disease, diet, mating and population dynamics. But among these were three full-text open papers on ape tourism and disease transfer to/from them, which had not been surfaced in the test before (“Habituating the great apes: the disease risks”; “Ape tourism and human diseases: how close should we get”; “Anthropozoonotic … infections in habitats of free-ranging human-habituated gorillas, Uganda”). Plus another three, including a pirate copy of “Who is on the gorilla’s payroll? Claims on tourist revenue from a Ugandan National Park”, and the World Bank report “The success of tourism in Rwanda: Gorillas and more”, plus the ubiquitous PLOS One article “Extreme conservation leads to recovery of the Virunga mountain gorillas”. Many of the full-text links offered at Scholar came via researchgate.net. | |||||||||
| OPENDoar | 10 | Examined first 40 results. The World Bank report “The success of tourism in Rwanda: Gorillas and more” was at No.4, followed by the ubiquitous PLOS One article “Extreme conservation leads to recovery of the Virunga mountain gorillas”. Some duplicates. One prospective item (“Evaluating the prospects of benefit sharing schemes in protecting mountain gorillas in Central Africa”) led to a $38 paywall whereas JURN found it free, while others (“The role of tourism in post-conflict peacebuilding in Rwanda”) led to records that had no full-text. Most useful was the indexing of the German-run on-the-ground Gorilla Journal, offering articles such as community opinion research among local people, “Gorilla Habituation and Ecotourism – a Social Perspective” (June 2014); “Western Gorilla Tourism: Lessons Learned from Dzanga-Sangha” (Dec 2006); and “Ten Years of Gorilla Tourism in Mgahinga” (June 2004). However, these three article titles were not highlighted in search and were instead deeply embedded in single issue PDFs of Gorilla Journal. (I regret that Gorilla Journal is not yet indexed in JURN, but it will be added soon). | |||||||||
| JURN | 15 | Looked at first 40 results, the link titles of which are given below. There were a number of duplicates in the first four pages. A key finding is that JURN is now large enough to easily provide strong results through to result No.100. So, given a well-formed search, people who are habituated to just look at the first ten results in Google should explore the full set of 100 results in JURN. | |||||||||
JURN results:
1. * “The success of tourism in Rwanda – Gorillas and more”.
2. “Extreme Conservation of Gorillas”.
3. * “Evaluating the Prospects of Benefit Sharing Schemes in Protecting Mountain Gorillas in Central Africa”.
4. “Human Metapneumovirus Infection in Wild Mountain Gorillas, Rwanda”.
5. “The Success of Tourism in Rwanda: Gorillas and More” (duplicate of No.1).
6. “Conserving critically endangered central African Mountain Gorillas from poaching threats”.
7. * APE TOURISM AND HUMAN DISEASES: How Close Should We Get?
8. “Dian Fossey’s Controversial “Active Conservation” Proves Useful in Increasing Mountain Gorilla Awareness”.
9. * Best Practice Guidelines for Great Ape Tourism (78 page book from the IUCN)
10. “Diversity of Microsporidia, Cryptosporidium and Giardia in Mountain Gorillas”.
11. “(Gorilla beringei beringei) in Bwindi Impenetrable” (mis-titled in results link, actually has main title “Landscape predictors of current and future distribution of mountain gorillas”)
12. * “Economics of Gorilla Tourism in Uganda”.
13. * “Extreme Conservation Leads to Recovery of the Virunga Mountain Gorillas”.
14. “Genetic census reveals increased but uneven growth of a critically endangered mountain gorilla population”.
15. “Murdered: the Virunga Gorillas” (National Geographic article from 2008, on pressures from militias, refugees and charcoal burners).
16. “Mountain Gorillas: Three Decades of Research at Karisoke”.
17. “Cambridge Books Online” (Free book chapter from Cambridge University Press, “Long-term research and conservation of the Virunga mountain gorillas”, from the book Science and Conservation in African Forests).
18. “The Success of Tourism in Rwanda: Gorillas and More” (another duplicate of No.1).
19. “Impacts of tourism and recreation in Africa” (Encyclopedia of Earth, short introductory article by the U.N.).
20. * “Gorilla-based Tourism: a Realistic Source of Community Income in Cameroon? Case study of the villages of Goungoulou and Karagoua”.
21. “Gentle Gorillas, Turbulent Times” (National Geographic article from 1995).
22. “Mountain Gorilla PHVA Final Report 1997”.
23. “Consequences of Non-Intervention for Infectious Disease in African Great Apes”.
24. * “VIRUNGA MASSIF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT PLAN”. (2005. A useful baseline for understanding what was expected of the gorilla tourism in Rwanda).
25. * “Chimpanzee Tourism in Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania”. (Not gorillas, but included because possibly useful for comparison).
26. * “THE RWANDAN GORILLA PROJECT” (Detailed charity prospectus proposal to UK investors, for a gorilla tourism venture. Another useful baseline for understanding what was expected of the gorilla tourism in Rwanda, from the investor point of view).
27. * “Development AND gorillas? Assessing fifteen years of integrated conservation and development in south-western Uganda”.
28. “Population dynamics of the Bwindi mountain gorillas”.
29. * “Evaluating the prospects of benefit sharing schemes in protecting mountain gorillas in Central Africa”. (Free full-text at JURN, but behind a $38 paywall at OPENDoar — see the OPENDoar entry given above).
30. “Dian Fossey’s Controversial “Active Conservation” Proves Useful in Increasing Mountain Gorilla Awareness” (Duplicate of No.8).
31. * “THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF THE MOUNTAIN GORILLA PROTECTED FORESTS (The Virungas and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park). Final Report”. (Has 12 pages of rigourous examination of the value of gorilla tourism).
32. “Evaluating the prospects of benefit sharing schemes in protecting mountain gorillas in Central Africa”. (Duplicate).
33. * “From vision to narrative: A trial of information-based gorilla tourism in the Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, Gabon”.
34. “From vision to narrative: A trial of information-based gorilla tourism in the Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, Gabon”. (Duplicate of No.33).
35. Diversity of Microsporidia, Cryptosporidium and Giardia in Mountain … (Duplicate of No.10)
36. * “Gorilla Tourism: Uganda uses tourism to recover from decades of violent conflict”.
37. “Plumptre et al 2003 Current status of gorillas” (Cambridge University free book chapter, “The current status of gorillas and threats to their existence at the beginning of a new millennium”)
38. “Community-based forest enterprise development for improved livelihoods and biodiversity conservation: a case study from Bwindi World Heritage site, Uganda” (Short, and rather too tangential, but useful in showing the gorilla tourism in the context of other micro-livelihoods such as honey, oyster mushrooms, handicrafts, growing passion fruits and Irish potatoes).
39. “Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda” (Encyclopedia of Earth, short introductory article by the U.N.).
40. “20 Years of IGCP: Lessons Learned in Mountain Gorilla Conservation”.
Results stayed on-topic for mountain gorillas and/or related tourism right through to result No.100, with another 10 or so results that would have been very useful — but which were not counted for the purposes of this test.
27 Tuesday Jan 2015
Posted in Ecology additions, My general observations
Here’s a new group test of academic search tools for open access or otherwise free academic papers. It follows JURN’s recent large number of additions of ecology related sources. Specifically it looks for recent (2013-) work in a rapidly developing and important niche of marine science. The plastic-biodegrading microbes that live on the “plastisphere” (tiny sub-5mm fragments of plastic now found throughout much of the world’s oceans, in the surface layers or also embedded in seabed silt). At a pinch, I have sometimes accepted relevant recent work on oil biodegrading bacteria living in the oceans, when it seems to suggest mechanisms or pathways. None of these marginal acceptances occurred in JURN’s results, though, so this gives other search tools an advantage.
| JURN group test: marine microplastic biodegradation January 2015. Searching for free full-text scientific articles, theses, reports or book chapters in English after 2012. Clicked through on possible results and evaluated. |
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| DOAJ | 0 | Used ‘Article’ search. 0 from zero results. | |||||||||
| Paperity | 0 | Titles of first 25 results all strongly irrelevant. | |||||||||
| Microsoft Academic | 0 | 0 from five results. | |||||||||
| OATD | 0 | 0 from zero results. | |||||||||
| JournalTOCS | 0 | 0 from zero results. | |||||||||
| Ingenta Connect | 0 | 0 from one result. The one result was 2011’s initial paper “Interactions Between Microorganisms and Marine Microplastics: A Call for Research”, which proved to be paywalled at $28. | |||||||||
| Journal Seek | 0 | 0 from zero results. | |||||||||
| Journal Click | 0 | The top result looked promising, the major report Microplastic Litter in the Dutch Marine Environment, but mentions of biodegradation were found to be very fleeting. One article from GEOMAR required a Logon. Several results proved to be from allegedly predatory or suspect publishers. Two further prominent results were on tests for bioaccumulation of pollutants in estuary lugworms. After the first eight results, results appeared to lack focus on marine life. | |||||||||
| OAlib | 0 | First result not relevant and proved, on clickthrough to full-text, to be “404 not found”. Second result’s full-text was from a completely different paper! The first page of results were all, anyway, from 2012 or earlier. | |||||||||
| Digital Commons Network | 0 | I switched out of the Arts and Humanities section for this search. Had one result, not relevant. A simpler keyword search for | marine microplastic | gave only six results, none relevant. | |||||||||
| BASE | 0 | One result, a 2014 thesis on the highly polluted North Sea that found that 5% of 290 gut samples from North Sea fish had ingested some microplastic, rising to 18% in mackerel. And yet… “No direct [health] effect could be recorded in individuals that had ingested microplastics”. But since there was no analysis of microbial degradation of the microplastic, the thesis was discounted. | |||||||||
| Mendeley | 1 | Searched ‘Articles’ only, then filtered for Open Access articles only. Three possible titles were investigated in the first 25 results, all from near the top of the first page. One was found to be on methods to determine microplastic ingestion in larger organisms. Another was on microplastic distribution patterns across the eastern Pacific. The third explored microbial success in breaking down petroleum hydrocarbons in the ocean through complex “interactions between bacteria, fungi and microalgae” in micro ecosystems. This suggests there is some division-of-labour going on among these organisms as they break down things like plastics. The latter result was judged to be on-topic enough to count as a result. | |||||||||
| CORE | 1 | Filtered search by English language, full-text only, and set date slider to 2012-2014. Looked at first three pages of results. One 2014 PLOS paper was tangentially on-topic, concluding that “microorganisms indigenous to Arctic seawater are capable of performing extensive biodegradation of chemically and physically dispersed oil at … -1°C”, and this was counted as a result. A 2013 PhD thesis discussed how lab studies could be extrapolated to rivers, reporting that “groups of PNP-degrading bacteria were detected” in samples from the River Dene in England. Though interesting, this paper was not counted as it was not about the oceans and the bacteria were not the focus. | |||||||||
| OpenAIRE | 1 | Filtered for ‘English language’ | ‘Open Access’ | 2013 and 2014. Checked first page of results for each year. Top results in 2013 were mostly items previously encountered and discounted. One interesting 2013 paper from India found marine bacteria rapidly degraded the ‘sunset yellow’ dye pollutant released from textile industries, but the paper was discounted because it was not about plastics. The 2014 results had many papers about cleanup of oil spills by microbial life, as the oil rapidly photo-oxidises under sunlight to other substances. The paper “The metabolic pathways and environmental controls of hydrocarbon biodegradation in marine ecosystems” had enough on-topic discussion to be counted. 2014’s PLOS paper “Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans”, although a good survey of the world’s plastisphere problem, had only a very fleeting mention of biodegradation, thus: “bacterial degradation [may] also contribute to the removal of small microplastics from the sea surface” | |||||||||
| Google Search | 1 | Used a Web browser not signed in to Google. I had to force verbatim on “biodegradation” to get useful results. Examined first 30 of those results. Only one was post 2013 and free, “Life in the ‘Plastisphere’: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris” (2013). | |||||||||
| Google Scholar | 3 | Checked first page of results, most were from pre 2013. The first page of results did however surface the paper “Millimeter-sized marine plastics: a new pelagic habitat for microorganisms and invertebrates”, which presented evidence that bacteria are pitting and grooving on a range of ocean microplastics. This important paper became result No.2, after I switched to results “Since 2014” (there was no “Since 2013” option). The important comprehensive overview paper “The present and future of microplastic pollution in the marine environment” (2013) was also found to be available free in the “Since 2014” results. As was 2014’s “Rapid bacterial colonization of low-density polyethylene microplastics in coastal sediment microcosms”. | |||||||||
| OPENDoar | 3 | Examined first 20 results. Showing up on the first page were: “The spectroscopic detection and bacterial colonisation of synthetic microplastics in coastal marine sediments”; “Rapid bacterial colonization of low-density polyethylene microplastics in coastal sediment microcosms” and “Millimeter-Sized Marine Plastics: A New Pelagic Habitat for Microorganisms and Invertebrates”. Many later results were from before 2013. | |||||||||
| JURN | 6 | Tested without keyword forcing (Google switches biodegradation to degradation) so as to be fair to OPENDoar, but still had good results. The list of the first 20 results is given below. Keyword forcing using “biodegradation” simply gave very similar results in a different order. | |||||||||
JURN results, first 20 results. No keyword forcing.
Search for | marine microplastic biodegradation |
1. OUT OF DATE RANGE. Laboratory Test Methods to Determine the Degradation of Plastics in Marine Environmental Conditions (2012)
2. Isolation of microplastics in biota-rich seawater samples and marine organisms (2014)
3. Microplastic pollution in deep-sea sediments (2013)
4. OUT OF DATE RANGE. The spectroscopic detection and bacterial colonisation of synthetic microplastics in coastal marine sediments (2012)
5. High-levels of microplastic pollution in a large, remote, mountain lake [in Mongolia] (2014)
6. VALID. Life in the Plastisphere: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris (2013)
7. Isolation of microplastics in biota-rich seawater samples and marine organisms.
8. VALID. CIESM Workshop Monographs, No.46: Marine litter in the Mediterranean and Black Seas (2014). Contains three full-text papers: “Bacterial degradation of synthetic plastics” and “Microbial biodegradation of synthetic plastic polymers: state of the art and perspectives from the BIOCLEAN project” and “Surface properties of marine microplastics that affect their interaction with pollutants and microbes”. But this was counted as a single result.
9. Proceedings of the GESAMP International Workshop on microplastic particles as a vector in transporting persistent, bioaccumulating and toxic substances in the oceans (2010)
10. VALID. Rapid bacterial colonization of low-density polyethylene microplastics in coastal sediment microcosms (2014)
11. VALID. Millimeter-Sized Marine Plastics: A New Pelagic Habitat for Microorganisms and Invertebrates (2014)
12. VALID. The plastic-associated microorganisms of the North Pacific Gyre (2013)
13. VALID. Plastic Degradation and Its Environmental Implications with Special Reference to Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (2013)
14. VALID (BUT DUPLICATE). Rapid bacterial colonization of low-density polyethylene microplastics in coastal sediment microcosms (2014)
15. Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment (2009)
16. Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea (2014)
17. Marine litter within the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2013)
18. Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea (2014)
19. Leaching of plastic additives to marine organisms (2013)
20. Environmental implications of plastic debris in marine settings (2009)
Google News once again proved a somewhat useful source even without any keyword forcing, surfacing a manageable number of useful topical articles from as far back as 2013, such as:
* Fate of ocean plastic remains a mystery (Nature.com)
* Microscopic diatoms with taste for marine refuse could help clean up (South China Morning Post, reporting research).
* Microscopic creatures could be helping reduce marine garbage on the ocean (News International, reporting research).
However News also surfaced simplistic (and in most cases wrong) claims that plastic “doesn’t biodegrade” or never degrades, all in a range of low-grade news sources.
04 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in Ecology additions
I used Linkbot to check all the Web links in JURN’s link list of ecology related titles in English, and made repairs. Please refresh any local copies that you may be keeping.
01 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Ecology additions, New titles added to JURN
Thanks to various open journal suggestions I’ve picked up from Andrew Farke at Integrative Paleontologists and Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, and my own searches, JURN is now a pretty good search tool for finding free/open research on dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures and fauna.
05 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Ecology additions, New titles added to JURN
New A-Z megalist of ecology related journal titles and subject repositories indexed by JURN.
25 Tuesday Mar 2014
Posted in Ecology additions, Spotted in the news
The Europeana Creative Challenge…
aim[s] to identify, incubate and spin off into the commercial sector viable online applications based on the re-use of digital cultural heritage content [from Europeana, and] The best five applications will be invited to a final challenge event to pitch their ideas to representatives from the cultural and creative industries as well as to investors.
The current challenge has a Natural History theme. Deadline: 31st March 2014.
Springing to mind: a simple workflow for automated extraction and smoothing of 3D shapes from high-res 2D photos of organic shapes (shells, fossils, wings, insects carapaces, etc), to create a royalty-free bank of organic starting-point shapes for rapidly iterative and generative product design prototyping.
Chlamyphorus truncatus, via Europeana. The prototype for your new girls’ hairbrush has arrived… 😉