Removed OIAster

Removed OAIster from the guide to free search tools. Manchester Met reports that…

“OAIster … has been taken over by OCLC and absorbed into their WorldCat database. … there is no way to restrict your search to OAIster content and it’s very difficult to pick out OAIster records from the search results … OCLC promise a discrete OAIster interface in January 2010, but until then, I’m afraid that it’s all a bit of a mess.”

Six new titles added today

Added to the JURN site-index today:—

Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry (Google – and hence JURN – is only indexing the TOCs and not the full-text PDFs)

MELA Notes (1997-2007) (JURN was previously only indexing the issues from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s)

Ostracon : The Journal of the Egyptian Study Society, The (2000-2006)

   ( Hat-tip for the above: AWOL blog )

MacQuarie Journal of Business Law (Has occasional historical articles, e.g.: “Debt Collection in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land 1817 and Thereabouts”; and “Trade and State-Building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa”)

Penn African Studies Newsletter (Indexing just the most recent issues – 2008 and 2009 issues have started to run book reviews)

Italian Politics and Society : the review of the conference group on Italian Politics and Society (1977-2008. Formerly CONGRIPS Newsletter)

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Humanities Research (1997-2004) (Already indexed – but the link is to be added to the JURN Directory of ejournals).

61 x “free first chapters” from the books list of the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies

New report on open access book publishing in the Humanities and Social Studies

OAPEN is to publish…

“a study on user needs in relation to open access book publishing within the Humanities and Social Sciences. The study will be made available through OAPEN’s website, www.oapen.org, by the end of October [2009].”

No sign of it yet. Any day now, now doubt…

In the meanwhile, the main findings are:

* Print remains important in HSS although a trend has been established to more digital consumption (more screen reading and E-Book use), more informal online communication (blogs and wiki’s) and a small rise of scholarly writing specifically adapted to the digital environment. It is felt print and E-Books will coexist and will be used side-by-side for the time being.

* Accessibility and dissemination of scholarly content are key. It is felt Open Access promotes both and does not necessarily harm the quality of publications. Accessibility also opens research up further, enabling content enhancement and connections (links) between publications. A good and easy way to use search function remains indispensable.

* In the online environment filter and selection mechanisms such as peer review remain of the utmost importance to establish quality, as are (publishers) brands and (scholarly) reputations. It is felt Open Access monographs should pay extra attention to quality control to ensure their legitimacy.

* Experiments with new forms of collaboration and new (Open Access) business models in book publishing are necessary. The research shows users are still skeptical about the sustainability of these kinds of models but feel experiments are essential to save the monograph from the traditional (print) publishing model that is no longer sustainable.

Chinese Academic Journals

So that’s where the mainland Chinese journals are. The China National Knowledge Infrastructure: Chinese Academic Journals (CAJ) apparently contains ‘hard’ scanned images of pages… (thus making them invisible to search-engines) “from 1,856 print journals in the humanities. Access requires a password.” The main CNKI archive apparently totals 7,200 journals across all disciplines including science, when journals from 1915-1994 are counted in. Since no other mainland arts/humanities journals seem to be visible to Google, the government must be requiring scholars to publish online only in the gulag CAJ.