ACCESS | Asia 's Newspaper on Electronic Information Product & Service

December 2006 No.59

AGORA, Hinari and now OARE

Agriculture, health and now environment. UNEP, Yale University and leading science publishers have launched OARE to bring environment information free of charge to researchers in the poorest countries. The numbers are big: 200 publishers, one of the world's largest collections of peer reviewed science journals, 1,200 institutions in more than 100 countries. Do you qualify? See Here.

Unclaimed monies held by government agencies

If you think the Singapore government owes you money, there's never been a better time to claim it. While the human memory plays tricks, that of a Sun server never suffers from Alzheimer's. And that's a good thing for the Unclaimed Monies Held by Government Agencies, Association of Bartenders Singapore and the Singapore magicians' Network whose websites (and many others) which have been archived by the National Library Board under Web Archive Singapore. Want your website archived? Here tells you who to ask.

From China with love

Is there anything you're wearing that isn't made in China? Shoes, bras, shirts and socks… Now there are books from China. McGraw-Hill and its Chinese partners are bringing teaching materials from China to the United States for the tens of thousands of Americans currently learning Chinese. With an estimated 30 million people around the globe learning Chinese as a second language, there's money in them there textbooks. MoreHere.

Google Scholar? Sounds like a good idea

Tracey Hughes interviews Anurag Acharya Google Scholar's founding engineer to delve a little deeper into its features, scope and aim. Does it rank search results? Work with bibliographic management software? Have a link resolver? Cost an arm and a leg? Answers and more on these pages.

Copyright: love it? Hate it?

A few weeks ago at an open access meeting in Bangkok, ACCESS was told "get real, copyright is crap!" These open access storm troopers see a world free of the encumbrance of copyright so that the poor benefit from the ideas, products and inventions of the rich. Robin Hood really. But then comes along a report from no less than The British Academy which says that copyright hinders scholarship in the humanities. What is ACCESS to make of this? Should we become a Robin Hood too? You decide after reading Here.

ASEAN library still a long way off

The noble idea to expand its fledgling digital library and publishing service across all countries in the region is still a pipedream. At a recent meeting in Brunei, efforts to include all member countries were a big challenge for the organizers. Find out why..

Another one bites the dust

Not really, but a venerable publisher beloved of professional and academic societies has just been shopped by a larger one. And while it will make no difference to subscribers of either company, there are some who believe this represents an erosion of choice and another consolidation in the academic publishing world which will push up subscription rates. You decide and read Here.

What's in a number?

Plenty if you're ScholarlyStats, the usage data gathering service. Although barely ten months old it has plenty of customers eager to know how the journals they subscribe to are being used. With the ability to integrate data from more than 40 platforms, the number crunching must be intense. Oh, we almost forgot to say that ScholarlyStats just won the Best Library Product at the International Information Industry Awards. Celebrate with them.

Substitute you for my mum

Sang The Who a long time ago. But how about you substituting your journal subscriptions with open access materials? What would make you do that? According to a study commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium, librarians make the switch because they have a bad hair day or their iPod won't shuffle. Unbelievable? You bet! Real reasons Here.

Thousands upon thousands of junk results

That's what you won't get if you search through OpenDOAR, the Directory of Open Access Repositories. The new search service steers you away from stinkfoot.com and papercuts.org to freely open access repositories holding research material. The service relies on Google's indexes rather than combine harvesters, er, OAI-PMH. More Here.

Meetings and Exhibitions more...

Scirus partners with Hong Kong University

Award-winning science-specific search engine expands its reach in Asia-Pacific

Scirus, Elsevier's free science-specific search engine, is further developing its repository search service in the Asia-Pacific region by partnering with Hong Kong University (HKU) to index its repository, called Hong Kong University Theses Online (HKUTO).

Earlier this year, Scirus partnered with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Partnering with the Hong Kong University (HKU) means further expansion of Scirus’ presence in the Asian-Pacific region. With over 300 million scientifically relevant pages to date, the addition of the HKUTO emphasizes Scirus’ mission to remain the most comprehensive source of science-focused content on the Web. Scirus is also helping to power the search capability on the HKU repository site, which contains more than 12,000 online full text records.

David Palmer, Head of Library Systems, HKU Library commented about this: “We chose Scirus to index and power the search of HKUTO because of the great offer we received from Elsevier. They generously gave their time and expertise to add some very important features to the HKUTO repository. Previously impossible, the full text of theses held in HKUTO is now searchable. Searches on HKUTO can be broadened to include theses held in hundreds of other libraries around the world, and then broadened again to search all of Scirus. This could not have been done without Scirus’ technology.”

“We are happy to partner with the HKU for several reasons,” added Saskia van Acker, Content Manager of Scirus. “First of all, in our pursuit to collaborate with institutional partners from all over the world we are keen on welcoming another prominent institutional repository from the Asian-Pacific region. Secondly, the HKUTO database is interesting because of its size and content: it contains over 12,000 full text online theses and dissertations. We consider this very valuable content for our users.”

The Hong Kong University when paper ruled

Kadoorie Biological Science Building for the digital era

Hong Kong University Theses Online (HKUTO)

The Hong Kong University Theses Collection holds almost 15,000 titles of theses and dissertations submitted for higher degrees to the University of Hong Kong since 1941. HKUTO now includes over 12,000 full text electronic theses. The first recorded thesis was dated 1928, though all theses prior to 1941 were lost during the occupation of WWII. HKUTO includes works in the arts, humanities, education and the social, medical and natural sciences. Many of them deal entirely with or focus on subjects relating to Hong Kong. The collection is primarily in English, with some in English and Chinese, and others in Chinese only. Almost all HKU theses are included in HKUTO. Missing titles might be located in HKU departmental libraries. Visit HKUTO here.

Scirus is a comprehensive science-focused search engine

Scirus is the most comprehensive science-focused search engine available on the internet, supporting over one million researchers, scientists and students worldwide. Scirus offers users a unique combination of free Web information and journal content, clearly branding search results from proprietary sources, assuring users the validity of the content. Web sources searched by Scirus include research institutes, governments, scientific organizations, conferences, scientists’ homepages and company homepages worldwide. Optimized for science-related queries, Scirus uses a dictionary with over 1.6 million scientific terms, unique pattern recognition tools and linguistic analysis, to classify the content type and recognize the 300 million scientifically relevant pages. Scirus offers users unique search functionalities such as the ability to search on bibliographical information and specific content types. Scirus is the recipient of numerous International awards. Read more here.

The University of Hong Kong, founded in 1911, is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. It has grown with and helped shape the city from which it takes its name. Today, HKU, as it is fondly called, is a dynamic, comprehensive, university of world-class standing. With ten faculties and numerous research centres, its reputation as a centre of intellectual excellence is recognised around the world. More here.