Category: Access

Alan Pearce is making his book, Deep Web for Journalists, available free online. He says:

Inside you will learn how to avoid the attention of even the most sophisticated snoopers, how to transfer and store information securely, and how to avoid the many traps that lie in wait for today’s journalists and researchers.

The second half of the book is devoted to fine-tuning our search skills. Understanding how to interrogate any search engine is essential but knowing where to look is often more important.

Download Deep Web for Journalists
Visit Alan’s website

Open access repositories start to offer overlay peer review services

Converting open access repositories into functional evaluation platforms 
Bringing back quality control to the scientific community

The use of journal hierarchy for assessing the reputation of research works and their authors, has contributed to a competitive environment that is having a detrimental effect on scientific reliability. Open access repositories administered by Universities or research organizations are a valuable infrastructure that could support the transition to a more collaborative and efficient scholarly evaluation and communication system. Open Scholar has coordinated a consortium of six partners to develop the first Open Peer Review Module (OPRM) for institutional repositories. The module integrates an overlay peer review service, coupled with a transparent reputation system, on top of institutional repositories. It is provided freely as open source software.

This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free.

Alexandra Elbakyan is a highbrow pirate in hiding. The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers.

. . . . .

“While we don’t condone fraud and using illegal sources, I will say that I appreciate how she is shining a light on just how out of whack the system is of providing easy access to basic information that our universities and scholars need to advance science and research,” said Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, an organization that advocates for open access to research. “This has been a problem for decades.”

Continue reading “Yoda: Death of Elsevier & Thomson Reuters…”