Search study of the ‘digital natives’

A new paper, “A study of the information search behaviour of the millennial generation” [those born between 1982 and 2000]. The paper found; erratic information search processes; only limited attempts to evaluate the quality / timeliness / validity of information found.

Open Lovecraft

Open Lovecraft, recent scholarly works relevant to H.P. Lovecraft, freely published online.

Research Councils UK – new draft policy

Academic papers should be made free to access within six months of publication, according to a draft policy from Research Councils UK (RCUK). They should also have a permissive licence (Creative Commons CC-BY), which would make their content free to use commercially if properly attributed.

Value and benefits of text mining

A new JISC report, just released: Value and benefits of text mining.

Peer-reviewed journals law changes in the UK

Peer-reviewed journal papers are to be protected from libel actions in the UK. I have visions of dodgy Russian moguls setting up dubious journals in order to attack their rivals…

Ocropus

Ocropus is Google’s OCR software, and it’s open source.

JSTOR Register and Read

JSTOR has launched a public beta of the test for its eventual full free access service. Register and Read is billed as an “experimental” service and it gives access to full-text content from 75 publications, limited to three free articles.

Access to scholarly content: gaps and barriers

An interesting new report from RIN, Access to scholarly content: gaps and barriers (Dec 2011).

* 79.1% in “industry and commerce” said their access to research papers was “easy to access”.

* When the same group was later asked more specifically about academic papers…

“In a later question, put only to those researchers for whom journal articles are important, respondents in all sectors rated their access as somewhere between ‘variable’ and ‘good’. Conference papers, on the other hand, were rated somewhere between ‘variable’ and ‘poor’.”

* “the motor industry, utilities companies, metals and fabrication, construction, and rubber and plastics.” reported the poorest access.

* “34.4 per cent of researchers and knowledge workers describe their current level of access to conference papers (in print or online) as `poor’ or `very poor’.”

* “Based on an analysis of the Labour Force Survey, CIBER estimates that there are around 1.8 million professional knowledge workers in the UK, many working in R&D intensive occupations (such as software development, civil engineering and consultancy) and in small firms, who may not currently have access to journal content via subscriptions.”