Friday 12 June 2009

OASIS - the new one-stop-shop for OA

You have heard about Open Access? But you don't know where to go to find out more . . You can’t get to any of the many workshops on the topic? You don’t have the funds to travel to meet OA people? You are not alone!

So to meet the needs of scattered scholarly communities around the world, and to save the air-miles and workloads of dedicated people who arrange workshops, meetings and conferences on open access, the Open Society Institute has supported the development of an online, free, authoritative ‘source book’ that aims to meet the OA-needs of researchers, publishers, administrators, librarians, students and the general public alike.It should serve as an invaluable, reliable and up-to-the-minute resource for everyone concerned with the widest distribution of research information. For developing country scholarly communities, OASIS will be a treasure chest.

If you want to know how to set up an OA Institutional Repository – go OASIS! If you want to know which universities or funding organisations have OA policies in operation – go OASIS! If you want to know what business plans OA publishers have found to work best – go OASIS! There are loads of links, articles, summaries and even videos, so it is an excellent one-stop-OA-shop.

Here is the official announcement of the launch, with links to this new resource:

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The Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) is being launched at the 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELUB2009), taking place in Milan, Italy from June 10-12.

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative 'sourcebook' on Open Access, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with links to diverse additional resources and case studies. As such, it is a community-building as much as a resource building exercise. Users are encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use. For details about the site, please visit the OASIS web site.

A brief introduction to OASIS is available here.

For more information, contact Alma Swan or Leslie Chan

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The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is pleased to have been associated with the development of OASIS and wishes all concerned much success.

Monday 8 June 2009

eIFL surges ahead - and gives us a little treat!

As OA gains momentum throughout the world, the efforts made by the OSI-supported eIFl network are notable. Recent announcements in Open Access News show that there has been remarkable OA progress not only in South Africa, but in the Ukraine and elsewhere in the partner countries. Iryna Kuchma and colleagues are to be congratulated in achieving such success and we recommend subscribing to the eIFL Newsletter to keep up with the developments. For all eIFL Newsletters, see here.

And for a delightful treat, just watch the short video in which ‘Access to Knowledge’ is spoken by eIFL partners in their own languages. Click here and enjoy!