Information Research Weblog

The commercial journal publishers are really in a state of panic. Reports from various sources point to their launch of PRISM: The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, a lobby organization to help them try to persuade the US Congress (and presumably Parliament in the UK) to ban Open Access. Of course, they don't say that: we have the usual weasel-worded statement that lobby organizations in the USA seem to be adept at. Fortunately, it isn't going to fool many on this side of the Atlantic. I can't imagine many scientists anywhere taking much notice of the proposition that:

Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing, putting at risk the integrity of scientific research by:

• undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it;
• opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record;
• subjecting the scientific record to the uncertainty that comes with changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling with definitive versions; and
• introducing duplication and inefficiencies that will divert resources that would otherwise be dedicated to research.

Now, what does all that mean. Well, the first one is anti free-OA journals - they are simply lying, and they know it. Free OA, scholarly journals operate the same peer review process as do commercial journals: if they didn't scholars wouldn't publish in them, but free, collaboratively supported journals are growing in number and take away submissions from the commercial journals, which will find it harder and harder to maintain quality. So - in panic - they are lying to you, because, rather like the neo-con supporters that the same lobbyists worked for, the big lie is the only strategy. Perhaps Karl Rove has gone straight from the White House to PRISM?

Number two is a nice one: here are the publishers, going down the so-called 'Green Route' by allowing self-archiving, or the 'Gold Route' of 'author payments' now complaining that this will lead to 'selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record'. What hypocrisy! This particular point just shows how misled are those who think that it is possible to negotiate with business on access. What this means is: 'If you publish in subscription journals, anyone can publish and we will bear the risks; if you want Open Access then you may not be able to afford it.'

Number three is a variant on the second. It plays with the idea that the archived version of a paper may not be the 'definitive' version - unless the publisher allows archiving of the published text. And that business about 'changing federal budget priorities and bureaucratic meddling', means "Hands off big business - let us keep on making money by allowing us to get our raw material free of charge and then charge outlandish subscription rates for the privilege of access."

And the final point? Well, here I have to agree with the publishers. Self-archiving may lead to duplication and inefficiencies, since one never knows where a paper is archived - is it in the individual's own home-pages (like mine), is it in an institutional archive, is it in a disciplinary archive (also like mine), or is it only available in the subscription journal that is only accessible to those who can afford to view it - also like some of mine :-) ?

What this recent initiative by the publishers points to is that the only sure way for the scholarly communities to take charge of the scholarly communication process is to rid themselves of their commercial exploiters and promote the publication of free, collaboratively produced and subsidised journals. Forget the Green and Gold routes insofar as they depend upon the acquiescence of the business world and go for the Platinum Route - it is the only way to take charge, and you have been exploited long enough.

Perhaps 'PRISM' really means, 'Publishers Resisting Intellectual Solidarity in the Market'!

From LIS News a story about Questia making 5,000 online books freely available. On a quick look, I guess that many of these are already freely available from sources such as Project Gutenberg. It's always nice to have alternative sources, but I couldn't see any download option

Heather Morrison's Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics has a useful entry for sources of data and information on open access.

One source she points to may be of interest to a lot of people: this is OAIster - pronounced, judging by its logo, "oyster". OAIster harvests open access sources and currently covers getting on for 12.5 million papers. An excellent tool for lesser known journals that may still contain something useful for you.

Thanks again to Peter Suber's newsletter for an item about the decision of the American Anthropological Association to transfer its publishing services to Wiley-Blackwell. The basis for the decision appears to be, in part, a report by the AAA's Director of Publishing which contains a truly amazing proposition:

Today’s electronic environment mitigates against a small scholarly publisher continuing to operate its entire program independently

I don't think I've seen such an unintelligent statement about publishing in the electronic era. It is exactly the opposite of the true situation: the electronic environment makes it easier for scholarly societies to pursue an independent programme. I would urge members of the AAA to abandon their organization (since it has abandoned them to the vagaries of commercial decision making) and develop their own alternative publishing outlets. There are many examples of collaborative, non-commercial OA journals from which they could take models and encourgement.

PS: I ought to have pointed out that the statement is also illiterate: the word sought was "militate" not "mitigate" - you can't "mitigate against" something - "mitigate" means to lessen the effect of something.

Thanks to Peter Suber's OA News for this item:

The German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG) has announced a funding program to launch new science journals, expand existing journals, and help print journals make the transition to electronic publication. To be eligible for funding, the journals must meet the DFG guidelines for open access, peer review, and preservation. (Thanks to the Informationsplattform Open Access.)

The enlightened character of this development compares favourably with the still unresolved policy of the UK Research Councils, which seem continually to be running scared of actually making a decision - the latest information that I could find on the Website was that discussion of its report on the subject was an agenda item for a meeting of the Executive Group held on the 25 April 2007. What the outcome was appears not to be recorded. However, we know from the earlier publications on the subject that the RCUK considers that there are only two forms of open access, "author pays" and "self-archiving". The notion that research funds, instead of supporting commercial publishers through "author payments", could go to the formation of new, collaborative, no fee, no subscription e-journals, is not on their agenda. The real reason for this, of course, is that the Research Councils fear offending government policy towards business - even if those businesses lie mainly outside the UK. The evidence for this is in the UKRC's own document. The intention is announced to:

Initiate a project to investigate the impact of author-pays publication and self-archiving on research publishing. Three leading publishers (Macmillan, Blackwell and Elsevier) have indicated that they are prepared to be involved in the project.

Obviously the companies want to be involved to protect their interests and I can't envisage anything happening to seriously affect the status quo.

The issue of funding OA publishing is the subject of another pair of items in Peter's newsletter: one on the University of Wisconsin setting aside resources to pay for OA - including support for free journals; and the other points to Heather Morrison's Weblog, where, in an article on the use of National Institutes of Health research funds, she notes:

If half the articles were paid for through article processing fees, about 32,500 articles, the $30 million NIH is already paying for publication charges would cover an average of $923 per article. That this is well within the realm of feasibility is illustrated by the fact that, while $923 average is less than the fee charged by some open access publishers, but it is more than is charged by other open access publishers, including the profitable Hindawi.
The feasibility of full open access publishing for NIH-funded research becomes even more obvious when we consider the possibility of redeploying some or all of the "indirect costs", from subscriptions or site licenses to support for open access initiatives.

Came across and interesting tool recently, called GTDinbox for Gmail. This is an add-in, or perhaps 'top-up' would be a better term, to Gmail, enabling you to use it within the 'Getting things done' methodology.

I haven't used GTD in the past, but this application may just persuade me to do so.

From a SPARC mailing list I learn that Google has not only opened its data to university research, but also requires the researchers to publish in open access journals.

I look forward to receiving the numerous submissions that will flow from this decision :-)

To Durham City at the weekend - best known for having the finest cathedral in Britain:

 

 

This building is less well known, although no doubt the fans of Indian cuisine think it is a great place, but if you look carefully between the windows of the first floor, you will see the 'torch of learning' that was, if my memory serves me right, the one time symbol of the county library movement. And it just happens to be where I started my career, as a rather nervous 16-year-old just out of school:

 

 

The new library (the second since then) is down at the bottom of the street and is known as the Clayport Library:

 

 

Somehow, they've never managed to achieve the same architectural standard since the cathedral was built :-)

I had an interesting message on a mailing list today:

SAGE Publications are pleased to offer free online full text access to the current and back issues of the following selected Information Sciences <https://online.sagepub.com/cgi/register?registration=FT77503> journals, until 30 September 2007, as listed below:

• IFLA Journal
• Journal of Information Science
• Journal of Librarianship and Information Science
• Information Development
• Business Information Review
• Journal of Health Informatics

No reason is given for this interesting trial, but I assume that it is something to do with the success of open access journals. Perhaps income from them is low, since journals in the field typically have quite small subscription lists and perhaps funding them through advertising is on the cards?

I don't know that many of those reading this Weblog will have known, or know of, Professor Wilf Saunders, who died last Friday. Wilf was the founding Director (in 1962) of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, under the original name of the Postgraduate School of Librarianship.

Wilf was President of the Library Association and Chair of the Committee that recommended the amalgamation of the LA, the Institute of Information Scientists and Aslib - an idea that did not come to fruition at the time, but which subsequently led to the merger of the LA and the IIS into CILIP. He received a CBE for his services to education.

Wilf became known to a wider audience when his "Dunkirk Diary of a Very Young Soldier" formed part of the background for the BBC drama/documentary on the Dunkirk evacuation. Published by Birmingham Public Libraries, where Wilf had begun his career, the "Diary" told his personal story of the preliminaries to the evacuation and his own days on the beach, often wading in water to boats that sank under their loads, before being taken off and transported back to England. He made a brief appearance in an interview associated with the programme. After Dunkirk, Wilf, a Signaller, attended officer training and spent the rest of the war in North Africa and Italy, in charge of a signals unit.

His many friends around the world will miss him - someone described by one of his contemporaries as "a True Gentleman".

Hi,

By any chance does anybody has some more information on "ROAMING LIBRARIANS" or "ROAMING REFRENCE" ? I will appreciate all your help and suggestions on this. We want to implement this in our library but before that I would like to hear about your experiences and challenges (technical, management etc) if anyone of you had while implementing this service. That will be a great help for me in planning and laying out this project.

Thanks,

Gigs

Your experience on FaceBook sounds more like MySpace. I've never had a friend request on FaceBook that turned out to be a spammer peddling porn. I have had a few friend requests from authors who write in genres I like so I haven't minded those.

MySpace is another matter. Until I tweaked my profile to require a full name and an email address, I would receive 3 - 5 friend requests daily that wanted to lure me to porn sites.

I'm not a cheerleader for FaceBook and won't try to convert you but I can see the potential in an academic setting. That's where the students are. There are also interesting apps being written for FaceBook including some that provide connectivity to library resources. Why a library app? If the students are going to be there anyway why not give them easy access in the event they have a sudden urge to look something up.

I joined Facebook recently, just to find out what it was all about, since libraries are now trying to use it (rather unsuccessfully, as far as I can tell) to create 'communities' of their users.

A number of friends and acquaintances seemed to join up at about the same time, so I found a group almost immediately. However, I also found that the amount of use I made of the system was minimal and that it added little more to the experience of communicating than does my ordinary use of e-mail. I also found messages telling me that person X wanted to be my 'friend' - these turned out to be spammers, peddling pornography in general and porongraphic images in particular.

I don't really need any more spam - and am thankful that Gmail's system gets rid of most of it for me, so I have deactivated my account and do not plan to reactivate it at any time.

I suppose these social networking sites are of some use, but I can't really imagine what it might be!

I imagine that most readers of this Weblog will have heard of Google's acquisition of gapminder.com and its Trendalyzer software. Recently, in relation to this, I came across a reference to www.ted.com, where TED = Technology, Entertainment and Design, and to a video by Hans Rosling, a Professor of Public Health in Sweden with 20 years experience of health research in Africa. Rosling was the inspiration behind gapminder.com and the TED site has an incredible video of his performance at the annual TED conference in Monterey, California. I recommend it: for the subject matter, for the presentation and demonstration of the power of Trendalyzer, and for the surprise ending. Go take a look.

Take a look also at the other videos available - there are some outstanding presentations: I particularly liked that by Evelyn Glennie, the star percussionist, who has been deaf since she was 12 - wonderful stuff; but there are many more available, such as James Watson, Jimmy Wales, E.O. Wilson - and that's just in the "Ws"! I think I'm going to be viewing these videos for weeks ahead!

McGee's Musings has a nice piece on 'knowledge management'. I particularly liked:

If you can manage at all, you must do so at another level of abstraction. You aren’t managing knowledge; instead you are trying to manage the conditions under which knowledge work takes place and within which valuable knowledge might be created or put to use. At that point, it becomes more productive to think in terms of leadership rather than management; particularly if you subscribe to Colin Powell’s characterization of a leader as someone you’ll follow to discover where they’re going.

The World List... has been further expanded by the addition of a number of Latin American countries, details for which were kindly provided by Ian Johnson as a result of his 'Revistas' project (http://www.rgu.ac.uk/files/Latin%20American%20Library%20Schools%20v7.doc) - I still have to review the information for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where there are larger numbers of departments, but that will happen. I've also added one or two other countries myself and we now have a total of 92 countries and 586 institutions and I don't know how many departments and courses - perhaps someone would like to count them! Xenu reports that there are 2,864 links to check. I try to do that a couple of times a year and each time, some 30% of the links have changed and need to be removed or corrected.

Which brings me to the question of maintenance. I regularly receive comments about the value of the list for curriculum development and/or research purposes, but maintenance is a key problem.

This can be dealt with by charging universities in developing countries an annual fee for entry in the directory - perhaps by Department or School; this would provide a service to everyone and a free service to the developing world. Departments pay for entry in printed directories of courses, and something in the order of $250.00 or £125.00 per entry (i.e., whatever appears under the name of the department) would correspond favourably with the rates of printed directories - with the added advantage of a world-wide readership (28,000 hits on the index page since last September); naturally, under this regime, if a university didn't wish to pay, it wouldn't get an entry.

Does the community value the list sufficiently to pay for it?

This from John Williams, author of a letter to the editor in the last issue of IR:

Good morning, Professor Wilson.

1.In case you missed it, the announcement of the sad and untimely death of Michie and McClaren can be found at either of these sites.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/09/car_crash/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6281348.stm

2. Regarding my Letter in the current issue of IR, I have happened to find an even longer term that the Patent Office took in granting a patent. This was William Friedman's application of 1933 for a Cryptographic System. No version of the patent was ever declined by PTO (unlike Mooers' experience). However, it was not granted until August 2000, 31 years after his death. The Assignee was the National Security Agency. The Patent Number is 6,097,812. It would make an interesting book to discover the top 25 information technology patents that took the longest to be granted, by the way.

3. My two colleagues on the Mooers project have returned from a session of research at the Smithsonian Archives and their Watson Davis collection. Davis was Mooers' father-in-law. A number of things turned up, however there is one that might interest you. This was a letter to Davis written by John Mauchly in 1947 with a blind copy to Mooers. Mauchly sought Davis' advice on how to keep the general public informed of progress in electronics and computer science. Davis ran Science Service at the time and was able to give Mauchly some direction by return letter.

However, it's serendipitous that there is evidence of a need for popularizing computer science from Mauchly at the same time as Mooers and his wife published Electronics: What Everyone Should Know (1947: Bobbs-Merrill). Mooers, in publishing this book, was following the example of his friend Robert Fairthorne who had published several titles in Longman's March of Time series of popularizations of science/technology in the 1930's and 40'. Fairthorne's topics were aeroplanes, wireless, and cinema and television, among others. The wireless introduction became a British Army field manual during World War II, I believe.

4. One of my colleagues on the Mooers project is Gwen Alexander. She has just been appointed Dean of the Library School at Emporia State University. If you are coming to the States in the future, please drop me an email. Gwen would enjoy hosting a lecture by you to her students at the School. I've spoken to her and you can consider this a standing invitation.

Finally, congratulations on being number six in the survey of library science/information management literature. When I wrote the cohort section of the introduction to our bibliography of information retrieval and data mining five years ago, I predicted that a cohort would form around you and Information Research. That has happened. Your status pleases me and the recognition is well deserved.

Best regards,

John

If you use the World list of schools and departments of information science, etc. you will find a completely re-designed site when you next check it. Not all of the links have been checked in the process, but that task is ongoing. The new version has a significant increase in the number of departments recorded for India, thanks to Dr. V.J. Vijayakumar and I shall be updating the Far-eastern countries with information provided by Chris Khoo of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

If you spot errors in the directory, please let me know.

My thanks to Javier Martinez for drawing my attention to the fact that, for 2006, Information Research has moved up two places in the rankings, i.e., from 20th out of 53 to 18th out of 53.

However, the group of journals into which IR fits (Information Science & Library Science) is something of a rag-bag. It includes a number of journals whose first location is in information systems and a couple that are more concerned with communication sciences, so we can remove the following eleven journals (using ISI's abbreviations) as not really constituting 'competitors': INFORM SYST J, INFORM SYST RES, J HEALTH COMMUN, J INF TECHNOL, J MANAGE INFORM SYST, MIS QUART, RES EVALUAT, SCIENTIST, SOC SCI COMPUT REV, SOC SCI INFORM, TELECOMMUN POLICY, and J HEALTH COMMUN.

Of the remaining 42 journals, Information Research then ranks 12th. However, the Impact Factor is an odd measure because when we look at the different fields and different journals we find that it is, at least in part, a measure of what we were taught to call, in classification lectures, the 'extension' of the subject. One finds that 'niche' journals tend to have higher impact factors and, in subjects that are 'niche' subjects the average impact factor tends to be higher than in fields that are more diffuse in character - I'm busy working on a research note to explore this notion further - think of it as a hypothesis for now. The effect of this is that the JIF is not comparing like with like.

In the Information Science & Library Science group there are the following niche journals: COLL RES LIBR, ECONTENT, ELECTRON LIBR, GOV INFORM Q, INFORM SOC, INFORM TECHNOL LIBR, INT J GEOGR INF SCI, INTERLEND DOC SUPPLY, J ACAD LIBR, J AM MED INFORM ASSN, J GOV INFORM, J MED LIBR ASSOC, J SCHOLARLY PUBL, KNOWL ORGAN, LAW LIBR J, LIBR COLLECT ACQUIS, LIBR RESOUR TECH SER, ONLINE, ONLINE INFORM REV, PORTAL-LIBR ACAD, PROGRAM-ELECTRON LIB, REF USER SERV Q, RESTAURATOR and SCIENTOMETRICS. We also have a non-journal serial - ANNU REV INFORM SCI - which, again, has a special role in the field and, because of that role, is likely to have a high impact factor. Removing these 25 journals gives us 17 that we can define as 'general purpose' information science, library science or information management journals.

The 17 journals in rank order by impact factor are: INFORM MANAGE-AMSTER, J AM SOC INF SCI TEC, INFORM PROCESS MANAG, J DOC, LIBR INFORM SCI RES, INFORM RES, J INF SCI, INT J INFORM MANAGE, LIBR TRENDS, LIBR QUART, ASLIB PROC, J LIBR INF SCI, CAN J INFORM LIB SCI, LIBR J, LIBRI, Z BIBL BIBL and LIBR INFORM SC Actually, Library Journal ought not to be in there, since it isn't a research journal on a par with the rest, however, leaving it in, Information Research then ranks 6th.

This from Slashdot:

"A judge has delayed his ruling on the eBay patent infringement case. eBay has been involved in a legal dispute over the use of its popular "Buy it Now" button, which allows consumers to skip the bidding and purchase items on eBay directly. The patent suit was filed six years ago by MercExchange L.L.C. In May of 2003, a jury ruled in MercExchange's favor finding that eBay did in fact infringe on the patent, but in 2005 the US Supreme Court ruled that MercExchange was not automatically entitled to a court order blocking the offending service, essentially handing a victory down to patent reform advocates. However, the ruling by the Supreme Court does not affect the final judgment of the court."

Does this mean that 'Search' button on this page, or 'Post Item', or any other button (which, presumably, may simply be a link - like 'Home' on this page, could be illegal on the grounds that someone patented the idea?

Software patents really were the biggest nonsense perpetrated by the US Patent Office and are completely unnecessary: a program can be copyrighted, and copying of the entire programme or any significant part of it would be an infringement of copyright. Patenting simple interface features is crazy!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is interviewed in this clip and defines the Semantic Web as 'the data web', suggesting that the emerging Semantic Web standards are all about enabling sites to be created that pull data in from various data bases to create new associations of data. It may be that 'data web' is a better term than 'semantic web', since the Web is already 'semantic' (see previous message), otherwise we wouldn't understand a word of what is there :-)

F.J. Devadason has produced an interesting paper on the notion of the Semantic Web - pointing out, rightly, that the Web is already semantic and that, perhaps, what is needed are maps to guide one through the forest, rather than additional codes added to Web pages. Read it here

For those interested in Open Access, there's an interesting PowerPoint presentation by the founders of a proposed new OA journal, Semantica and Pragmatics. They are going what I call the Platinum Route or True OA (TOA) to distinquish it from Green and Gold, which are author archiving and author payment. The more of these TOA journals (like Information Research) we have, the better!

In an earlier post I mentioned TiddlyWiki and my applications of it here and there. News about TiddlyWiki is best gathered by becoming a member of the relevant Google Group: one is for users in general and is mainly used for announcements and questions and answers - post a question and you'll usually get a very quick response from someone in the Group; the other is for those with the necessary technical skills to develop applications on TiddlyWiki or to contribute plug-ins and modifications.

Scanning both of these groups can be useful if you get into using TiddlyWiki: for example, a recent post drew my attention to Dave Gifford's Notes wiki, which is a nicely customised version for note taking with an excellent means of generating lists from the tags: you can get a version for yourself, if you right click on this link and then "Save link as...". That wiki advertised Dave's BibblyWiki - a version for creating and displaying bibliographic records of books and articles - again, get a copy by right clicking on this link and going through the same process. There's also a version in Spanish

The Developers' Group brought my attention to a number of things: a version of the basic TiddlyWiki in Brazilian Portuguese, and another in Portuguese Portuguese, and a very clever bookmarklet, which replaces the built-in search module of TW with YourSearch - not easy to describe what happens as a result but it means that you can search any TW with YourSearch. Of course, you need Firefox as your browser, although we are told that it may work in Opera and Safari

Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News for drawing attention to Alma Swan's new Weblog. The latest entry draws attention to the role of libraries in universities and comments:

The library is a woeful brand. Look on the website of almost any UK university and the library features under 'services' (or in some cases 'facilities') if it's lucky, or has to be specifically entered into the search box if it's not. And yet it is not so everywhere. In other parts of Europe, it is common for the library to be considered part of the academic fabric of an university, rather than a service department. Senior members of academic staff assume the role of university librarian for a period and then return to their department, while another takes over. In this way, the library is embedded in the academic framework of a university and is valued in a way that seems quite different to how libraries are valued in the UK.

Alma is certainly right about the problem of finding the library on the typical UK university site, and the pattern is repeated for public libraries, which are usually to be found only as a sub-site to the local authority's pages - often with the latter intruding on sidebars to draw attention to local authority pages rather than library pages - they're a mess.

However, I've worked in places in Europe where academics have been the 'librarian', and the experience has not always been good - with the downgrading of professional librarianship, and a lack of any professionalism on the part of the academic means that the library is often way down the budget greasy pole. In any event, finding a 'university library' in some countries can be a problem, since the 'faculty library' prevails, sometimes with a 'coordinator' trying to pull it all together and usually failing. So I'm not sure that the situation is any better.

The professional librarian in UK universities was the result of a long struggle to overcome the limitations of the 'academic in charge' model and, from observation of a number of cases, it seems to me that the problem has been not the lack of professional competency, but the dreaded 'new management' paradigm, where service agreements, budgetary stringency, etc., etc., have ruled in the majority of UK universities. This 'managerial' perspective, begun in the Thatcher years and happily continued by Major and Blair - and no doubt now by Gordon Brown, has been the chief agent of the destruction of genuine academic standards in UK universities. And it is the destruction of the academic ethos that has contributed to the decline of the library in the profile of the university.

There are times when the 'war or terror' paranoia exceeds even my expectations. There's a couple of lovely paranoia stories going the rounds - one about a suspect Canadian coin; the other about the wonderful Boston police force. But don't follow the links to Fox - the story has been pulled.

There's a lot of chatter on the Net about the latest Pew Internet study, which categorises IT users according to their relationship with the technology, from the Ominvores, who constitute 8% of the population of the USA, and who 'have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online and do a range of Web 2.0 activities such as blogging or managing their own Web pages.', to those who are Off the Network, and who have 'neither cell phones nor internet connectivity tend to be older adults who are content with old media', who constitute 15% of the population

c|net news has a nice pie chart of the data.

Thanks to Peter Suber's OA News for drawing attention to an item about the downside of Google Books.

It seems that the flaws are quite numerous but, to my mind readily fixable, if Google took a grip on quality control: it doesn't really take much to determine whether the scanned pages are of acceptable quality, for example.

This is a useful article and one that ought to be read by Google's executives - fix it guys before you lose credibility.

Peter Suber has an interesting comment on a message from Steven Harnad in Open Access News. He comments:

If there's a good OA journal in your field, and if it's no-fee or you can afford its fee or find a sponsor to pay it, then go for it. You'll help the journal and help yourself. But if there's not a good OA journal in your field, or if you can't afford the fee or find a sponsor to pay it, then remember that OA archiving provides bona fide OA. Publish in the best subscription journal that will accept your article and then deposit a copy of the postprint in an OA repository.

This seems to be eminently sensible advice and, as Information Research is a fully peer-reviewed journal of recognized quality, why do authors continue to submit to non-OA journals?

Rather more than 30 years ago I produced what was then called a 'programmed text' on chain indexing - apparently (at least according to a Google search) it still appears on some reading lists. The programmed text, in effect, implemented on paper the notion of hypertext.

I've occasionally thought of updating it, but not seriously until TiddlyWiki appeared on the scene. Now, as a result of a couple of days' work in retyping the text of the book, 'An introduction to chain indexing' is reborn as a true hypertext.

One of the benefits of using TiddlyWiki for this purpose is that the user can simply download a copy to his or her own hard disc (or portable medium of any kind) and use the text whether connected to the Internet or not, since everything needed to manipulate the text is actually built into the Web page.

I'll be interested to hear from anyone who uses the text or teaches the concept.

I picked up a second-hand copy of a book I'd seen reviewed some time back, The meaning of Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod - the subtitle tells you what it is about - "...and other extraordinary words from around the world". My favourite to date and one that I think ought to be brought into the English language is, from the Japanese: potto: to be so distracted or preoccupied that you don't notice what is happening right in front of you.

The English usage would be quite natural I think: "I was completely potto...", "Excuse me (on bumping into someone), I was having a potto moment...", etc.

For those who thinking of moving up a class in wireless routers, here's a horror story about the gear. (Thanks to Bill Drew and the LITA discussion list.)

Quite by chance, I came across one of the most impressive pieces of 'Web-ware' I've seen to date. It is a stand-alone, browser-based, javascript-run personal wiki, which you can put on a Website, or simply use on your own PC to collect recipes, book details, extracts from papers to help you prepare a paper, organize your Ph.D. thesis notes, or whatever. Naturally, I couldn't help using it and you'll see the result (which took about a day's work to construct) in inforesearchwiki. This is, in effect, a database of the abstracts to papers published in volume 12 of Information Research, with a subject index constructed from the 'tags' (or index terms as we old school information scientists prefer) associated with each abstract.

TiddlyWiki has an enthusiastic world-wide communitity, doing all kinds of things with it and producing a variety of style sheets and plug-ins. As more than one user has said, it is a 'mind-blowing' piece of gear.

According to the book entitled, "Research in the Digitalized Age," written by Leslie F. Stebbins in chapter 2 states how to evaluate books and e-books, shortcuts for researchers and etc. During class I discovered a great resource for accessing free e-books which is Google Books. Google provides the majority of the certain books and for some books the entire book is easily accessible for free. How crazy is this? I never really looked into Google Books until I took LIS 620: Advanced Reference. I always thought there was a fee that was associated with accessing e-books. I will definitely explore this database instead of buying books that are available online for free.