The JISC Committee for the Information Environment (JCIE) Scholarly Communication Group
has released its report on Open Access Citation Information (condensed version or expanded version). The report authors are Rachel Hardy, Charles Oppenheim, Tim Brody, and Steve Hitchcock. Excerpt from the condensed version:
A primary objective of this research is to identify a framework for universal open access (OA) citation services and an ideal structure for the collection and distribution of citation information and the main requirements of such services. The aim of the proposal is to increase the exposure of open access materials and their references to indexing services, and to motivate new services by reducing setup costs. A combination of distributed and automated tools, with some additional effort by authors, can be used to provide more accurate, more comprehensive (and potentially free) citation indices than currently exist....Recommendations: [1] Integrate reference parsing tools into IR software to allow the immediate autonomous extraction of reference data from papers uploaded by authors. [2] Automatically parse most reference formats deposited as free text, and present a properly parsed version back to the author interactively. Authors can then be invited to check the reformatted references and attempt to repair unlinked references. [3] Establish a standard means for IR software to interact with reference databases, e.g. through a published Web services interface, allowing IR administrators to choose between reference database providers (e.g. CrossRef, PubMed, CiteULike, etc.). [4] Create or adapt reference database services to support remote reference linking, i.e. using the partial data obtained from autonomous reference parsing to query, expand and link those references to the canonical reference. [5] Develop a standards-based approach to the storage and communication of reference data, e.g. using OpenURL context objects in OAI-PMH....
This proposal enhances open access by building services that exploit improved accessibility of data, but it is also predicated on open access content, and in that respect should not become a barrier to the wider adoption of OA and the provision of substantially more OA content on which it depends. The proposal needs to be tested in terms of technical implementation and usability as well as acceptability by authors before it is included in a production version of any IR software.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/17/2005 04:18:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
