24 August 2004|
[Gender&ict] gender & ICT report available. "Bridging the Gender Digital Divide: A Regional Report on Gender and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)" Commissioned by UNDP, this report represents a joint effort of UNDP and UNIFEM to deepen knowledge about gender dimensions within ICT for Development (ICTD) and to strengthen integration of gender within the work of UNDP and others working to promote ICTD in the region. The report highlights the need for increased action to address imbalances between women's and men's access to and participation in ICTs in the CEE/CIS region. It also emphasizes the powerful potential of ICTs as a vehicle for advancing gender equality. This report is the first of its kind to compile a substantial inventory of gender equality projects and resources for the information society in the CEE/CIS region, including references to other resources, relevant websites and contacts. Equally important, regional specificities are addressed... 10:53:12 AM 
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APC Paper on Internet Governance and WSIS. Adam Peake of Glocom has authored a paper (PDF), commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), on Internet governance and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (PDF).
[via Internetpolicy.net] [ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog]10:51:21 AM
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Weblogs and Communities of Practice. Here’s a thoughtful post comparing communities of practice to networks of weblogs, apparently distilled from a discussion group at the Blogwalk conference. The short summary:
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Disruptive technologies in scholarly communication. Susan Lafferty and Jenny Edwards, Disruptive technologies: what future universities and their libraries? Library Management, 26, 6 (2004) pp. 252-58. Only this abstract is free online: "Christensen's Theory of Disruptive Technologies predicts that mainstream organisations and industries can be made obsolete by new technologies that change the whole paradigm of the industries in which they operate. This paper demonstrates the relevance of the theory of disruptive technologies to academic libraries, higher education and the academic publishing industry. The way universities are organised and how they operate could change radically; scholarly communication could be transformed, placing academic publishers at risk; academic libraries may become irrelevant as new business models emerge. There are strategies that these organisations might adopt to limit the effect of such technologies and/or preferably transform them into sustaining technologies." [Open Access News] 10:47:01 AM
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17 August 2004|
Review of OA pricing models. David Stern, Open Access Journals: revenue beyond author charges. Stern offers a detailed review of OA pricing models and discusses alternatives to author payment models. "The major concern of the community should be maintaining a revenue stream to support the peer review process," he argues. (Source:the (sci-tech) Library Question) [Open Access News] 9:58:33 PM
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Bangalore presentations on institutional repositories. The presentations from the INDEST-NCSI Workshop on Institutional Repositories (Bangalore, India, July 27-29, 2004), are now online. [Open Access News] 9:56:53 PM
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Academia's information sharing future. Grant Buckler, Open access: Academia's information sharing future, Information Highways, July/August 2004. A very good survey. Excerpt: "From the writer's viewpoint, though, academic publishing is quite different. Where journalists and novelists are paid for writing and many live on this income, academic journals pay neither the authors of the papers they publish nor their peers who review them....Meanwhile, the Internet removes the printing and distribution costs from the equation....The benefit to researchers is wider readership and more citations, which enhances their reputations. 'People go for what is easily available,' says Andrew Odlyzko, director of the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota, 'and we now have evidence from various studies that papers which are readily available on the net tend to have wider readership.' " [Open Access News] 9:55:29 PM
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10 August 2004|
Idea Viruses as Informational Cascades. In a previous post, I suggested that so-called “idea viruses” might be thought of as either causes of or manifestations of informational cascades. I now think manifestation is the right characterization rather than cause. I am persuaded by this fascinating and frightening piece of research [PDF] showing that legislators tend… [e-Literate]10:51:55 AM
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More on the Springer open-choice plan. Stephanie Kirchgaessner, New leaf for chief of Springer, Financial Times, August 5, 2004. On Derk Haank's move from Elsevier to Springer. Excerpt: "Like other academic publishers, some of Springer's biggest customers the libraries that purchase its journals are facing increasing budget pressure. A vocal minority of libraries and academics are also calling for a revamp of the traditional 'user pays' publishing model, which they claim is too costly for the end user. Instead, some are promoting a so-called open access model in which an author or sponsoring institution pays to have articles published that are then widely disseminated. Mr Haank says the debate, which has pitted some open-access upstarts against the industry leaders, has taken on an 'unhelpful', 'almost religious' emotional element. Nevertheless, Springer has responded to the call from some academics by offering journal authors a choice: publish using the traditional method or pay Springer $3,000 once an article has been accepted and it will be disseminated for free. 'The responses have been very positive, because people appreciate we are listening to the market,' Mr Haank says. But one rival says Springer's plan represents little more than a 'public relations initiative'. It is an accusation Mr Haank would likely deny, although he does appear to relish the challenge he is presenting to some academics to put their money where their protests are. 'Let's see how serious they really are...we expect that not more than 10 per cent will be interested in this option,' he says." (PS: Haank sounds as if his plan is designed more to generate low uptake, and ground a rebuke to OA advocates, than to test the OA waters in good faith. However, as I argued in SOAN for 8/2/04, the Springer processing fee is so high, and the restrictions on resulting access so many compared to true OA, that "[i]f Springer gets very few takers, no one will not be able to conclude that authors don't desire free online access for their work, especially when publishers offering full OA at lower prices are thriving.") [Open Access News] 10:47:56 AM
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Elsevier CEO responds to economic and political challenge. Dan Sabbagh, Reed Elsevier chief hits back in scientific publishing row, London Times, August 6, 2004. Excerpt: "Critics argue that the scientific community should abandon seeking publication in journals of the type that Reed owns in favour of the 'open-source' model, in which authors pay to have their research made public. 'After five years, the author-pays model has gained a 1 per cent market share,' Sir Crispin said as the Anglo-Dutch group reported interim results. 'Libraries do push back on costs, but we are securing a 96 per cent renewal rate, and that tells the real story.'...Last month, MPs on the Commons Science and Technology Committee called on the Government to create a free national archive of all scientific publications, and accused Reed of 'not being transparent' about its costs. At that time, Ian Gibson, MP, the committee’s chairman, went further and accused commercial publishers of 'ripping off the academic community'. According to the committee, the price of scientific publications has increased by 58 per cent since 1998. The report is now in the hands of the Government, which has to decide what measures to adopt. Executives at Reed are privately confident that any measures adopted will not have a major impact on business." [Open Access News] 10:46:47 AM
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Call for Australia to follow UK OA plan. Allan Fels, How to bring knowledge to the entire planet, The Age, August 7, 2004. Excerpt: "The promise of the internet as an easy-to-search, open-access archive holding all humanity's accumulated research and information is not being realised. According to a new report from the British Parliament, much of the best scientific and medical research is being locked away in for-profit journals whose rising costs are increasingly putting them out of public reach....It is time that the Australian Government changed its funding criteria and approach, to encourage researchers to publish their work in ways that ensure it is accessible to all....A fascinating demonstration of how an open-access research distribution universe would look is the Los Alamos E-Print Archive (arxiv.org). This website has revolutionised physics research by serving as an open and respected resource for serious scientists....Such open-access structures lower the barriers to entry to science, bring more brains into the innovation process, and increase the potential for breakthroughs....Colin Steele, one of the conveners of the NSCF, makes the insightful argument that prosperity in a knowledge economy depends as much, if not more, on knowledge distribution power than it does on knowledge production power. One could not make a stronger case for the end of the era of high-priced academic journals and the beginning of an era of open-access publishing." [Open Access News] 10:46:20 AM
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Will OA make costs go up or down?. Joseph J. Esposito, The devil you don't know: The unexpected future of Open Access publishing, First Monday, August 2004. Abstract: "With the advent of the Internet and online publishing, the notion has arisen that access to the world’s research publications could be made available to one and all for free, presumably by shifting the costs to other places in the value chain and disintermediating publishers, a circumstance called Open Access (OA) publishing. While there are many hopes embedded in this view (lower costs, wider access, etc.), it appears more likely that Open Access will come about not through a revolution in the world of legacy publishing, but through upstart media built with the innate characteristics of the Internet in mind. An unanticipated outcome of this situation will be that the overall cost of research publications will rise, though the costs will be borne by different players, primarily authors and their proxies." [Open Access News] 10:44:38 AM
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More on the BMC consultation on OA funding. Mark Chillingworth, BioMed Central seeks Open Access advice, August 9, 2004. Excerpt: "Open Access publisher BioMed Central is seeking librarians advice on the future payment methods for Open Access (OA). A special meeting is being held in London, results from the meeting will be published in September....Amongst the institutions being represented at the meeting will be Havard, Yale, Cambridge and Loughborough universities as well as Wellcome Trust, the Council for Central Laboratory of the Research Councils UK, and the Research Council." [Open Access News] 10:43:00 AM
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[bytesforall_readers] Global report on free flow of information published. http://www.digitalopportunity.org/article/frontpage/296/1061 Global report on free flow of information published Authoritarian governments in many countries still control the free flow of information on the internet, shows a recently published global report by Reporters Without Borders. More: http://www.rsf.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=433 -- Atanu ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker... By Monitor@community.eldis.org. [Community@Eldis: ICT for Development messages] 10:42:27 AM
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Contextualized Learning: Empowering Education. Learning must evolve into more pervasively accessible forms of performance support, and it must transition into a seamless set of resources that are integrated into work. This is what creates the appeal for search engines like Google or Yahoo. But... [eCornell Research Blog] 10:41:14 AM
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Survey Results: Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions. Joe Cothrel and Jenny Ambrozek have released a survey report that focuses on how online communities are being used in business and what we can expect in the future. It's called: Online Communities in Business: Past Progress, Future Directions Among the findings: While there were few surprises (RIO is hard to measure, etc.) here are a few things that I found interesting in the report: We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of the message board- reportedly created during a Chicago snow storm in 1978. With all the new and cool technologies like weblogs and wikis becoming online community tools, little attention is paid to the lowly message board these days. Yet, the survey results show that respondents plan to be using message boards more frequently than any other tool in five years (though to a lesser degree than today). See pages 16-17 of the report. On the same table, respondents say that they plan to be using Weblogs more frequently than than any other technology 1 year from now. To me, this suggests that respondents are learning about weblogs, but have yet to test them as online community tools- but plan to in the next year. I was also excited and pleased to see that I was listed as an "influencer". Thanks to this weblog, I imagine. Overall, I think this report is an interesting snapshot of the state of business online communities today. I had hoped for a larger sample size, but 135 isn't bad. Here's my own look at the near-future of business online community tools: While message boards have been a standard community tool for years, we are seeing a host of technologies emerge that can be integrated into message board-based environments. I think the we'll see future growth in message board communities integrating weblogs and wikis as community tools. While message boards will manage group discussions, weblogs may provide a community news and culture source and wikis can be a place to accumulate or collect the knowledge that is created by the group. In much the same way, social networking tools (like visible networks) may get into the mix as well. I also think, in the future, we'll see that "standard" online community tools include a diverse set of resources that are disparate today. Nancy White also http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/2004/08/ambrozek-and-cothrel-report-online.htmhas some preliminary comments. Also a wiki has been created for future comments. [Common Craft - Online Community Strategies]10:40:18 AM
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The Portable Internet. The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit will soon release a new publication examining the emergence of high-speed wireless Internet access together with the proliferation of portable devices entitled The Portable Internet (executive summary (PDF)), the sixth in its series of "ITU Internet Reports" originally launched in 1997. This new report will be released in conjunction with ITU TELECOM Asia 2004, to be held in Busan (Republic of Korea) from 7 to 11 September 2004. [ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog]10:31:44 AM
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03 August 2004|
Bank evaluation vindicates PRSP critics. The World Bank's Operations and Evaluation Department (OED) has just released the report of an evaluation they have conducted of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach. [Bretton Woods Project] 4:41:19 PM
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Last update: 24/08/2004; 10:53:52 .
