Israel Scholar Works, an OA repository for Israeli and Jewish scholars worldwide, officially launched on October 14. From the announcement:
Israel Scholar Works (ISW) is a digital archive (repository) for creative work by the faculty, staff and students of Israel Academic Institutions and Jewish scholars all around the world. Israel Scholar Works aims to facilitate innovation in the production and dissemination of Israel scholarship, to unite Israel and Jewish scholarship, to make it available to a wider audience, and to help assure its long-term preservation. Israel Scholar Works has published first postscript archive article and now open for submissions of a wide range scholarly publications....
While Israel Scholar Works present focus is postscript (or postprint) archiving of articles originally published in peer-reviewed journals and dissertations by Israel/Jewish scholars, in future the Repository will offer direct control over creation and dissemination of the full range of scholarly output, including pre-publication materials, conference proceedings, book chapters and teaching series. Importantly, it will cross disciplinary boundaries, giving it a wider scope than any journal or any small set of journals....
Sadly, "Israel does not have the level of Open Access activity that we see in any other part of the world with comparable levels of higher education and research," says Peter Suber....Israel Scholar aims to raise the profile of Open Access among Israeli scholars, librarians, university administrators, and government officials, and help bring Israel to a level of recognition for its OA activity commensurate with its levels of scientific research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/19/2006 09:05:00 AM.
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.
